_A mother may laugh with a master; she goes and
the joke goes with her: the boy stays behind._
Sibyl Carston, having arranged things entirely to her satisfaction,
straightway made preparations to join her husband in that far-off
dependency. The preparations were quickly made. She went down to see
Dick at school: walked with him through cool cloisters, out into the
sun; paced close-shaven lawns; drank in the beauty of it all and
expressed a hope that it was sinking into the soul of her son.
“Oh, rather,” said the son, a little surprised that his soul should be
discussed. He realized the occasion was a special one, otherwise it
was the sort of thing you didn’t talk about. It was there all right,
his soul, he supposed. It stirred to the sound of beautiful music;
also when he read in history of deeds of valour!—you bet it did—at the
greatness of England in general; at the left-hand bowling of one master
in particular. It was all there, but he didn’t want to talk about it.
“I understand, darling,” said his mother, “but don’t stifle it.”
He wouldn’t, rather not. “But, I say, what’s this about Diana and this
London business and Aunt Elsie? Rough on her, isn’t it?”
“No, darling, I don’t think so. I want Diana to have some fun.”
“There’s lots at Aunt Elsie’s. There are the dogs, they’re good fun,
and the rabbits, and the farm. There’s always something to do there.
Aunt Elsie is jolly good fun, isn’t she?”
“So is Uncle Marcus.”
“Is he?” This doubtfully.
“He’s my brother, darling.”
“Oh, I see. I suppose you are bound in a kind of way to think him funny
then—you like him in a way.”
“Very much.”
“Aunt Elsie doesn’t.”
“She has never seen him.”
“She jolly well doesn’t want to either.”
“Dick, darling, you will take care of Diana, won’t you?” said his
mother, changing the subject: it was so difficult to keep to any
subject with the good-bye looming in the near distance.
Any one who says good-bye to the child she loves for a long time
(and a year to a mother is an eternity) drinks deep of the cup of
self-sacrifice. Sibyl’s one thought was that Dick should not know what
she was suffering. Of course he knew: but if it were her business—as
mother—to bridge the distance across the sea, to talk of the near
days when they should be together again, it was his—as son—to pretend
he believed her. He assured her it was no distance: he didn’t mind: it
happened to lots of boys: it was all right.
“You will take care of Diana?” she repeated—readjusting the distance.
“Yes, rather; you don’t want her to marry while you’re away, I
suppose?—because I don’t quite see how I should manage that.”
“I don’t want her to marry while I’m away, of course, although I hope
she may some day.”
“Taboret Major admires her so, I thought I would just ask.”
“He would be young to marry, wouldn’t he?”
“Well, so would she—anyway, he wouldn’t like me to talk about his
private affairs, so don’t say anything about it. And, I say, if you do
see him, I think you’d better not speak to him at all; he doesn’t like
people speaking to him. He’s going to be a great writer—he thinks.”
Sibyl promised she wouldn’t speak to Taboret Major, but Mr. Wane she
must see. Mr. Wane was Dick’s house-master, and Dick allowed he was
very fairly decent. But Dick had started early in life with prejudices
against masters and it was difficult to overcome them. When he had come
back from his first term at a private school, he had resented with the
whole force of his small being the injustice of being given a holiday
task. Until he had got home he hadn’t known the beastly thing had come
with him. The perfidy of the master had embittered him. “How could he
have wished me a happy holiday when he knew all the time that he had
given me this beastly thing to do?” he had asked.
It was a difficult question to answer. Masters must answer it for
themselves—at that day when they too must answer questions: not only
ask them.
“Oh, yes, you must see old Wane,” Dick admitted.
“We will walk about a little first—and talk—there is so much to
say—isn’t there?” said his mother.
Dick nodded: she tightened the pressure of her arm on his, and it
spoke volumes. He kicked at the little pebbles in the path, anything
seemed to help. “How high do you suppose that tree is?” he asked. “It’s
awfully old.”
