"Really, Miss Day!" cried the scandalised woman. "Yours is hardly a seemly att.i.tude to a.s.sume before the pupils, is it?"

And at that least opportune moment, the door of the cla.s.s-room burst open again and Kitty Miller, that day scholar who sometimes walked home with Miss Day and kept "The Deleah Book," appeared. She flourished a letter in her hand.

"What will you give me for this, Miss Day?" she cried, not till too late perceiving the awe-inspiring figure of Miss Chaplin.

Deleah took the missive, and it would have been hard to decide whether she who gave it or she who took it had the guiltier look.

The outraged voice of Miss Chaplin arrested Kitty Miller in the moment of ignominious flight. "Wait!" commanded the alarming tones. Kitty stood still, trembling as she heard. "Who employs you to convey letters to Miss Day, Kitty?"

Kitty, the colour of beet-root, looked at Deleah, lily-white.

"Who gave you that letter, Kitty?"

And poor Kitty, looking piteously at Deleah, lied--futilely, but for the sake of her friend--and said she did not know.

"Was it a gentleman?"

Kitty, confounded and demoralised, stammered out that she had forgotten.

Deleah came to her rescue. Deleah, who knew well that her hour had come: "It is from Mr. Reginald Forcus," she said. She had received warnings on the subject of Reginald Forcus before.

"And what has that gentleman to write to you of such immediate importance that it must cause an interruption to cla.s.s?" Miss Chaplin with head in air demanded.

And Deleah looking at the note in its envelope, said she did not know.

"Open it, and see," Miss Chaplin naturally recommended.

When Deleah hesitated to comply, the schoolmistress held out her hand, but Deleah, choosing to disregard that gesture, put the letter in her pocket.

The elder lady threw her thin lips into a tight line across her narrow face. She really thought it immoral for a girl to receive a letter from a gentleman, she really felt that the high tone of her school was endangered by that flagrant breach of manners made by Deleah Day. She had to punish iniquity, she had to protect from the evil effects of pernicious example, the unsullied young under her care.

When Deleah, that afternoon, came upon Reggie waiting for her at the corner of the street, a fatuous expression of joy at her approach on his silly, good-looking face, she had received her dismissal from the school.

She was filled with anger towards him as the cause of that which was to her a calamity.

"I have been given notice to go. _You_ have done that, Reggie," she greeted him. "Your silly letter this morning was the finish."

"A rattling good thing too," the irreverent Reggie declared. "I'm jolly glad to hear it."

"And what do you suppose I am to do now?"

"That's what I came to tell you. It's just spiffin' for my plans, as you'll see, dear."

"It's not at all 'spiffin'' for mine."

"You. wait! You and I will get married, Deleah. We'll bring it off at once, do you see?"

"Oh, no, Reggie!"

"Oh, yes, Deleah. See if we won't! I'm not doing anything underhand. I've told Francis, straight. He's no fool. He knows when I mean a thing. And I'm my own master."

"But you're not mine, Reggie."

"You wait a bit. We'll fight all that out afterwards. What I've got to say to you this afternoon is this: I want to put you up on horseback."

"Absurd!"

"Wait! Only wait! Where do you think I've been this afternoon? I've been over to Runnydale, to look at old Candy's little brown mare. It's the one his girl has been riding. She's married, and gone away; and I've got the promise of it for you. No! Now do wait a bit. That little mare's as safe as a donkey; a child might ride her. All the same, I'm not going to put you up on her till you've had lessons; and I've been and seen about that too."

"Reggie!"

"I have, right enough. I went round to Ben Steel's when I came back from Runnydale. He's arranged to take you out twice a week. I'm going with you--so as you don't feel strange. I told Ben you'd take to it like a duck to water. 'That young lady'll look stunning on horseback,' Steel said. A little cheeky of him, but he's privileged. I say, Deleah, what'll the old women of Brockenham say when they see you with me, a-c.o.c.k-horse, riding side by side past their windows?"

"They'll never see me doing it, Reggie. I'm not going to ride with you, my dear boy."

"You wait! You'll change your mind when you see Laura Candy's little brown mare. Let me bring her up for you to see, to-morrow. Look here, I'm to send over for her to-night. Oh, hang it all, Deleah, we'll put off the marrying for a time if you like, but I've set my heart on having some rides together. You don't know how proud I shall be to ride with you beside me down Broad Street, and through the market-place, and up St.

Margaret's Lane. It will give all the cackling old women something to talk about."

It was with difficulty she made him understand that to help him to afford food for gossip was not her ambition, that she declined his escort on horseback through the streets of her native town, as well as his companionship through life. The events of the day had hardened her heart; and she succeeded in convincing him at last.

"And, Reggie, you are not to come to our house any more; you are never to write me letters; you are not to waylay me in the streets."

"Oh, I say, Deleah! Come! You can't mean it."

"I mean every word."

"But can't I sometimes meet you by accident even?"

"If you do I shall cut you."

"And if I won't be cut?"

"I shall call a policeman."

She laughed, but she made him see that she was in earnest. He walked by her side, crestfallen, a grieving look on his good-humoured, pleasant face. The hunting season was not here for several months. His head and his heart had been filled of late with Deleah, his time had been pa.s.sed in riding down Bridge Street in the hope that she might be looking out of window, in waylaying her when she came from school, in sitting in the room over the shop with Bessie, to get rid of time till Deleah should appear.

"If I'm to give up seeing you, and trying to see you, what on earth am I to do?" he asked.

"You are to travel."

"Why that is what Francis has been sticking into me!

"There you are, then. Two people who know what is good for you, Reggie."

"Francis is in a deuce of a hurry. He wants me to go next week."

"And why not?"