Page:Hornung - Fathers of Men.djvu/159

 "Do you ever see the Miss Christies now?" he had inadvertently inquired.

"The Christies!" Evan exclaimed, emphatically, and not without a sidelong glance at Carpenter. "Oh, yes, the girls skated on our pond all last holidays. Phyllis can do the outside edge backwards."

"She would," said Jan. "I doubt you're too big for Fanny now?"

Fanny had been Evan's pony, on which he had ridden a great deal with his friends the Christies; hence the somewhat dangerous association of ideas. He said he now rode one of the horses, when he rode at all. His tone closed that side of the subject.

"Do you remember how you used to hoist a flag, the first day of the holidays, to let the young—to let the girls know you'd got back?"

Evan turned to Carpenter with a forced laugh. "All these early recollections must be pretty boring for you," said he. "But this chap and I used to know each other at home."

"I wish we did now," said Jan. "There's nobody to speak to down in Norfolk."

"Except R. N. Ambrose," put in Chips, dryly. "I suppose you know that's his uncle?"

Devereux did not know it, and the information was opportune in every way. It reminded him that Mrs. Rutter had been a lady, and it reminded Jan himself that all his people had not sprung from the stables. It made him distinctly less liable to say "the Miss Christies" or "Master Evan." Above all it introduced the general topic of Cricket, in which Chips and his statistics got a chance at last, so that in argument alone a mile went like the wind. Chips could have gained full marks in any paper set on the row of green and red booklets in his