THE HAMPSTEAD HEATH CONSPIRACY

He was right, but it was touch and go. Peggy was climbing down from her gate as Philip cantered up.

"Hallo, Pegs!" he said breathlessly.

Miss Falconer greeted him coldly.

"Hallo!" she replied. "Going for a walk?"

"What walk?" asked the bewildered Philip. "Didn't you expect to meet me?"

"Certainly not. Why should I? I wasn't thinking about you at all," replied Eve's daughter.

"But you promised to meet me here at half-past three," cried Philip in dismay.

"And now it's a quarter to five!" blazed Peggy, abandoning her strategical position, woman-like, in order to score a tactical point.

Sure enough, the sound of a church chime fell musically on their ears through the still evening air.

"I'm awfully sorry," said Philip.

"It doesn't matter at all," replied Peggy, still inflexible. "Good-night!"

"Good-night!" said Philip quietly. He was constitutionally incapable of forcing his society where it was not wanted. He turned to go. "It's a pity I'm late," he added regretfully. "The most exciting things have been happening, and I wanted to tell you about them."

The small damsel's hauteur melted in an instant. She deliberately resumed her perch upon the gate.

"You can come and sit up here if you like," she intimated, holding out her hand.

Philip accepted the invitation with alacrity, but the touch of Peggy's froggy paw brought a look of concern into his face.

"I say," he said, "you are cold! Put on my greatcoat."

Peggy declined.

"You'll want it yourself," she said.

But Philip was insistent.

"You simply must," he urged. "You are shivering all over. You can give me a corner of it to sit on if you like."

The argument came to an end, and presently they were installed side by side upon the gate, like two sociable sparrows. Peggy, whose teeth were chattering, snuggled gratefully into the warmth of the big coat, while Philip balanced himself on the rail beside her, sitting on a very liberal allowance of corner.

"Are you comfortable now?" he asked.

"Yes," said Peggy gratefully. "I'm glad you came," she added with characteristic honesty.

"Why?" enquired Philip. He did not know that one must never ask a lady for her reasons.

But the little girl answered quite frankly:—

"I was getting frightened."

And she slipped her arm round Philip's neck.

If Philip had been to a boys' school he would have received this familiarity with open alarm or resentment. Being what he was, nothing but a very gallant little gentleman, he responded by putting his own arm in a protective fashion round his companion's slim shoulders.

"Now we are all right," he said comfortably.

"Tell me your news," commanded Peggy.

Philip related the whole amazing story. Peggy listened breathlessly, her eyes and lips forming three round O's. When the recital was finished, she remarked:—

"She must have been the lady Mother meant when she said that was the question only one woman could give the answer to only she never would."

"Yes," said Philip, catching the general sense of this unusual passage of syntax. "It was the same name—a funny name—Vivien."

"How do you know?" asked Peggy curiously.

"Uncle Joseph told me all about her," said Philip. "I forgot, you haven't heard that bit."

And at the pressing invitation of Miss Falconer, he recited the tale of Colonel Meldrum's love-affair.

Peggy's verdict came hot and emphatic.

"She was a beast to treat him like that."

"Well, she has come back to him in the end," said broader-minded Philip.

"Will they get married, do you think?" asked Peggy, all in a feminine flutter.

Philip pondered.

"I suppose so," he said at last. "But they are pretty old."

"If they do," continued Peggy, "what will happen to you?"

Philip pondered again. Life had suddenly turned a corner, and new vistas were opening before him.

"I don't know," he said slowly. "I don't want to go back home at all. For one thing, I don't see how I can. I have broken an order. I told Uncle Joseph about meeting you, and he forbade me to speak to you again so long as I lived under his roof. I shouldn't have come this afternoon—"

"Oh!" said Peggy reproachfully.

"You can't disobey an order," explained Philip gently. "But when I saw Uncle Joseph and the lady—like"—he coughed modestly—"like the way they were, I thought I might."

"He had broken his own orders," observed Miss Falconer jesuitically.

"Besides," continued Philip, "I am not going to live under his roof any longer. I hate it all so."

"Hate what?"

Philip recollected himself.

"The work I have to do," he said. "I used to like it once; but now—now I don't think it is very good work. Anyhow, I hate it. I can't go back to it. I only went on because—well, because of Uncle Joseph. He was very good to me, and I was some use to him."

"My dear, he won't want you now," said Peggy shrewdly.

Philip was conscious of a sudden thrill.

"Won't he?" he said. "I never thought of that. Then I needn't go back?"

"You'll have to go somewhere, though," observed his sage counsellor. "Where are you going to?"

"I should like to go about a bit. I have never even been to school. I don't know any other boys. I want to grow up and be a man, and travel about all over the world," said Philip, his eager spirit dashing off into futurity at once.

"I see," said Peggy, suddenly cold again.

"Yes," continued Philip. He was fairly soaring now. "Have you read 'The Idylls of the King'?"

Peggy shook her head blankly.

"No," she said. "Is it a story?"

"Yes. It's all about a Round Table, and some knights who met there. They used to ride out and do the most splendid things."

"What sort?" asked Peggy absently.

The sudden revelation of the eternal masculine in Philip, exemplified by his desire to roam, was jangling the chords of the eternal feminine in herself.

"Dangerous things," explained Philip enthusiastically.

"What for?"

"Well, they very often did them just out of bravery; but the very best things a knight did were always in honour of his Lady."

"Oh! Then you would require a Lady?" said Peggy, growing distinctly more attentive.

"Rather!" said Philip. "To serve, you know. Whenever a knight performed any great deed he wouldn't care anything about himself. He would just feel he had done it for his Lady, and she would reward him."

"How?"

