"Well, well, I'm glad they should have their game. Shall we stroll round and have a look at them?"

"Oh I wouldn't, if I were you, father, they'd stop directly. These village chaps are always so shy. It would spoil their afternoon."

"Would it?" Mr Ffolliot asked dubiously; "would it? I should have thought they would have found encouragement in the fact that their Squire took an interest in their sports."

"I don't think so," Buz said decidedly; "they hate to be looked at when they're practising."

"Very well, very well, if you think so," Mr Ffolliot said with surprising meekness; "we'll go and see Willets instead, and tell him about that fox."

"I don't think I'd bother him, the fox is miles away by now."

"Well, where shall we go?" Mr Ffolliot demanded testily; "I've come out to walk with you, and you do nothing but object to every direction I propose."

"Let us," said Buz, praying for inspiration, "let us go straight on till we come to a cleaner bit."

Mr Ffolliot looked ruefully at his boots. "It is wet," he remarked, "mind you don't slip with that arm of yours."

"Shall I take the gla.s.ses, father?" Buz asked politely.

"Yes, do, though I'm not sure that I wholly approve of Grantly lending these expensive gla.s.ses to you younger ones. I must speak to him about it."

Buz sighed heavily.

Just once more did Eloquent see Mary before Parliament met. It was in a shop in Marlehouse the day after he had received his lesson in kicking off, and he was buying ties. Eloquent was critical about ties, he had by long apprenticeship penetrated to the true inwardness of their importance, and this afternoon he was very difficult to please.

Many boxes were laid upon the counter before him, the counter was strewn with "neckwear," and yet he had only found one to his liking.

While the a.s.sistant was away seeking others from distant shelves, Eloquent busied himself in arranging the scattered ties carefully in their proper boxes. For him it was a perfectly natural thing to do, but he happened to look into the mirror that faced the counter, and in it he beheld Mary Ffolliot seated at the counter behind him, and she was watching him with fascinated interest. Buz was with her and they were buying socks. Eloquent's deft hands dropped to his sides and he turned furiously red. For no one knew better than he that it is not usual for a customer to arrange goods in a shop.

The young lady in the mirror had discreetly turned her head away, the a.s.sistant came back, Eloquent bought two ties without having the least idea what they were like, and then he heard a voice behind him saying, "How do you do, Mr Gallup--we've not seen you since the election to congratulate you," and Mary was standing at his side holding out her hand.

He shook hands with Mary, he shook hands with Buz, he mumbled something incoherent, and they were gone.

The Liberal member for Marlehouse rushed from the shop in an opposite direction without taking or paying for his ties, and the astute a.s.sistant packed them up, having added three that Eloquent did not buy, for the good of the trade.

CHAPTER XVI

MAINLY ABOUT REGINALD PEEL

The holidays had started badly, there was no doubt about that. All the young Ffolliots were agreed about it. First Buz broke his arm on Boxing-day. That was upsetting in itself, and Buz, as an invalid, was a terrible nuisance. Then the Ganpies had to return to Woolwich much sooner than they had expected: another matter for gloom and woe. And finally came the crushing intelligence that Mr Ffolliot did not intend to start for his oasis till the beginning of February, after the twins had gone back to school and Grantly to the Shop. And this was considered the very limit. Fate had done its worst.

No party: no relaxation of the rules as to absence of noise and presence of perfect regularity and punctuality at meals: no cheerful gathering together of neighbouring families for all sorts of junkettings; in fact, none of the usual features of the last fortnight of the Christmas holidays. And yet, in looking back afterwards, the young Ffolliots, with, perhaps, the exception of the unfortunate Buz, would have confessed that on the whole they had had rather a good time.

Mary, in particular, would have owned frankly, had she been asked, that she had never enjoyed a holiday more.

For one thing, the big boys had been "so nice to her," and by "the big boys" she meant Grantly and Reggie Peel.

She and Grantly had always been great allies. When they were little they did everything together, for the three and a half years that separated Mary from the twins seemed, till they should all get into the twenties, an immeasurable distance. But Grantly hitherto had been no more polite and considerate than the average brother. He was both critical and plain-spoken, and poor Mary had suffered many things at his hands . . . till this holiday; and it never occurred to her that this agreeable change in Grantly's att.i.tude might be due to some alteration in herself rather than in him.

