A Crooked Mile Part 36

Amory and Cosimo were going to c.u.mberland for the rest of the summer.

They would have liked to go to Norway, but the money would no longer run to it. They seemed a little shy of one another. They had been at the Brear a fortnight, and had had the little room over the porch. The twins were remaining behind for the present. Dorothy had said they would be no trouble. This was entirely untrue. They were more trouble than all the rest put together. Corin, near the schoolroom window, was wrangling with an eight years old Woodgate now.

"They do, there! On Hampstead Heath! I've seen them, an' they've hats, an' waterbottles, an' broomsticks!"

"Pooh, broomsticks! My father has a big elephant-gun!"

"Well ... mine goes to great big Meetings, an' says 'Hear hear!'"

"My father's in India!"

"Well, so was mine!"

"_I've_ seen them troop the Colour at the Horse Guards' Parade!"

"So've I!" Corin mendaciously averred.

The other boy opened his eyes wide and protruded his mouth. It is rarely that one boy does not know when another boy is lying.

"Oh, what a big one! _You'd_ catch it if Uncle Stan heard you!"

"Well," Corin pouted, "--I will--or else I'll cry all night--hard--and I'll make Bonnie cry too!--"

"Well, an' so shall I, again, an' then I'll have seen it twice, an'

you'll only have seen it once, an' if I see it every time you do you'll _never_ have seen it as often as me!"

Then Stan's voice was heard.

"Corin, come here."

It was an atmosphere of insensate militarism, but the Pratts were content to leave their offspring to breathe it for the present. They had another matter to attend to--their own marital relations. It had at last occurred to them that you cannot rule others until you can govern yourself, and they were going to see what could be done about it. They had secured a cottage miles away from anywhere, at the head of a narrow-gauge railway, and it remained to be seen whether quiet and privacy and the resources they might find within themselves would avail them better than the opposites of these things had done. There was just the chance that they might--their only chance. The twins, if all went well, would join them by and by. In the meantime they must see red, and learn to do things with once telling.

So Amory took the struggling Corin into her arms--he wanted to go to the armoury of wooden guns--and kissed him. Then he ran unconcernedly off.

Dorothy saw the sad little lift of Amory's bosom, guessed the cause, and laughed.

"Shocking little ingrates!" she said. "Noel's joy when I go away is sometimes indecent.--But don't be afraid they'll be any trouble to us here. You see the rabble we have in any case."

"It's very good of you," Amory murmured awkwardly.

"Nothing of the sort. Stan loves to manage them--it keeps his hand in for managing me, he says.... Now, I don't want to hurry you, but you'd better be off if you're going to get as far as Liverpool to-night.

Good-bye, dear----"

"Good-bye, Dorothy----"

"So long, Pratt--up with those bags, Tim----"

"Good-bye, Bonnie----"

"Corin! Corin!--(Hm! See if I don't have you in hand in another week or two, my boy!)--Come and say good-bye to your father."

"Good-bye, Lady Tasker----"

"All right?"

The wheels crunched; hands were waved; the rabble gave a shockingly undisciplined cheer; and young Arthur Woodgate, who had run along the terrace and stood holding the gate at the end open, saluted. Stan took out his watch again.

"Four minutes to sunset," he announced.

But there was no need to tell Billie to stand by to strike the flag that hung motionless above the gable where the old billiard-room and gun-room had been thrown together to make the schoolroom. The halyards were already in his hands.

"Here, Corin," Stan called, "you shall fire the gun to-night."

Corin gave a wild yell of joy. Well out of reach, there was an electric b.u.t.ton on one of the rose-grown verandah posts. Stan lifted his newest recruit to it, who put a finger-tip on it and shut his eyes----

"BANG!" went the little bra.s.s carronade in the locked enclosure behind the woodshed----

And hand over hand Billie hauled the flag down.

But it would be run up again in the morning.

_Printed by_ BUTLER & TANNER, _Frome and London_.

_SPRING 1914_ METHUEN'S POPULAR NOVELS

Crown 8vo, 6s. each

IT HAPPENED IN EGYPT

By C. N. and A. M. WILLIAMSON, Authors of 'The Heather Moon,'

'The Lightning Conductor,' etc.

This book tells, in the charming manner of the authors, a story of entrancing interest for travellers in Egypt and for home-dwellers too. A young English diplomatist finds himself compelled by an unusual combination of circ.u.mstances to become the temporary conductor of a party of tourists cruising on the Mediterranean and seeing Egypt. His strange new duties plunge him into the midst of adventures both comic and serious. He composes quarrels, intervenes in love affairs, baffles the agents of a secret society, conducts his charges successfully up the Nile to Khartoum, and in the end finds love and treasure both for himself and a faithful friend.

CHANCE

By JOSEPH CONRAD, Author of 'The n.i.g.g.e.r of the "Narcissus."'

In this new romance, which Mr. Conrad unfolds in his fascinating and curious way, partly by monologue, partly by narrative, we find the author of _Lord Jim_ again revealing one of those strange cases of human pa.s.sion and disaster which he alone, of living writers, can present. The sea is in the book, but it is not entirely a book of the sea.

WHOM G.o.d HATH JOINED