[Illustration: She looked charming.]
I HAD come back from India. I was in Southampton. Only a few months
before I had been teaching whist to the natives on the banks of the
Ganges, and I had made my fortune out of the Indian rubber. I wonder if
they remember the great Sahib who always had seven trumps and only one
other suit. Tailoring is in its infancy over there, and the natives
frequently had no suit at all. I had not placed my money in the Ganges
banks, because they are notoriously unsafe. I had brought it with me to
Southampton. I was rich, but solitary. Yet I was a dashing young fellow,
especially in my printed conversation. When it rained, I said "dee."
Just smack your lips over the delightful wickedness of it, and then
proceed.
There was nothing to do. I couldn't go to Ryde, although the waiter
assured me it was a pleasant trip. Neither did I care to go for a walk.
The situation was at a dead-lock, and I said so.
"Well," said the waiter, "there's the quay."
So I went to the quay. I heard a sweet young voice remark, "What a
shocking bad hat!" I fell in love with her at once. She was with a
governess--obviously French--who remonstrated.
"'Ush! Naughty! Signor will overhear you, Mees SMITH. Then I give you
spanks."
"Well, he shouldn't wear such a bad hat, Mademoiselle."
I was just turning round to introduce myself, when I saw that they had
both stepped on to the steamer. I followed them. The French Governess
seemed to be in doubt about the boat.
"Antelope of the western horizon," she said, to a surly onlooker, "I
will give you three piastres and a French halfpenny if you have ze
goodness to tell me if this is ze Ryde steamer."
"How the dickens am I to know whether it's the right steamer or not,
when I don't know where you're going to?" asked the man.
I knocked him down at once, and as he rose to return the compliment my
hat fell off. Miss SMITH caught it on the tip of her toe as it was
falling, sent it twenty feet into the air, caught it again in her large
beautiful hands, and pressed it firmly down over my eyes.
In the wilds of Assam one gets unused to the grand freedom and cultured
geniality of English ladies. I hardly knew what to do, but I extricated
myself slowly from the folds of the hat, chucked her under the chin, and
remarked, "_Houp-la!_" The French Governess had retired to the cabin to
be ill, and we were rapidly steaming from the quay.
"Don't!" said Miss SMITH, looking very shy and pretty.
"Certainly not," I replied. "Of course you will have some tea with me?"
"Oh, my!" she murmured, in her sweet, refined voice. "Well, I must first
go and look after poor Mlle. DONNERWETTER."
While she was below, I secured two umbrellas from the stoker, and
improvised a sort of tent with this and a back number of the _Times_. I
also procured a few delicacies such as young girls love--a pot of French
mustard, two bottles of ginger-beer, some shrimps, and several large
buns. I spread them all out in a row. It seemed to make them look more
luscious, somehow. We were very warm and cosy, seated over the boiler of
the engine. Was I in love? Pshaw! Decidedly not, and yet--well, she
looked very pretty as she sat there, chattering freely about herself,
and lightly dusting with her handkerchief one of the shrimps which was a
trifle soiled. I gathered from her conversation that she was very rich,
that she had no parents, and would lose all her money if something
happened.
"And is that something--er--marriage?" I ventured to ask.
"Gar'n!" she replied, in her pretty school-girl slang. "What are yer
getting at?"
"Suppose the boiler blew up, what then?"
"Ah!" she replied, sadly; "Mademoiselle will blow me up if she finds us
out. Listen! she's calling."
"Then it's all right, because if she calls now she'll find us in."
At this moment the steamer reached its destination, and I was compelled
to leave Miss SMITH. However, I followed her and the Governess until
they entered the gates of Plumfields, a large school for young ladies.
Why should I go back to Southampton? I think I will remain at Ryde. (_To
be concluded in Four Chapters._)
* * * * *
THE PRINCE "STARRING" AT POOLE.--His Royal Highness was just as
successful last week at Poole in Dorsetshire (everyone who was there
will indorse it) as he was at Pyramids in Egypt.
* * * * *
[Illustration: SOCIAL ECONOMY.
"WHAT! GOING TO WEAR THAT FRIGHTFUL GOWN? AND AT YOUR OWN DANCE, TOO?"
"THAT'S JUST WHY! TO-NIGHT THEY _HAVE_ TO ASK ME!"]
* * * * *
[Illustration: "COUNTING THE CHICKS!"]
"COUNTING THE CHICKS!"
DAME PARTLET broods in reverie beatific
Over as nice a "sitting"
Of golden eggs as ever fowl prolific
Tended, untired, unflitting.
Sound eggs and of good stock, there is no doubt of them.
What will come out of them?
That question interests nor PARTLET only;
No; while the speckled beauty
Sits in quiescent state, content though lonely,
The poultry-yard's prime duty
Filling her soul, how many minds are watching
That hopeful hatching!
Worthy Exchequer Hen! Layer and sitter
Of really first-rate quality.
Though rival fowls are enviously bitter,
That doth not bate her jollity.
Her duties CAQUET BONBEC'S game to tackle,
Without much cackle.
And then, what luck! A "run" unprecedented,
Or almost so; and fodder
With which the Laureate's Bird had been contented:
Fortune has freaks far odder
Than e'en a poet's whimsies, any day,
Her rivals say.
She must, they swear, have "raked in golden barley,"
Like the great Fleet Street "Cock."
Their jealous jeremiads, sour and snarly,
PARTLET'S prim feelings shock.
"Luck! Not at all: but the reward emphatic
Of skill villatic."
"Of course 'tis obvious that the Tory rooster
Has 'crammed a plumper crop'
Than Grand Old Chanticleer, that barn-yard boaster,
Whose crowings now must stop,
He thought his 'Surplus' none would nearly equal.
Behold the sequel?
"Not quite as many eggs? No, but far finer,
And not one will be addled.
He, in his day, was a Distinguished Shiner,
But then the yard he saddled
With cross-bred cocktail chicks, unprofitable
For nest or table."
So PARTLET, in her own complacent musings;
And as for the outsiders,
Reckoning up their probable gains and losings,
Some fain would be deriders
Of her, her fortune, and the brood forthcoming,
Which she seems summing.
"Don't count your chickens ere they're hatched!" they snigger.
(Old saws are always dear to the censorious)
"We've seen small chickens out of eggs much bigger.
You Tory hens are always so vainglorious.
_We_'d see--before we join this Farm-yard Chorus--
The birds before us.
"'Free Education'; Chick? 'Free Breakfast-table'?
Or else 'Income-Tax Penny'?
Humph! All good breeds! We cannot say we're able
To cackle against any.
Were they but in _our_ nest, we'd hatch 'em gladly,
But doubt _you_ sadly!"
Meanwhile complacent PARTLET sits and broods,
Blandly anticipative.
As for the Public, well, of all the moods
They clearly love the dative;
And, so the brood be good, won't greatly bother
As to who's mother!
* * * * *
Shall Women Smoke?
I SEE, by an advertisement, that a cork tip put to a cigarette
prevents tongue irritation. I have no objection to my wife's
smoking, if she will use these cigarettes. Her "tongue irritation"
is something too trying to
Yours truly,