"Good heavens!" she mentally exclaimed. "I do hope and trust that boy has not been thoughtless!"

She remembered how she had found him in the tea-room, and his p.r.o.neness to amatory dalliance of a fleeting kind, inevitable in the case of a man so handsome, and so much sought after by flirting women; and she had a moment of grave uneasiness. Then she reflected upon Jenny's soberness of nature and Tony's opportune departure with Lady Louisa, and was at ease again.

Tea was served at five, and the children came down to be played with.

Then Mr. Churchill and Mr. Oxenham returned from their club to dinner, and the latter was introduced to Jenny, and both did their part to put her at ease and make her feel at home and happy. The old gentleman took her in to dinner on his arm, and was concerned that she did not eat as she should, and told her she wanted a change to the seaside, racking his brains to think how he could manage to cozen her into accepting some a.s.sistance that would make such a thing practicable. Soon after dinner was over the hansom Mrs. Oxenham had ordered was announced, and the good old fellow, bustling in from his wine, declared his intention of seeing Miss Liddon home in person. He blamed Mary for sending her away so soon, but Mary said it was better for her to go to bed early; and then Mr.

Churchill said he hoped Miss Liddon would soon come again--forgetting that his daughter was on the point of leaving him, and that his young wife would be little likely to endorse such an invitation.

Jenny left in a glow of inward happiness, and of grat.i.tude that she could not express, though she tried to do so. Mrs. Oxenham wrapped her in a Chuddah shawl, and kissed her on the doorstep.

"Good-night, dear child," she said, quite tenderly. "Go straight to bed and to sleep, and don't go to the tea-room to-morrow. I shall come and see you early."

Having watched her charge depart in her father's care, this kind woman returned to her husband, whom she found alone in the dining-room, smoking, and reading the evening paper, with his coffee beside him.

"Harry, dear," she said, "I want to ask you something."

"Ask away," he returned affably.

"Would you have any objection to my having that girl to stay with me for Christmas--that is, if she will come?"

He laid down his paper and thought about it. Though he was a Manchester cotton man, he was no sn.o.b, or he would not have been Mary Churchill's husband; but this was, as he would have termed it, a large order.

"Who else is coming?" he inquired.

"n.o.body. That is, I have not asked anybody at present. I think I'd rather we were quietly by ourselves. She's a lady, Harry, you can see it for yourself. Her father was an Eton boy."

"Eh? You don't say so!" This was certainly a strong argument.

"And she is thoroughly out of health. I never saw a girl so altered--shattered with hard work, poor little soul. I believe if she doesn't get a long rest and a change that she will have a severe illness, and then what would become of her mother and sister, and the business she has managed so splendidly? Now that Cup time is over, it is possible for them to do without her for awhile, and country air and good feeding and a little looking after would set her up, I know. And I don't see how else she is to get it. I am sure the children would like to have her, Harry; and she is so modest and quiet that she would never be in the way."

"What about Tony?" asked Mr. Oxenham.

"He is not coming. I asked him, but he said he couldn't leave town. He is too much engaged with Lady Louisa, I suppose; and if she didn't keep him, Maude would. Oh, if there was the slightest chance of Tony being at Wandooyamba, of course I shouldn't ask Miss Liddon there."

"Well, my dear, I'm sure I don't care, one way or another. Do just what you think best."

"You are quite sure you don't mind, Harry?"

"Not in the least. What's good enough for you is good enough for me, and, personally, I think she's an awfully nice little thing."

"Then I shall go and settle it with her mother in the morning," said Mrs. Oxenham, "and we will take her back with us."

CHAPTER XII

TWO WISE MEN

It was not far from Christmas when Anthony returned from his cruise, which he did in a listless, yawning, world-weary frame of mind. He had not enjoyed himself as he had expected to do, and wished he had remained in Melbourne at work, and given his old father a holiday instead.

