"Trust a boy for gossip," exclaimed Betty. "Fire away, Lance."

"My aunt knew them," said Lance. "She, Mrs. C., was a little dear, awfully pink and pretty you know, and Clutterbuck, a big raw thin thing with wild sort of hair and dreamy manners. Well, they were awfully proud and pleased with themselves, and started off for their honeymoon like two happy babies."

"Will you kindly tell me how you knew this?" asked Mrs. Leighton helplessly.

"I heard my aunt telling my mother," said Lance.

"There's a gleam in your eye which I don't quite trust," Elma remarked sedately. "Go on."

"Everything went well," exclaimed Lance, "until one morning when Mrs.

C., all rosy and chiffony you know, said 'My dear Theo, I don't remember to ever have been so happy.' Clutterbuck rose from the table, as pale as death. She cried, 'Theo, Theo, tell me, what is wrong?' 'Wrong,'

cried Professor Clutterbuck, 'you have used the Split Infinitive!'

Gospel, Mrs. Leighton," said Lance as a wind-up. "She's been the Past Participle ever since."

There was this amount of truth in Lance's story: that Dr. Clutterbuck was distinguished in his own career as Professor of Geology, that his English was irreproachable; and that Mrs. Clutterbuck had practically no English, since she was hardly ever known to speak at all. She shunned society; and the same introspective gaze of the Professor, which had skimmed the Leighton drawing-room and found there only the striking personality of Mr. Leighton, skimmed his own home in a like abstracted manner, and took no notice of the most striking personality in Ridgetown--Elsie, his daughter.

It was the black cat episode which precipitated the nickname of "The Serpent." Lance had always declared that this girl had an understanding with animals which was nothing short of uncanny. He happened to read _Elsie Venner_, and the names being alike, and temperament on similar lines, he immediately christened her the Serpent. He caught her out at numberless pranks which were never reported to the diligent ears of Betty and May. One was that she had climbed to his bedroom and purloined a suit of clothes.

There was no end to what might be expected of this lonely little person.

Years ago, Betty and May had turned their backs on her in the cruel haphazard manner of two friends who might easily dispose of an outsider.

Betty and May despised the Serpent because she "had a cheap governess,"

"couldn't afford to go to school," and "wore her hair in one plait."

The lonely little Serpent never properly forgave these insults.

Mrs. Leighton did not wholly encourage Lance in his tale.

"I do not think I approve of your being so down on these people," she said: "and if there is any truth in what you say, it is very tragic about poor Mrs. Clutterbuck, though she does not strike me as being a very capable person."

"Capable," asked Lance. "Who could remain capable, Mrs. Leighton, with a cold tap continually running freezing remarks down one's back. Don't you think it's a miracle she's alive?"

Mrs. Leighton preferred to remain on her smooth course of counsel.

"It never does to judge people like that," she exclaimed. "You do not know. To put it in a selfish manner, one day you may find the Clutterbucks being of more service to you than any one on earth."

She pulled at her knitting ball.

"You girls talk a great deal of romance and nonsense about people like the Dudgeons. Why don't you think something nice about that poor little Serpent for a change?"

The girls remembered not very long afterwards the prophetic nature of these remarks. That they should cultivate the Clutterbucks for any reason at all, however, seemed at that moment impossible.

Dr. Merryweather called the same afternoon.

It was one of the coincidences of life that he should immediately talk of the Clutterbucks.

"Know them?" he asked. "I think your husband does, doesn't he? Do you call on the wife at all?"

"No," answered Mrs. Leighton. "I never feel that I could get on with her very well either. Mr. Leighton meets the Professor and they talk a lot together, but it's quite away from domestic matters."

"It would be a bit of a kindness, I think," said the old Doctor, "your calling, I mean. There's too little public spirit amongst women, don't you think?"

"Oh, wouldn't it be a little impertinent perhaps to call, in that spirit?" asked Mrs. Leighton.

"Well, I don't know. The child is running wild. The parents are a pair of babies where healthy education is concerned. Result, the child has no friends, and expends her affection, she has stores of it, on her animals. A dog gets run over and dies. What do you get then? She never squeaks. Not a moan, you observe. But she sits up in that tree of hers with a cat to do any comforting she may want--and her hair begins to come out in patches."

Mrs. Leighton's knitting fell to her lap.

"Her hair is coming out in patches?" she asked in a horrified voice.

"Yes. What else would you have when a child is allowed to mope.

Something is bound to happen. Clergymen are of use when a child's naughty. But when it mopes itself ill, we are called in. Yet it's a clergyman's task after all. This child, on the way to being a woman, has never had one friend. Her mother is too timid to be really friendly with any one, and the husband is wrapped in his dry-as-dust philosophy--and where are you with a tender child like that?"

"But if Mrs. Clutterbuck can't be friendly with any one, why should I call?" asked Mrs. Leighton hopelessly.

"Your girls might become friendly with the child," said he. "I'm afraid I don't make a very good clergyman."

"They call her the Serpent, you know," said Mrs. Leighton, "very naughty of them. I shall do my best, Doctor. I didn't know her hair was coming out in patches."

Dr. Merryweather might be complimented on his new profession after all.

It had been a master stroke to refer to the patches. Mrs. Leighton had known of its happening after illness or great worry. That a child should suffer in this quiet moping manner seemed pathetic.

"Yet, I don't think I'm the person to do a thing of this sort," Mrs.

Leighton said hopelessly to Miss Meredith later in the day. "I do so object to intrude on people. I should imagine it indelicate of any one else to do the same to myself, you know."

"Very awkward, certainly," replied Miss Meredith primly.

"Oh, mummy," said Elma, "you know how kind Miss Grace is or Miss Annie.

They say 'Isn't Betty a little pale at present?' and you get her a tonic. You think nothing of that. It's just the same with the Clutterbucks. Betty ought to behave herself and go and call with you, and get the Serpent to come. I think she looks a jolly little thing."

Elma was quite alone in that opinion.

"Jolly!" said Jean, "you might as well talk of a toadstool's being jolly. Still, Betty isn't a child. She shouldn't be squabbling. Betty ought to call."

"You know Dr. Clutterbuck, wouldn't you call on his wife?" asked Mrs.

Leighton of Miss Meredith.

"Oh, I'm afraid I don't know him well enough. Robin rather dislikes him--and, well, we have no young people, you see."

Miss Meredith was lame but definite.

"Then the sooner the better. Betty and I call to-morrow," said Mrs.

Leighton.

They did, and to their astonishment found Mrs. Clutterbuck dimly but surely pleased. n.o.body remained timid very long in Mrs. Leighton's kind presence, and the mutual subject of days long ago when it was no crime to talk of babies, broke the ice of years of reserve in Ridgetown with Mrs. Clutterbuck. The Serpent, after many pilgrimages on the part of the one maid to the garden, finally appeared. Mrs. Clutterbuck's restraint returned with the evident unwillingness of Elsie's att.i.tude.

Both retreated to the dumb condition so trying to onlookers.

The Serpent indeed paid Betty out for many months of torture. Her calm, disconcerting gaze never wavered, as she watched every movement of that ready enemy. Mrs. Leighton made her only mistake in showing definitely that she wanted to be kind to Elsie. That little lady's pale visage looked fiercely out at her and chilled the words that were intended to come.