stopped crying, and had turned her face away. He ventured to offer her a glass of ratafia. She shook her head silently, and the landlord, setting two glasses down beside the bowl, said: “Perhaps Miss would fancy just a sip of punch, to keep the cold out. Snowing quite fast, it is, though not laying, sir. I hope no bad news from Mr. Penicuik’s, sir?”
Freddy, who had been hurriedly inventing a tale to account for Miss Charing’s unconventional presence in the Blue Boar, now rose to the occasion with considerable address. “Lord, no! Nothing of that sort!” he said airily. “Stupid looby of a coachman forgot his orders, that’s all! Ought to have fetched Miss Charing an hour ago. She’s been visiting: obliged to walk back to Arnside. Started to snow, so she had to seek shelter.”
If the landlord thought poorly of a story which featured a host so lost to propriety as to permit an unattached damsel to leave his house at dusk, on foot and unescorted, and which left out of account the modest carpet-bag, at present reposing in the passage outside the coffee-room, Kitty at least had no fault to find with it. No sooner had Mr. Pluckley departed, than she turned to look admiringly at Freddy, and to thank him for his kind offices. “I had no notion you could be so clever!” she told him.
Mr. Standen blushed, and disclaimed. “Made it all up beforehand,” he explained. “Daresay you wouldn’t think of it, but the fellow was bound to start nosing out your business. Oughtn’t to be out alone, you know. Ought to have brought the Fish with you.”
“But, Freddy, you must see that I couldn’t run away to London if I brought Fish! She would never consent!”
“Mustn’t run away to London,” said Freddy. “Been thinking about that, and it won’t do. Pity, but there it is!”
“You don’t feel that there might be something I could do to support myself?” asked Miss Charing, with a last flicker of hope. “Of course, I don’t wish to starve, but do you think I should?
Keeping his inevitable reflections to himself, Mr. Standen lied manfully. “Sure of it!” he said.
“Not if I became a chambermaid!” said Kitty, suddenly inspired. “Hugh says I am too young to be a housekeeper, but I could be a chambermaid!”
Mr. Standen brought her firmly back to earth. “No sense in that. Might as well stay at Arnside. Better, in fact.”
“Yes, I suppose I might,” she said despondently. “Only I would like so much to escape! I do try not to be ungrateful, but oh, Freddy, if you knew what it is like, keeping house for Uncle Matthew, and reading to him, and pouring out his horrid draughts, and never speaking to anyone but him and Fish! It makes me wish he never had adopted me!”
“Must be devilish,” nodded Mr. Standen, ladling punch into one of the glasses. “Can’t think why he did adopt you. Often puzzled me.”
“Yes, it used to puzzle me too, but Fish thinks that he formed a lasting passion for my mama.”
“Sort of thing she would think,” remarked Freddy. “If you ask me, he never formed a lasting passion for anyone but himself. I mean, look at him!”
“Yes, but I do feel she may be right,” Kitty insisted. “He hardly ever speaks of her, except when he says I am not nearly as pretty as she was, but he has her likeness. He keeps it in his desk, and he showed it to me once, when I was a little girl.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have believed it!” said Freddy, apparently convinced.
“No, but I fancy it was so. Because George, you know, thought I was Uncle Matthew’s daughter. Hugh said that he never did so, but I have a strong notion he did!”
“Shouldn’t think so at all,” said Freddy. “George might, because he’s a gudgeon. Daresay Dolph might, but nobody else would. In fact, Dolph wouldn’t either, because he don’t think anything. If you was my uncle’s daughter, he wouldn’t behave so shabbily. Wouldn’t want to leave his money to one of us, either.”
“N-no. I daresay he might wish me to marry one of his great-nephews, but he wouldn’t cut me off without a penny if I refused, would he?”
“He don’t mean to do that?” exclaimed Freddy, shocked.
She nodded, and gave a rather watery sniff into his handkerchief. “Yes, he does, and of course I quite see that I can never hope to form an eligible connection if I’m to be a pauper. It makes me feel horridly low!”
