Part 39

"We are going to have the whole house done up and refurnished at last. Papa chose the furniture for the drawing-room yesterday. It is all in yellow satin, which is rather bright, I think. I haven't seen the carpet yet, but it is to match the furniture; and there is a lovely hearthrug, with a lion-hunt worked on it.

"But that isn't the best of it; we are going to have the big children's party after all! No one but children invited, and everyone to do exactly what they like. I wanted so much to have you home for it, but papa says it would only unsettle you and take you away from your work.

"Had Dulcie forgotten you? I should like to see her so much. Now I really must leave off, as I am going to the Aquarium with papa. Mind you write me as good a letter as this is, if that old Doctor lets you. Minnie and Roly send love and kisses, and papa sends his kind regards, and I am to say he hopes you are settling down steadily to work.

"With best love, your affectionate sister, "BARBARA BULTITUDE."

"P.S.--I nearly forgot to say that Uncle Duke came the other day and has stayed here ever since. He is going to make papa's fortune! I believe by a gold mine he knows about somewhere, and a steam tramway in Lapland. But I don't like him very much--he is so polite."

It would be nothing short of an insult to the reader's comprehension, if I were to enter into an elaborate explanation of the effect this letter had upon Mr. Bultitude. He took it in by degrees, trying to steady his nerves at each additional item of poor Barbara's well-meant intelligence by a sip at his tin-flavoured coffee. But when he came to the postscript, in spite of its purport being mercifully broken to him gradually by the extreme difficulty of making it out from two undercurrents of manuscript, he choked convulsively and spilt his coffee.

Dr. Grimstone visited this breach of etiquette with stern promptness. "This conduct at table is disgraceful, sir--perfectly disgraceful--unworthy of a civilised being. I have been a teacher of youth for many years, and never till now did I have the pain of seeing a pupil of mine choke in his breakfast-cup with such deplorable ill-breeding. It's pure greediness, sir, and you will have the goodness to curb your indecent haste in consuming your food for the future. Your excellent father has frequently complained to me, with tears in his eyes, of the impossibility of teaching you to behave at meals with common propriety!"

There was a faint chuckle along the tables, and several drank coffee with studied elegance and self-repression either as a valuable example to Dick, or as a personal advertisement. But Paul was in no mood for reproof and instruction. He stood up in his excitement, flourishing his letter wildly.

"Dr. Grimstone!" he said; "never mind my behaviour now. I've something to tell you. I can't bear it any longer. I must go home at once--at once, sir!"

There was a general sensation at this, for his manner was peremptory and almost dictatorial. Some thought he would get a licking on the strength of it, and most hoped so. But the Doctor dismissed them to the playground, keeping Paul back to be dealt with in privacy.

Mrs. Grimstone played nervously with her dry toast at the end of the table, for she could not endure to see the boys in trouble and dreaded a scene, while Dulcie looked on with wide bright eyes.

"Now, sir," said the Doctor, looking up from his marmalade, "why must you go home at once?"

"I've just had a letter," stammered Paul.

"No one ill at home, I hope?"

"No, no," said Paul. "It's not that; it's worse! She doesn't know what horrible things she tells me!"

"Who is 'she'?" said the Doctor--and Dulcie's eyes were larger still and her face paled.

"I decline to say," said Mr. Bultitude. It would have been absurd to say 'my daughter,' and he had not presence of mind just then to transpose the relationships with neatness and success. "But indeed I am wanted most badly!"

"What are you wanted for, pray?"

"Everything!" declared Paul; "it's all going to rack and ruin without me!"

"That's absurd," said the Doctor; "you're not such an important individual as all that, Bultitude. But let me see the letter."

Show him the letter--lay bare all those follies of Dick's, the burden of which he might have to bear himself very shortly--never! Besides, what would be the use of it? It would be no argument in favour of sending him home--rather the reverse--so Paul was obliged to say, "Excuse me, Dr. Grimstone, it is--ah--of a private nature. I don't feel at liberty to show it to anyone."

"Then, sir," said the Doctor, with some reason, "if you can't tell me who or what it is that requires your presence at home, and decline to show me the letter which would presumably give me some idea on the subject, how do you expect that I am to listen to such a preposterous demand--eh? Just tell me that!"

Once more would Paul have given worlds for the firmness and presence of mind to state his case clearly and effectively; and he could hardly have had a better opportunity, for schoolmasters cannot always be playing the tyrant, and the Doctor was, in spite of his attempts to be stern, secretly more amused than angry at what seemed a peculiarly precocious piece of effrontery.

But Paul felt the dismal absurdity of his position. Nothing he had said, nothing he could say, short of the truth, would avail him, and the truth was precisely what he felt most unable to tell. He hung his head resignedly, and held his tongue in confusion.

"Pooh!" said the Doctor at last; "let me have no more of this tomfoolery, Bultitude. It's getting to be a positive nuisance. Don't come to me with any more of these ridiculous stories, or some day I shall be annoyed. There, go away, and be contented where you are, and try to behave like other people."

"'Contented!'" muttered Paul, when out of hearing, as he went upstairs and through the empty schoolroom into the playground. "'Behave like other people!' Ah, yes, I suppose I shall have to come to that in time. But that letter---- Everything upside down---- Bangle asked to meet a common clown! That fellow Duke letting me in for gold-mines and tramways! It's all worse than I ever dreamed of; and I must stay here and be 'contented!' It's--it's perfectly damnable!"

All through that morning his thoughts ran in the same doleful groove, until the time for work came to an end, and he found himself in the playground, and free to indulge his melancholy for a few minutes in solitude; for the others were still loitering about in the schoolroom, and a glass outhouse originally intended for a conservatory, but now devoted to boots and slates, and the books liberally besmeared with gilt, and telling of the exploits of boy-heroes so beloved of boys.

Mr. Bultitude, only too delighted to get away from them for a little while, was leaning against the parallel bars in dull despondency, when he heard a rustling in the laurel hedge which cut off the house garden from the gravelled playground, and looking up, saw Dulcie slip through the shrubs and come towards him with an air of determination in her proud little face.