f than to me; but I sang
out,

'Good! Oh, so kind!'

This appeared to convince her.

'Very generous to you and every one, is he not?' she said; and from that
moment was all questions concerning his kind treatment of the boys, and
as to their looking up to him.

I quitted her, taking her message to Heriot: 'You may tell him--tell him
that I can't write.'

Heriot frowned on hearing me repeat it.

'Humph!' he went, and was bright in a twinkling: 'that means she'll
come!' He smacked his hands together, grew black, and asked, 'Did she
give that beast Boddy a rose?'

I had to confess she did; and feeling a twinge of my treason to her, felt
hers to Heriot.

'Humph!' he went; 'she shall suffer for that.'

All this was like music going on until the curtain should lift and reveal
my father to me.

There was soon a secret to be read in Heriot's face for one who loved it
as I did. Julia's betrayed nothing. I was not taken into their
confidence, and luckily not; otherwise I fear I should have served them
ill, I was so poor a dissembler and was so hotly plied with
interrogations by the suspicious usher. I felt sure that Heriot and Julia
met. His eyes were on her all through prayer-time, and hers wandered over
the boys' heads till they rested on him, when they gave a short flutter
and dropped, like a bird shot dead. The boys must have had some knowledge
that love was busy in their midst, for they spoke of Heriot and Julia as
a jolly couple, and of Boddy as one meaning to play the part of old Nick
the first opportunity. She was kinder to them than ever. It was not a new
thing that she should send in cakes of her own making, but it was
extraordinary that we should get these thoughtful presents as often as
once a fortnight, and it became usual to hear a boy exclaim, either among
a knot of fellows or to himself, 'By jingo, she is a pretty girl!' on her
passing out of the room, and sometimes entirely of his own idea. I am
persuaded that if she had consented to marry Boddy, the boys would have
been seriously disposed to conspire to jump up in the church and forbid
the banns. We should have preferred to hand her to the junior usher,
Catman, of whom the rumour ran in the school that he once drank a bottle
of wine and was sick after it, and he was therefore a weak creature to
our minds; the truth of the rumour being confirmed by his pale
complexion. That we would have handed our blooming princess to him was
full proof of our abho