It was a slightly Cockney voice, and it dripped with archness.
Like anyone else in the circumstances Brat disobeyed the injunction automatically. He looked round into the face of a girl of sixteen or so. She was a large, plumpish girl, with bright auburn hair and prominent blue eyes. The eyes were remarkable in that they managed to be at once avid and sleepy. As they met Brat's they almost popped out altogether.
"Oh!" said the girl, in a half-shriek. "I thought you were Simon. You're not!"
"No," agreed Brat, beginning to get to his feet.
But before he could move she had dropped to the grass beside him.
"My, you gave me a shock. I bet I know who you are. You're the long-lost brother, aren't you? You must be; you're so like Simon. That's who you are, isn't it?"
Brat said that it was.
"You even wear the same kind of clothes."
Brat said that they were Simon's clothes. "You know Simon?"
"Of course I know Simon. I'm Sheila Parslow. I'm a boarder at Clare Park."
"Oh." The school for dodgers, Eleanor had called it. The place where no one had to learn the nine-times.
"I'm doing my best to have an affaire with Simon, but it's uphill work."
Brat did not know the correct rejoinder to this, but she did not need conversational encouragement.
"I have to do something to put some pep into life at Clare Park. You can't imagine the screaming boredom of it. You simply can't imagine. There is nothing, but I mean nothing, that you are forbidden to do. I once got so desperate I took off all my clothes and walked into Cedric's office-Cedric is our Leader, he doesn't like being called the Head, but that's what he is, of course-I walked in with nothing on, not a stitch, and all he said was: 'Have you ever thought of going on a diet, Sheila dear? Just took a look at me and said: 'Have you ever thought of going on a diet? and then went on with looking up Who's Who. He's always looking up Who's Who. You don't really stand much of a chance of fetching up at Clare Park unless your father is in Who's Who. Or your mother, of course. My father's not in it, but he has millions, my father, and that makes a very good substitute. Millions are a very good introduction, aren't they?"
Brat said that he supposed they were.
"I flapped Father's millions in front of Simon; Simon has a great respect for a good investment and I hoped it would weight my charms, so to speak; but he's a frightful snob, Simon, isn't he?"
"Is he?"
"Don't you know?"
"I've only met him to-day."
"Oh, of course. You've just come back. How exciting for you. I can understand Simon not being overjoyed, of course, but it must be exciting for you to put his nose out of joint."
Brat wondered if she, too, pulled the wings off flies.
"I may have more chance with Simon now that you've taken his fortune from him. I'll have to waylay him somewhere and see. I thought I was waylaying him now, when I saw Timber. He often comes up here because it's his favourite place for exercising the horses. He hates Tanbitches." She jerked her chin at the opposite side of the valley. "And this is a good place for getting him alone. So I came up here on spec, and then I saw that black brute, and I thought I had him cold. But it was only you."
"I'm sorry," Brat said meekly.
She considered him.
"I suppose it's no good my trying to seduce you instead?" she said.
"I'm afraid not."
"Is it that I'm not your type, or is it not your line?"
"Not much in my line, I'm afraid."
"No, I suppose not," she said, agreeing with him. "You have a face like a monk. Funny you should look so like Simon and yet look so different. Simon's no monk; as that Gates girl over at Wigsell could tell you. I make images of that Gates girl and stick pins in them, but it doesn't do any good. She goes on blooming like a blasted peony and fascinating him like fly-paper."
She was rather like a well-blown peony herself, he thought, looking at her wet red mouth and the buttons straining the cloth across her ample bust. A rather drooping and disappointed peony at the moment.
"Does Simon know that you are fond of him?" Brat asked.
"Fond of him? I'm not fond of him. I don't think I like him at all. I just want to have an affaire with him to brighten up the term a bit. Until I can leave this boring place."
"If you can do anything you like, why can't you leave now?" Brat asked reasonably.
"Well, I don't want to look too much of a fool, you know. I went to school at Ling Abbey, you see, and I made the place a hell so that my people would take me away and send me here. I thought I was going to have the time of my life here, with no lessons and no timetable and no rules or anything. I had no idea it would be so boring. I could weep with boredom."
"Isn't there anyone at Clare Park you could substitute for Simon? I mean, someone who would be more-accommodating?"
"No, I had a look at them first. Skinny and hairy and intellectual. Have you ever noticed how the intellect runs to hair? Some people get a kick out of disgust, but not me. I like them good-looking. And you have to admit Simon is very good-looking. There was an under-gardener at Ling Abbey that was almost as handsome, but he hadn't that lovely God-damn-you look that Simon has."
"Didn't the under-gardener keep you at the Abbey place?"
"Oh, no, they sacked him. It was easier than expelling me and having a scandal. But they had to expel me in any case, so they might as well have kept poor Albert. He was much better with his lobelias than he was with girls. But of course they couldn't be expected to know that. I suppose you wouldn't put in a good word for me with Simon? It would be such a pity to waste all the agony I've gone through trying to interest him."
"Agony?"
"You don't suppose I endure hours on those horrible quadrupeds just for fun, do you? With that cold stick of a sister of his looking down her nose at me. Oh, I forgot: she's your sister too, isn't she? But perhaps you've been away so long that you don't think of her the way a boy thinks of his sister."
"I certainly don't," Brat said; but she was not listening.
"I suppose you've ridden horses since you could crawl, so you have no idea what it is like to be bumped about on a great shapeless mountain of a thing that's far too high from the ground and has nothing to hold on to. It looks so easy when Simon does it. The horse looks so nice and narrow when you're standing on the ground. You think you could ride it the way you ride a bicycle. It's only when you get up you find that its back is simply acres across and you can make no impression on it at all. You just sit there and are bumped about, and your legs slip backwards and forwards instead of staying still like Simon's, and you get large blisters and can't sit down in the bath for weeks. You don't look quite so like a monk when you smile a bit."
Brat suggested that surely there were better ways of attracting favourable notice than being a tyro at something that the object of one's pursuit already did to perfection.
"Oh, I didn't think that I'd attract him that way. It just gave me an excuse for being round the stables. That sister of-your sister doesn't stand any hanging round if you haven't got business."
"Your sister," he thought, and liked the sound of it.
He had three sisters now, and at least two of them were the kind he would have indented for. Presently he must go down and make their further acquaintance.
"I'm afraid I must go," he said, getting up and putting the reins over Timber's head.
"I wish you didn't have to," she said, watching him tighten the girth. "You are quite the nicest person I have talked to since I came to Clare. It's a pity you aren't interested in women. You might cut Simon out with the Gates girl, and then I'd have more chance. Do you know the Gates girl?"