Meade L. T. - Girls New and Old стр 23.

"I want nothing of the kind," said Maurice. "You can scold me when I make you angry, Mr. Danvers. I want to speak to you for a moment. May I come in?"

Mr. Danvers had only opened his door from four to five inches while he was expostulating with Maurice. Now he flung it open with a sort of snarl, and said:

"Come in, if you wish to; come in, if you insist. This is my parlor, bedroom, kitchen, all in one. A pretty cheerful-looking apartment, is it not?"

"It's all right," said Maurice. "I haven't come to see your room, but to see you."

"Well, well; find a chair if you can, lad. I was frizzling bacon when you came in. Do you mind if I go on with it?"

"Let me help," said Maurice.

"Preserve us, no! I like my bacon done to a turn. Hands off, youngster! You can talk to me while I am eating my supper."

Maurice lounged against the window-sill. There was literally not a disengaged seat in the room. Mr. Danvers had described it as kitchen, bedroom, parlor, but it was also, and above all these things, library. Books on the floor, books crowding the bookcases, books in heaps on the windowsill, books on the bed, books on every table and every chair, marked all too vividly the tastes of John Danvers, the classical master of the Grammar School, the most hard-headed, soft-hearted, irascible-tempered, touchiest, most generous man in the whole of Hazlewick.

"Now, then, Ross, you can state your business," said Danvers, as he munched his bacon with appetite. "Do you see that pile of exercise books there? I've got to look through them all between now and ten o'clock. They are every one of them the choice productions of idiotic asses, so you may imagine the treat which lies before me. Now then, Ross, speak out."

"I'd best plump it," said Maurice. "I want to know, Mr. Danvers, if you'll board me and my three brothers? Don't say 'no,' till you think it over. We won't be any trouble, and you've heaps of room in this house."

When Maurice made this astounding proposal, Mr. Danvers' face became a study. His mouth opened until it formed itself into a round O; his blue eyes twinkled with the queerest mixture of anger and uncontrollable mirth. He was in the act of helping himself to a delicious morsel of frizzled bacon; he kept his fork suspended in mid air.

"Please don't speak for a minute," said Maurice, whose face was crimson. "I knew you'd funk it; I knew you'd hate it; I know perfectly well it would be beastly for you. All the same, I want you to do it; it will be beastly for us too, but I want you to do it. Yes, you shall do it, because because "

"Your reasons, lad?" said John Danvers.

He sprang to his feet, pushed aside his meal with a clatter, walked to the door, turned the key in it, and then strode up to where Maurice was, half sitting, half lounging.

"Now, out with your reasons, and be quick!" he said. "I don't want my bacon spoiled and my evening spoiled; I'll turn you out of this room, you young rascal, if you're not quick! Why am I to turn my life into an inferno? Now, be quick; out with your thought, lad!"

Mr. Danvers' last sentence was spoken with a certain softening of voice which encouraged Maurice to proceed.

"I'm desperate," he said, "and desperate people come to desperate resolves. It is for Cecil; she's the best girl in all the world, and the cleverest; but she's not half educated. She was at a school, not a tip-top school, but just a middling sort of place. I wish now she'd gone to a decent High School, but mother didn't like High Schools, and anyhow, there she is, nearly eighteen, with more talents than all the rest of us put together, but shut out of everything, because she hasn't got certificates, and all that sort of rot. Well, she's got a chance; an old lady, a friend of ours,

wants to pay her expenses at Redgarth College. Perhaps you've heard of Redgarth, Mr. Danvers?"

"I have, and of Miss Forester," said John Danvers. "Women are being taken more and more out of their sphere day by day. Go on, boy your ideas amuse me; so I'm to enter purgatory for the sake of a girl. Go on, pray!"

"No," said Maurice; "I wish I were the same age as you, sir, or you were the same age as me, and we'd fight this out, not for the sake of a girl in the ordinary sense of the word, but because of the best sister a fellow ever had, and we want to give her a chance at least I do."

"And you propose to send me to a lunatic asylum?"

"Not quite; we wouldn't be as bad as that. You own the whole of this house, don't you?"

"What's that to you, you young dog?"

"Yes; but don't you?"

"Fact, Maurice Ross; I also own a digestive system, which is going to be put frightfully out of gear by this night's work."

"Oh, I wish you'd take the matter seriously. We boys want a bedroom, and any ramshackle sort of place to work in. I engage, on my honor, to keep the three younger lads in order. I know a bit of cooking, and we can manage our own meals, and we can pay you for every scrap of expenses you are put to, and you can have a bit of profit over and above."