air by turns daily; and the boys, too, all the boys rosy and jolly, according to the last report received of them from his friend Matthew.  Enthusiasm struck and tightened the loose chord of scepticism in Lord Ormont; somewhat as if a dancing beggar had entered a kennel-dog’s yard, designing to fascinate the faithful beast.  It is a chord of one note, that is tightened to sound by the violent summons to accept, which is a provocation to deny.  At the same time, the enthusiast’s dance is rather funny; he is not an ordinary beggar; to see him trip himself in his dance would be rather funnier.  This is to say, inspect the trumpeted school and retire politely.  My lord knew the Bern of frequent visits:  the woman was needed beside him to inspire a feeling for scenic mountains.  Philippa’s admiration of them was like a new-pressed grape-juice after a draught of the ripe vintage.  Moreover, Bobby was difficult:  the rejected of his English schools was a stiff Ormont at lessons, a wheezy Benlew in the playground:  exactly the reverse of what should have been.  A school of four languages in bracing air, if a school with healthy dormitories, and a school of the trained instincts we call gentlemanly, might suit Master Bobby for a trial.  An eye on the boys of the school would see in a minute what stuff they were made of.  Supposing this young Italianissimo with the English tongue to be tolerably near the mark, with a deduction of two-thirds of the enthusiasm, Bobby might stop at the school as long as his health held out, or the master would keep him.  Supposing half a dozen things and more, the meeting with this Mr. Calliand was a lucky accident.  But lucky accidents are anticipated only by fools.

Lord Ormont consented to visit the school.  He handed his card and invited his guest; he had a carriage in waiting for the day, he said; and obedient to Lady Charlotte’s injunctions, he withheld Philippa from the party.  She and her maid were to pass the five hours of his absence in efforts to keep their monkey Bobby out of the well of the solicitious bears.

My lord left his carriage at the inn of the village lying below the school-house on a green height.  The young enthusiast was dancing him into the condition of livid taciturnity, which could, if it would, flash out pungent epigrams of the actual world at Operatic recitative.

’There’s the old school-clock!  Just in time for the half-hour before dinner,’ said Calliani, chattering two hundred to the minute, of the habits and usages of the school, and how all had meals together, the master, his wife, the teachers, the boys.  ‘And she—­as for her!’ Calliani kissed finger up to the furthest skies:  into which a self-respecting sober Northener of the Isles could imagine himself to kick enthusiastic gesticulators, if it were polite to do so.

The school-house faced the master’s dwelling house, and these, with a block of building, formed a three-sided enclosure, like barracks!  Forth from the school-house door burst a dozen shouting lads, as wasps from the hole of their nest from a charge of powder.  Out they poured whizzing; and the frog he leaped, and pussy ran and doubled before the hounds, and hockey-sticks waved, and away went a ball.  Cracks at the ball anyhow, was the game for the twenty-five minutes breather before dinner.