'I suppose there will be for the winter,' said Miss Mohun, and therewith the conversation was safely conducted away to musical subjects, in which some of the sisters' pride and affection for their brothers peeped out; but Gillian was conscious all the time that Kalliope was speaking with some constraint when she mentioned Alexis, and that she was glad rather to dwell on little Theodore, who had good hopes of the drawing prize, and she seriously consulted Miss Mohun on the pupil-teachership for him, as after he had passed the seventh standard he could not otherwise go on with his education, though she did not think he had much time for teaching.
'Would not Mr. White help him further?' asked Miss Mohun.
'I do not know. I had much rather not ask,' said Kalliope. 'We are too many to throw ourselves on a person who is no near relation, and he has not seemed greatly disposed to help.'
'Your elder brother?'
'Oh, poor Richard, he is not earning anything yet. I can't ask him. If I only knew of some school I could be sure was safe and good and not too costly, Alexis and I would try to manage for Theodore after the examination in the spring.'
The Woodward schools were a new light to her, and she was eagerly interested in Miss Mohun's explanations and in the scale of terms.
Meantime Miss Adeline got on excellently with the younger ones, and when the others were free, proposed for their benefit a spelling game. All sat round the table, made words, and abstracted one another's with increasing animation, scarcely heeding the roaring of the wind outside, till there was a ring at the bell.
'My brother has come for us,' said Kalliope.
'Oh, but it is not fit for you to walk home,' said Miss Mohun. 'The brougham is coming by and by; ask Mr. White to come in,' she added, as the maid appeared with the message that he was come for his sisters.
There was a confusion of acknowledgments and disclaimers, and word was brought back that Mr. White was too wet to come in. Miss Mohun, who was not playing, but prompting Fergus, jumped up and went out to investigate, when she found a form in an ancient military cloak, trying to keep himself from dripping where wet could do mischief. She had to explain her regret at his having had such a walk in vain; but she had taken alarm on finding that rain was setting in for the night, and had sent word by the muffin-boy that the brougham would be wanted, contriving to convey that it was not to be paid for.
Nothing remained to be said except thanks, and Alexis emerged from the cloak, which looked as if it had gone through all his father's campaigns, took off his gaiters, did his best for his boots, and, though not in evening costume, looked very gentleman-like and remarkably handsome in the drawing-room, with no token of awkward embarrassment save a becoming blush.
Gillian began to tremble inwardly again, but the game had just ended in her favour, owing to Fergus having lost all his advantages in Aunt Jane's absence, besides signalising himself by capturing Maura's 'bury,' under the impression that an additional R would combine that and straw into a fruit.
So the coast being cleared, Miss Adeline greatly relieved her niece's mind by begging, as a personal favour, to hear the song whose renown at the concert had reached her; and thus the time was safely spent in singing till the carriage was announced, and good-nights exchanged.
Maura's eyes grew round with delight, and she jumped for joy at the preferment.
'Oh!' she said, as she fervently kissed Valetta, 'it is the most delightful evening I ever spent in the whole course of my life, except at Lady Merrifield's Christmas-tree! And now to go home in a carriage! I never went in one since I can remember!'
And Kalliope's 'Thank you, we have enjoyed ourselves very much,' was very fervent.
'Those young people are very superior to what I expected,' said Aunt Adeline. 'What fine creatures, all so handsome; and that little Maura is a perfect darling.'
'The Muse herself is very superior,' said Miss Mohun. 'One of those home heroines who do the work of Atlas without knowing it. I do not wonder that the marble girls speak of her so enthusiastically.'
How Gillian might have enjoyed all this, and yet she could not, except so far that she told herself that thus there could be no reasonable objection made by her aunts to intercourse with those whom they so much admired.
Yet perhaps even then she would have told all, but that, after having bound over Kalliope to secrecy, it would be awkward to confess that she had told all. It would be like owning herself in the wrong, and for that she was not prepared. Besides, where would be the secrecy of her 'great thing'?
CHAPTER IX. GAUGING AJEE
Without exactly practising to deceive, Gillian began to find that concealment involved her in a tangled web; all the more since Aunt Jane had become thoroughly interested in the Whites, and was inquiring right and left about schools and scholarships for the little boys.
She asked their master about them, and heard that they were among his best scholars, and that their home lessons had always been carefully attended to by their elder brother and sister. In fact, he was most anxious to retain Theodore, to be trained for a pupil-teacher, the best testimony to his value! Aunt Jane came home full of the subject, relating what the master said of Alexis White, and that he had begun by working with him at Latin and mathematics; but that they had not had time to go on with what needed so much study and preparation.
'In fact, said Miss Mohun, 'I have a suspicion that if a certificated schoolmaster could own any such thing, the pupil knew more than the teacher. When your father comes home, I hope he will find some way of helping that lad.'
Gillian began to crimson, but bethought herself of the grandeur of its being found that she was the youth's helper. 'I am glad you have been lending him books,' added Aunt Jane.
What business had she to know what had not been told her? The sense of offence drove back any disposition to consult her. Yet to teach Alexis was no slight task, for, though he had not gone far in Greek, his inquiries were searching, and explaining to him was a different thing from satisfying even Mr. Pollock. Besides, Gillian had her own studies on hand. The Cambridge examinations were beginning to assume larger proportions in the Rockquay mind, and 'the General Screw Company,' as Mr. Grant observed, was prevailing.
Gillian's knowledge was rather discursive, and the concentration required by an examination was hard work to her, and the time for it was shortened by the necessity of doing all Alexis's Greek exercises and translations beforehand, and of being able to satisfy him why an error was not right, for, in all politeness, he always would know why it did not look right. And there was Valetta, twisting and groaning. The screw was on her form, who, unless especially exempted, were to compete for a prize for language examination.
Valetta had begun by despising Kitty Varley for being excepted by her mother's desire and for not learning Latin; but now she envied any one who had not to work double tides at the book of Caesar that was to be taken up, and Vercingetorix and his Arverni got vituperated in a way that would have made the hair of her hero-worshipping mother fairly stand on end.
But then Lilias Mohun had studied him for love of himself, not for dread of failure.
Gillian had been displeased when Fergus deserted her for Aunt Jane as an assistant, but she would not have been sorry if Valetta had been off her hands, when she was interrupted in researches after an idiom in St. John's Gospel by the sigh that this abominable dictionary had no verb oblo, or in the intricacies of a double equation by despair at this horrid Caesar always hiding away his nominatives out of spite.
Valetta, like the American child, evidently regarded the Great Julius in no other light than as writer of a book for beginners in Latin, and, moreover, a very unkind one; and she fully reciprocated the sentiment that it was no wonder that the Romans conquered the world, since they knew the Latin grammar by nature.
Nor was Gillian's hasty and sometimes petulant assistance very satisfactory to the poor child, since it often involved hearing 'Wait a minute,' and a very long one, 'How can you be so stupid?' 'I told you so long ago'; and sometimes consisted of a gabbling translation, with rapidly pointed finger, very hard to follow, and not quite so painstaking as when Alexis deferentially and politely pointed out the difficulties, with a strong sense of the favour that she was doing him.
Not that these personal lessons often took place. Kalliope never permitted them without dire necessity, and besides, there was always an uncertainty when Gillian might come down, or when Alexis might be able to come in.
One day when Aunt Jane had come home with a story of how one of her 'business girls' had confessed to Miss