The sun was in his mother’s eyes, she couldn’t see. Neither could
he, but he knew; it was sixty feet high, so it wasn’t quite a fair
question, was it?
“Not quite fair, my Dick.”
So much wasn’t quite fair.
If you can’t talk you can always eat an ice, at least you can if you
are a boy. Sibyl suggested it. “Good business,” said Dick.
The ice was a help—a still greater help, two ices. They seemed to help
the swallowing part of the business and good-byes largely consist of
that. Then Sibyl went to see Mr. Wane and Dick waited outside—hoping
she wouldn’t do anything funny—or try to make the old man laugh. If
Sibyl had been, as a mother, a little less pretty and charming, it
is possible Dick would have been—as a boy—a little less forward for
his age, and might have been possessed of a character that was less
surprising in its strength to his house-master. It is possible.
Mr. Wane was a just man and honourable, but perhaps, to convince
himself that Dick’s mother had dimples, he may have emphasized a little
more than he need have done certain things that had been “curiously
brought to his notice” about Dick. A certain sterling honesty of
purpose—unusual in so young a boy—Yes, they were there! Two of them,
one on each side of her mouth. A very pretty mouth—a mouth that told
of a certain fastidiousness of character that appealed to Mr. Wane. He
only needed to give one or two instances, which bore out what he had
said about Dick’s character, and a depth he had suspected, in the eyes
of Dick’s mother, he found and fathomed.
“Show me a boy’s mother!” he was wont to say.
Dick had shown him a pretty mother, and had waited patiently outside
while she talked about him! At last she joined him. Old Wane came out
with her and he was laughing, but he seemed all right, _otherwise_.
Dick and his mother walked back through the cool cloisters, out into
the sun and over close-shaven lawns. “Point out to your mother,” Mr.
Wane had said, “architectural features of interest, my boy!” And Dick
proceeded to do it. “That gate, see? It was built—I don’t know when—in
the year, I don’t know what—by—I don’t know who,”—and his mother was
duly impressed. To pay for this knowledge and other things there must
be spent years in hot climates. Money must be saved so that when Dick
was grown to be a man he should look back to this time as the happiest
in his life. If all this and the sense of its past should sink into his
soul, it must help to make him one of England’s proudest sons.
At the railway station they parted, and Sibyl watched till she could
no longer see her small pink-faced son, who was growing, for all his
smallness—so big, so tall, so reserved.
After Dick’s mother had left him, an uncomfortable way all visiting
mothers have, Dick, unconscious of that curious nobility of character
that Mr. Wane, somewhat to his own surprise, had endowed him with,
felt very lonely. He hated islands, beastly far-off islands, rotten
places for mothers to go to—what was the matter with England? He
asked Taboret Major, and Taboret Major said, “Nothing, absolutely
nothing—England was all right.” And he and Dick walked down to the
cricket fields (their England) and it was all right.
Mrs. Wane, who had lately been brought to bed of her third son, was
propped up on her pillows and Mr. Wane was sitting beside her. That
he had something on his mind she knew. Mothers always upset him: they
upset boys too; being altogether upsetting things.
“He _is_ a very nice boy—a _very_ nice boy—a _particularly_ nice boy, I
should say,” he said thoughtfully.
He had said it three times, so Mrs. Wane put out her hand and closing
it on his said—“Was she so very charming and attractive?” And Mr. Wane
laughed, for in spite of what Dick knew to the contrary, “old Wane”
could see a joke, and that joke against himself.
“You dear!” he said to his wife, and she answered: “He _is_ a nice
boy—a _very_ nice boy—a _particularly_ nice boy—and there’s another
just as nice—and you might tell his mother so without its causing you
any after pricks of conscience, or remorse.” And she looked towards the
cradle in which slept profoundly Wane Minimus.
“He’s very good and quiet,” admitted his father.
