Roger Ingleton, Minor Part 16

"Do you mean that there was ever a doubt about it?" said the young lady uncomfortably.

"They said he died, so he must have died," said old Hodder, sipping his tea. "It was all talk to the likes of me. Young Master Roger wasn't of the dying sort."

"He went abroad, I hear?" she asked.

"So they say. It's a score of years or more since. I tell 'ee, Missy, young Master Roger wouldn't have stood by to see me turned out like this; he'd have--"

Here there was a click at the gate and a long shadow fell on the footpath. It was Mr Armstrong in his flannels. He looked somewhat alarmed to find Miss Rosalind in possession. Still more to perceive that she proposed to remain where she was. His impulse was to make a feeble excuse and say he would call again. But his courage revived on second thoughts.

"Ah, Hodder," said he, after saluting the young lady, "what's all this about turning you out of your cottage! What a notion to get into your head!"

"You may call it a notion, Mr Armstrong," said the old man, "but what about this here piece of paper?" And he produced a blue legal doc.u.ment.

Mr Armstrong put up his eye-gla.s.s and read it, with a face which, as Rosalind furtively glanced upwards, seemed inscrutable. When he had finished he coolly put it in his pocket.

"I'll see to this," said he. "You choose the best time of day for a walk, Miss Oliphant."

"Shall you really be able to settle this for Hodder?" replied she.

"I've very little doubt about it."

The old man chuckled ungallantly. "He, he," said he, "Missy, you ladies are good enough for tea and sugar, but it takes a man to put the likes of me right with my masters."

Armstrong flushed angrily at this speech and was about to relieve his mind when Rosalind laughingly interposed--

"Poor old Hodder! You're quite right; I should never have been clever enough to help you. Good-bye. I'm so glad."

To tell the truth, Miss Oliphant was a good deal more engrossed with what the old man had let drop concerning the lost Roger than with the tutor and his knowledge of the law of landlord and tenant.

"Suppose he did not die!" she said, half scared at the boldness of the suggestion. "If he were to come back!" And she went back and looked long once more at the picture. Then with less satisfaction she contemplated her own copy. Thus employed Roger found her when he pa.s.sed her door an hour later.

"Still harping on my brother," said he.

"I've done with him, thank you," said Rosalind, handing him back the picture. "See, I have one of my own now."

"Why, it's better than the original. I like it better."

"That shows how little you know about painting."

"It shows how much you know about my brother," said he. "But if you like to keep the original and let me have the copy, I should consider I had the best of the bargain."

Rosalind tossed her head and locked her own copy up in her desk.

"Roger," she said when that was done, "where did he die?"

"The date is on the picture, if one could only make it out. He was abroad at the time, I believe."

"Where?"

"I never heard."

"Have you never tried to find out?"

Roger looked at her, startled.

"It was before I was born," said he. "Father never spoke of him. But why do you ask?"

"Only a girl's curiosity. I thought, if any one knew, you would. But there is the bell for lunch."

Armstrong meanwhile had been having an interview of a different kind.

He strolled into Mr Pottinger's office almost at the same time as that worthy lawyer himself.

"So you are back?" asked the latter.

"Yes, and quite at your service," said the tutor. "I am afraid my absence has been inconvenient. But I am ready for business now. By the way, I have brought you back a doc.u.ment which must have been left on old Hodder by mistake. I certainly did not sanction it."

The lawyer sat back in his chair and gazed at the tutor through his spectacles. Mr Armstrong, leaning against the chimney-piece, put up his gla.s.s and gazed leisurely back. The two men understood one another pretty well already.

"The notice is quite in order. I have Captain Oliphant's instructions."

"And mine?"

"You were not here."

"I am here now, and I object to Hodder's being disturbed. Do I make myself clear?"

"But--"

"You must excuse me, Mr Pottinger. I shall be glad to discuss the matter with you in the presence of my co-trustees. Meanwhile, good- morning."

The lawyer jumped out of his chair like a man shot.

"What, sir--you, an interloper, an adventurer, a n.o.body, a parasite--do you suppose I am going to be talked to by you as if I didn't know my own duty. Do you know, Master Usher, that you can any day receive a week's notice of dismissal--"

"A month's, I think," observed the tutor, taking up his hat. "In that respect, perhaps, I have the advantage of the solicitor to the trust.

However, we won't talk of that just now. Good-morning again."

Mr Armstrong looked in on his friend the doctor, whom he found in an opportune moment at breakfast. The two men had a long chat over their coffee, and finally adjourned for a walk along the sh.o.r.e, ending up with a cool spring dip in Sheephaven Cove. After which, much refreshed, and glad to be once more in his familiar haunts, the tutor strolled cheerfully back to Maxfield for lunch. He was quite aware things had undergone a change. He had two new enemies, but he was not afraid of them. He had a new pupil, but he liked him. He had a devoted new champion, in the shape of a little girl, but that was no hardship, Roger, too, despite his new friends, was still loyal to his tutor; and Mrs Ingleton, by all appearances, still regarded him as a useful friend. What then was the difference! It could hardly have anything to do with a certain young person half his own age, with whom the tutor had not had two hours' continuous conversation in his life, and of whose behaviour generally he did not at all know whether he approved or not.

"Ridiculous!" said Mr Armstrong to himself with a smile, as he strolled up the carriage drive.

At that moment the distant hall-door opened, and a light figure stepped out for a moment on to the door-step to pat the great mastiff that lay sleeping on the mat. The apparition, the caress, and the vanishing occupied scarcely half a minute, and when it was past Mr Armstrong was only ten paces nearer the house than he had been when it appeared.

But, somehow, in those few seconds the amused smile on his lips faded away, and the eye-gla.s.s dropped somewhat limply from his eye, as he repeated to himself more emphatically than before--

"Ridiculous!"

At lunch, Roger innocently broached the question of Hodder's eviction.