CHAPTER SEVEN.

MR. ARMSTRONG PUTS DOWN HIS FOOT.

Mr Armstrong, as unconcerned as if he had just returned from a half- hour's stroll, had little idea of the flutter which his return caused to the Maxfield family. He could hardly know that Raffles was parading the lower regions rubbing his hands, and informing his acquaintance down there that the season for "larks" was coming on; nor, as he was out of earshot, could he be supposed to know the particularly forcible expressions which Captain Oliphant rehea.r.s.ed to himself in celebration of the occasion. As for the young people, it did afford him a pa.s.sing gratification to feel his pupil's arm linked once more in his own, and to encounter the expected boisterous welcome from Tom and Jill. Miss Rosalind was busy, forsooth! and if Mr Armstrong flattered himself she took the slightest interest in his return, he might find out his mistake.

"I'll join you in a minute, Roger," said he to his ward, "but I must go and pay my respects to your mother."

"Oh, she'll keep," said Roger; "I want to hear what you've been up to."

"In five minutes," said the tutor, going to the drawing-room.

Mrs Ingleton was there, looking pale and fragile, pouring out afternoon tea for Captain Oliphant.

"Why, Mr Armstrong," said she, "we had given you up for lost; Roger was getting quite melancholy without you."

"I understood," began the captain, "when you asked leave--"

"Mrs Ingleton, I must ask you to excuse my long absence. I went to see a dying friend, and was unable to return earlier."

"You might have written," said the captain, returning to the charge.

Mr Armstrong screwed his eye-gla.s.s round and stared at the speaker.

"I beg your pardon," said he.

"I say, sir, you might have written. Let me tell you, Mr Armstrong, that, as my dear relative's co-trustee and guardian--"

"I am sorry," observed the tutor, addressing Mrs Ingleton, "that Roger's cough is still troubling him. He is waiting for me upstairs, by the bye, but I was anxious to offer you my apologies without delay for my long absence."

"Mr Armstrong," said the captain, stepping between the tutor and the door, "this will not do, sir. When I speak to you, I expect you to listen."

Mr Armstrong bowed politely.

"I repeat, sir, your conduct satisfies neither me nor your mistress.

You forget, sir, that you are here on sufferance, and I desire to caution you that it may become necessary to dispense with your services, unless-- I am speaking to you, Mr Armstrong."

Mr Armstrong was examining with some curiosity a china group on the mantelpiece. He turned round gravely.

"You were saying--?" said he.

The captain gave it up.

"We shall discuss this matter some other time," said he.

"Pray, pray," said Mrs Ingleton with tears in her eyes, "let us not forget that my boy's happiness depends on our harmony. I am sure Mr Armstrong recognises that I depend on you both."

Mr Armstrong bowed again; and finding that the captain had returned to his chair, he quietly left the room.

When he entered Roger's room, humming a tune to himself, he neither looked like a man who had returned from a funeral or from an altercation in the drawing-room. In five minutes he was in possession of most of what had taken place during his absence--of Roger's cold, of the painting-lessons, of Tom's reminiscences of Christy's Minstrels, and most of all of Hodder's tribulation.

"And what sort of an artist are you turning out?" inquired he.

"Oh, all right. But I say, Armstrong, I want you to make it right about Hodder before anything. Will you come and see him?"

"My dear fellow, Hodder is as safe in his cottage as you are here.

Leave that to your responsible guardian. My present intention is to work on the tender mercies of Raffles for some dinner. I have travelled right through from Paris since this morning."

"Your friend died?" inquired Roger.

"Yes. I was in time to be of some little help, I think, but he was past recovery. How is Miss Oliphant?"

"All right; but in an awful state about old Hodder. I'm afraid to meet her myself. She will be relieved to have you back."

"Will she really?" said the tutor, laughing. "I hardly flatter myself her comfort depends on which particular hemisphere I happen to be in."

Miss Oliphant, as it happened, had taken to a spell of hard work in her studio, and was not visible all the evening. She was, in fact, making a copy of the portrait Roger had lent her, and the work interested her greatly.

This bold, fearless, almost insolent, boy's face fascinated her. She seemed to be able to interpret the defiance that flashed in his eye, and to solve the problem which gathered on his half-mocking lips. She was half afraid, half enamoured of this old piece of canvas.

"Why are not you here now?" she muttered as she gazed at it. "You don't look like the sort of boy to die. Should we be friends or enemies?

Heigho! I shouldn't care much which, if only you were here. Roger minor is a dear boy; but--you are--"

She didn't say what he was, but worked late into the night with her copy.

At bedtime Jill came in radiant.

"He's come back, Rosalind. Dear Mr Armstrong's come back."

"Oh!" said Rosalind shortly.

"Aren't you glad? Oh, I am!"

"Why should I be glad? I don't care two straws for all the Mr Armstrongs in the world. Go to bed, Jill, and don't be a goose."

Jill obeyed, a little discomfited, and was sound asleep long before the artist joined her. And long before she woke from her dreams next morning Rosalind was astir and abroad. She had resolved to pay an early call on old Hodder, if not to relieve his mind about the eviction, at least to take him some comfort in the shape of a little tea and sugar.

The old man was sitting outside the cottage, smoking and moaning to himself. He cheered up a bit at the sight of his visitor, still more at the sight of the tea. But it was a short-lived gleam of comfort, and he relapsed at the earliest opportunity into the doleful.

"Little good it'll do me," said he, "as have known this place, man and boy, seventy-five years, Missy. Never a word did they say to me till now. The old squire had allers his nod for Hodder, and when times was bad he let the rent stand. And young Master Roger was of the same sort."

"Oh, Roger is your friend still," said Rosalind; "he's doing everything to help you."

"I don't mean _him_. He's good enough; but he's a boy. But young Master Roger as was, he had a will of his own, Missy. Not one of 'em durst stand up to him."

Rosalind became interested. "Do you mean the one who died?" said she.

"Ay, they say he died. They said as much and wrote it on the tombstone."