“He knows perhaps,” said his mother, “that his father is one from whom
it is supposed the secrets of no small boy can be hid. By instinct he
knows that: later on I shall tell him that he need not be quite so
good, or so quiet; that although as a schoolmaster it is your bounden
duty to know the secrets of all small schoolboys, as a father you
are just as blind—and just as weak as any other well-dispositioned
father. It is in order to make schoolmasters human that mothers marry
them—there could be no other reason. Now tell me all about Carston’s
mother and just what it was you said to her about him?”
That night, as Mr. Wane undressed, he was still a little uneasy.
“He is a _particularly_ nice boy,” he murmured; but this it was
that rankled—Barker’s mother had been down, too, and Barker was a
particularly nice boy—he had faults, of course, so had Dick—but he had
told Barker’s mother of Barker’s faults. He had not spared her: nor had
he cared whether she had dimples or not—perhaps because she had not.
Before he got into bed he thanked God for the inestimable gift of a
good wife—and he meant it; and of an understanding wife—he meant that
too; and of a beautiful wife—he meant that too—in the highest sense.
V
_If my sister have a child then am I straightway
an uncle, and who shall save me?_
When Diana took up her abode in the house of her uncle, she arrived
late, dressed, and went out again to dinner. That was not how Marcus
would have had her arrive. She must understand that order was the
keynote of his establishment. How otherwise could he expect to keep so
excellent a housekeeper as Mrs. Oven? Pillar, too, must be considered.
She must state definitely when she would be in to dinner and when not.
“I was not,” she said later, when taxed, “definitely not.”
Marcus dined alone. As he came downstairs dressed for dinner, he met
a housemaid going up, with a glass of milk on a tray. On the tray
there was also a plate, on the plate there was a banana, and beside
the banana lay glistening a halfpenny bun. The meal of some one’s
particular choosing, he should say. In no other way could it have found
its way upstairs in his house. But whose meal was it?
That he had two housemaids he knew. He saw evidence of their being in
the brightness of the brasses, the polish of the furniture, but he
hardly knew them apart. The bun-bearer was one of them. He went on his
way deploring that in his house there was no back staircase. But for
whom could a vagrant banana be?
Tentatively he put the question to Pillar, as ashamed to ask it as
Pillar was to answer it. Pillar murmured something about a mischance,
and Mr. Maitland was quick to admit it. It was certainly an accident
meeting the banana on the stairs; but the meal itself remained
unexplained, and inexcused; it must have been predestined. Then it
struck him that Diana must have brought a maid. It was quite right she
should. He might have guessed it. But a maid who lived on buns and
bananas, could she be efficient?
Marcus dined uncomfortably. The dinner seemed less good than usual.
Gradually it was borne in upon him that it must be Mrs. Oven who was in
bed and who was feeding on buns and bananas. She had lost her taste,
her sense, her gastronomic taste—her sense of taste. Everything!
Towards twelve o’clock Diana came in, unrepentant and delightful;
she floated in, as it were, on a cloud of tulle, a veritable
will-o’-the-wisp, a thing as light as gossamer, as elusive as a
firefly. She had a great deal to tell Marcus and told him none of it.
She was lost in the depth of his huge sofa—she looked like drifted
snow—blown there by the wind. He didn’t tell her that, even if he
thought it. What he did tell her was that he expected his guests to go
to bed early. This in obedience to an instinct that told him to begin
as he meant to go on—
Diana said she could not go to bed early—that night, at all events.
She would go as early as she could—as early in the morning. “I have a
confession to make. Shall I make it now or wait till to-morrow? In ten
minutes it will be to-morrow. To-morrow never used to come so soon.”
“Why not now?”
“No, I could not sleep unforgiven.”
“But why should you? What if I forgave you?”
Horrible thoughts flashed through Marcus’s mind. What could she have
to confess? Happier thoughts—what could there be that he would not
forgive? forgive her? There were things he could not forgive a man.
All the things he had heard of modern girls and their ways passed
through his mind, all the things he had ever heard of men from the
days of man’s innocency until now. Then he looked at Diana. The modern
girl was all right; she was delicious. But men—men? Would they find
Diana distracting? Or was it because he was no longer young that her
youth seemed so appealing, her freshness, her gaiety so infectious?
