“My hair’s just plain boy-colour,” said Philip; “my sister says so, and my eyes are blue, I believe.”
“I can’t see in this light;” the captain leaned his elbows on the table and looked earnestly in the boy’s eyes. “No, I can’t see. The other prophecy goes:
“From down and down and very far down
The king shall come to take his own;
He shall deliver the Magic town,
And all that he made shall be his own.
Beware, take care. Beware, prepare,
The king shall come by the ladder stair.”
“How jolly,” said Philip; “I love poetry. Do you know any more?”
“There are heaps of prophecies of course,” said the captain; “the astrologers must do something to earn their pay. There’s rather a nice one:
Every night when the bright stars blink
The guards shall turn out, and have a drink
As the clock strikes two.
And every night when no stars are seen
The guards shall drink in their own canteen
When the clock strikes two.
“Tonight there aren’t any stars, so we have the drinks served here. It’s less trouble than going across the square to the canteen, and the principle’s the same. Principle is the great thing with a prophecy, my boy.”
“Yes,” said Philip. And then the faraway bell beat again. One, two. And outside was a light patter of feet.
A soldier rose—saluted his officer and threw open the door. There was a moment’s pause; Philip expected someone to come in with a tray and glasses, as they did at his great-uncle’s when gentlemen were suddenly thirsty at times that were not mealtimes.
But instead, after a moment’s pause, a dozen greyhounds stepped daintily in on their padded catlike feet; and round the neck of each dog was slung a roundish thing that looked like one of the little barrels which St. Bernard dogs wear round their necks in the pictures. And when these were loosened and laid on the table Philip was charmed to see that the roundish things were not barrels but coconuts.
The soldiers reached down some pewter pots from a high shelf—pierced the coconuts with their bayonets and poured out the coconut milk. They all had drinks, so the prophecy came true, and what is more they gave Philip a drink as well. It was delicious, and there was as much of it as he wanted. I have never had as much coconut milk as I wanted. Have you?
Then the hollow coconuts were tied on to the dogs’ necks again and out they went, slim and beautiful, two by two, wagging their slender tails, in the most amiable and orderly way.
“They take the coconuts to the town kitchen,” said the captain, “to be made into coconut ice for the army breakfast; waste not want not, you know. We don’t waste anything here, my boy.” Philip had quite got over his snubbing. He now felt that the captain was talking with him as man to man. Helen had gone away and left him; well, he was learning to do without Helen. And he had got away from the Grange, and Lucy, and that nurse. He was a man among men. And then, just as he was feeling most manly and important, and quite equal to facing any number of judges, there came a little tap at the door of the guardroom, and a very little voice said:
“Oh, do please let me come in.”
Then the door opened slowly.
“Well, come in, whoever you are,” said the captain. And the person who came in was—Lucy. Lucy, whom Philip thought he had got rid of—Lucy, who stood for the new hateful life to which Helen had left him. Lucy, in her serge skirt and jersey, with her little sleek fair pigtails, and that anxious “I-wish-we-could-be-friends’ smile of hers. Philip was furious. It was too bad.
“And who is this?” the captain was saying kindly.
“It’s me—it’s Lucy,” she said. “I came up with him.”
She pointed to Philip. “No manners,” thought Philip in bitterness.
“No, you didn’t,” he said shortly.
“I did—I was close behind you when you were climbing the ladder bridge. And I’ve been waiting alone ever since, when you were asleep and all. I knew he’d be cross when he knew I’d come,” she explained to the soldiers.
“I’m not cross,” said Philip very crossly indeed, but the captain signed to him to be silent. Then Lucy was questioned and her answers written in the book, and when that was done the captain said:
“So this little girl is a friend of yours?”
“No, she isn’t,” said Philip violently; “she’s not my friend, and she never will be. I’ve seen her, that’s all, and I don’t want to see her again.”
“You are unkind,” said Lucy.
And then there was a grave silence, most unpleasant to Philip. The soldiers, he perceived, now looked coldly at him. It was all Lucy’s fault. What did she want to come shoving in for, spoiling everything? Anyone but a girl would have known that a guardroom wasn’t the right place for a girl. He frowned and said nothing. Lucy had smuggled up against the captain’s knee, and he was stroking her hair.
“Poor little woman,” he said. “You must go to sleep now, so as to be rested before you go to the Hall of Justice in the morning.”
They made Lucy a bed of soldiers’ cloaks laid on a bench; and bearskins are the best of pillows. Philip had a soldier’s cloak and a bench, and a bearskin too—but what was the good? Everything was spoiled. If Lucy had not come the guardroom as a sleeping-place would have been almost as good as the tented field. But she had come, and the guardroom was no better now than any old night-nursery. And how had she known? How had she come? How had she made her way to that illimitable prairie where he had found the mysterious beginning of the ladder bridge? He went to sleep a bunched-up lump of prickly discontent and suppressed fury.
When he woke it was bright daylight,
