Miss Heriot turned round on her stool. She was as like her brother as a woman still young can be like a rather elderly man; her hair was fair, and she had not come to spectacles; but her eyes were as keen and kindly as his own, her whole countenance as sensible and shrewd. “You can trust me, Bob,” she said. “I know I can,” he answered, pipe in hand. “That’s why I’m going to tell you what neither boy nor man shall learn through me. What type of lad does this poor Rutter suggest to your mind?” There was a pause. “I hardly like to say.” “But I want to know.” “Well—then—I’m sure I couldn’t tell you why—but he struck me as more like a lad from the stables than anything else.” “What on earth makes you think that?” Heriot spoke quite sharply in his plain displeasure and surprise. “I said I couldn’t tell you, Bob. I suppose it was a general association of ideas. He had his hat on, for one thing, when I saw him first; and it was far too large for him, and crammed down almost to those dreadful ears! I never saw any boy outside a stable-yard wear his hat like that. Then your hunting was the one thing that seemed to interest him in the least. And I certainly thought he called a horse a 'hoss’!” “So he put you in mind of a stable-boy, did he?” “Well, not exactly at the time, but he really does the more I think about him.” “That’s very clever of you, Milly—because it’s just what he is.” Heriot’s open windows were flush with the street, and passing footfalls sounded loud in his room; but at the moment there were none; and a clock ticked officiously on the chimneypiece while the man with his back to it met his sister’s eyes. “Of course you don’t mean it literally?” “Literally.” “I thought his grandfather was a country parson?” “A rural dean, my dear; but the boy’s father was a coachman, and the boy himself was brought up in the stables until six months ago.” “The father’s dead, then?” “He died in the spring. His wife has been dead fourteen years. It’s a very old story. She ran away with the groom.” “But her people have taken an interest in the boy?” “Never set eyes on him till his father died.” “Then how can he know enough to come here?” Heriot smiled as he pulled at his pipe. He had the air of a man who has told the worst. His sister had taken it as he hoped she would; her face and voice betokened just that kind of interest in the case which he already felt strongly. It was a sympathetic interest, but that was all. There was nothing sentimental about either of the Heriots; they could discuss most things frankly on their merits; the school itself was no exception to the rule. It was wife and child to Robert Heriot—the school of his manhood—the vineyard in which he had laboured lovingly for thirty years. But still he could smile as he smoked his pipe.