He had always felt he could never have made a successful or even a
comfortably happy father. A creature like this he could never have let
out of his sight: all men would have become his enemies by very reason
of their existence.
“Once Was,” said Diana softly, “why so dreamy? You make me sleepy.
Good-morning!”
She went to bed, unconfessed, unforgiven. Pillar put out the lights
downstairs. Marcus put them out on his landing. Above that it was
Diana’s business. “Don’t forget the lights, Diana,” he called.
At one o’clock in the morning Diana was singing in her bath and Marcus
lay in bed wondering what it was she wanted to confess. He fell asleep
uncertain whether he liked a niece in the house or not. He had pictured
to himself a quiet, mousey niece, demure and obedient! But how charming
she had looked on the sofa!—she got her feet from him, did she? A great
attraction in women, pretty feet; and none too common. He must see that
she gave enough for her boots. It was where some women economized. He
shuddered to think of women out in the street, on muddy days, in house
shoes. Horrible!
Diana came down to breakfast. That was to her credit. To bed late: yet
up early. She looked delicious: not in the least tired and very fresh
and clean. A girl may be both without looking triumphantly so, as Diana
did.
After breakfast with Marcus was a sacred hour, dedicated to his
newspapers and his pipe, yet after breakfast Diana planted herself on
the edge of his chair and proceeded to get to know him. Not until she
had done that, she said, could she make her confession.
“What is it?” he asked, ready to forgive anything, if only that he
might be left in peace.
“I brought Shan’t with me; do you mind?”
“A maid?” he said. “A dyspeptic maid,” he added to himself.
“Well, she’s female—certainly—I’ll say that for her.”
Marcus would have allowed that himself—in spite of her addiction to
zoölogical fare.
“She’s such a willing little beast. She won’t eat if I go away—so I had
to bring her—see, my Once Was?”
“Oh, a dog? My dear Diana, of course, I can’t have it upstairs, but
Pillar will be delighted to exercise the little beast—”
No dog explained the banana and the milk, but he said nothing.
“Dear child!”—he was feeling very fond of Diana—“I should like to
see—whatever you call it—is it trained and—”
“Shan’t! Shan’t!” called Diana up the stairs. “Come! Hurry up!”
“It was a funny way to talk to a dog,” thought Marcus. If at that
moment he had looked up from his paper he would certainly have thought
it a funny dog that walked into the dining-room. “Well?”
Marcus turned in answer to the interrogation and beheld a small girl
of four or five, standing, beaming at him, the very quintessence of
willingness and loving-kindness. “We-ell?” she repeated.
There are those in life who carry the mackintoshes of others; who leave
the last fresh egg for others; the early peas for others; the first
asparagus for others; who look up trains for others; find servants
for others; houses for others; who cry with others; who laugh with
others. They are as a rule spinsters who do these things and they do
them gladly—even the crying. Yes! Shan’t-if-I-don’t-want-to, Shan’t for
short, was a spinster, and Marcus recognized her as one of those born
to do things for others. She could laugh and cry at the same time, run
faster than any child of her age to do your bidding. She could soothe
your pain with her smile: and touch your heart with her laugh. These
things Marcus did not as yet know. But he was glad directly he saw her
that she was not a dog, and he grudged her neither the milk, nor the
bun, nor the banana, nor the distracting of Mrs. Oven from the cooking
of his dinner, which said much for the fascination of Shan’t.
There she stood longing to do things, aching, benevolence beaming from
her eyes. “Well?” she repeated.
“Good gracious!” said Marcus, and he got up and stood looking down
with amazement on this small person, who stood so willingly waiting.
Suddenly she looked at his feet and like a flash she was gone.
“Who in the world is it, Diana?” he asked sternly, but his heart had
become as water, and his bones like wax. Here was the child of his
dreams, the child he had played Hide-and-Seek with, told his longest
stories to, taken to the Zoo, saved from drowning.
