THE MASTER OF THE HOUSE

“That’s Geoff, I’m sure,” said Elsa; “I always know his ring. I do hope-” and she stopped and sighed a little.

“What?” said Frances, looking up quickly.

“Oh, nothing particular. Run down, Vic, dear, and get Geoff to go straight into the school-room. Order his tea at once. I don’t want him to come upstairs just now. Mamma is so busy and worried with those letters.”

Vic, a little girl of nine, with long fair hair and long black legs, and a pretty face with a bright, eager expression, needed no second bidding. She was off almost before Elsa had finished speaking.

“What a good child she is!” said Frances. “What a clever, nice boy she would have made! And if Geoff had been a girl, perhaps he would have been more easily managed.”

“I don’t know,” said Elsa. “Perhaps if Vicky had been a boy she would have been spoilt and selfish too.”

“Elsa,” said Frances, “I think you are rather hard upon Geoff. He is like all boys. Everybody says they are more selfish than girls, and then they grow out of it.”

“They grow out of showing it so plainly, perhaps,” replied Elsa, rather bitterly. “But you contradict yourself, Frances. Just a moment ago you said what a much nicer boy Vic would have made. All boys aren’t like Geoff. Of course, I don’t mean that he is really a bad boy; but it just comes over me now and then that it is a shame he should be such a tease and worry, boy or not. When mamma is anxious, and with good reason, and we girls are doing all we can, why should Geoff be the one we have to keep away from her, and to smooth down, as it were? It’s all for her sake, of course; but it makes me ashamed, all the same, to feel that we are really almost afraid of him. There now-” And she started up as the sound of a door, slammed violently in the lower regions, reached her ears.

But before she had time to cross the room, Vicky reappeared.

“It’s nothing, Elsa,” the child began eagerly. “Geoff’s all right; he’s not cross. He only slammed the door at the top of the kitchen stair because I reminded him not to leave it open.”

“You might have shut it yourself, rather than risk a noise to-night,” said Elsa. “What was he doing at the top of the kitchen stair?”

Vicky looked rather guilty.

“He was calling to Phoebe to boil two eggs for his tea. He says he is so hungry. I would have run up to tell you; but I thought it was better than his teasing mamma about letting him come in to dinner.”

Elsa glanced at Frances.

“You see,” her glance seemed to say.

“Yes, dear,” she said aloud to the little sister, “anything is better than that. Run down again, Vicky, and keep him as quiet as you can.”

“Would it not be better, perhaps,” asked Frances, rather timidly, “for one of us to go and speak to him, and tell him quietly about mamma having had bad news?”

“He wouldn’t rest then till he had heard all about it from herself,” said Elsa. “Of course he’d be sorry for her, and all that, but he would only show it by teasing.”

It was Frances’s turn to sigh, for in spite of her determination to see everything and everybody in the best possible light, she knew that Elsa was only speaking the truth about Geoffrey.

Half an hour later the two sisters were sitting at dinner with their mother. She was anxious and tired, as they knew, but she did her utmost to seem cheerful.

“I have seen and heard nothing of Geoff,” she said suddenly. “Has he many lessons to do to-night? He’s all right, I suppose?”

“Oh yes,” said Frances. “Vic’s with him, looking out his words. He seems in very good spirits. I told him you were busy writing for the mail, and persuaded him to finish his lessons first. He’ll be coming up to the drawing-room later.”

“I think mamma had better go to bed almost at once,” said Elsa, abruptly. “You’ve finished those letters, dear, haven’t you?”

“Yes-all that I can write as yet. But I must go to see Mr. Norris first thing to-morrow morning. I have said to your uncle that I cannot send him particulars till next mail.”

“Mamma, darling,” said Frances, “do you really think it’s going to be very bad?”

Mrs. Tudor smiled rather sadly.

“I’m afraid so,” she said; “but the suspense is the worst. Once we really know, we can meet it. You three girls are all so good, and Geoff, poor fellow-he means to be good too.”

“Yes,” said Frances, eagerly, “I’m sure he does.”

“But ‘meaning’ alone isn’t much use,” said Elsa. “Mamma,” she went on with sudden energy, “if this does come-if we really do lose all our money, perhaps it will be the best thing for Geoff in the end.”

Mrs. Tudor seemed to wince a little.

“You needn’t make the very worst of it just yet, any way,” said Frances, reproachfully.

“And it would in one sense be the hardest on Geoff,” said the mother, “for his education would have to be stopped, just when he’s getting on so well, too.”

“But-” began Elsa, but she said no more. It was no use just then expressing what was in her mind-that getting on well at school, winning the good opinion of his masters, the good fellowship of his companions, did not comprise the whole nor even the most important part of the duty of a boy who was also a son and a brother-a son, too, of a widowed mother, and a brother of fatherless sisters. “I would almost rather,” she said to herself, “that he got on less well at school if he were more of a comfort at home. It would be more manly, somehow.”

Her mother did not notice her hesitation.

“Let us go upstairs, dears,” she said. “I am tired, but I am not going to let myself be over-anxious. I shall try to put things aside, as it were, till I hear from Great-Uncle Hoot-Toot. I have the fullest confidence in his advice.”

