The Story of Louie

a number of amusing phenomena. She watched them with wonder; all was so very, very different. The building itself seemed once to have been some sort of a dwelling-house, for there we

rning in the dark interiors beyond. They seemed so near. The width of Holborn lay between, but they seemed to crowd on her much more closely than the yew at Rainham Parva had ever crowded on the inner windows of the courtyard. The yew, moreover, wa

less sharply. They too, like the buildings across the way, seemed to ignore intervening space and to press intrusively forward to look at her. She was glad that the first thing she had done had been to stop Mr. Weston's mouth on the subject of the Scarisbricks and Lord Moone; half the drollery of her experience would have gone had these people known who she really was. And t

all his life he gave (as if he must find something superior for her, and knowing better all the time) pronunciations marvellously new. He found new words, too; must look 'em up, Louie thought, in the dictionary. Richenda, who had begun by be

ourse, and wouldn't stick fast, being a Jewess, not she; but Kitty didn't suppose Miriam Levey had one shilling to rub against another; not, that was, "on her own." Louie, finding other questions answered from this same standpoint, took her cue and framed her questions accordingly. Had the other female student (there were only four women), Miss Soames, anything? Well, Kitty didn't know; she fancied her aunt must have a tidy bit coming in; they lived together in a boarding-house in Woburn Place, and as the aunt did nothing all day perhaps she too was partly independent, or even wholly so. Had Mr. Merridew, the swaggering boy who cheapened his clothes so curiously, a tidy bit coming in? Here Kitty evidently had a tale to tell. Had Archie Merridew a bit comin

with rapid gestures and still more rapid speech, "before the applause I am waiting for has had time to subside-good word, subside-(thank you, Cuthbert, you can take the bouquet round to the stage-door)-as I was saying when Fitzclarence interrupted me, ladies and tripeheads in blouses, whoa, backpedal, never mind-as I was saying, I will now e

's niece would grow bigger and big

iggle, faint with laughing; "oh

Mackie's-the putting of his handkerchief to his nose, and the drawi

ew. Mr. Mackie had his own perfection; but vulgarity

evenings of Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and the whole of Sunday quite unamusingly on her hands. She did not want time on her hands. As muc

g she saw a student whom

cess, had sat down where she was to read it. She had not looked up when somebody had passed the mouth of her little compartment and entered the next one. She had heard a book taken down from a shelf behind her, and, after some minutes, put back again; and had she not chanced to straigh

moved as if to look back at her in turn; but young Merridew came up at that moment and they went out together. The big man's head and shoulders were to be seen beyond the handrail for quite an appreciable moment of time after young Merridew's had disappeared. But she had been wrong in thinking that he wore a shabb

seek the Secretar

oss, the pretty daughter of the tipsy veterinary surgeon at Trant. Polly too had sported that running of pale blue ribbon beneath the openwork of what Kitty Windus called her "pneumonia blouse," and the clumps of dark hair on her nape too was like Polly's, and she had Polly's dark and sidelong glance,

Louie whether she intended to walk or to "hop on a bus." She always spoke in these rather sprightly terms, just as she always stiffened the line of her back a little the moment a man, any man, entered the room; and she referred, brightly and hopefully, to proposals of marriage as "chances." Louie was alrea

ouie had got out the word "big." "That's Mr. Jeffries.

s own. Students who only came in the evenings were of a

arcel with him?" Kitty said, with m

ffries had carried a brown p

at was in it-that is, i

e sort of a joke. Louie admitted that she could

ll get to know it by-and-by! You see," she explained

at you mean," said Loui

t once (the parcel, I mean; for shame, you dreadful girl!) and it had a clean shirt

ssary that its existence was assumed-how extremely amusing! She knew that entertaining word, "poor," but what was this other, this new and side-splitting wo

she had wasted a

a tidy bit?

tty's hide. She gave another little laugh and dr

m the Mandrill, my dear.) Not a penny

manency?"

orks somewhere in the City, I believe-'something in the City'-sounds most prosperous, doesn't it? And Archie's awful kind to him, I think, but of course he is frightfully

too. To have to beg for a bath-and then to have the

ferent, differences, after all

ed to Mr

The examinations were to be held just before Christmas, and unless Louie could be ready for her Elementary by that time she would have a good many

hat he would come to Sutherland Plac

Richenda would make

rtherance of your aims, Miss C

he periphrasis, a

" she said; "but of course I shoul

hat that condition is?" Wes

ay you for it," sa

d. "Oh no-no, no, no-I should be a

n. "Good gracious,

f, Miss Causton--" His tone was reverential, his eyes did her homage. Louie had forg

ike. But no pay, no

pang. If he took money for giving lessons, lessons

he point with insi

y mu

some assistance in the furnishing of our

would. So th

t," said

pected him to

d pounds into her account, asking her to regard the extra twenty-five pounds as interest on his unceremonious borrowing. But she did not for a moment believe his cheerful tale that "things were all right again now"; poor old boy, ten to one he had borr

half-a-crown a week had power to buy. Half-a-crown a week wou

nderclothing in a brown paper

that parcel

-no, how fun

in his presence the next time she saw him. She felt that she possessed something of his-namely, this knowledge-which she ought no

They were the eyes of a lion-clear amber, sherry-coloured. They were made more than ever to resemble the eyes of a lion by that tawny ulster he never removed, and she remembered Kitty's sinister and mirthful suggestion. Did his keeping on of that ulster mean something hardly less stark and laughable than the circumstance of the bath itself? (Louie felt that she was learning.) Then she noticed his hands. She always noticed hands. He stopped in passing to pick up a pen for her. The hand that returned it was not only a magnificent engine of sinew and bone

oom, "and he has got too big a face and a rather frightening jaw; but he does shave it properly, and I don't see where the

way. As a matter of fact, if Roy Lovenant-Smith resembled the little terra-cotta head in the Tanagra Gallery of the Museum, this Mr. Jeffries suggested something from the Assyrian Gallery d

y she took it upon herself to s

s desirable to Louie as they evidently exalted him in Kitty's eyes, walked westwards along Holborn with them. He wore a new red waistcoat with brass buttons, and perhaps it was in order to live up to his splend

e chocs?"

ling manners. As it happened, she would have liked some chocolates; lately she had craved for chocolate

trived to put Kitty (the straight-backed Kitty whom

oad and hop on a bus, leaving Kitty and the heir to the tennis-lawn together, when something Kitty

'll have to go till we come back. Any

him," Kitty giggled.

od exam., I will say that for him; so we'll call

N

call her that.) I didn't know she was an old friend of the pater's t

d Kitty archly. "Perhaps it isn

he pavement; all she caught of

ou never think of asking me down to Gui

llantly; "can't be did without, Kitt-oh. The

passage Louie heard on

uie heard something else about apron-strings. "Pale blu

Kitty re

oner's son. "As if a fellow hadn't eyes! I

adful!" said Kitty,

at the Holborn Public Bat

sement can be too rich. "Good-b

ng about the penny stage, but by that

toned lit

t on h

d to buy chocolates for herself. She bought them, walked to the Marble Ar

half-a-cake of soap must be dragged in. And that pathetic, pathetic care the man took of his hair and hands! For all that, as she strode along, crunching her chocolates, she became almost angry with him too. Was soap so frightful

forget that these th

was getting adept in the sport of it. She bandied back to Kitty Windus, with whom she found herself in talk, half-a-score of her own expressions: "Beg yours," "Granted," "As the poet says," and the like; and she all but openly stalked Mr. Mackie for the sake of the pearls that rippled from his lips. I

at the School in general and at Mr. Jeffries