“What you need, Kit, is a drop of something to put some heart into you,” said Freddy decidedly. “If you won’t take some ratafia—mind, I don’t say I blame you!—you’d better have a mouthful of this. It ain’t the right thing, but who’s to know?”
Miss Charing accepted a half-filled glass, and sipped cautiously. The pungency of the spirit was inclined to catch the back of her throat, but the sweetness and the unmistakeable tang of lemon-juice reassured her. “I like it,” she said.
“Yes, but don’t go telling my uncle, or the Fish, that you’ve been drinking punch with me,” he warned her.
She assured him that she would not; and since she was now quite warm, and was finding the settle uncomfortable, joined him at the table, and sat there, sipping her punch, and brooding over her unhappy circumstances. Freddy, who was grappling with thoughts of his own, rather absentmindedly refilled both glasses. A frown began to gather on his brow. He broke the silence by demanding suddenly: “Who’ll inherit the ready if you don’t marry one of us, Kit?”
“Uncle Matthew says he shall leave it to the Foundling Hospital,” replied Kitty. “All of it!”
“He does, does he? Seems to me Dolph ain’t the only one who’s queer in his attic!” said Mr. Standen. He stared fixedly at the play of the candlelight on the golden liquid in his glass. “Wonder if Jack knows that?” he said, in a ruminative tone.
“You may depend upon it that he does, for I am sure Uncle Matthew would not tell George and Hugh more than he has told Jack. And I am excessively happy to think that it has not weighed with him!”
“Wonder if he’s playing a deep game?” said Mr. Standen, pursuing his own meditations. “No saying what might be in his head: a curst rum touch, Jack! Shouldn’t have thought he’d whistle a fortune down the wind, though. Rather fancy he counted the old gentleman’s rolls of soft his own. Never knew such a fellow for wasting the ready! Played wily beguiled with his own fortune.” He encountered a startled look of enquiry from Miss Charing, and added succinctly: “Gamester. Tulip of the Turf. Seems to have come off all right so far, but m’father says he’ll end under the hatches. Very downy one, m’father!” He dwelt for a moment on the percipience of Lord Legerwood, while Miss Charing eyed him with hostility. Refreshing himself with some more punch, he said: “May be shamming it. Don’t care to have his hand forced. Must know you wouldn’t take Dolph or Hugh. Must know I ain’t hanging out for a rich wife. Means to steer the old gentleman to Point Non-Plus.” He drained his glass, and set it down. Still more profound thoughts deepened the frown on his brow. “Same time— may have come about again. Fresh as ever. Don’t need the ready. Don’t want to be married. Drop the handkerchief when he chooses.”
“Drop—
Much confused, Mr. Standen begged pardon. “Thinking to myself!” he explained.
She paid no heed to this, but said fiercely: “
“No, no! That is—couldn’t blame him, Kit! Handsome phiz, you know—devil of a Corinthian—never at a stand! Daresay you don’t know it, but the fact is any number of caps set at him! High-fliers, too. Queer creatures, females,” mused Mr. Standen, shaking his head. “Fellow’s only got to be a rake to have ’em all dangling after him. Silly, really, because it stands to reason—Well, never mind that!”
“Good gracious, Freddy, as though I was not well-aware that Jack is a shocking flirt!” said Kitty untruthfully, but with spirit. “I have not the least doubt that he flirts with all the prettiest ladies in London! Which makes it so particularly stupid and—and diverting of Uncle Matthew to suppose that he wished to offer for me! Indeed, I can’t imagine why anyone should think he would do so. I should be astonished to learn that he regards me as anything other than a dowdy schoolgirl!”
“Yes, I should be too,” agreed the Job’s comforter on the other side of the table.
Miss Charing swallowed another mouthful of punch. A gentle glow was spreading through her veins, dispelling the melancholy which had possessed her. It would have been too much to have said that she was restored to happiness, but she no longer despaired. A certain exhilaration infused her brain, which seemed all at once to be able quite easily to master difficulties that, a few minutes before, had appeared so insoluble. She sat bolt upright in
