CHAPTER XXXVII

Spring gave place to summer, and still I kept studiously to my books. I saw less of Owen, for in the afternoons I played cricket, and Owen did not. On the thirteenth of June my examination commenced, and from the first I did well, having good luck with the papers. On Tuesday evening when I went home I had only one more exam. in front of me, and it would take place the following afternoon. After that I should be free for the summer.

It was a hot, breathless kind of night, and I did not intend to work too much. I loafed about the shop after tea, talking to Miss Izzy. She had asked me to go to the Free Library to get her a book, but nothing on the list she had given me, though it was a fairly long one, was in, and I had come back with a tale of my own selecting.

“You might have got one of Annie Swan’s,” Miss Izzy said, eyeing the work I had chosen, dubiously, “but of course you couldn’t tell what ones I’d read.”

“Annie Swan’s?”

“Yes; they’re all good. Mr. Spicer mentioned ‘Carlowrie’ from the pulpit on Sunday, and you don’t often hear _him_ praise a novel.”

“When he does it’s a spicy one,” said George, who was going out.

Miss Izzy took no notice.

“I’ve got to meet the girl at a quarter-to-eight, so I can’t stop,” George threw back gaily from the door, which next moment swung after him, as he stepped into the street, fixing a flower in his button-hole.

“You get ‘Aldersyde’ and read it,” said Miss Izzy, “or ‘Across Her Path.’”

“I thought you said Carl-something-or-other.”

“You’ll maybe like the others better. If George McAllister would join the literary society instead of running about the streets at nights it would answer him better. Who’s this girl he’s going to meet?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s only talk, I suppose. Girls have more sense than to bother with the likes of him.”

“Do you think so?” I murmured sceptically. “The kind that George cares for I don’t imagine have very much.”

“You know nothing about them. If you’d any sisters you’d know more.”

“I’m very glad I haven’t,” I replied.

Miss Izzy bounced round. “Why?” she demanded sharply. “Girls can do everything as well as men can; only they never get the chance.”

“That’s all rot,” I said ungallantly. “They’re quite different. You might as well compare cats and dogs.”

“And we’re the cats, I suppose? It’s well you’re still a puppy.”

“I didn’t mean you, Miss Izzy. I know there are exceptions. But most girls don’t think; or if they do, it’s only about who’s going to marry them.”

“Don’t think! Well, of all!――And you and George McAllister and the others――you think a lot, don’t you?”

“George doesn’t,” I admitted.

“But _you_ do――especially about yourself. Do you know this, Peter Waring, you’re about as conceited and full of yourself as a monkey that’s been taught a few tricks!”

“Well, I’m going away to-morrow, and you’ll not see me again for a long time.”

This was not fair, as I knew it would soften Miss Izzy, and it had indeed this result. “I don’t mind seeing you,” she confessed, with a sigh, “if that’s all. It’s hearing you talk. You may give me your photograph if you like.”

I had had my photograph taken quite recently for Mrs. Carroll’s birthday, and I ran upstairs and brought one down. Miss Izzy examined it critically. “I’ve got a red plush frame at home that’s about your mark.”

“Don’t put me in red plush,” I begged.

Miss Izzy looked up from the photograph to the original. “Is red plush not good enough for you? You’d like a gold frame, maybe?”

“It’s not that,” I said hastily. “It’s only that I don’t care much for red plush. Can’t you get a plain frame? I will get one for you.”

“No, thanks. I always put a plain person in an ornamental frame: it gives them a better chance.”

“All right.”

There was never any use trying to get an advantage over Miss Izzy in verbal skirmishes, so I gave in, and, as the shop appeared to be comparatively deserted to-night, I sat down on an empty wooden box, and read aloud to her the first two chapters of the novel I had brought from the library. It was Hardy’s “Two on a Tower,” and as I turned the pages, the circumstances, so different, under which I had read them before, kept floating into my mind. When I had finished the second chapter, and drummed for a while with my heels against the box, I went upstairs, and got out my notes on French composition to look them over before to-morrow’s examination. The room, although the window was wide open, seemed to me unbearably stuffy, and moreover I had a slight headache and felt tired and irritable. I put up with the heat for half an hour, and then undressed and sat down in my nightshirt close to the window, which looked out on to a dirty strip of back garden, threaded with clothes-lines, and forming, after dark, a kind of debased Paradise for dissipated cats.

