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Page 93
". . . Just as though she was standing on a precipice and frightened of
falling over was her voice like, Mum, Miss Jill--may I call you Miss
Jill? It's more familiar-like and--homely, and I know you will excuse
me, Miss Jill, if I say that I can't get used to you in those clothes,
pretty as they are and becoming to you. It seems to me like
fancy-dress, you with a veil over your face, if you will excuse me
saying so. You are just the same to me and my lady as when you came to
stay with her grace; and glad I for one shall be when I see the
barouche waiting for her at Victoria, with Whippup and his powdered
head on the box. I don't mind that young chauffeur with one leg lost
in the war, but I don't like that wicked-looking red vermilion
motor-car of her grace's, though the slum-folks do, and you should hear
them cheer, Miss Jill, when it goes down Shadwell way."
This conversation took place on the quay whilst her grace was absent,
trying to still the unaccountable fear with which her heart had been
filled by her maid's dream, by talking to the little brown urchins who
swarmed about her the better to view the bird.
"What do you think of them, Dekko old fellow?" She took him on her
wrist, at which he spread his tail, rattled his wings, and puffed his
ruff, whereupon the children fled, yelling. "Come now, say something
nice to the poor little things. You've frightened them. Ask them if
the boat is ready."
Dekko gave a sudden piercing screech:
"You damned, dirty lot!" he yelled. "You----"
And some doubted the bird's sojourn on a sailing-vessel in the
full-rigged, full-mouthed days of 1840!
Her grace rapped the razor-edged beak sharply and returned to the other
two just in time to hear her maid's answer to some question:
"Sergeant O'Rafferty of the Irish Guards, Miss Jill. He demeaned
himself by marrying a _bar_maid, miss."
As already mentioned, love and marriage had passed Maria Hobson by.
Arrived at the hotel, their spirits went up with a bound.
What had come to them out there in the desert town? Had they all been
stricken with some dreadful depression? Of course the child was safe
in this laughing, dancing, happy throng, and at the sight of her
god-mother she would leave her partner and run to her; would throw her
arms about her, and hug her in her loving way.
Owing to the crowds of people and the crush of cars, little if any
notice had been taken of their arrival; the luggage was coming up later.
"Wait a minute here, Hobson," had said her grace. "Jill, come and see
if you can recognise Damaris by the picture you saw of her--the
prettiest girl in Egypt!"
They stood at the side door of the ballroom and scanned the laughing
couples sitting in rows in the throes of the cotillon. Ellen
Thistleton, with the royal asp of ancient Egypt with a slight list to
starboard above her heated countenance, stood alone in the middle of
the room, with a glass of champagne in one hand.
Before her stood Mr. Lumlough and the colonel for whom the gilded asp
was being worn at such a rakish angle.
She stood for quite some seconds in her conspicuous position, as though
debating within herself upon the choice. As Mr. Lumlough subsequently
remarked to his panting partner, in his customary slang, "She had a
nerve!"
Then, with head on one side, she coyly handed the Veuve Clicquot to the
thankful young man, and allowed herself to be gathered to the heart of
the portly, jubilant colonel, who, loving her, saw the jaunty gilded
asp as a nimbus around her head.
Of Damaris there was no sign, and the old lady's heart, through some
unaccountable terror, seemed as if it would sink into her small crimson
shoes, though outwardly she showed no sign of the fear that gripped her.
"I expect she has gone upstairs, or out into the grounds to give
Wellington a run--I don't see him anywhere. Come, Hobson; give me your
arm to the lift."
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