and a frown on his forehead, reading the
Marriage Service. The book had been effectively designed for not
spoiling the figure when carried in a pocket. But this did not matter,
for even if he could have read the words, he would not have known what
they meant, seeing that he was thinking how he could make a certain
petition to a certain person sitting just behind at a large bureau with a
sliding top, examining artificial flies.

He fixed at last upon this form:

"Gordy!" (Why Gordy no one quite knew now--whether because his name was
George, or by way of corruption from Guardian.) "When Cis is gone it'll
be rather awful, won't it?"

"Not a bit."

Mr. Heatherley was a man of perhaps sixty-four, if indeed guardians have
ages, and like a doctor rather than a squire; his face square and puffy,
his eyes always half-closed, and his curly mouth using bluntly a voice of
that refined coarseness peculiar to people of old family.

"But it will, you know!"

"Well, supposin' it is?"

"I only wondered if you'd mind asking Mr. and Mrs. Stormer to come here
for a little--they were awfully kind to me out there."

"Strange man and woman! My dear fellow!"

"Mr. Stormer likes fishing."

"Does he? And what does she like?"

Very grateful that his back was turned, the boy said:

"I don't know--anything--she's awfully nice."

"Ah! Pretty?"

He answered faintly:

"I don't know what YOU call pretty, Gordy."

He felt, rather than saw, his guardian scrutinizing him with those
half-closed eyes under their gouty lids.

"All right; do as you like. Have 'em here and have done with it, by all
means."

Did his heart jump? Not quite; but it felt warm and happy, and he said:

"Thanks awfully, Gordy. It's most frightfully decent of you," and turned
again to the Marriage Service. He could make out some of it. In places
it seemed to him fine, and in other places queer. About obeying, for
instance. If you loved anybody, it seemed rotten to expect them to obey
you. If you loved them and they loved you, there couldn't ever be any
question of obeying, because you would both do the things always of your
own accord. And if they didn't love you, or you them, then--oh! then it
would be simply too disgusting for anything, to go on living with a
person you didn't love or who didn't love you. But of course SHE didn't
love his tutor. Had she once? Those bright doubting eyes, that
studiously satiric mouth came very clearly up befo