"Dad's a bit stiff about the Prophet," Noel once said to his sisters, "but if I am in luck's way and get a scholarship, I shall just go up to Lincoln's Inn myself and interview the old buffer;" and this seemed so venturesome and terrifying a project that Mollie gasped, and said, "Oh, no, not really, Noel!" and Waveney opened her eyes a little widely.
"You bet I do," returned Noel, cocking his chin in a lordly way. "I shall just march in as cool as a cucumber, and as bold as brass. 'I have come to thank my unknown benefactor, sir,' I would say with my finest air, 'for the good education I have received. I have the satisfaction of telling you that I have gained a scholarship--eighty pounds a year--and that, with the kind permission--of--of my occult and mysterious friend, I wish to matriculate at Balliol. As I have now attained the age of manhood, is it too much to ask the name of my venerable benefactor?'"
"Oh, Wave, is he not ridiculous?" laughed Mollie; but Waveney looked at her young brother rather gravely.
"Don't, Noel, dear; father would not like it." But Noel only shrugged his shoulders at this. He had his own opinions about things, and when he made up his mind it was very difficult to move him. Never were father and son more unlike; and yet they were the best of friends.
Mr. Ward always had a hard day's work on Tuesday. He had two schools at Norwood, and never came home until evening. The girls always took extra pains with the breakfast-table on the Norwood days, and while Mollie made the coffee, boiled the eggs, and superintended the toast-making, Waveney made up dainty little pats of butter and placed them on vine-leaves. Then she went into the narrow little slip of garden behind the house and gathered a late rose and laid it on her father's plate.
Waveney was in excellent spirits all breakfast-time. She laughed and talked with Noel, while Mollie sat behind her coffee-pot and looked at her with puzzled eyes.
"How can Wave laugh like that when she knows, she knows!" she thought, wonderingly; but at that moment Waveney looked at her with a smile so sweet and so full of sadness, that poor Mollie nearly choked, and her eyes brimmed over with tears.
"Wish me good luck, and do not expect me until you see me," were Waveney's last words, as Mollie stood at the door with a very woe-begone face. "Cheer up, Moll. Care killed the cat, you know;" and then she waved her hand and vanished.