'They speak of you?'

It was Aminta more than the Countess of Ormont speaking to him.

'You take an interest in the boys,' he said, glowing. 'Yes, well, they
have their talks. I happened to be a cricketer, counting wickets and
scores. I don't fancy it's remembered that it was I preached my lord.
A day of nine wickets and one catch doesn't die out of a school. The
boy Gowen was the prime spirit in getting up the subscription for the
laundress. But Bench and Parsons are good boys, too.'

He described them, dwelt on them. The enthusiast, when not lyrical, is
perilously near to boring. Aminta was glad of Mrs. Lawrence's absence.
She had that feeling because Matthew Weyburn would shun talk of himself
to her, not from a personal sense of tedium in hearing of the boys; and
she was quaintly reminded by suggestions, coming she knew not whence, of
a dim likeness between her and these boys of the school when their hero
dropped to nothing and sprang up again brilliantly--a kind of distant
cousinship, in her susceptibility to be kindled by so small a flying
spark as this one on its travels out of High Brent. Moreover, the dear
boys tied her to her girlhood, and netted her fleeting youth for the
moth-box. She pressed to hear more and more of them, and of the school-
laundress Weyburn had called to see, and particularly of the child,
little Jane, aged six. Weyburn went to look at the sheet of water to
which little Jane had given celebrity over the county. The girl stood
up to her shoulders when she slid off the bank and made the line for her
brother to hold, he in the water as well. Altogether, Cuper's boys were
justified in promoting a subscription, the mother being helpless.