FullReads

But again I had to confess my ignorance of what was then the popular garden game.

‘What do you generally do to amuse yourself, then?’ she inquired.

‘I read, generally, or paint texts or outlines. Sometimes’–(I thought this accomplishment would surely appeal to her)–‘sometimes I do woolwork!’

‘I don’t think I would tell the boys that,’ she advised rather gravely; she evidently considered me a very desperate case. ‘It’s such a pity, your not knowing any games. Suppose I taught you croquet, now? It would be something to go on with, and you’ll soon learn if you pay attention and do exactly what I tell you.’

I submitted myself meekly to her direction, and Marjory enjoyed her office of instructress for a time, until my extreme slowness wore out her patience, and she began to make little murmurs of disgust, for which she invariably apologised. ‘That’s enough for to-day!’ she said at last, ‘I’ll take you again to-morrow. But you really must try and pick up games, Cameron, or you’ll never be liked. Let me see, I wonder if there’s time to teach you a little football. I think I could do that.’

Before she could make any further arrangements the tea-bell rang, but when I lay down that night in my strange cold bed, hemmed round by other beds, which were only less formidable than if they had been occupied, I did not feel so friendless as I might have done, and dreamed all night that Marjory was teaching me something I understood to be cricket, which, however, was more like a bloated kind of backgammon.

The next day Marjory was allowed to go out walking with me, and I came home feeling that I had known her for quite a long time, while her manner to me had acquired a tone even more protecting than before, and she began to betray an anxiety as to my school prospects which filled me with uneasiness.

‘I am so afraid the boys won’t like the way you talk,’ she said on one occasion.

‘I used to be told I spoke very correctly,’ I said, verdantly enough.

‘But not like boys talk. You see, Cameron, I ought to know, with such a lot of them about. I tell you what I could do, though–I could teach you most of their words–only I must run and ask mother first if I may. Teaching slang isn’t the same as using it on my own account, is it?’

Marjory darted off impulsively to ask leave, to return presently with a slow step and downcast face. ‘I mayn’t,’ she announced. ‘Mother says “Certainly not,” so there’s an end of that! Still, I think myself it’s a decided pity.’

And more than once that day she would observe, as if to herself, ‘I do wish they had let him come to school in different collars!’

I knew that these remarks, and others of a similar tendency, were prompted by her interest in my welfare, and I admired her too heartily already to be offended by them: still, I cannot say they added to my peace of mind.

And on the last evening of the holidays she said ‘Good-night’ to me with some solemnity. ‘Everything will be different after this,’ she said; ‘I shan’t be able to see nearly so much of you, because I’m not allowed to be much with the boys. But I shall be looking after you all the time, Cameron, and seeing how you get on. And oh! I do hope you will try to be a popular kind of boy!’

* * * * *

I’m afraid I must own that this desire of Marjory’s was not realised. I do not know that I tried to be–and I certainly was not–a popular boy.

The other boys, I now know, were by no means bad specimens of the English schoolboy, as will be evident when I state that, for a time, my deep mourning was held by them to give me a claim to their forbearance.