"I like our new lettering," he said thoughtfully. The words "Stewart Ansell" were repeated again and again along the High Street--curly gold letters that seemed to float in tanks of glazed chocolate.

"Rather!" said Rickie. But he wondered whether one of the bonds that kept the Ansell family united might not be their complete absence of taste--a surer bond by far than the ident.i.ty of it. And he wondered this again when he sat at tea opposite a long row of crayons--Stewart as a baby, Stewart as a small boy with large feet, Stewart as a larger boy with smaller feet, Mary reading a book whose leaves were as thick as eiderdowns. And yet again did he wonder it when he woke with a gasp in the night to find a harp in luminous paint throbbing and glowering at him from the adjacent wall. "Watch and pray" was written on the harp, and until Rickie hung a towel over it the exhortation was partially successful.

It was a very happy visit. Miss Appleblosssom--who now acted as housekeeper--had met him before, during her never-forgotten expedition to Cambridge, and her admiration of University life was as shrill and as genuine now as it had been then. The girls at first were a little aggressive, for on his arrival he had been tired, and Maud had taken it for haughtiness, and said he was looking down on them. But this pa.s.sed.

They did not fall in love with him, nor he with them, but a morning was spent very pleasantly in snow-balling in the back garden. Ansell was rather different to what he was in Cambridge, but to Rickie not less attractive. And there was a curious charm in the hum of the shop, which swelled into a roar if one opened the part.i.tion door on a market-day.

"Listen to your money!" said Rickie. "I wish I could hear mine. I wish my money was alive."

"I don't understand."

"Mine's dead money. It's come to me through about six dead people--silently."

"Getting a little smaller and a little more respectable each time, on account of the death-duties."

"It needed to get respectable."

"Why? Did your people, too, once keep a shop?"

"Oh, not as bad as that! They only swindled. About a hundred years ago an Elliot did something shady and founded the fortunes of our house."

"I never knew any one so relentless to his ancestors. You make up for your soapiness towards the living."

"You'd be relentless if you'd heard the Silts, as I have, talk about 'a fortune, small perhaps, but unsoiled by trade!' Of course Aunt Emily is rather different. Oh, goodness me! I've forgotten my aunt. She lives not so far. I shall have to call on her."

Accordingly he wrote to Mrs. Failing, and said he should like to pay his respects. He told her about the Ansells, and so worded the letter that she might reasonably have sent an invitation to his friend.

She replied that she was looking forward to their tete-a-tete.

"You mustn't go round by the trains," said Mr. Ansell. "It means changing at Salisbury. By the road it's no great way. Stewart shall drive you over Salisbury Plain, and fetch you too."

"There's too much snow," said Ansell.

"Then the girls shall take you in their sledge."

"That I will," said Maud, who was not unwilling to see the inside of Cadover. But Rickie went round by the trains.

"We have all missed you," said Ansell, when he returned. "There is a general feeling that you are no nuisance, and had better stop till the end of the vac."

This he could not do. He was bound for Christmas to the Silts--"as a REAL guest," Mrs. Silt had written, underlining the word "real" twice.

And after Christmas he must go to the Pembrokes.

"These are no reasons. The only real reason for doing a thing is because you want to do it. I think the talk about 'engagements' is cant."

"I think perhaps it is," said Rickie. But he went. Never had the turkey been so athletic, or the plum-pudding tied into its cloth so tightly.

Yet he knew that both these symbols of hilarity had cost money, and it went to his heart when Mr. Silt said in a hungry voice, "Have you thought at all of what you want to be? No? Well, why should you? You have no need to be anything." And at dessert: "I wonder who Cadover goes to? I expect money will follow money. It always does." It was with a guilty feeling of relief that he left for the Pembrokes'.

The Pembrokes lived in an adjacent suburb, or rather "sububurb,"--the tract called Sawston, celebrated for its public school. Their style of life, however, was not particularly suburban. Their house was small and its name was Shelthorpe, but it had an air about it which suggested a certain amount of money and a certain amount of taste. There were decent water-colours in the drawing-room. Madonnas of acknowledged merit hung upon the stairs. A replica of the Hermes of Praxiteles--of course only the bust--stood in the hall with a real palm behind it. Agnes, in her slap-dash way, was a good housekeeper, and kept the pretty things well dusted. It was she who insisted on the strip of brown holland that led diagonally from the front door to the door of Herbert's study: boys'

grubby feet should not go treading on her Indian square. It was she who always cleaned the picture-frames and washed the bust and the leaves of the palm. In short, if a house could speak--and sometimes it does speak more clearly than the people who live in it--the house of the Pembrokes would have said, "I am not quite like other houses, yet I am perfectly comfortable. I contain works of art and a microscope and books. But I do not live for any of these things or suffer them to disarrange me. I live for myself and for the greater houses that shall come after me. Yet in me neither the cry of money nor the cry for money shall ever be heard."

Mr. Pembroke was at the station. He did better as a host than as a guest, and welcomed the young man with real friendliness.

"We were all coming, but Gerald has strained his ankle slightly, and wants to keep quiet, as he is playing next week in a match. And, needless to say, that explains the absence of my sister."

"Gerald Dawes?"

"Yes; he's with us. I'm so glad you'll meet again."

"So am I," said Rickie with extreme awkwardness. "Does he remember me?"

"Vividly."

Vivid also was Rickie's remembrance of him.

"A splendid fellow," a.s.serted Mr. Pembroke.

"I hope that Agnes is well."

"Thank you, yes; she is well. And I think you're looking more like other people yourself."

"I've been having a very good time with a friend."

"Indeed. That's right. Who was that?"

Rickie had a young man's reticence. He generally spoke of "a friend,"

"a person I know," "a place I was at." When the book of life is opening, our readings are secret, and we are unwilling to give chapter and verse.

Mr. Pembroke, who was half way through the volume, and had skipped or forgotten the earlier pages, could not understand Rickie's hesitation, nor why with such awkwardness he should p.r.o.nounce the harmless dissyllable "Ansell."

"Ansell? Wasn't that the pleasant fellow who asked us to lunch?"

"No. That was Anderson, who keeps below. You didn't see Ansell. The ones who came to breakfast were Tilliard and Hornblower."

"Of course. And since then you have been with the Silts. How are they?"

"Very well, thank you. They want to be remembered to you."

The Pembrokes had formerly lived near the Elliots, and had shown great kindness to Rickie when his parents died. They were thus rather in the position of family friends.

"Please remember us when you write." He added, almost roguishly, "The Silts are kindness itself. All the same, it must be just a little--dull, we thought, and we thought that you might like a change. And of course we are delighted to have you besides. That goes without saying."

"It's very good of you," said Rickie, who had accepted the invitation because he felt he ought to.

"Not a bit. And you mustn't expect us to be otherwise than quiet on the holidays. There is a library of a sort, as you know, and you will find Gerald a splendid fellow."

"Will they be married soon?"

"Oh no!" whispered Mr. Pembroke, shutting his eyes, as if Rickie had made some terrible faux pas. "It will be a very long engagement. He must make his way first. I have seen such endless misery result from people marrying before they have made their way."

"Yes. That is so," said Rickie despondently, thinking of the Silts.