Master and Maid. L. Allen Harker
with his fellow sportsmen, so extremely shy in any other society.
Every stranger noticed handsome Paddy, even as a baby; but for the most part they passed Lallie by in her childhood, and Tony's notice and affection were very precious to her. He and the quaint, pale-faced little girl had much in common: they understood one another. He hadn't seen Lallie for over a year, and during that time she had changed and developed. Her manner had acquired a certain poise and balance wholly lacking to the wild, shy nymph of Irish river and Norman hillside that he knew so well.
Old Madame's death had made her not only more than ever the companion of her father, but it had also made her mistress of his house, and Lallie had found in herself all sorts of latent powers and possibilities, hitherto wholly unsuspected, and these had crystallised into qualities. Tony realised that while she was temperamentally the same Lallie--subtle, sensitive, responsive to every smallest change in the mental atmosphere--a new Lallie had arisen, who would be by no means so easily dealt with, and a shrewd suspicion flashed across his mind that Fitzroy Clonmell was equally aware of the change, and that with his customary cleverness he had shifted the responsibility on to other shoulders than his own.
Tony sat so still that Val came from under the chair, stretched himself, and laid his head softly on his master's knees, regarding him with tenderly inquiring eyes. The clock on the mantelpiece struck twelve, and Tony arose.
"Time for bed, old chap," he said, "but we'll have a look at the night first."
He and the dog went out into the garden, and Tony looked up at the black bulk of the house against the moonlit sky. The great dormitories in the wing lay stark and silent, all their teeming life wrapped in the silence of healthy boyhood's slumber; and there too, in Miss Foster's room above his own study, lay Lallie--Lallie, with her bodyguard of fifty boys. He smiled at the quaint fancy. Val rubbed himself against his master's legs.
"Well, Val, we must do our best to take care of her," said Tony, "but I can't have her flirting with my boys and upsetting them. That would never do. However, it isn't as if she was one of those flaringly pretty girls that every fellow turns round to look at."
Somehow this reflection did not seem to afford much comfort to Tony. A vision of Lallie's face lifted to his as she said good-night came between him and the comfortable assurance that she, at all events, was not pretty. How soft her dark hair was!--and it smelt of violets. Poor little motherless, warm-hearted Lallie!
He saw Val comfortably settled in his basket, and went quietly up the dark staircase. He paused outside Lallie's door to listen; all was perfectly still. In another half-hour every soul in B. House was fast asleep.
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