With his usual clear-sightedness, he had spied what had escaped his
seniors. Our neighbour, Mr. Mortimer Pegg, had been having some paper hung,
and, surely enough, the workmen had left a tall ladder propped against the
wall of the house. Without a second's hesitation, Simon flung himself upon
it, and with one splendid effort, hurled it from that support to the wall
of Mrs. Handsomebody's house. Then, with the strength of a superman, he
dragged it until it leaned just below our window, and stood gasping at its
base.
"Good fellow," said Angel, and began to climb out.
"Now, you hand me The Seraph," he ordered, "and I'll attend to him."
I had some misgivings as I passed his plump, clinging little person through
the window, and watched him make the perilous descent, but, in time, he
reached the ground, and then I, too, stood beside the others, and the four
of us scampered lightly down the street with no misgivings, and no fears.
Before the door of our own grocer, Simon made a halt.
"Must have somethin' wet," he gasped. "Ladder nearly floored me."
He took us in and treated us with princely unconcern to ginger beer and a
jam puff apiece. As we sucked our beer through straws, I smiled to think of
Mary Ellen, doubtless preparing bread and milk at home.
Once more we entered the garden through the creeper-hung door. We visited
the rabbits, and unchained one of the fox-terriers, which had been tied up,
Simon told us, as a punishment for eating part of a lace curtain. Bill
appeared then and said that his mother desired us to go to her in the
drawing-room, and, as it was beginning to rain, Simon agreed that it wasn't
a bad idea. We might even find something to eat in there.
As we trooped past the basement window, I lingered behind the others, and
peered for a space into the lawless region below. What met my gaze almost
took my breath away: for there was our own Mary Ellen, who should have been
at that moment cleaning the coal cellar, sitting at one end of the long
table, in her new blue dress, and plumed hat, a gentleman in livery on
either side of her, and on the table before her, a mug, which, without
doubt, contained gin-and-beer!
I waited to see no more. Enough to know that all the world was run amuck!
With a glad whoop, I sped after the others, and only drew up when I stood
on the threshold of the drawing-room.
Like the servants' hall, it was a large apartment, and, like it, was
bewildering in its colour and movement, to eyes accustomed to the grey
decorum of Mrs. Handsomebody's establishment.
Though it was summer, there was a fire on the hearth, which played with
changeful constancy on the vivid chintzes, silver candle-sticks, and many
mirrors of the room, but most of all, on the golden hair and satin tea-gown
of the lady in pink.
She was speaking in a loud, clear voice to Simon's father, who was leaning
against the mantelpiece smoking.
"Why the devil," she was saying, "should you smoke expensive cigars? Why
don't you smoke cigarettes as I do?"
She angrily puffed at one as she spoke, and threw herself back among the
black and gold cushions of the divan, where she was sitting. Her fair brow
cleared, however, as her glance rested on The Seraph.
"Adorable little toad!" she cried, drawing him to her side. "What is your
name?"
"Alexander," replied our youngest, "but they call me The Seraph. I'm not a
pampud pet."
This sent the lady into a gale of laughter. She hugged him closer and
turned to me.
"And what is your name, Sobersides?" she demanded.
"John," I replied, "and my father is David Curzon, and he is an engineer in
South America, but he's coming back to England some day, and, I expect then
we shall go to school. We just live with Mrs. Handsomebody."
As I talked, her expression changed. She leaned forward, searching my face
eagerly.
"Is it possible?" she said, in a tragic voice. "Is it possible? David
Curzon. His son. The very spit of him!" Abruptly she broke into gay
laughter, which, somehow, I did not quite like: and turning to her husband,
she said: "Do you remember Davy Curzon? He was such a silly old pet. Lor'!
I'd quite forgot him!"
"Lucky Davy," said the gentleman, smiling at me.
"And he was so ridiculously poor," she went on, "I remember he ruined
himself once to buy me a pair of cream-coloured ponies, and a lapis-lazuli
necklace. And I daresay he's _fat_ now!"
"He is not," I retorted stoutly. "He's thin. He's had the fever."
"Again?" she cried. "He had it when I knew him--badly too. Who did he
marry?"
"A Miss Vicars," replied her husband. "Good family. A screaming beauty too.
Other two boys look like her."
But the lady had now, it seemed, no interest in the other two boys. The
Seraph was deposed from his place on the divan to make room for me; and the
lady begged me to give her a kiss, just for old times' sake. Yet, somehow,
I did not quite like it, for I felt that she was making fun of my father,
the hero of my dreams.
Meanwhile, the other children, unchided, were making things lively in their
own way. Mops and the boys were eating dates from a bowl and pelting each
other with the stones, while a new member of the family, a seemingly
sexless being in a blue sash and shoulder knots, called "Baby," galloped up
and down the room with a battledore and shuttlecock.