Gerald, of a steady, plodding temperament, gave no slightest cause for uneasiness, either to his mother or to the kind patron who had helped the boy to this opening in life. But, alas, of Hugh and Teddie otherwise! Cyril Westmacott, a younger brother of Helen’s, had kept the two boys at school till the age of eighteen, but, having sons of his own, could not afford a college education to follow. Hugh, therefore, for the last two years, had lived a somewhat desultory life since leaving school till the present time, when he held a rather vague position in a London office—a life which greatly unfitted the boy, never of a studious or persevering nature, for such steady application as nondescript appointments in the City render desirable for the attainment of a more lucrative post.
Teddie, only a few months from school, was equally restless under restraint and impatient of all monotony. Unfortunately, monotony constituted, in great part, the high-stooled City life of the two youngest Le Mesurier boys.
To-day was Monday, a depressing fact to Hazel, who accompanied three long-legged and long-faced brothers to the station, some two miles distant from Hazelhurst, with mournful regularity in the early morning of that day, come wet, come shine, after a hearty breakfast at half-past six, served to the party by Miles, who, respectful and deeply sympathetic, urged one and all to keep up their strength for the trying ordeal they were about to undergo. Nor were his efforts vain, for no excitation of mind, not even that of sorrow, to the best of his knowledge, had ever affected the wonderful appetites of his young masters.
And now the girl, returned to the quiet house to find her mother not yet risen, had found its solitude unbearable, the very echoes that the famous Le Mesurier voice had awakened within its walls having died now into quite disproportionate silence, it seemed to Hazel, who, fleeing to the woods, had given herself up to sad meditation, in which the wistful desire to earn money herself held prominent place.
Lying on a bed of soft mosses, she lost herself in thought, and more than an hour must have passed when the sound of footsteps fell upon her startled ears. Raising herself to a distrustful sitting posture, the girl awaited what should chance, presently descrying the figure of Miles the butler, evidently in quest of herself, though at the moment of her discovery she could perceive him passing among the trees along many and divergent tracks.