A girl with such a name as Aminta might not be exactly up to the standard of old Matey, still, if he thought her so and she had spirit, the school was bound to subscribe; and that look of hers warranted her for taking her share in the story, like the brigand’s wife loading gnus for him while he knocks over the foremost carabineer on the mountain-ledge below, who drops on his back with a hellish expression.

Browny was then clearly seen all round, instead of only front-face, as on the Sunday in the park, when fellows could not spy backward after passing.  The pleasure they had in seeing her all round involved no fresh stores of observation, for none could tell how she tied her back-hair, which was the question put to them by a cynic of a boy, said to be queasy with excess of sisters.  They could tell that she was tall for a girl, or tallish—­not a maypole.  She drank a cup of tea, and ate a slice of bread-and-butter; no cake.

She appeared undisturbed when Matey, wearing his holiday white ducks, and all aglow, entered the booth.  She was not expected to faint, only she stood for the foreign Aminta more than for their familiar Browny in his presence.  Not a sign of the look which had fired the school did she throw at him.  Change the colour and you might compare her to a lobster fixed on end, with a chin and no eyes.  Matey talked to Miss Vincent up to the instant of his running to bat.  She would have liked to guess how he knew she had a brother on the medical staff of one of the regiments in India:  she asked him twice, and his cheeks were redder than cricket in the sun.  He said he read all the reports from India, and asked her whether she did not admire Lord Ormont, our general of cavalry, whose charge at the head of fifteen hundred horse in the last great battle shattered the enemy’s right wing, and gave us the victory—­rolled him up and stretched him out like a carpet for dusting.  Miss Vincent exclaimed that it was really strange, now, he should speak of Lord Ormont, for she had been speaking of him herself in morning to one of her young ladies, whose mind was bent on his heroic deeds.  Matey turned his face to the group of young ladies, quite pleased that one of them loved his hero; and he met a smile here and there—­not from Miss Aminta Farrell.  She was a complete disappointment to the boys that day.  “Aminta” was mouthed at any allusions to her.

So, she not being a match for Matey, they let her drop.  The flush that had swept across the school withered to a dry recollection, except when on one of their Sunday afternoons she fanned the desert.  Lord Ormont became the subject of inquiry and conversation; and for his own sake—­not altogether to gratify Matey.  The Saturday autumn evening’s walk home, after the race out to tea at a distant village, too late in the year for cricket, too early for regular football, suited Matey, going at long strides, for the story of his hero’s adventures; and it was nicer than talk about girls, and puzzling.