'What's a Poppet, Uncle Woss?'
My brother replied that a Poppet was a little girl in a white fur coat,
and immediately buttoned her up in one, while he called a soldier, who
was standing near, to 'bring the other coat,' and, as he helped me on
with it, he said, 'You remember Brown, don't you, Meg?'
'Why, Sam! of course I do,' and I shook hands. 'However do you always
manage it?'
'Oh, got a knee this time,' said Ross, and stared at Brown, who looked
extremely sheepish. 'Where's your maid?' he added.
'Haven't brought her, couldn't get a passage.'
'Oh, what rotten luck; how have you managed?'
'Captain Everard did a lot for me.'
'But not your hair, surely, Meg? (Get a porter, Brown, and fish the
baggage out.)'
So while Brown 'fished,' I revelled in my warm coat, and tried to see
how it set on me at the back and said, 'Why, Ross, it's sable.'
'Well, you don't think I'd give you a rabbit one, do you?' said my
brother.
Being uneconomically inclined myself, I felt I ought to add, 'But what
extravagance!'
He scoffed, and said he'd have me know his godmother had left all her
money to him, and not to me, that a fur coat was cheaper than pneumonia,
anyway, besides being less trouble to one's relatives, and for those two
reasons _only_ he had bought it. 'I've got a car waiting outside,' he
said, 'so that while remarks on finance, coming from you, are deeply
interesting, my child, they are also apt to be expensive, as it's up to
thirty bob by now, the train's so late.'
As we drove out of the station Ross said, 'Michael wired to the Savoyard
for your rooms, and my hospital is quite close,' and then he added in an
airy manner, 'Oh, by the way, I knew you'd want a nursemaid for the
Gidger, so I engaged one for you. She's pretty and seems nice, so I
didn't bother about references.'
I didn't want to appear ungrateful, so I only murmured that I could see
about those later on, and I drew a little closer to him and squeezed his
arm for joy at seeing him again, while the Gidger gazed, entranced, out
of the window at the traffic.
'Ross,' I said, 'how on earth does Sam always manage it?'
'I dunno,' said Ross, staring through the glass at Sam's impassive back.
'It's extraordinary. When I got this bullet in my arm he came up a
moment after, said he'd bust his knee. Sometimes I think he must have
some arrangement with the d----'
'With a person that we need not name.'
'Just so,' said Ross, and giggled as he used to do when I reproved him.
But, all the same, it is a funny thing that Sam always has managed to
get with Ross, from the time he turned up as the school boot-boy, to the
day he appeared in my brother's dug-out with a can and said, 'Hot water,
sir,' in just the same old way.
When I arrived at the hotel the 'pretty nursemaid' turned out to be my
darling Nannie.
'When you feel you can stop kissing them both, Meg would like your
references.'
'References given _and_ required,' laughed Nannie.
'Then the deal's off. Meg's past won't bear looking into.'
Ross had just crammed my rooms with flowers and the air was full of
scent. He said Michael told him 'heaps of lilies.' Did he remember
that the scent of those is love? I do think, however, he might have
ordered the removal of the earwigs.
I was so tired that I came upstairs directly after dinner. The Gidger
was already fast asleep.
'Pretty lamb,' said Nannie, just as she always used to do.