At half-past ten or so George stepped jauntily in. “Hello! Not done yet?” He took the now withered flower from his button-hole and flung it out among the cats; then he began to turn over some papers I had laid down on the table in the exact order I required them.

“You’ll mix those up,” I said crossly. “Leave them alone.”

George threw the papers down. “All right. Keep your wool on!” Two or three of the sheets fluttered to the floor.

I picked them up in a very bad temper, and George began to whistle――the same few bars over and over again. “Oh, shut up,” I cried. “Can’t you see I’m working?”

“Temper! Temper!” said George, cheerfully. “I’ll have to tell Katherine about this!”

He was standing before the looking-glass, and had begun to remove his dickey; but at the very moment of speaking he knew he had made a mistake. He looked round with a sort of foolish, apologetic grin. I, too, knew that his words had slipped out unintentionally, for I had never mentioned Katherine’s name to him. There were, in fact, only two ways in which he could have come by his information: either Aunt Margaret had managed to get hold of some of my letters again, or else he had read one of them himself.

“What do you mean?” I asked coldly, looking steadily into his eyes as they were reflected in the glass.

George tried to laugh it off. “I was only joking,” he said, nervously.

But I wanted a better explanation than this.

“Who told you about Katherine?” I asked, getting up from my chair deliberately, and walking over to him, while he spun round to meet me with bright eyes and a forced smile.

“What’s the matter? What are you losin’ your rag about? I don’t want to annoy you.”

“The matter is this: I want to know if you have been reading my letters? If you have, you must have unlocked the box I keep them in.”

“I never unlocked any box.” George backed away from me, his eyes not leaving mine.

“You’d better tell me,” I said, but George would say nothing further. He stood with his back now against the wall. I struck him on the cheek with my open hand. “Answer,” I said.

I saw his eyes turn to the door, and anticipated the spring he made to get past me. The next moment I had him by the throat and we were struggling together. Suddenly I released my hold, flinging him from me. He struck out at me as I came toward him again, but it was the feeble, half-hearted blow of a coward, and I felt my fist in contact with his face, almost as if he had run up against it. He staggered back, and a crimson stream poured down over his chin and on to his shirt, making a horrible mess, while he stood blubbering like a baby. I did not hit him again, but simply watched him. I knew he was really more frightened than hurt, for though his nose was bleeding profusely, I had seen it do that on several occasions before, quite spontaneously. We must, all the same, have kicked up a considerable racket, for I heard the sound of quick footsteps in the passage, and then our door was flung open and a wild figure rushed in. It was Aunt Margaret, in a stained, red dressing-gown, her black eyes blazing in her big, puffy face. Her huge loose body shook and panted with rage as she turned from George to me. I stepped quickly out of her way, for there was something rather fearful in the great white mask of hate she turned on me. She said not a word, but shooting out an arm, like a shoulder of mutton, gripped me by the collar of my nightshirt, and began to rain down a torrent of heavy blows on my head and uplifted arms. I protected myself as well as I could, and at last, with a violent wrench, tore myself out of her grasp, my nightshirt ripping down to the hem, a considerable portion of it remaining in Aunt Margaret’s hand. “Stop that!” I shouted furiously, but she came at me again, her fat body panting yet displaying an incredible activity, her eyes shining with madness.

I knew there would be mischief done, for I saw her catch up an iron rod that was part of George’s trouser-stretcher. I was really frightened now, and made a dive to get past her and out of the door. I felt her nails tear my naked shoulder; at the same moment I flung up my arm and, it may be, saved my life, for something crashed down over my elbow, striking on the back of my head with a sickening jar that I seemed to hear as the floor swept up to meet me.