]  

Well, there was no help for it. The box was packed, the cab was at the door. The farewells had been said. Maurice determined that he wouldn’t cry and he didn’t, which gave him the one touch of pride and joy that such a scene could yield. Then at the last moment, just as father had one leg in the cab, the Taxes called. Father went back into the house to write a cheque. Mother and Mabel had retired in tears. Maurice used the reprieve to go back after his postage-stamp album. Already he was planning how to impress the other boys at old Strong’s, and his was really a very fair collection. He ran up into the schoolroom, expecting to find it empty. But some one was there: Lord Hugh, in the very middle of the ink-stained table-cloth.

‘You brute,’ said Maurice; ‘you know jolly well I’m going away, or you wouldn’t be here.’ And, indeed, the room had never, somehow, been a favourite of Lord Hugh’s.

‘Meaow,’ said Lord Hugh.

[opp p7]‘If you think cats have such a jolly time,’ said Lord Hugh, ‘why not be a cat?’

[

opp p7

]

‘Mew!’ said Maurice, with scorn. ‘That’s [p7]  what you always say. All that fuss about a jolly little sardine-tin. Any one would have thought you’d be only too glad to have it to play with. I wonder how you’d like being a boy? Lickings, and lessons, and impots, and sent back from breakfast to wash your ears. You wash yours anywhere—I wonder what they’d say to me if I washed my ears on the drawing-room hearthrug?’

[p

7

]  

‘Meaow,’ said Lord Hugh, and washed an ear, as though he were showing off.

‘Mew,’ said Maurice again; ‘that’s all you can say.’

‘Oh, no, it isn’t,’ said Lord Hugh, and stopped his ear-washing.

‘I say!’ said Maurice in awestruck tones.

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