The twinkle came back to his father's eyes.

"The woman tempted me!" was all he said; and Roy, hopelessly mystified, wondered how he could possibly know. It was very clever of him. But Aunt Jane seemed shocked.

"Nevil, be quiet!" she commanded in a crisp undertone; and Roy, simply hating her, pulled out his watch.

"We've got to hurry, Daddy. Mother said 'not later than half-past.' And it is later."

"Scoot, then. She'll be anxious because of the storm."

But though Roy, grasping Tara's hand, faithfully hurried ahead because of mother, he managed to keep just within earshot; and he listened shamelessly, because of Aunt Jane. You couldn't trust her. She didn't play fair. She would bite you behind your back. That's the kind of woman she was.

And this is what he heard.

"Nevil, it's perfectly disgraceful. Letting them run wild like that; damaging the trees and scaring the birds."

She meant the pheasants of course. No other winged beings were sacred in her eyes.

"Sorry, old girl. But they appear to survive it." (The cool good-humour of his father's tone was balm to Roy's heart.) "And frankly, with us, if it's a case of the children or the birds, the children win, hands down."

Aunt Jane snorted. You could call it nothing else. It was a sound peculiarly her own, and it implied unutterable things. Roy would have gloried had he known what a score for his father was that delicately implied ident.i.ty with his wife.

But the snort was no admission of defeat.

"In _my_ opinion--if it counts for anything," she persisted, "this harum-scarum state of things is quite as bad for the children as for the birds. I suppose you _have_ a glimmering concern for the boy's future, as heir to the old place?"

Nevil Sinclair chuckled.

"By Jove! That's quite a bright idea. Really, Jane, you've a positive flair for the obvious."

(Roy hugely wanted to know what a "flair for the obvious" might be. His eager brain pounced on new words as a dog pounces on a bone.)

"I wish I could say the same for you," Lady Roscoe retorted unabashed.

"The obvious, in this case--though you can't or won't see it--is that the boy is thoroughly spoilt, and in September he ought to go to school.

You couldn't do better than Coombe Friars."

His father said something quickly in a low tone and he couldn't catch Aunt Jane's next remark. Evidently he was to hear no more. What he had heard was bad enough.

"I don't care. I jolly well won't," he said between his teeth--which looked as if Aunt Jane was not quite wrong about the spoiling.

"No, don't," said Tara, who had also listened without shame. And they hurried on in earnest.

"Tara," Roy whispered, suddenly recalling his quest. "I _found_ the Golden Tusks. I'll tell it you after."

"Oh, Roy, you are a wonder!" She gave his hand a convulsive squeeze and they broke into a run.

The "bits of blue" had spread half over the sky. The thunder still grumbled to itself at intervals and a sharp little shower whipped out of a pa.s.sing cloud. Then the sun flashed through it and the shadows crept round the great twin beeches on the lawn--and the day was as lovely as ever again.

And yet--for Roy, it was not the same loveliness. Aunt Jane's repeated threat of school brooded over his sensitive spirit, like the thundercloud in the wood that was the colour of spilled ink. And the Boy-of-ten--a potential enemy--was coming to tea....

Yet this morning he had felt so beautifully sure that nothing could go wrong on a day like this! It was his first lesson, and not by any means his last, that Fate--unmoved by 'light of smiles or tears'--is no respecter of profound convictions or of beautiful days.

CHAPTER III.

"Man am I grown; a man's work I must do."

--TENNYSON.

Tara was right. The Boy-of-ten (Roy persistently ignored the half) was rather a large boy: also rather lumpy. He had little eyes and freckles and what Christine called a "turnip nose." He wore a very new school blazer and real cricket trousers, with a flannel shirt and school tie that gave Roy's tussore shirt and soft brown bow almost a girlish air.

Something in his manner and the way he aired his school slang, made Roy--who never shone with strangers--feel "miles younger," which did not help to put him at ease.

His name was Joe Bradley. He had been in India till he was nearly eight; and he talked about India, as he talked about school, in a rather important voice, as befitted the only person present who knew anything of either.