“That’s Shan’t-if-I-don’t-want-to! That’s one of her names, but she
always does want to. She’s the jolliest little beggar in the world.
Mummy says I can’t have her for my own, but she is my own and I am
hers. Here she is. She is bound to have fetched something for you. For
Heaven’s sake, say ‘Thank you.’”
She had fetched his slippers. Now Marcus Maitland would rather go
without breakfast than breakfast in slippers, but he said, “Tha-ank
you.”
“Now,” said Diana, “if by chance I ruffled your hair she’d be off for
your hair-brushes before you knew where you were.”
“I don’t know where I am, as it is,” said Marcus, edging away from the
devastating hands of Diana. He loathed his hair ruffled.
“Put on your slippers,” said Shan’t, pointing to his feet.
“But I have only just put on my boots.”
“Put—them—on and don’t—argue,” said Shan’t.
“But—”
“Pe—lease!” Shan’t looked at him, and Marcus, feeling about as
determined as a worm can feel under the steady pressure of a
garden-roller, stooped down and began to unlace his boots. To do it
properly he must have a button-hook. Could Shan’t know to what an
exquisite discomfort she was putting him?
“No,” said Diana, “you needn’t. No, Shan’t, you can fetch something
else.”
“No, sit down, Shan’t,” commanded her uncle. “I want to look at you.”
She sat down on a footstool, folded her hands and looked up at her
uncle. “Funny old fing!” she said, wrinkling her nose; “you didn’t know
I was coming, did you?”
Marcus said he had had no idea.
“Diana said you didn’t.”
“Say your poem, Shan’t,” said Diana. “It’s her own—her very own,” she
added. “Go on, Shan’t.”
“I forget it.”
“How can you forget it when it’s your own?”
“Well, I have.”
“Shan’t—One-two-three.”
Marcus knew it to be the fashion among poets to read their own works.
He wondered if they needed treatment as drastic as this, or if they did
it more willingly? In the muse of charity perhaps they did.
“One—two—three,” said Diana sternly, and Shan’t began:
“Swing me higher,
Oh, Delia, oh, Delia!
Swing me over the garden wall—
Only do not let me fall.
“Found in the garden
Dead in her beauty.
Was she not a dainty dish
To set before the king?”
All this very, very fast, and at the end of it Shan’t, pink and
breathless, as any poet should be after being called upon to recite his
own poem half an hour after breakfast.
“Does your aunt know you’re here?” asked Marcus.
“She does—_now_,” said Shan’t seriously.
“How did you get away without being seen?” Marcus thought that
no well-brought-up child could ever escape from its Nannies and
nursery-maids. The safety of England depended on the safeguarding of
her children. He had heard that said, and he knew there were societies
to enforce it because he had subscribed to them.
Up sprang Shan’t, the better to tell her story. A dramatic sense was
hers. “I ran down the back stairs—and I ran down the drive—and I ran
down the garden—and I ran froo the gates—and I ran down the road and I
ran over the be-ridge. And then I didn’t run any—more. I just waited for
Diana—and we came.”
A deep sigh followed this statement. The air escaping from an air
cushion was the only thing Marcus could think of that compared with the
exhaustiveness of the sigh. At that moment Pillar brought a telegram
and Mr. Maitland opened it. Pillar glanced quickly at the child and
Shan’t’s smile proclaimed him her friend. He was on her side.
“Diana, it is from your aunt,” said Marcus; “she says, ‘Return Shan’t
at once’!”
“No,” said Shan’t; “shan’t if I don’t want to.” And she was off and out
of the room, out of the front door, opened by the telegraph boy, who
boylike was always as ready to let anything out as he was to catch and
cage anything, through the door into the street: across the road and
into the square through the garden gate that stood ajar.
“Let her run!” called Diana to her vanishing uncle; “she’ll soon
tire.” But Marcus had gone in eager pursuit. He crossed the street,
was through the gate and on to Shan’t before she had gone many yards
down the straight path that ran through the square. He caught her in
his arms. “By Jove, how she wriggles!” There was imminent danger of the
uncle being left with the clothes of Shan’t in his arms, and no Shan’t.
