“In a whisper,” said Rosalind. The rare good point of talking in a whisper was that they were obliged to place their heads closely together. Erb explained the difficulty, and Rosalind, after considering for a moment, announced the decision in her emphatic way. School holidays would soon be on. She wanted to take a fortnight’s holiday herself: she would take Louisa away with her, either to Aunt Emma’s, at Penshurst, or, if the seaside was ordered, to Worthing. “Spoiling your own holiday!” “Not at all, not at all!” she answered decidedly. “It’s going to be, any way.” “But why should _you_ trouble? I could get Lady Frances—she’d do anything for me.” “No doubt! Find my umbrella there in the corner—the one with the silver knob—and walk down with me to the school.” It was certainly very pleasant to see how the young woman, after a few moments of reserve, and in the presence of Erb’s depression, became brighter than usual, pushing away all her own trouble, and talking of the Professor’s last escapade as though it were the best joke in the world. The Professor, still declining in the service of the profession, had recently been offered the post of baggage man in a newly-starting provincial company, with the added duty of acting as understudies to the man who played the old City man in Act I., and the Chief of Police in Russia in Act IV. Professor, with many protestations and frequent appeals to the shades of Barry Sullivan and John Ryder and others, had accepted the offer, and, securing on the Saturday night the sum of ten shillings in advance for the purpose of obtaining fine linen, appeared at St. Pancras station the next afternoon on the starting of the special, and denounced “The Banker’s Blood” Company, individually and generally, called upon Heaven to punish them for the attempt to degrade one who had trod the boards long before many of them had been allowed, mistakenly, to see the light of day, and altogether making such a furious scene on the platform, that the manager, consulting hastily with other members of the company in the labelled compartments, gave Rosalind’s father another half-sovereign to refrain from accompanying the party. All of which Rosalind told in such a merry way that Erb found himself for a time half wooed from melancholy. “That blessed paper,” he said, going back to trouble ruefully, “has got me in a corner the very first start off.” “It wants fifteen minutes to the hour,” said Rosalind, looking up at the clock at the corner. “Let’s walk round the Green and hear all about it.” Rosalind’s hopeful view of the matter was that it might be only what was called a “try on,” and the statement of Erb that he felt he hadn’t a leg to stand on, she declared to be unworthy of him.