Mary was far too interested in life with a big "L" to waste any time upon self-a.n.a.lysis or introspection. Neither she nor Grantly had ever referred to the night of young Rabbich's dinner at the Moonstone, but since that night she had been distinctly conscious of a slightly more respectful quality in his manner towards her. The tendency was indefinable, illusive, but it was there, and simple-minded Mary only reflected gratefully that Grantly was "growing up awfully nice."

Regarding Reggie Peel, however, she did venture to think that she must be rather more attractive than she used to be; and complacently attributed his new gentleness to the fact that she had put up her hair since she last saw him.

Gentleness was by no means one of Reggie's chief characteristics. He was ruthless where his own ends were concerned, tirelessly hard working, amusing, and of a caustic tongue: a cheerful pessimist who expected the very least of his fellow-creatures, until such time as they had given some proof that he might expect more. Yet there were a favoured few, a very few, whom he took for granted thankfully, and Mary had long known that her mother was one of those few. Lately she had realised with a startled thrill of gratification that she, too, had stepped out of the rank and file to take her place among those chosen ones, for Reggie had confided to her a secret that none of the others, not even her mother, knew.

Among the many serious periodicals of strictly Imperial tone that Mr Ffolliot read, was one that from time to time indulged its readers with exceptionally well-written short stories. Quite recently a couple of these stories had dealt with military subjects, and were signed "Ubique." The stories were striking, strong, and evidently from the pen of one who knew his ground. Mr Ffolliot admired them, and graciously drew the attention of his family to them. One had appeared in the January number, and Mrs Ffolliot and Mary fell foul of it because it was too painful. They thought it pitiless, even savage, in its inexorable disregard of the individual and deification of the Cause. Grantly, of course, upheld the writer. The male of the species prides itself on inhumanity in youth. Mr Ffolliot approved the story from the artistic standpoint, and the General defended it on the score of its absolute truth. Reggie, quite contrary to custom, gave no opinion at all till he was asked by Mary, one day when they were riding together.

As she expected, he defended the writer's stern realism. But what she did not expect was that he seemed to make a personal matter of it, almost imploring her to see eye to eye with him, which she wholly failed to do.

"I think he must be a terribly hard man, that 'Ubique,'" she said at last, "with no toleration or compa.s.sion. He talks as though incompetence were an unpardonable crime."

"So it is; if you undertake a job you ought to see that you're fit to carry it out."

"You can't always be sure. . . . You may do your best and . . . fail."

"I grant you some people's best is a very poor best, but in this case the man let a flabby humanitarianism take the place of his judgment, and he caused far more misery in the end. Can't you see that?"

"All the same," Mary said decidedly, "I wouldn't like to fall into the hands of that man, the Ubique man I mean, not the failure. He must be a cold-blooded wretch, or he couldn't write such things. It makes me shudder."

And Mary shivered as she spoke.

"He must be a beast," she added.

They were walking their horses along the turf at the side of the road skirting the woods. Reggie pulled up and Mary stopped also a little in front.

"Got a stone?" she asked carelessly.

Reggie did not answer or dismount, and she turned in her saddle to look at him, to meet his crooked, whimsical smile. Suddenly he dropped his reins and beat his breast, exclaiming melodramatically: "And Nathan said unto David, 'Thou art the man.'"

"What on earth do you mean?" Mary asked, bewildered. "What man? do you mean you'd behave like the man in the story, or you wouldn't, or . . .

Oh, Reggie, you don't mean to say you wrote it yourself?"

"You have spoken."

"You must be awfully clever!" Mary e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed with awe-struck admiration.

"My cleverness will not be of much comfort to me if you persist in your wrong-headed opinion that the man who wrote that story is a beast."

"Oh, that's different. I know you, you see, and you're not a beast.

You aren't really like that."

"But I am. That's the real me. It is truly; the real, deep-down me, the me that's worth anything."

"No," said Mary, shaking her head, "I don't believe it; you _have_ some consideration for other people."

"Not in that sense; if there was anything, any big thing, I had to put through--no one should stand in my way. And it's the same with anything I want very much. I go straight for it, and it matters nothing to me who gets knocked down on the route . . . and so you'll find," Reggie added very low.