Lucian the dreamer

e forward they were as David and Jonathan, loving much, and having full confidence in each other. They became inseparable, and their lives were spent together from an early ho

satiety and sometimes kept on short commons, according to their vagaries and moods. Like all young and healthy things, they believed that the world had been made for their own particular benefit, and they absorbed it. Perhaps there had never been such a close companionship as that which sprang up between these two. The trifling fact that one was a boy and the other a girl never seemed to strike them: they were sexless

ed to be equalised. It was true that the two children treated the houses with equal freedom. If they happened to be at the farm about dinner-time they dined there, but the vicarage would have served them equally well if it had harboured them when the luncheon-bell rang. Mr. Pepperdine was greatly delighted when he found them filling a side of his

fered. ‘A nice handful for anybody, is that young Sprats—as full of mischief as an egg is fu

aken her father in hand and had shaken him up and pulled him together. He had contracted bad habits as regards food and was{64} becoming dyspeptic; he was careless about his personal comfort and neglectful of his health—Sprats dragooned him into the paths of rectitude. But she extended her mothering instincts to Lucian even more than to her father. She treated him at times as if he were a child with whom it was unnecessary to reason; there was always an affectionate solicitude in her attitude towards him which was, perhaps, most marked when she bullied

creased rather than decreased; her hair, which was growing deeper in colour, was a perpetual nuisance to her. She had grown a little quieter in manner, but would break out at times; the mere fact that she wore longer skirts did not prevent her from climbing trees or playing cricket. And she and Lucian were still hand-in-glove,

nd bugles; Miss Judith looked very handsome in her pearl-grey. In the vicarage pew, all alone, sat Sprats in solemn state. Her freckled face shone with much polishing; her sailor hat was quite straight; as for the rest of her, she was clothed in a simple blouse and a plain skirt, and there were no tears in either. All the rest was as usual. The vicar’s surplice had been newly washed, and Sprats had mended a bit of his

ance, entered in advance of two ladies, whom he marshalled to the castle pew with as much grace and dignity as his gout would allow. Lucian and Sprats, with a wink to each other which no one else perceived, examined the earl’s companions during the recitation of the General Confession, looking through the slits of their hypocritical fingers. The elde

heek whereon there appeared the bloom of the peach, fresh, original, bewitching; her hair, curling over her shoulders from beneath a white sun-bonnet, artfully designed to communicate an air of innocence to its wearer, was of the same blue-black hue that distinguished Lucian’s own curls. It chanced that the boy had just read some extracts from Don Juan: it seemed to him that here was Haidee in the ve

n all his life as he then wished to be out of church and safely hidden in the vicarage, where he always lunched on Sunday, or in some corner of the woods. For the girl in the earl’s{67} pew was discomposing, not merely because of her prettiness but because she would stare at him, Lucian. He, temperamentally shy where women were concerned, had only dared to look at her now and then; she, on the contrary, ha

sed close by Lucian. He looked at her; she raised demure eyelids and looked at him. The soul within him became as water—he was lost. He seemed to float into space; his head burned, his heart turned icy-cold, and he shut his eyes, or thought he did. When he opened them again the girl, a dainty dream of white, was vanishing, and Sprats and Miss Judith were asking him if he didn’t fee

; Sprats noticed it, and wondered if he was going to have rheumatic fever or ague. She fetched a clinical thermometer out of the house and took his temperature. It was quite normal, and she was reassured, but still a little puzzled. When tea-time came she brought his tea and her own out into the garden—she observed that he ate languidly, and only asked twice for strawberries. She refused to allow him to go to church in the evening, and conducted him to the farm hersel

ith emotion, and Sprats became certain that he was suffering from indigestion. She had private conversation with Miss Pepperdine at the farm on the subject of Lucian’s indisposition, with the r

he pews of earls, and he was—he was not exactly sure what he was. She would doubtless look upon him with scorn: well, he would make the world ring with his name and fame; he would die in a cloud of glory, fighting for some oppressed nation, as Byron did, and then she would be sorry, and possibly weep for him. By eleven o’clock he felt as if he had been in

in the room as well as Haidee. It was fortunate that Mrs. Brinklow, who had an eye for masculine beauty and admired pretty boys, took a great fancy to him, and immediately began to pet him in a manner which he bitterly resented. That cooled him, and gave him self-possession. He contrived to extricate himself from her caresses with dignity, and replied to the questions which the earl put to him about his studies with modesty and courage. Sprats conducted Haidee to the garden to inspect her collection of animals; Lucian{70} went with them, and became painfully

and was naturally inclined to let her daughter manage her own affairs, contrived to waylay the boy with the beautiful eyes as he left the Castle, and as pretty a piece of comedy ensued as one could wish to see. They met again, and then they met in secret, and Lucian became bold and Haidee alluring, and the woods by the river, and the ruins in the Castle, might have wh