“I wish he would take it into his head to come home,” said Frances.

“So do I,” agreed her mother.

They were hardly settled in the drawing-room before Vic appeared.

“Elsa,” she whispered, “Geoff sent me to ask if he may have something to eat.”

“Something to eat,” repeated Elsa. “He had two eggs with his tea. He can’t be hungry.”

“No-o- But there were anchovy toasts at dinner-Harvey told him. And he’s so fond of anchovy toasts. I think you’d better say he may, Elsa, because of mamma.”

“Very well,” the elder sister replied. “It’s not right-it’s always the way. But what are we to do?”

Vicky waited not to hear her misgivings, but flew off. She was well-drilled, poor little soul.

Her brother was waiting for her, midway between the school-room and dining-room doors.

“Well?” he said, moving towards the latter.

“Yes. Elsa says you may,” replied the breathless little envoy.

“Elsa! What has she to do with it? I told you to ask mamma, not Elsa,” he said roughly.

He stood leaning against the jamb of the door, his hands in his pockets, with a very cross look on his handsome face. But Victoria, devoted little sister though she was, was not to be put down by any cross looks when she knew she was in the right.

“Geoff,” she said sturdily, “I’ll just leave off doing messages or anything for you if you are so selfish. How could I go teasing mamma about anchovy toasts for you when she is so worried?”

“How should I know she is busy and worried?” said Geoff. “What do you mean? What is it about?”

“I don’t know. At least I only know that Elsa and Francie told me that she was worried, and that she had letters to write for the ship that goes to India to-morrow.”

“For the Indian mail you mean, I suppose,” said Geoff. “What a donkey you are for your age, Vic! Oh, if it’s only that, she’s writing to that old curmudgeon; that’s nothing new. Come along, Vicky, and I’ll give you a bit of my toasts.”

He went into the dining-room as he spoke, and rang the bell.

“Harvey’ll bring them up. I said I’d ring if I was to have them. Upon my word, Vic, it isn’t every fellow of my age that would take things so quietly. Never touching a scrap without leave, when lots like me come home to late dinner every night.”

“Elsa says it’s only middle-class people who let children dine late,” said Vic, primly, “I shan’t come down to dinner till I’m out.”

Geoffrey burst out laughing.

“Rubbish!” he said. “Elsa finds reasons for everything that suits her. Here, Vicky, take your piece.”

Vicky was not partial to anchovy toasts, but to-night she was so anxious to keep Geoff in a good humour, that she would have eaten anything he chose to give her, and pretended to like it. So she accepted her share, and Geoff munched his in silence.

He was a well-made, manly looking boy, not tall for his years, which were fourteen, but in such good proportion as to give promise of growing into a strong and vigorous man. His face was intended by nature to be a very pleasing one. The features were all good; there was nobility in the broad forehead, and candour in the bright dark eyes, and-sometimes-sweetness in the mouth. But this “sometimes” had for long been becoming of less and less frequent occurrence. A querulous, half-sulky expression had invaded the whole face: its curves and lines were hardening as those of no young face should harden; the very carriage of the boy was losing its bright upright fearlessness-his shoulders were learning to bend, his head to slouch forward. One needed but to glance at him to see that Geoffrey Tudor was fast becoming that most disagreeable of social characters, a grumbler! And with grumbling unrepressed, and indulged in, come worse things, for it has its root in that true “root of all evil,” selfishness.

As the last crumbs of the anchovy toasts disappeared, Geoff glanced round him.

“I say, Vic,” he began, “is there any water on the sideboard? Those things are awfully salt. But I don’t know that I’m exactly thirsty, either. I know what I’d like-a glass of claret, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t have it, either. At my age it’s really too absurd that-

“What are you talking about, Geoff?” said Elsa’s voice in the doorway. “Mamma wants you to come up to the drawing-room for a little. What is it that is too absurd at your age?”

“Nothing in particular-or rather everything,” said Geoff, with a slight tone of defiance. There was something in Elsa’s rather too superior, too elder-sisterly way of speaking that, as he would have expressed it, “set him up.” “I was saying to Vic that I’d like a glass of claret, and that I don’t see why I shouldn’t have it, either. Other fellows would help themselves to it. I often think I’m a great donkey for my pains.”

Elsa looked at him with a strange mixture of sadness and contempt.

“What will he be saying next, I wonder?” her glance seemed to say.

But the words were not expressed.

“Come upstairs,” she said. “Vicky has told you, I know, that you must be particularly careful not to tease mamma to-night.”

Geoff returned her look with an almost fierce expression in the eyes that could be so soft and gentle.

“I wish you’d mind your own business, and leave mother and me to ourselves. It’s your meddling puts everything wrong,” he muttered.

But he followed his elder sister upstairs quietly enough. Down in the bottom of his heart was hidden great faith in Elsa. He would, had occasion demanded it, have given his life, fearlessly, cheerfully, for her or his mother, or the others. But the smaller sacrifices, of his likes and dislikes, of his silly boyish temper and humours-of “self,” in short, he could not or would not make. Still, something in Elsa’s words and manner this evening impressed him in spite of himself. He followed her into the drawing-room, fully meaning to be good and considerate.