"I say, Nell--er--"
"Say on!" she encouraged him.
"You don't think--I mean--well, you won't get thinking--er--will you?"
"Oh, Ted, why? Have you noticed any grey hairs yet?" She put up her
hands to her hair.
He smiled.
"I mean--you know--"
"By Jove, if she does know, they didn't divide the supply of brains
between us equally," Denis observed.
"I only mean that I don't want you to--to get thinking that--you know
you said before that I looked as if I were thinking of something nice
for you--well, you won't think I was, will you?"
"Oh, indeed, I will now! Denis, can't you see there's a secret
somewhere? Oh, how lovely! Ted, I do love secrets. Is it something
_very_ nice?"
He looked into her teasing face with an expression of almost ludicrous
dismay.
"I--wish you wouldn't!" he muttered so gravely that she stopped
laughing.
"Well, I won't!" she said. "I'm quite sure there's nothing nice going
to happen anywhere or any time, and it'll be all the more a surprise,
won't it? Oh, Ted, I didn't mean it," she added remorsefully. "It was
all fun, all smoke--"
"'There's no smoke without a fire,'" Denis told the ceiling.
"Mine was pipe smoke," she rejoined.
Ted still looked worried. His good nights were absent. When he had
gone, Nell observed thoughtfully:--
"I wonder what it is! Oh, I hope we won't have to wait long!"
*CHAPTER XXXII*
Down the stairs flew Nell, out into the street, up to a banana barrow, a
boy, and a puppy.
"Could you lend him to me for a while?"
The boy eyed her suspiciously. There was not much ground for suspicion,
since it was hardly likely she could be contemplating theft; the puppy,
though fascinating, was obviously incapable of proclaiming what breed he
was intended by nature to represent. Moreover Nell, in a long pinafore
and hatless, could scarcely run away with him. It was merely from force
of habit that the boy eyed her suspiciously. The puppy was more
discerning. He welcomed her as a long and ardently looked for friend;
he turned ecstatic somersaults over her feet; then stood up, and tore at
her pinafore with wild, soft little paws. She picked him up.
"May I have him? I want to paint him."
The owner of the bananas, for whom the boy and the puppy were waiting,
reappeared. He was quite a gallant gentleman, and assured Nell he would
be pleased to let her have the puppy for "a _h_our, miss," he said with
a good deal of effect. "And in a _h_our I shall be back this way, and
will fetch 'im if convenient."
Nell smuggled the puppy into the house and up to the Stronghold beneath
her pinafore.
He started the _h_our by persisting in looking upon Kate Kearney as a
butt, provided by Providence, for his especial benefit. He thought her
a tremendously funny joke and the more K.K. aired her dignity, the
funnier he thought her. He rolled over in uncontrollable mirth, kicking
up impertinent little legs right beneath her nose; he turned somersaults
over her staid body; he frisked up to her in ridiculous boxing
attitudes; he slapped her face, and he jeeringly incited her over and
over again to "come on."
But K.K. refused to "come on." She was furiously jealous of the
unaristocratic little mongrel who had suddenly invaded her precincts.
She took refuge in a hurt dignity; she turned her head away at his
approach with an unmistakable suggestion. The puppy was not hurt; he
had, together with his dirt and his plebeian origin, a useful
thick-skinned philosophy.
K.K. retired to a corner, back to audience, and Nell tried to sketch the
puppy. When held by Molly, he howled so pathetically that he procured
his release, which was exactly what he meant to do. Thereupon he licked
all available hands and waddled back to Kate Kearney. As interludes to
his worrying of her, he tugged a great hole into the table-cloth and
upset Nell's paint-water; he managed to get a pencil stuck into his
mouth, and screamed with terror; he, perhaps, after all, and in spite of
his plebeian philosophy, somewhat affected by K.K.'s suggestively
averted nose, essayed a bath in her drinking-pan. He upset the pan, and
his own feelings; dripping and whimpering at the shock of the water, he
ran round the room, and chose a wet oil-painting of Nell's against which
to dry himself. The result was bad for the painting, and for the puppy,
too. Adorned with patches of green and blue, he waxed pathetic, sat down
with a disconcerting suddenness, and put his head on one side.
Nell exclaimed, "I can't give him back like that!" and had resort to
turpentine.
All the puppy's instincts arose and defied her. He wriggled and kicked
and howled, and in the midst of it Sheila Pat appeared with Jim on her
arm, and the information that Aunt Kezia had returned home. The puppy
was released. The Atom put Jim down, and ran to him delightedly. But a
change had come o'er the puppy. On the floor Jim O'Driscoll sat, lazily
picking the shell from a nut. He took no notice of the puppy; his air
of complete indifference was positively insulting. The puppy stood for
a minute, petrified, then he pranced a little closer, and waited. Jim
scratched his left ear and ruminated. The puppy barked. Jim scratched
his right ear and ruminated further. The puppy made a nervous dash at
him, and fled with his tail between his legs. Jim drew in the foot that
the puppy had touched and went on shelling his nut. There was a pause,
then the puppy approached within a yard of the blase little figure on
the floor and barked. They tried to stop him, but that puppy refused to
be stopped; he had a good deal to say, and he meant to say it. That the
object of the rude things he was saying gave not the slightest heed to
him merely aggravated his eloquence to a louder pitch.