Roy was quite convinced he knew nothing at all about Rajputana or Chitor or Prithvi Raj or the sacred peac.o.c.ks of Jaipur. But somehow he could not make himself talk about these things simply for "show off," because a strange boy, with bad manners, was putting on airs.

Besides, he never much wanted to talk when he was eating, though he could not have explained why. So he devoted his attention chiefly to a plate of chocolate cakes, leaving the Boy-of-ten conversationally in command of the field.

He was full of a recent cricket match, and his talk bristled with such unknown phrases as "square leg," "cover point" and "caught out." But for some reason--pure perversity perhaps--they stirred in Roy no flicker of curiosity, like his father's "flair for the obvious." He didn't know what they meant--and he didn't care, which was not the least like Roy.

Tara, who owned big brothers, seemed to know all about it, or looked as if she did; and to show you didn't understand what a girl understood, would be the last indignity.

When the cricket show-off was finished, Joe talked India and ragged Tara, in a big-brotherly way, ignored Christine, as if five and a half simply didn't count. That roused Roy; and by way of tacit rebuke, he bestowed such marked attention on his small sister, that Christine (who adored him, and was feeling miserably shy) sparkled like a dewdrop when the sun flashes out.

She was a tiny creature, exquisitely proportioned; fair, like her father, yet in essence a replica of her mother, with the same wing-like brows and dark limpid eyes. Dimly jealous of Tara, she was the only one of the three who relished the presence of the intruder and wished strange boys oftener came to tea.

Millicent, the nursery-maid, presided. She was tall and smiling and obviously a lady. She watched and listened and said little during the meal.

Once, in the course of it, Lilamani came in and hovered round them, filling Roy's tea-cup, spreading Christine's honey--extra thick. Her Eastern birthright of service, her joy in waiting on those she loved, had survived ten years of English marriage, and would survive ten more.

It was as much an essential part of her as the rhythm of her pulses and the blood in her veins.

She was no longer the apple-blossom vision of the morning. She wore her mother-o'-pearl sari with its narrow gold border. Her dress, that was the colour of a dove's wing, shimmered changefully as she moved, and her aquamarine pendant gleamed like drops of sea water on its silver chain.

Roy loved her in the mother-o'-pearl mood best of all; and he saw, with a throb of pride, how the important Boy-from-India seemed too absorbed in watching her even to show off. She did not stay many minutes and she said very little. She was still, by preference, quiet during a meal; and it gave her a secret thrill of pleasure to see the habit of her own race reappearing as an instinct in Roy. So, with merely a word or two, she just smiled at them and gave them things and patted their heads. And when she was gone, Roy felt better. The scales had swung even again.

What was a school blazer and twenty runs at cricket, compared with the glory of having a mother like that?

But if tea was not much fun, after tea was worse.

They were told to run and play in the garden; and obediently they ran out, dog and all. But what _could_ you play at with a superior being who had made twenty runs not out, in a House Match--whatever that might be?

They showed him their ring-doves and their rabbits; but he didn't even pretend to be interested, though Tara did her best, because it was she who had brought this infliction on Roy.

"How about the summer-house?" she suggested, hopefully. For the summer-house locker contained an a.s.sortment of old tennis-bats, mallets and b.a.l.l.s, that might prove more stimulating than rabbits and doves. Roy offered no objection; so they straggled across a corner of the lawn to a narrower strip behind the tall yew hedge.

The grown-ups were gathered under the twin beeches; and away at the far end of the lawn Roy's mother and Tara's mother were strolling up and down in the sun.

Again Roy noticed how Joe Bradley stared: and as they rounded the corner of the hedge he remarked suddenly "I say! There's that swagger ayah of yours walking with Lady Despard. She's jolly smart, for an ayah. Did you bring her from India? You never said you'd been there."

Roy started and went hot all over. "Well, I _have_--just on a visit. And she's _not_ an ayah. She's my Mummy!"