She looked helplessly up into his longing, glowing, boyish face--so sweet, so young, so beautiful. Should she put up her arms and draw it to her breast? She had given no actual promise to the Professor. She had not mentioned him to the Boy. Ah, dear God! If one had waited twelve long years for a thing which was to prove but an empty husk after all! In order not to fail the possible expectations of another, had she any right to lay such a heavy burden of disappointment upon her little Boy Blue? And, if she _must_ do so, how could she best help him to bear it? "Fanks," came a brave little voice, with almost startling distinctness, across the shore of memory; "Fanks, but I always does my own cawwying." At last she found her voice. "Boy dear," she said, gently; "please go now. I am tired." Then she shut her eyes. In a few seconds she heard the gate close, and knew the garden was empty. Tears slipped from between the closed lids, and coursed slowly down her cheeks. The only right way is apt to be a way of such pain at the moment, that even those souls possessing clearest vision and endowed with strongest faith, are unable to hear the golden clarion-call, sounding amid the din of present conflict: "Through much tribulation, enter into the kingdom." Thus hopeless tears fell in the old garden. * * * * * And Martha, the elderly housekeeper, faithful but curious, let fall the lath of the green Venetian blind covering the storeroom window, through which she had permitted herself to peep. As the postern gate closed on the erect figure of the Boy, she dropped the blind and turned away, an unwonted tear running down the furrows of her hard old face. "Lord love 'im!" she said. "He'll get what he wants in time. There's not a woman walks this earth as couldn't never refuse _'im_ nothing." With which startling array of negatives, old Martha compiled one supreme positive in favour of the Boy, leaving altogether out of account--alas!--the Professor. Then she wiped her eyes with her apron, and chid her nose harshly for an unexpected display of sentiment. * * * * * And the Boy tramped back to his hotel with his soul full of glory, knowing his first march round had been to some purpose. The walls of the belovèd Citadel had trembled indeed. * * * * * "_And the evening and the morning were the first day._" * * * * * THE SECOND DAY MISS CHARTERIS TAKES CONTROL The Boy arrived in flannels, his racket under his arm. He came in, as usual, through the little green gate in the red-brick fruit-wall at the bottom of the garden. From the first, he had taken this privilege, which as a matter of fact had never been accorded to anybody.