The Ffolliots of Redmarley Part 22

Heartiest grats," the boy called cheerily. Eloquent went up to him and held out his hand. He looked up and down the street, no one was within earshot. "I've a favour to ask you, Mr Ffolliot," he said in a low tone, "but you must promise to refuse at once if you have any objection."

Grantly leant down to him, smiling more broadly than ever. "That's awfully decent of you," he said, and he meant it.

Again Eloquent cast an anxious look up and down the street. "They've asked me to kick-off at the match on Sat.u.r.day, and . . . you'll think me extraordinarily ignorant . . . I've no idea what one does. Can I learn in the time?"

Eloquent's always rosy face was almost purple with the effort he had made.

Grantly, on the contrary, appeared quite unmoved. He fixed his eyes on his horse's left ear and said easily: "It's the simplest thing in the world. All we want is a field and a ball, and we've got both at home.

At least . . . not a soccer ball--but I don't think that matters. When will you come?"

"When may I come?"

"Meet me this afternoon in the field next but one behind the church.

There's never anyone there, and we'll fix it up."

"All right," said Eloquent. "Many thanks . . . I suppose you think it very absurd?" he added nervously.

This time Grantly did not look at Mafeking's left ear, he looked straight into Eloquent's uplifted eyes, saying slowly:

"I don't see that I'm called upon to think anything about it. You've done another kind thing in asking me. Why should you think I don't see it?"

And in spite of himself Eloquent mumbled, "I beg your pardon."

"This afternoon then, at three-thirty sharp--good-day."

A loafer hurried up at this moment and Grantly swung off his horse and ran up the steps into the bank.

Eloquent looked after the graceful figure in the well-cut riding clothes and sighed--

"If I'd been like himself he'd have asked me to hold his horse while he went in, but things being as they are, he wouldn't," he reflected bitterly.

Only one belonging to a large family knows how difficult it is to do anything by one's self.

That afternoon it seemed to Grantly that each member of the Manor House party wanted him for something, and he offended every one of them by ungraciously refusing to accompany each one in turn.

His mother and Mary were driving into Marlehouse and wanted him to come and hold the horse while they went into the different shops, but he excused himself on the score of his morning's errand, and Uz was told off for the duty, greatly to his disgust. Reggie asked Grantly to ride with him, but Grantly complained of fatigue, and Reggie, who knew perfectly well that the excuse was invalid, called him a slacker and started forth huffily alone, mentally animadverting on the "edge"

displayed by the new type of cadet.

Nearly ten years' service gave Reggie the right to talk regretfully of the stern school he had been brought up in.

Ger, on the previous day, had been sent to his grandparents at Woolwich "by command"; and the Kitten was going with Thirza to a children's party. She was therefore made to lie down for an hour after lunch--so she was disposed of. There remained only Buz, and Buz was on the prowl seeking someone to amuse him. His arm was still in a sling and he expected sympathy. He shadowed Grantly till nearly half-past three, when that gentleman appeared in the back pa.s.sage clad in sweater and shorts, with a Rugger ball under his arm.

"Hullo," cried Buz, "where are you off to?"

"I'm going to practise drop-kicks . . . by myself," Grantly answered grumpily.

"Why can't I come? I could kick even if I can't use this beastly arm."

"No, it's too cold for you to stand about."

"Bosh; I can wrap myself in a railway rug if it comes to that."

"It needn't come to that. You go for a sharp walk or else take a book and amuse yourself. I must be off."

"Well you _are_ a selfish curmudgeon," Buz exclaimed in real astonishment. "Why this sudden pa.s.sion for solitude?"

Grantly banged the door in Buz's face, regardless of the warning cards, and set off to run. Buz opened the door and looked after him, noted the direction, nodded his head thrice and nipped upstairs to Grantly's room, where he abstracted his field-gla.s.ses from their case hanging on a peg behind the door. He hung them round his neck by the short black strap, tied a sweater over his shoulders, and went out by the side door in quite a different direction from that taken by his brother.

Oblivious of the surgeon's strict injunctions that he was on no account to run or risk a fall of any kind, holding the gla.s.ses with his free hand so that they shouldn't drag on his neck, directly he was clear of the house he broke into the swinging steady trot that had won him the half-mile under fifteen in the last school sports; climbed two gates and jumped a ditch, finally arriving at the top of a small hill, the very highest point on the Manor property. From this eminence he surveyed the country round, and speedily, without the aid of the field-gla.s.ses, discerned his brother kicking a football well into the centre of the field, while the Liberal member for Marlehouse ran after it and tried somewhat feebly to kick it back.

"Well I'm jiggered!" Buz exclaimed in breathless astonishment; "so he knows him too. Whatever are they playing at?"

He fixed the field-gla.s.ses, watching intently, then dropped them and rubbed his eyes, took them up again and gazed fixedly, and so absorbed was he that he positively leapt into the air when he heard his father's voice close beside him asking mildly, "What are you watching so intently, Hilary?"

The lovely winter afternoon had tempted Mr Ffolliot out. Usually Mrs Ffolliot accompanied him on his rare walks, but this afternoon he only decided to go out after she had left for Marlehouse. Like Buz, he sought the highest point of his estate, in his case that he might complacently survey its many acres.

Buz dropped the gla.s.ses so that they hung by their strap and swung round, facing his father with his back to the distant figures with the football, seized the gla.s.ses again and gazed into the copse, exclaiming eagerly, "A fox, sir; perhaps you could see him if you're quick,"

pulled the strap over his head, gave the gla.s.ses a dextrous twist, entirely destroying their focus, and handed them to his father, who fiddled about for some time before he could see anything at all.

"A fox," Mr Ffolliot repeated, "in the copse. We had better go and warn Willets to look out for his ducks and chickens."

"I don't suppose he'll stay, sir, but perhaps it would be as well.

Shall I take the gla.s.ses, father, they're rather heavy?"

But Mr Ffolliot had got them focussed and was leisurely surveying the distant scene; gradually turning so that in another moment he would bear directly on the field where Grantly and Eloquent were now to be seen standing in earnest conversation.

"There he is," shouted the mendacious Buz, seizing his father by the arm so violently that he almost knocked him down, "over there towards the house; don't you see him? a big dog fox with a splendid brush----"

Imperceptibly Buz had propelled his father down the slope on the side farthest from his brother.

"My dear Hilary," Mr Ffolliot exclaimed, straightening his hat, which had become disarranged in the violence of his son's impact, "one would think no one had ever seen a fox before; why be so excited about it?"

"But didn't you see him, sir?" Buz persisted. "There he goes close by the garden wall; oh, do look."

Mr Ffolliot looked for all he was worth. He twiddled the gla.s.ses and put them out of focus, but naturally he failed to behold the mythical fox which was the product of his offspring's fertile brain.

They were at the bottom of the slope now, and Buz gave a sigh of relief.

"I thought I saw two youths in the five-acre field," Mr Ffolliot remarked presently; "what were they doing?"

"Practising footer, I fancy," Buz said easily, thankful that at last he could safely speak the truth.

"Ah," said Mr Ffolliot, "it is extraordinary what a lot of time the working cla.s.ses seem able to spend upon games nowadays. Still, I'm always glad they should play rather than merely watch. It is that watching and not doing that saps the moral as well as the physical strength of the nation."

"It's Thursday, you see, father--early closing," Buz suggested.