A Man's Man Part 6

Jimmy Marrable paused, and surveyed his nephew rather irritably.

"Well," he inquired at length, "haven't you any contribution to make to this conversation?"

"Can't say I have had much chance so far," replied the disrespectful Hughie.

"Don't you want to know what I'm going to do with the rest of my money?

That's a question that a good many people are worrying themselves about.

Don't you want to join in the inquisition?"

"Can't say I do. No business of mine."

His uncle surveyed him curiously.

"You're infernally like your father, Hughie," he said. "Well, I'm going to leave it to Joey."

"Good scheme," said Hughie.

"You think so?"

"Rather!"

"There's a lot of it," continued his uncle reflectively. "Some of it is tied up rather queerly, too. My executors will have a bit of a job."

He surveyed the impa.s.sive Hughie again.

"Don't you want to know who my executors are?" he inquired quite angrily.

"No," said Hughie, who was deep in other thoughts at the moment. "Not my business," he repeated.

"Hughie," said Jimmy Marrable, "you are poor Arthur over again. He was a cursedly irritating chap at times," he added explosively.

A babble of cheerful voices on the staircase announced the return of the safe-looking Mr. Lunn and party. They flowed in, entranced with that gentleman's door-knockers (the countenances of which, by the way, were usually compared by undergraduate critics, not at all unfavourably, with that of their owner), and declared themselves quite ready now to be properly impressed by whatever features of the College Hughie should be pleased to exhibit to them.

One tour round a College is very like another; and we need not therefore follow our friends up and down winding staircases, or in and out of chapels and libraries, while they gaze down on the resting-places of the ill.u.s.trious dead or gape up at the ephemeral abodes of the undistinguished living.

The expedition was chiefly remarkable (to the observant eye of Mrs.

Ames) for the efforts made by its conductor to get lost in suitable company--an enterprise which was invariably frustrated by the resolute conduct of that small but determined hero-wors.h.i.+pper, Miss Joan Gaymer.

On one occasion, however, Hughie and Miss Freshwater were left together for a moment. The party had finished surveying the prospect from the roof of the College Chapel, and were painfully groping their way in single file down a spiral staircase. Only Hughie, Miss Freshwater, and the ubiquitous Miss Gaymer were left at the top.

"You go next, Joey," said Hughie; "then Miss Freshwater, then me."

The lady addressed plunged obediently into the gloomy chasm at her feet.

She observed with frank jealousy that the other two did not immediately follow her, and accordingly waited for them in the belfry half-way down.

Presently she heard their footsteps descending; and Miss Freshwater's voice said:--

"I wanted to tell you about it first of anybody, Hughie, because you and I have always been such friends. n.o.body else knows yet."

There was a silence, broken only by Hughie's footsteps, evidently negotiating a difficult turn. Then Miss Freshwater's voice continued, a little wistfully:--

"Aren't you going to congratulate me?"

And Hughie's voice, sounding strangely sepulchral in the echoing darkness, replied:--

"Rather! I--I--hope you'll be very happy. Mind that step."

Miss Gaymer wondered what it was all about.

Hughie found an opportunity before the day was over of holding another brief conversation with his uncle, in the course of which he expressed an opinion on the advantages of immediate and extensive foreign travel which sent that opponent of early marriages back to town in a thoroughly satisfied frame of mind.

"There ought to be a statue," said Jimmy Marrable to his cigar, as he leaned back reflectively in his railway carriage, "set up in the capital of every British Colony, representing a female figure in an att.i.tude of aloofness, and inscribed: _Erected by a grateful Colony to its Princ.i.p.al Emigration Agent--The Girl at Home Who Married Somebody Else_."

Then he sighed to himself--rather forlornly, a woman would have said.

CHAPTER IV

AN UNDERSTUDY

"_The indulgence of the audience is asked on behalf of Miss Joan Gaymer, who, owing to the sudden indisposition of Miss Mildred Freshwater, has taken up that lady's part at very short notice._"

A couple of hours later Hughie, roaring very gently for so great a lion, was engaged in paddling a Canadian canoe down to Ditton Corner.

The canoe contained one pa.s.senger, who, with feminine indifference to the inflexible laws of science, was endeavouring to a.s.sist its progress by paddling in the wrong direction. Her small person, propped by convenient cus.h.i.+ons, was wedged into the bow of the vessel, and her white frock and attenuated black legs were protected from the results of her own efforts at navigation by a spare blazer of Hughie's. Her hat lay on the floor of the canoe, half-full of cherries, and her long hair rippled and glimmered in the afternoon sun. Miss Joan Gaymer would be a beauty some day, but for the present all knowledge of that fact was being tactfully withheld from her. To do her justice, the prospect would have interested her but little. Like most small girls of eleven, she desired nothing so much at present as to resemble a small boy as closely as possible. She would rather have captured one bird's-nest than twenty hearts, and appearances she counted as dross provided she could hold her own in a catherine-wheel compet.i.tion.

They were rather a silent couple. Joan was filled with that contentment which is beyond words. She was wearing a new frock; she had escaped under an escort almost exclusively male--if we except the benevolent despotism of Mrs. Ames--from home, nurse, and governess, to attend a series of purely grown-up functions; and to crown all, she was alone in the canoe, a light-blue blazer spread over her knees, with one who represented to her small experience the head and summit of all that a man should--nay, could--be.

"I expect," she remarked, in a sudden burst of exultation, as the canoe slid past two gorgeously arrayed young persons who were seated by the water's edge, "that those two are pretty sorry they're not in this canoe with us."

The ladies referred to arose and walked inland with some deliberation.

Hughie did not answer. His brow was knitted and his manner somewhat absent.

"Hughie," announced Miss Gaymer reproachfully, "you are looking very cross at me."

She had a curiously gruff and hoa.r.s.e little voice, and suffered in addition from inability to p.r.o.nounce those elusive consonants _r_ and _l_. So she did not say "very cross," but "ve'y c'oss," in a deep ba.s.s.

Hughie roused himself.

"Sorry, Joey!" he said; "I was thinking."

"Sec'ets?" inquired Miss Gaymer, all agog with femininity at once.

"No."

"Oh,"--rather disappointedly. "About your old boat, then?"