hted with him. So
was Priscilla, who winked three times at her father when neither Frank
nor her aunt was looking at her. Sir Lucius was uneasy. He feared that
his nephew was likely to turn out a prig, a kind of boy which he held in
particular abhorrence.

When luncheon was over he said that he intended to take his rod and go
up the river for the afternoon. He invited Priscilla to go with him and
carry his landing net. Frank, preceded by Miss Lentaigne, was conducted
by the butler to a hammock chair agreeably placed under the shade of a
lime tree on the lawn. When Sir Lucius and Priscilla, laden with fishing
gear, passed him, he was still making himself politely agreeable to Miss
Lentaigne. Priscilla winked at him. He returned the salutation with a
stare which was intended to convince her that winking was a particularly
vicious kind of bad form. Miss Lentaigne, as Priscilla noticed, sat with
two treatises on Christian Science in her hand.

Priscilla, returning without her father at half past six o'clock,
found Frank sitting alone under the lime tree. He was in a singularly
chastened mood and inclined to be companionable and friendly, even with
a girl of no more than fifteen years old.

"I say, Priscilla," he said, "is that old aunt of yours quite mad?"

There was something in the way he expressed himself which delighted
Priscilla. He had reverted to the phraseology of an undignified
schoolboy of the lower fifth. The veneer of grown manhood, even
the polish of a prefect, had, as it were, peeled off him during the
afternoon.

"Not at all," said Priscilla. "She's frightfully clever, what's called
intellectual. You know the sort of thing. How's your ankle?"

"She says it isn't sprained. But, blow it all, it's swelled the size of
the calf of your leg."

He did not mean Priscilla's leg particularly; but with a slight lift of
an already short skirt she surveyed her own calf curiously. She wanted
to know exactly how thick Frank's injured ankle was.

"Then she didn't cure it?"

"Cure it!" said Frank, "I should think not. She simply kept on telling
me I only thought it was sprained. I never heard such rot talked in all
my life. How do you stand it at all?"

"That's nothing," said Priscilla. "We're quite glad she's taken to
Christian Science; though she did nearly kill poor father. Before that
she was all for teetotallity--that's not quite the right word, but you
know the thing I mean, drinking nothing but lemonade, ei