and held me at the window while my father talked with hers; and for a long time after I beheld them in imagination talking:  that is to say, my father issuing his instructions and Mr. Rippenger receiving them like a pliant hodman; for the result of it was that two days later, without seeing my kings of England, my home again, or London, I was Julia Rippenger’s intimate friend and the youngest pupil of the school.  My father told me subsequently that we slept at an hotel those two nights intervening.  Memory transplants me from the coach and scarlet livery straight to my place of imprisonment.

CHAPTER V

I MAKE A DEAR FRIEND

Heriot was the name of the head boy of the school.  Boddy was the name of one of the ushers.  They were both in love with Julia Rippenger.  It was my fortune to outrun them in her favour for a considerable period, during which time, though I had ceased to live in state, and was wearing out my suits of velvet, and had neither visit nor letter from my father, I was in tolerable bliss.  Julia’s kisses were showered on me for almost anything I said or did, but her admiration of heroism and daring was so fervent that I was in no greater danger of becoming effeminate than Achilles when he wore girl’s clothes.  She was seventeen, an age bewitching for boys to look up to and men to look down on.  The puzzle of the school was how to account for her close relationship to old Rippenger.  Such an apple on such a crab-tree seemed monstrous.  Heriot said that he hoped Boddy would marry old Rippenger’s real daughter, and, said he, that’s birch-twigs.  I related his sparkling speech to Julia, who laughed, accusing him, however, of impudence.  She let me see a portrait of her dead mother, an Irish lady raising dark eyelashes, whom she resembled.  I talked of the portrait to Heriot, and as I had privileges accorded to none of the other boys and could go to her at any hour of the day after lessons, he made me beg for him to have a sight of it.  She considered awhile, but refused.  On hearing of the unkind refusal, Heriot stuck his hands into his pockets and gave up cricketing.  We saw him leaning against a wall in full view of her window, while the boys crowded round him trying to get him to practise, a school-match of an important character coming off with a rival academy; and it was only through fear of our school being beaten if she did not relent that Julia handed me the portrait, charging me solemnly to bring it back.  I promised, of course.  Heriot went into his favourite corner of the playground, and there looked at it and kissed it, and then buttoned his jacket over it tight, growling when I asked him to return it.  Julia grew frightened.  She sent me with numbers of petitions to him.

‘Look here, young un,’ said Heriot; ’you’re a good little fellow, and I like you, but just tell her I believe in nothing but handwriting, and if she writes to me for it humbly and nicely she shall have it back.  Say I only want to get a copy taken by a first-rate painter.’