the other day. He comes to papa for
extra coaching in French, you know, and I had to give him tea...."

"About me--?" Ishmael stared blankly, then, more from some premonition
than anything else, grew slowly and burningly red. The colour ebbed
away, leaving him pale. "What was it?" he asked.

"Nothing. At least, I honestly don't know what. Papa shut him up. He
said to him he was no gentleman to say such things before a _jeune
fille_--" She broke off, feeling she had hardly improved matters. A
deadly suspicion that had once before knocked on Ishmael's heart and
been refused more than a second's glance for sheer incredibility pounded
at him again, making the blood sing in his ears. Nothing heard at school
or from the Parson--who had long perturbed himself as to the right
moment for explanations--had started those first warning notes, but
words freely bandied across his head at home as a little boy, and then
meaningless to him--words that had since echoed back on to fuller
knowledge ominously. If it had not been that Archelaus, the free-speaker
and the vindictive One of the family, was still in Australia, and that
Ishmael spent a large part of his holidays with friends of the Parson's
in Devon and Somerset, the conspiracy of secrecy, wise or unwise, could
not have lasted so long. He stared at Hilaria and his fingers dug into
the turf at either side of him.

At that moment Killigrew relieved the tension by jumping up and calling
a wild, long-drawn "Hullo-o" to the approaching boys. They came running
up the slope and flung themselves down in a circle, while Polkinghorne
major, a big, jolly, simple-minded boy, one of the best liked in the
school, laid audacious hands on the bag, which Hilaria snatched from him
with a shriek.

Doughty had ensconced himself by her, crowding between her and Ishmael
to do so, a manoeuvre which the latter, rather to Doughty's surprise,
did not seem to resent. This was the more odd as the boys had several
times already, both in school and out of it, come into conflict over
trifling matters, not so much from any desire to quarrel as because
they were by nature extremely antipathetic. Ishmael disliked Doughty and
took little trouble to hide the fact. He hated his pasty sleekness,
which made him think of a fat pale grub, and he hated the way the elder
boy hung round Killigrew; not from jealousy--Ishmael still cherished
aloofness too dearly for that--but from some instinct which told him
Doughty wa