Appreciating the danger he relaxed his hold. Off she went, but to be
caught again, and easily enough. She was hot. He could feel her heart
beating in her small body, as a bird might flutter against the bars of
the cage that imprisons it. She was such a little thing. “Shan’t,” he
said, “come here.” He drew her towards him; he sat down and lifted her
on to his knee.
“Shan’t if I don’t want to!” she whispered.
“But you’re going to want to.”
“Always do—mostly always do,” she said, crying softly; not really
crying, she assured him, smiling.
“Look here,” said her uncle, “d’you know what you are?”
“Lucky little devil,” she hazarded.
“Well—but seriously—a good little girl—and such a willing little
beggar, isn’t that it?”
She nodded. “Always—mostly always.”
“Look here—willing little beggars always do what they are asked and
Aunt”—Marcus paused—“Aunt—what do you call her?”
“Elsie—only-aunt-in-the-world.”
“There are others, of course,” said Marcus stiffly; “Aunt Elsie—”
“Only-aunt-in-the-world,” said Shan’t; “say it!” She laid a finger on
his lips.
“Well, Aunt Elsie-only-aunt-in-the-world wants you to go back to her
because she’s lonely.”
“She’s got free dogs!”
“Free?”
“One—two—free—” “Free” found the tip of Shan’t’s forefinger lightly
laid on the tip of Marcus’s nose.
“Yes; but she wants you—and if you are a good little girl and go back
you shall come again and stay—”
“When?”
“We might say Christmas-time.”
“When else?”
“—Easter, perhaps.”
“We have eggs at Easter,”—this softly reminiscent.
“You shall have eggs here.”
“What inside of them?”
“Oh—little presents.”
“What little presents? Whistles?”
“Yes, I dare say.”
“And knives?”
“I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“Why wouldn’t you?”
“Because I should know.”
“What would you know?”
“Well, about the knives.”
“Would you guess?”
“I expect so.”
“I’ve thought of something—No, _you_ do!”
“_I_ think of something?”
“Yes. Have you?”
“Yes.”
“Is it animal, vegetable, or amiable?”
“It’s animal.”
“Is it in this room?”
Marcus gently pointed out that they were not in a room, and Shan’t
pointed out less gently that he wasn’t playing properly. Marcus had had
very serious thoughts as to whether he should allow Shan’t’s version
of animal, vegetable, or mineral to pass unquestioned, or whether he
should tell her she wasn’t playing the game?
“Is it the poker?” asked Shan’t.
“A poker isn’t animal.”
“Then you should have said it was amiable—that’s what pokers are. I did
guess quickly, didn’t I?”
At this moment Diana joined them, and the inhabitants of the square
garden saw the unusual sight of that rather unfriendly Mr. Maitland
sitting on a garden seat, with a child on his knee, while a girl, a
very attractive girl, stood by, egging him on as it were.
“She’s going back to Aunt Elsie, Diana,” he said.
“Only-aunt-in-the-world—Say it,” said Shan’t.
He said it, repeating, “She’s going back.”
“Shan’t if I don’t want to.”
“But you will, Shan’t,” said Diana, “because—look at me!”
Shan’t threw back her head and looked at Diana.
“Because _I—want_ you to,” said Diana.
Shan’t slipped off her uncle’s knee, ran across the grass, over the
road, in at the hall door, at which Pillar was standing, into the
dining-room, and laid her head on a chair and sobbed.
“Poor little beggar,” said Diana.
“Diana, shall I?” He was longing to comfort her.
“No, you’ll spoil it all. You can’t give in now—if you say a child must
do a thing, make her do it. You have lost your chance.”
As one convicted of a crime Marcus returned to the dining-room. When
Pillar came into the room he looked at Mr. Maitland as he had never
looked at him before—looked as if he were saying: “A little sunshine
comes into the house and you shut it out—you draw down the blinds!”
