insincerity in a young man of the middle-class. He had gone to grow tea in Ceylon and fruit in British Columbia, and to help sheep to grow wool in Australia. At the age of twenty he had just returned from some similar errand in Canada, from which it may be gathered that the trial he gave to these various experiments was of the summary drum-head nature. Luke Steffink, who fulfilled the troubled role of guardian and deputy-parent to Bertie, deplored the persistent manifestation of the homing instinct on his nephew's part, and his solemn thanks earlier in the day for the blessing of reporting a united family had no reference to Bertie's return.
Arrangements had been promptly made for packing the youth off to a distant corner of Rhodesia, whence return would be a difficult matter; the journey to this uninviting destination was imminent, in fact a more careful and willing traveller would have already begun to think about his packing. Hence Bertie was in no mood to share in the festive spirit which displayed itself around him, and resentment smouldered within him at the eager, self- absorbed discussion of social plans for the coming months which he heard on all sides. Beyond depressing his uncle and the family circle generally by singing 'Say au revoir, and not good-bye,' he had taken no part in the evening's conviviality.
Eleven o'clock had struck some half-hour ago, and the elder Steffinks began to throw out suggestions leading up to that process which they called retiring for the night.
'Come, Teddie, it's time you were in your little bed, you know,' said Luke Steffink to his thirteen-year-old son.
'That's where we all ought to be,' said Mrs. Steffink.
'There wouldn't be room,' said Bertie.
The remark was considered to border on the scandalous; everybody ate raisins and almonds with the nervous industry of sheep feeding during threatening weather.
'In Russia,' said Horace Bordenby, who was staying in the house as a Christmas guest,
'I've read that the peasants believe that if you go into a cow-house or stable at midnight on Christmas Eve you will hear the animals talk. They're supposed to have the gift of speech at that one moment of the year.'
'Oh, DO let's ALL go down to the cow-house and listen to what they've got to say!'
exclaimed Beryl, to whom anything was thrilling and amusing if you did it in a troop.
Mrs. Steffink made a laughing protest, but gave a virtual consent by saying, 'We must all wrap up well, then.' The idea seemed a scatterbrained one to her, and almost heathenish, but if afforded an opportunity for 'throwing the young people together,' and as such she welcomed it. Mr. Horace Bordenby was a young man with quite substantial prospects, and he had danced with Beryl at a local subscription ball a sufficient number of times to warrant the authorised inquiry on the part of the neighbours whether 'there was anything in it.' Though Mrs. Steffink would not have put it in so many words, she shared the idea of the Russian peasantry that on this night the beast might speak.
The cow-house stood at the junction of the garden with a small paddock, an isolated survival, in a suburban neighbourhood; of what had once been a small farm. Luke Steffink was complacently proud of his cow-house and his two cows; he felt that they gave him a stamp of solidity which no number of Wyandottes or Orpingtons could impart. They even seemed to link him in a sort of inconsequent way with those patriarchs who derived importance from their floating capital of flocks and herbs, he-asses and she-asses. It had been an anxious and momentous occasion when he had had to decide definitely between 'the Byre' and 'the Ranch' for the naming of his villa residence. A December midnight was hardly the moment he would have chosen for showing his farm-building to visitors, but since it was a fine night, and the young people were anxious for an excuse for a mild frolic, Luke consented to chaperon the expedition. The servants had long since gone to bed, so the house was left in charge of Bertie, who scornfully declined to stir out on the pretext of listening to bovine conversation.
'We must go quietly,' said Luke, as he headed the procession of giggling young folk, brought up in the rear by the shawled and hooded figure of Mrs. Steffink; 'I've always laid stress on keeping this a quiet and orderly neighbourhood.'
It was a few minutes to midnight when the party reached the cow- house and made its way in by the light of Luke's stable lantern. For a moment every one stood in silence, almost with a feeling of being in church.
'Daisy--the one lying down--is by a shorthorn bull out of a Guernsey cow,' announced Luke in a hushed voice, which was in keeping with the foregoing impression.
'Is she?' said Bordenby, rather as if he had expected her to be by Rembrandt.
'Myrtle is--'
Myrtle's family history was cut short by a little scream from the women of the party.
The cow-house door had closed noiselessly behind them and the key had turned gratingly in the lock; then they heard Bertie's voice pleasantly wishing them good-night and his footsteps retreating along the garden path.
Luke Steffink strode to the window; it was a small square opening of the old-fashioned sort, with iron bars let into the stonework.
'Unlock the door this instant,' he shouted, with as much air of menacing authority as a hen might assume when screaming through the bars of a coop at a marauding hawk. In reply to his summons the hall-door closed with a defiant bang.
A neighbouring clock struck the hour of midnight. If the cows had received the gift of human speech at that moment they would not have been able to make themselves heard.
Seven or eight other voices were engaged in describing Bertie's present conduct and his general character at a high pressure of excitement and indignation.
In the course of half an hour or so everything that it was permissible to say about Bertie had been said some dozens of times, and other topics began to come to the front--the extreme mustiness of the cow-house, the possibility of it catching fire, and the probability of it being a Rowton House for the vagrant rats of the neighbourhood. And still no sign of deliverance came to the unwilling vigil-keepers.
Towards one o'clock the sound of rather boisterous and undisciplined carol-singing approached rapidly, and came to a sudden anchorage, apparently just outside the garden-gate. A motor-load of youthful 'bloods,' in a high state of conviviality, had made a temporary halt for repairs; the stoppage, however, did not extend to the vocal efforts of the party, and the watchers in the cow-shed were treated to a highly unauthorised rendering of 'Good King Wenceslas,' in which the adjective 'good' appeared to be very carelessly applied.
The noise had the effect of bringing Bertie out into the garden, but he utterly ignored the pale, angry faces peering out at the cow- house window, and concentrated his attention on the revellers outside the gate.