Philip's brow wrinkled. He had not considered the point before. With him, service always came far above reward.

"Well," he said at last, "she would praise him, and go on being his Lady, and nobody else's."

At this point in the conversation Philip was conscious of a sudden constriction round his neck. Peggy appeared to be about to make some remark; but she relaxed her arm again, and enquired calmly:—

"When are you going to begin?"

"I shall have to grow up a bit first, I suppose," said the prospective Galahad regretfully. "But I don't want to go back to Uncle Joseph till then."

"Why should you?" urged the small temptress at his side. "He won't require you now that his Lady has come back to him. You are free to be anything you like."

"The difficult part," remarked the practical Philip, "will be to make a start at being anything. To begin with, I don't know where to go."

"Come to us," said Miss Falconer promptly.

Swiftly she sketched out her plans to her mesmerised companion.

"I will take you up to the house now," she said. "I will put you into the studio: Dad is never there after dark. You can stay all night—"

She paused, and turned to Philip enquiringly.

"You won't be frightened?" she enquired, half-apologetically.

"Knights are never frightened," replied Philip axiomatically.

"You can sleep on the model-throne," continued Peggy, taking all obstacles in her stride. "I will bring you in some supper, and no one will know. Then, when Mother comes to see me in bed, I shall tell her about you, and we will settle what to do next. But you mustn't—not on any account—let Dad see you, or he would have one of his tempers. Come on!"

It was almost dark by this time, and Peggy's voice had sunk to an excited and ghostly whisper. She dropped off the gate, dislodging her companion—who it will be remembered had been accommodated with a seat upon a portion of her apparel—with some suddenness.

"We are rather late," she said. "I am not allowed to stay out after dark. Let's run! Give me your hand."

They trotted through the gloaming, and presently came to a house standing by itself, well back from the road. Breathing heavily, the two small conspirators stole round to the north side of the house, and presently came to a halt close under the wall. Above their heads, eight feet up, Philip could see a small window. It stood open.

"Take me on your back," said Peggy. "Stoop down."

Philip obeyed.

"Keep quite steady!"

By dint of much struggling, the agile Miss Falconer succeeded in working her small but sharp knees on to Philip's shoulders.

"Now!" she whispered at length. "Stand up slowly, with your face to the wall!"

Philip straightened his back laboriously, his fair burden maintaining her balance by clinging to his hair with both hands.

"This is a splendid adventure!" she whispered.

"Rather!" gasped Philip, with tears in his eyes.

"Now I am going to stand on your shoulders," explained Peggy. "Bend forward a little, with your hands against the wall. Keep your head well down, or I may tread on it."

Two minutes after, the soles of the young lady's shoes removed themselves from Philip's shoulder-blades with a convulsive spring, and followed their owner in a harlequin dive through the open window. There was a dull thud on the floor inside, followed by a brief silence. Then there was the sound of some one moving in the dark, and presently a French window further along the wall swung open with a click, and Peggy, touzled but triumphant, dragged her guest into the house.

The window closed, and a flood of electric light swept away the darkness. Philip looked round curiously. He had never been in a studio before. The side of the room at which they had entered was built out in the form of a penthouse, and was roofed with glass. In the middle of the floor stood a small platform, covered with a rug. On the platform stood a sofa, and on the sofa reclined an eerie figure, like a gigantic Dutch doll. Half-finished canvasses—prospective wolf-scarers, no doubt—leaned against the walls. In a corner lay an untidy heap of robes and draperies.

Upon an easel close by the throne stood an almost completed picture. It represented an infant of improbably angelic aspect asleep in a cot, in company with two golliwogs, a mechanical monkey, and a teddy bear.

"That," remarked Peggy professionally, "is a wolf-scarer. It's called 'Strange Bedfellows.' It's very pretty. It's nearly finished. This thing here is a model-throne. You can sleep on it to-night. Nobody will disturb you. Dad never comes here until after ten in the morning, and none of the maids are allowed in the studio at all. You will be quite warm. I'll get you some of these robes and things out of the corner. Ooh!"

Philip, fascinated by his surroundings, had not yet had time to notice his hostess. Now he turned quickly. Miss Falconer was in a somewhat dishevelled condition. Her red tam-o'-shanter was white with plaster. Her frock was stained all down the front, and one of her stockings had been cut open right across the knee, displaying a crimson bruise which threatened to deepen into purple.

"You have hurt yourself!" cried Philip in great concern.

"I got a bit of a bump dropping through that window," admitted Peggy, indicating the aperture through which she had gained admission to her home. "But it doesn't hurt much, except when you bend your knee suddenly. Now I must go and have tea in the schoolroom. When I see Mother I shall tell her about you, and she will know what to do. If you hear anybody coming, turn out the light and creep under the model-throne. It is hollow underneath. I have often been there, playing at robbers with myself."

Philip turned up the overhanging drapery, and dubiously surveyed the grimy recesses of his last refuge.

"Supposing I get underneath," he enquired, "and it turns out to be only you?"

Peggy considered. Then her face dimpled. The game of conspirators was, indeed, exhilarating.

"I shall knock seven times on the floor with a stick," she announced, "before I come down the passage. Then you will know."

"That will be splendid," agreed Philip. "You are awfully clever," he added admiringly, as the directress of his fortunes turned to go.

Peggy swung round again, with her fingers on the doorhandle. A sudden rush of colour swept across her face and neck, and for a moment her wide brown eyes met Philip's. Then the lashes dropped again.

"I say, Phil," she said shyly, "I'll be your Lady if you like."

Next moment she was gone, and our knight, feeling that he had been somewhat remiss in not having made the suggestion himself, was left listening to the sound of his Lady's feet limping down the passage.