Chapter 4

A SISTER'S SECRET.

"Tell me, Miss Walker! You know how things should
be. What would you say was a good profession for a young
man of twenty-six who has had no education worth speaking
about, and who is not very quick by nature?" The speaker
was Charles Westmacott, and the time this same summer
evening in the tennis ground, though the shadows had
fallen now and the game been abandoned.

The girl glanced up at him, amused and surprised.

"Do you mean yourself?"

"Precisely."

"But how could I tell?"

"I have no one to advise me. I believe that you
could do it better than any one. I feel confidence in
your opinion."

"It is very flattering." She glanced up again at his
earnest, questioning face, with its Saxon eyes and
drooping flaxen mustache, in some doubt as to whether he
might be joking. On the contrary, all his attention
seemed to be concentrated upon her answer.

"It depends so much upon what you can do, you
know. I do not know you sufficiently to be able to say
what natural gifts you have." They were walking slowly
across the lawn in the direction of the house.

"I have none. That is to say none worth mentioning.
I have no memory and I am very slow."

"But you are very strong."

"Oh, if that goes for anything. I can put up a
hundred-pound bar till further orders; but what sort of
a calling is that?"

Some little joke about being called to the bar
flickered up in Miss Walker's mind, but her companion was
in such obvious earnest that she stifled down her
inclination to laugh.

"I can do a mile on the cinder-track in 4:50 and
across-country in 5:20, but how is that to help me? I
might be a cricket professional, but it is not a very
dignified position. Not that I care a straw about
dignity, you know, but I should not like to hurt the old
lady's feelings.

"Your aunt's?"

"Yes, my aunt's. My parents were killed in the
Mutiny, you know, when I was a baby, and she has looked
after me ever since. She has been very good to me. I'm
sorry to leave her."

"But why should you leave her?" They had reached the
garden gate, and the girl leaned her racket upon the top
of it, looking up with grave interest at her big
white-flanneled companion.

"It's, Browning," said he.

"What!"

"Don't tell my aunt that I said it"--he sank his
voice to a whisper--"I hate Browning."

Clara Walker rippled off into such a merry peal of
laughter that he forgot the evil things which he had
suffered from the poet, and burst out laughing too.

"I can't make him out," said he. "I try, but he is
one too many. No doubt it is very stupid of me; I don't
deny