Secret Bread

Watch Killigrew and do as he does. Now, all together please ..."; and the row of self-conscious boys bowed, gloved hands upon severely jacketed chests, while as man

ne art of Terpsichore," a habit which had earned for himself the simple nickname of "Terps." The class was held in a spacious room used for balls, both subscription and private, at the "G

fering pangs of envy. After some four years of knowing her, Killigrew was suddenly in love with Miss Eliot and didn't mind who knew it. In fact, to be accurat

ilaria as a "good sort." Killigrew was determined to be different, and so, like Burns, "battered" himself into love. If Ishmael had been disposed to feel a tender sentiment for her himself, he could not have cherished it with any comfort, being already cast by Killigrew for the confidant of passion. Thus it came about that, though in after years those stolen meetings between Hilaria and a ring of boys would flash into his memory

the time of the Terror. There were people still alive in the 'fifties and 'sixties who remembered the Napoleonic wars and the shadow cast by that giant figure upon the world; indeed, so slowly did thought move down in the far West that it might almost have been said that St. Renny was just beginning to realise the wars, and rather resented the fact that English and French had since fought side by side in the Crimea. Also the vagaries of Napoleon III. kept England in a perpetual state of distrust, in spite of the champ

uch suspicion as an eccentric. He actually made his daughter, attired in a skirt that only reached to her knees, perform inelegant feats on parallel bars and ladders, while he was wont to boast that she could out-fence any boy at the school. She was an expert swimmer too, and there were rumours, that at

at despite folly directs so truly in moments of extremity did not fail them. The children who, had the course of events never been ruffled, would have grown up in a vicious and futile court, were forced to practise economies and learn at first hand the dignity of labour. With those families who returned to the increasing viciousness which culminated under Napoleon III. the lesson may not always have been lasting, bu

outh and vitality for her own ends. When the crude heartlessness of the boys racked him or the well-meaning advances of the gentry offended his alert vanity, it was to Hilaria that he would turn in thoughts and words to attain that measure of approbation without which his own self-love would have languished of inanition. It was Hilaria who healed his hurts, though with increasing difficulty. For there is little gulf, and that easily bridged, between the very young child and the old man, but between the adolescent and the old it is wide an

ient in modelling, being one of those subtly concave faces not without a fascination of their own, with an egg-like curve of prominent delicately-square chin. Her mouth, too large, opened very beautifully when she laughed over square thickly-white teeth. Her eyes were small and of no particular colour, though bright with a birdlike shining between the thick short lashes of a neutral brown. She had a something boyish in poise and action that really made her charm, but that also set her hopelessly out of her time. It was impossible to imagine Hilaria happy in a crinoline, and she fought them fiercely, yet crinolines were in full flo

nocence that made the most sensual of the boys careful not to take advantage of her in any bad way. That she climbed out of her bedroom window at night to go and meet some three of the boys

nd who, owing to the reputation for seriousness his secretiveness had earned for him, was one of the candidates undergoing preparation with Old Tring. He had apparently outgrown his fits of unbalanced talkativeness, and had become, with the difficult years, one of those boys who speak with almost comical rarity, and then with unemotional gruffness. This power of reticence never fails to win respect, if of a half-irritated, half-resentful order, and Ishmael held a certain position in the school. Also as the ward of a parson he was supposed to "be good" and know about such things as confirmations. As a matter of fact, he considered his own Tractarian principles, rigidly inculcated by Boase, as superior to the mild evangelical platitudes of Old Tring, and plumed himself accordingly. He was just at that dangero

ee how a spider's thread, woven from one tall plant to another, and wavering ever so delicately in the faint breeze, was one moment lit here and there to a line of pure light that merged into nothingness and gleamed out again, while a moment later it might have vanished entirely or else shine its length. The midges, dancing in mid-air, were living sun-motes for one flash, then were swallowed up as suddenly as though they had slipped through into the fourth dimension. A pair of white butterflies, pearly-grey or golden as they flutter

ve her a chance to whisper to him the news she was burning to impart and not merely stare at her and everything else with that blank gaze that always seemed to go through her to the wall beyond. And most of the boys itched to get out for an hour or so before supper, while the little girls thoroughly enjoyed themselves and Mr. Eliot wished the whole lot of them, or himself, elsewhere. At last the wheezy piano sounded its last note, the faded lady who once a week thumped it for an hour and the sum of two-and-sixpence gathered her shawl about her

take off this beastly thing first ..." She kicked a protesting leg agains

asked Ishm

minow-not Doughty; I didn't like him last time-I don't know why ..." She broke

'The Woman in White

and we shall have to hurry with

us so little time. It's dark at eight, an

ing forward like a great full-petalled

h.... All right, I'll risk it, but you'll all have to simply lug me over the stiles. Fancy if I stuck in one all night!" Her l

eautiful sway only a crinoline can give, checking the movement abruptly so that the fu

th this adroit carrying of the war into enemy's country she deflecte

bulk of the crinoline swelling out the mantle that made all women, from behind, seem at least fifty. A few people who saw her said to themselves that Eliot's maid seemed to be growing up at last, but they did not see her when, arrived at the stile