The Rainbow

"Though I know he is troublesome sometimes--but I think

it was too much. His body is covered with marks."

Mr. Harby stood sturdy and unmoved, waiting now to have done,

with the twinkling, tiny wrinkles of an ironical smile at the

corners of his eyes. He felt himself master of the

situation.

"And he was violently sick. I couldn't possibly send him to

school to-day. He couldn't keep his head up."

Yet she had no answer.

"You will understand, sir, why he is absent," she said,

turning to Mr. Harby.

"Oh, yes," he said, rough and off-hand. Ursula detested him

for his male triumph. And she loathed the woman. She loathed

everything.

"You will try to have it remembered, sir, that he has a weak

heart. He is so sick after these things."

"Yes," said the headmaster, "I'll see about it."

"I know he is troublesome," the woman only addressed herself

to the male now--"but if you could have him punished

without beating--he is really delicate."

Ursula was beginning to feel upset. Harby stood in rather

superb mastery, the woman cringing to him to tickle him as one

tickles trout.

"I had come to explain why he was away this morning, sir. You

will understand."

She held out her hand. Harby took it and let it go, surprised

and angry.

"Good morning," she said, and she gave her gloved, seedy hand

to Ursula. She was not ill-looking, and had a curious

insinuating way, very distasteful yet effective.

"Good morning, Mr. Harby, and thank you."

The figure in the grey costume and the purple hat was going

across the school yard with a curious lingering walk. Ursula

felt a strange pity for her, and revulsion from her. She

shuddered. She went into the school again.

The next morning Williams turned up, looking paler than ever,

very neat and nicely dressed in his sailor blouse. He glanced at

Ursula with a half-smile: cunning, subdued, ready to do as she

told him. There was something about him that made her shiver.

She loathed the idea of having laid hands on him. His elder

brother was standing outside the gate at playtime, a youth of

about fifteen, tall and thin and pale. He raised his hat, almost

like a gentleman. But there was something subdued, insidious

about him too.

"Who is it?" said Ursula.

"It's the big Williams," said Violet Harby roughly.

"She was here yesterday, wasn't she?"

"Yes."

"It's no good her coming--her character's not good

enough for her to make any trouble."

Ursula shrank from the brutality and the scandal. But it had

some vague, horrid fascination. How sordid everything seemed!

She felt sorry for the queer woman with the lingering walk, and

those queer, insidious boys. The Williams in her class was wrong

somewhere. How nasty it was altogether.