"Ah! deuce take the fellows," chuckled the General. "Love, devotion, admiration! What a lot of stuff they do write. I wonder if Fay were a little beggar, how much of it all would stand the test? But we know a trick worth two of that. Try those sardines, Keane. House is let, Fay--eh? House is let; nobody need apply. Ha, ha!"
And the General took some more curry, laughing till he was purple, while Fay blushed scarlet, a trick of which she was rarely guilty; Sydie smiled, and Keane picked out his sardines with calm deliberation.
"Hallo! God bless my soul!" burst forth the General again. "Devil take me! I'll be hanged if I stand it! Confound 'em all! I do call it hard for a man not to be able to sit at his breakfast in peace. Good Heavens! what will come to the country, if all those little devils grow up to be food for Calcraft? He's actually pulling the bark off the trees, as I live! Excuse me, I _can't_ sit still and see it."
Wherewith the General bolted from his chair, darted through the window, upsetting three dogs, two kittens, and a stand of flowers in his exit, and bolted breathlessly across the park with the poker in his hand.
"Bless his old heart! Ain't he a brick?" shouted Sydie. "Do excuse me, Fay, I must go and hear him blow up that boy sky-high, and give him a shilling for tuck afterwards; it will be so rich."
The Cantab made his exit, and Fay busied herself calming the kittens' minds, and restoring the dethroned geraniums. Keane read his _Times_ for ten minutes, then looked up.
"Miss Morton, where is your tongue? I have not heard it for a quarter of an hour, a miracle that has never happened in the two months I have been at the Beeches."
"What! am I in _mauvais odeur_ again?" smiled Keane. "I thought we were good friends. Have you found the Q. E. D. to the problem I gave you?"
"To be sure!" cried Fay, exultantly. And kneeling down by him, she went through the whole thing in exceeding triumph.
"You are a good child," said her tutor, smiling, in himself amazed at this volatile little thing's capacity for mathematics. "I think you will be able to take your degree, if you like. Come, do you hate me now, Fay?"
"No," said Fay, a little shyly. "I never hated you, I always admired you; but I was afraid of you, though I would never confess it to Sydie."
