There was a moment's silence.
'You splendour!' She gave a little gasp of admiration that went
straight to his heart, and set big fires alight there. 'Your reward
has come at last! My hero!'
This was as it should be. The beginning of an epic poem flashed with
tumult through his blood. Yet outwardly he kept his admirable calm.
'My dear, we must take success, like disaster, quietly.' He said it
gently, as when he played with the children. It was mostly put on, of
course, this false grandiloquence of the prig. His eyes already
twinkled more than he could quite disguise.
'Then we can manage the other school, perhaps, for Frank?' she cried,
and was about to open various flood-gates when he stopped her with a
look of proud happiness that broke down all barriers of further
pretended secrecy.
'Mr. Rogers,' was the low reply, 'has offered to do that for us--as a
start.' The words were leisurely spoken between great puffs of smoke.
'That's what I meant just now by saying that he lived poetry in his
life, you see. Another time you will allow judgment to wait on
knowledge---'
'You dear old humbug,' she cried, cutting short the sentence that
neither of them quite understood, 'I believe you've known this for
weeks---'
'Two hours ago exactly,' he corrected her, and would willingly have
prolonged the scene indefinitely had not his practical better half
prevented him.
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