It fell to the lot of Mrs. Oven to take Miss Shan’t back to her aunt.
She called her Miss Charlotte, thinking Shan’t was but the correct way
of pronouncing Charlotte. She had lived with a Lady Harriet who had
been very particular to pronounce her name curiously, and Mrs. Oven
recognized a distinction attached to curiously pronounced names and
respected those who knew how to pronounce them.
“You see, Diana,” explained her uncle, “I am delighted to have you, but
two extra in the house do make a difference, especially when the second
one is a child. There are the servants to consider, and besides there
is your aunt—”
Diana said Aunt Elsie would never let him have Shan’t, so he needn’t
worry.
“My dear Diana, your aunt has not the power to prevent me from having
Shan’t if I wish to—”
“You _will_ wish to. The day will come when you will find you can’t
live without her. I can’t imagine what I shall do without her, but I
quite see you can’t have two of us—it’s too darling of you to have me,
and Aunt Elsie must be considered.”
“With your Aunt Elsie I have nothing whatever to do. I owe her no
consideration. I don’t know her—”
“All right, darling, don’t be flurried. She doesn’t want to know you.
She dislikes you quite amazingly.”
“Why should she?” asked Marcus, finding the unreasonableness of women
difficult to understand.
That evening Mr. Maitland offered Pillar Zoo tickets for Sunday.
“No, thank you, sir; I would not deprive another more fitted—”
“There’s a new baby giraffe.” This was an attraction never before known
to fail in its lure.
“Oh, well, sir, at the Zoölogical Gardens one’s mind harks back, as it
were, to children. It’s better not to think of children when you’re in
a house where there are none, and none to come—so to speak.”
The next day Marcus got a letter from the only aunt in the world and
the letter ran as follows:
DEAR MR. MAITLAND,—I think it should be clearly understood before we
go any further that I have as much right to my brother’s children as
you have to the children of your sister. I do not wish to stand in
Diana’s way and I am delighted she should have such a chance as you
are giving her, but Shan’t is mine. Her mother did not leave her in
your charge. She left her in mine. She is a most charming companion,
but would be utterly lost upon a bachelor—as you appear to be—living
in London.
If, however, at any time you should agree to lend me Diana for a week,
I will lend you Shan’t. But it must be quite clearly understood that
you do not have both together, at any time. If the two sisters should
wish to be together, and it is only natural they should, I think their
mother would say the place for them to be together is here. You are
not likely to appreciate the extraordinary character of Shan’t, and it
is quite possible the child would wear herself out as your slave. With
Diana there is no such danger. You will find her delightful, but the
slaving must be on your side. Shan’t has just returned safely, so far
as I can see none the worse for her adventure. I must thank you for
sending her back in the care of so respectable and excellent a woman.
Shan’t has a name, by the way: it is Elsie; you must have known it.
Yours truly,
ELSIE CARSTON
“A most disagreeable letter,” said Marcus as he folded it and put it
into his pocket, to re-read later. “A most uncalled-for letter. I sent
the child back at once. Most men would have kept her.”
He began then and there to wonder why he had not kept her. Talk of
dogs! (Miss Carston was devoted to dogs, it seemed.) What dog had ever
attracted him as Shan’t had done? What dog had ever looked so willing?
Not even a retriever was so humbly anxious to do anything in the world
to please. She was such a jolly little thing to hold—so small—so easily
crushed—funny, jolly little thing! Why should Miss Carston have her?
Under the care of Miss Carston she would grow up a suffragette; would
grow up everything a man would wish a girl not to be; self-opinionated,
strong-minded, argumentative; always right, never wrong. It was a
horrible thought. And Pillar had been perfectly willing that Shan’t
should stay. If Pillar didn’t mind, who should?
It was only right that Diana and Shan’t should not be separated. Miss
Carston could have Dick in the holidays. That should satisfy her. If
anything could satisfy a nature so exacting!