Sparrows | Page 7

at his wife's side.
"Did she know Ruskin?" asked Harold.
"When I was at her school--it was then at Fulham--she, or her sister,
never let a day go by without making some reference to him," replied
his step-mother.
"What are you going to do for Miss Keeves?" asked Harold.
"It's so difficult to decide off-hand," his step-mother replied.
"Can't you think of anything, father?" persisted Harold.
"It's scarcely in my line," answered Montague, glancing at his wife as
he spoke.
Harold looked inquiringly at Mrs Devitt.

"It's so difficult to promise her anything till one has seen her," she
remarked.
"Then why not have her down?" asked Harold.
"Yes, why not?" echoed his brother.
"She can get here and back again in a day," added Harold, as his eyes
sought his review.
"Very well, then, I'll write and suggest Friday," said Mrs Devitt, not too
willingly taking up a pen.
"You can always wire and put her off, if you want to do anything else,"
remarked her sister.
"Won't you send her her fare?" asked Harold.
"Is that necessary?" queried Mrs Devitt.
"Isn't it usual?"
"I can give it to her when she comes," said Mrs Devitt, who hated
parting with money, although, when it was a question of entertaining
the elect of Melkbridge, she spent her substance lavishly.
Thus it came about that a letter was written to Miss Annie Mee,
Brandenburg College, Aynhoe Road, West Kensington Park, London,
W., saying that Mrs Devitt would expect Miss Keeves, for an interview,
by the train that left Paddington for Melkbridge at ten on Friday next;
also, that she would defray her third-class travelling expenses.

CHAPTER TWO
MAVIS KEEVES
The following Friday morning, Mavis Keeves sprang from bed on

waking. It was late when she had gone to sleep the previous night, for
she had been kept up by the festivities pertaining to breaking- up day at
Brandenburg College, and the inevitable "talk over" the incidents of the
event with Miss Helen and Miss Annie Mee, which conversation had
been prolonged till nearly twelve o'clock; but the excitement of
travelling to the place of her birth, and the certainty of getting an
engagement in some capacity or another (Mavis had no doubt on this
point) were more than enough to curtail her slumbers. She had fallen
asleep laughing to herself at the many things which had appealed to her
sense of humour during the day, and it was the recollection of some of
these which made her smile directly she was awake. She tubbed and
dressed quickly, although she had some bother with her hair, which,
this morning, seemed intent on defying the efforts of her fingers.
Having dressed herself to her somewhat exigent satisfaction, she went
downstairs, passing the doors of those venerable virgins, the Misses
Helen and Annie Mee, as she descended to the ground-floor, on which
was the schoolroom. This was really two rooms, but the folding doors,
which had once divided the apartment, had long since been removed
from their hinges; they were now rotting in the strip of garden behind
the house.
The appearance of Brandenburg College belied its pretentious name.
Once upon a time, its name-plate had decorated the gates of a stately
old mansion in the Fulham of many years ago; here it was that Mrs
Devitt, then Miss Hilda Spraggs, had been educated. Since those fat
days, the name-plate of Brandenburg College had suffered many
migrations, always in a materially downward direction, till now it was
screwed on the railings of a stuffy little road in Shepherd's Bush, which,
as Mavis was in the habit of declaring, was called West Kensington
Park for "short."
The brass plate, much the worse for wear, told the neighbourhood that
Brandenburg College educated the daughters of gentlemen; perhaps it
was as well that this definition, like the plate, was fallen on hard times,
inasmuch as it was capable of such an elastic interpretation that it
enabled the Misses Mee to accept pupils whom, in their prosperous
days, they would have refused. Mavis looked round the familiar,

shabby schoolroom, with its atmosphere of ink and slate pencil, to
which she was so soon to say "good-bye."
It looked desolate this morning, perhaps because there leapt to her
fancy the animated picture it had presented the day before, when it had
been filled by a crowd of pupils (dressed in their best), their admiring
parents and friends.
Yesterday's programme had followed that of all other girls' school
breaking-up celebrations, with the difference that the passages selected
for recital had been wholly culled from the writings of Mr Ruskin.
Reference to the same personage had occurred in the speech to the
prize-winners (every girl in the school had won a prize of sorts) made
by Mr Smiley, the curate, who performed this