Page:Hornung - Fathers of Men.djvu/69

 "But how did you manage to get half so high?" asked Evan, with a further ingenuous display of what was in his mind.

"Well, there was the vicar, to begin with."

"That old sinner!" said Evan.

"I used to go to him three nights a week."

"Now I remember."

"Then you heard what happened when my father died?"

"Yes."

"It would be a surprise to you, Master Evan?"

It had been on the tip of his tongue more than once, but until now he had found no difficulty in keeping it there. Yet directly they got back to the old days, out it slipped without a moment's warning.

"You'd better not call me that again," said Evan, dryly.

"I won't."

"Unless you want the whole school to know!"

"You see, my mother's friends"

"I know. I've heard all about it. I always had heard—about your mother.".

Jan had only heard that pitiful romance from his father's dying lips; it was then the boy had promised to obey her family in all things, and his coming here was the first thing of all. He said as much in his own words, which were bald and broken, though by awkwardness rather than emotion. Then Evan asked, as it were in his stride, if Jan's mother's people had a "nice place," and other questions which might have betrayed to a more sophisticated observer a wish to ascertain whether they really were gentlefolk as alleged. Jan answered that it was "a nice enough place"; but he pointed to a photograph in an Oxford frame—the photograph of a large house reflected in a little artificial lake—a house with a slate roof and an