CHAPTER IV

In Hamchester College the headmaster, Dr. Wentworth, like other headmasters, is a much criticised man. He has his partisans, he has also his detractors. Were an angel from heaven to descend and become headmaster of a large public school he would find plenty of adverse critics, and these were by no means lacking to Dr. Wentworth. But about his wife, there were no two opinions. Six hundred boys and all the masters agreed in thinking her perfectly delightful. So kind was she, so friendly, so simple and believing in the good intentions of others, that quite curmudgeony people melted into amiability in the sunshine of her presence. Perhaps one of the boys best summed up her mysterious charm when he said, "She doesn't try to be nice to a chap, she just is nice; and there's such a difference."

Therefore when Tony, having sat in her drawing-room for five minutes, prepared to depart--not without misgivings as to how Lallie would take it--that damsel nodded at him coolly, without so much as a supplicating glance after his retreating form, and when he had gone she turned to her hostess with a little laugh that ended in a sigh.

"Poor man," she said, "I'm afraid I'm a regular white elephant to him just now; but I can't make myself invisible, can I?"

"I think we'd all be very sorry if you were invisible. Come now, and see my chicks," and kind Mrs. Wentworth led Lallie upstairs and down a long passage to a big sunny room where two little girls sat painting at the table.

"This is Pris and this is Prue, and that over there is Punch!" Mrs. Wentworth said, indicating her offsprings.

Pris and Prue lifted small flushed faces from their artistic efforts, and surveyed Lallie with large solemn eyes, and each held out a small hand liberally besmeared with Prussian blue.

"How do you do?" said Pris politely. "I'm seven; how old are you?"

"I'm six," added Prue.

Punch, a rolly-polly person who was apparently engaged in dismembering a woolly lamb, remarked loudly and distinctly, "I'm a boy."

"May I paint?" asked Lallie.

"Oh, do, you can have my seat for a bit. You might do some legs; they run over so, somehow, with me."

Lallie sat down in front of Prue's picture, which was an elaborate Graphic illustration of the "Relief of Ladysmith."

"I'm sure Sir George White's tunic was not pink," Lallie objected. "They wore khaki, you know."

"I don't like khaki; it's the colour of mustard, an' I hate mustard; my new sash is pink, an' I like pink. My soldiers wear pink; you may paint their legs khaki if you like."

"It looks very stormy overhead," Lallie remarked. "Was there a thunderstorm at the Relief of Ladysmith?"

"My uncle was there," said Pris, as though that accounted for it.

"I'll leave you for a few minutes while I write a note," said Mrs. Wentworth. "Take care of this young lady; be very kind to her. She has come to stay with Mr. Bevan, and she'll come and see you often if you are good."

The moment the door closed behind their mother, regardless of the protests of their nurse, who was sewing at the window, the children crowded round Lallie, and all three tried to sit upon her at once.

"Are you quite a grown-up lady?" asked Pris doubtfully.

"No," said Lallie, "I'm a little girl----"

"You're a bit bigger than me," Prue granted somewhat grudgingly, "but I thought you weren't quite grown-up. Punch is only four."

"I'm a very old four," Punch maintained.

"Do you think," asked Prue, "that you could tell us a story?"

"Do I not?" Lallie answered, and in another minute she had the children absorbed in the legend of that "quiet, decent man, Andrew Coffy"; so that when her hostess came back to fetch her to lunch Lallie appeared, as it were, buried beneath the family of Wentworth.

Dr. Wentworth seemed sufficiently awe-inspiring to the outside world, but his family took a different view of him, and Pris at luncheon generally addressed her father as "Poor dear," or spoke of him as "That child."

Mrs. Wentworth was wont to declare to her intimates that no schoolmaster could possibly be endurable who was not well sat upon in the bosom of his family.

"Personally," she said, "I have the greatest admiration for my husband, and consider him quite an excellent sort of ordinary man; but being a headmaster, if I didn't make him positively skip off his pedestal his sense of proportion would die of inanition."

Certainly neither Miss Prudence nor Miss Patience Wentworth manifested the smallest awe of their parent; and Lallie was moved to take his side in several arguments that ensued during luncheon.

Prue was rosy and brown-eyed, with thick short hair that framed her round face deliciously. Pris was fair-haired, blue-eyed, with a face like a monthly rose. Punch's countenance resembled a full moon, and all three children were plump and healthy and absolutely good-tempered. In fact, the whole Wentworth family were rather roundabout, which perhaps accounted for their amiability. Lallie endeared herself immediately to Mrs. Wentworth by her extreme popularity with the children. Even the imperturbable Punch unbent so far as to say: "I like you. You may come and have dinner with us every day. You speak in such a funny voice."