Tasmania had looked beautiful, to be sure, but he had seen too many things that were more so, and seen them too recently, to be impressed by its hills and streams; while the sea had no charm after his recent voyage. He had wholly depended on his company for entertainment, and his company had disappointed him. Few, indeed, can stand the test of such conditions as those under which they were expected to shine, as under a microscope, with double l.u.s.tre and meaning (he had not stood it himself); and it was not surprising that the brilliant Lady Louisa had failed to substantiate her pretensions to be a clever woman, or that Mrs. Churchill had contrived to make a most kindly-disposed stepson hate her. Not, of course, that it was necessary for Lady Louisa to show herself clever in order to captivate our hero, or any man; it was because her stupidity had led her to waste her blandishments on a brainless idiot of a whisky-drinking globe-trotter, whose name was his only t.i.tle to be called a gentleman, that it had manifested itself so unmistakably to her superseded slave. When the bookless, newspaperless, trifling time was over, he stepped ash.o.r.e with a sense of being released from an irksome bondage, and determined to keep clear of his late too close companions for many a long day. One only was excepted--an old chum and crony, who had accompanied him on the voyage from England, a Queensland squatter, who lived nine months of the year in Melbourne--Adam Danesbury by name. Mr. Danesbury had afforded much amus.e.m.e.nt on board the yacht by boasting modestly of his recent engagement to a girl at home; showing her likeness, worn in a locket on his watch-chain, to the ladies, and confiding to them his plan for returning to marry and fetch her out as soon as he had got his northern shearing over. The ladies thought it was so very funny of him; any other man, they said, would have kept such a thing as dark as possible, under the circ.u.mstances. But Anthony Churchill, who had always made a friend of Danesbury, had never liked him so well as he liked him now.

"Come up to my place and dine with me to-night," he said to him, as the party were dispersing in the yard of the railway station; "and let's have a quiet pipe and a little peace, after all this racket."

"All right," said Mr. Danesbury, "I'm on."

They spoke in low tones, like a couple of conspirators.

"Mr. Churchill! Mr. Churchill!" called Lady Louisa from a Government House carriage, to which a callow aide had escorted her. "What have I done that I should be neglected in this manner? Are you not even going to say good-bye to me?"

Anthony advanced with his man-of-the-world courtliness, and pressed her outstretched hand. "No," he said, "I never mean to say good-bye to you--until I am obliged."

"_Au revoir_, then," she laughed. "You will come and see me soon?"

He bowed as to a queen, while the young A.D.C., whose enchantress she was at the moment, notwithstanding the fact that she was almost old enough to be his mother, glared ferociously.

"These conceited colonials!" he muttered to himself; "these trading cads, putting on the airs of gentlemen! What presumption of the fellow to speak in that tone to HER!"

"Tony," cried Maude, from the midst of her bags and bundles, which her maid was counting into the hands of a cabman, "you will see me safe home, Tony?"

"Well, really, Maude, I don't see how you can help getting home safely, with your own husband to take care of you," Tony replied, a little irritably (his father, delighted to get his young wife back again, was calling her carriage up). "You don't want me now."

"Tony, you know I _always_ want you. And you _might_ come just for a cup of tea and to see the children. They'll be expecting you."

"I'll see them on Sunday. I must go home and get washed and decent."

"As if you couldn't get washed in our house, where you've got your own rooms, and dozens of suits of clothes lying in your drawers!"

"Oh, I know; but you must excuse me now, really. There'll be letters and all sorts of things at my chambers, waiting for me, and I telegraphed to Jarvis to have my dinner ready."

He detached himself from her clutches, and, when her carriage drove off, called up his hansom and flung himself into it with a sigh of relief.

"Thank G.o.d, that's over!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, drawing his cigar-case from his pocket. "What fools women are! The more I see of them, the more sick of them I get."

It was great luxury to find himself in his own bachelor home, where the priceless Jarvis had everything in order and ready for him, and where he was his own man, as he could never be elsewhere. He had an iced drink, and read his letters, and glanced at half a dozen newspapers, lolling bare-armed upon a sofa, with a pipe in his mouth and slippered feet in the air; and then he had a bath and elaborately dressed himself, putting a silk coat over his diamond-studded shirt; and Jarvis set the dainty dinner-table, and Danesbury arrived.

"Come in, old fellow!" shouted the emanc.i.p.ated one, hearing his friend in the hall. "Now we'll enjoy ourselves! Take off that black coat--no ladies to consider now; we may as well be cool and comfortable when we do get the chance. Dinner ready, Jarvis? All's vanity and vexation of spirit, old man, except one's dinner. Thank G.o.d, we've still got that to fall back upon!"

"We've got something more than that to fall back upon, let us hope,"

said Mr. Danesbury, smiling. "At any rate, I have."

"Oh, _you_! You've got Miss Lennox to fall back on, of course. But we are not all so lucky."

"What's happened to you, that you should cla.s.s yourself with the unlucky ones? But I know; Lady Louisa hasn't appreciated you. I can quite understand that you feel bad about it, being so little accustomed to such treatment."

"Hang Lady Louisa! A battered old campaigner, with no more heart or brains than a Dutch doll! I should be sorry to feel bad over a woman of that sort."

"What then?"

"Lord knows. A troubled conscience, perhaps, for having wasted so much valuable time. Dinner, as I said before, will restore me. Sit down."