"He had to," she said. "I borrowed ten pounds of him. I couldn't have gone to Claridge's without money, you know."

"Why Claridge's?"

"It's the only hotel that I know. And I had to have his name and address to send it back."

"May I send it back this afternoon?" Edward asked.

"Yes--"

"And you take back all you said in the letter? You don't mean it?"

"Not if you didn't want me to."

"And it wasn't really only because you thought I... ."

"Of course. At least... ."

"Well, then," said Mr. Basingstoke, happily, "it never happened. I fetched you as we arranged. We go on as we arranged. And Mr. Schultz is only a bad dream to which I owe ten pounds."

"And you're not angry? Then will you lend me some money to buy a hat, and then we will go straight on to London."

"Yes," said Edward, controlling Charles, who had just seen the peaches and thought they looked like something to eat. "But--if you won't think me a selfish brute I should like to say just one thing."

"Yes--" She wrinkled her brows apprehensively.

"Neither Charles nor I have had any luncheon. Would you very much mind if we--"

"Oh, how hateful of me not to remember!" she said. "Let me come and talk to you and feed Charles. What a darling he is! And you do forgive me, and you do understand? And we're friends again, just as we were before?"

"Yes. Just as we were."

"It's curious," she said, as they went back through the red and green and blue and yellow of the garden, "that I feel as though I knew you ever so much better, now we've quarreled."

Mr. Schultz had, it appeared, after all, paid for the two luncheons.

Edward sent him two ten-pound notes and the sovereign, "with compliments and thanks."

"And that's the end of poor Mr. Schultz," she said, gaily, and, as it proved, with complete inaccuracy.

VIII

THE ROAD TO ----

THE drive to London was a silent one. Mr. Basingstoke did not want to talk; he had come on one of those s.p.a.ces where the emotions sleep, exhausted. He felt nothing any more, neither anxiety as to the future nor pleasure at the nearness of the furry heap beside him under which, presently, his companion slumbered peacefully as a babe in its cot. His mind was blank, his heart was numbed; it was not till the car reached the houses spilled over the pretty fields like ugly toys emptied out of the play-box of a giant child, that mind or heart made any movement.

Then it happened that the breeze caught the edge of the fur and lifted it, and he saw her little face softly flushed with sleep, lying very near him, and his heart seemed all at once to come to life again with an awakening stab of something that was not affection or even pa.s.sion, but a kind of protective exultation--a deep, keen longing to take care of, to guard, to infold safely from all possible dangers and sorrows her who slept so happy-helpless beside him. Then his mind awoke, too, and he found himself wondering. The Schultz episode, his suspicions, resentment--the explication--all this should, one would have thought, have brushed, like a rough hand, the bloom from the adventure. And, instead of taking anything away, it had, even as she had said, added a soft touch of intimacy to their friendship. Further, he now in his heart had the memory that, for an instant, his thoughts had wronged her, that he had suspected her of wavering, almost of light-mindedness, though his thought had taken no such definite lines even to itself in its secret heart--and all the time there had only been thought for him, sincere, delicate consideration, and, in the matter of that man's accepted help, the trust of a child, and that innocence of Una before which even lions like Schultz become shy and safe. Imagine a subject who has suspected his princess of being, perhaps, not a princess at all, but one masquerading in the robes and crown of a princess ... when he shall find her to be indeed royal, to what an ecstasy of loyalty will not his heart attain? So it was now with Mr. Basingstoke. He caught the corner of the fur and reverently covered the face of his princess.

And now the houses were thick and the shops began to score the streets with lines of color. He stopped at one of those big shops where they sell everything, and she awoke and said, "Are we there?"

"I thought," said he, "that you said something about a hat."

"Here?" she said, looking at the shop with strong distaste.

"Better here than really in London, I thought. And you'll want other things. And do you mind buying a box or a portmanteau or something?

Because hotels like you to have luggage."

"I've been thinking--" she said, but he interrupted her.

"Forgive me," he said, "but even you cannot think your best thoughts when you're asleep."

Then she laughed. "Well, you must give me the money," she said, holding out a bare, unashamed hand, "because I haven't any."

He composed himself to wait, and he waited a long time, a very, very long time. He cheered the waiting by the thought that she could not, after all, have found the shop so unsuitable as it had, at the first glance, seemed. He watched the doorway, and his eye became weary of the useless snippets of lace and silk at something eleven-three with which the windows at each side of the door were plastered. He noticed the people who went in, and the many more who waited outside and longed for these absurd decorations--longed with that pa.s.sion which, almost alone of the pa.s.sions, a girl may display to the utmost immoderation without fear of censure or of shame. He observed the longing in the eyes of little, half-developed, half-grown girls for this or that bit of worthless frippery; he would have liked to call to them and say, "My dear children, do go in and buy yourself each a fairing, and let me pay." But he knew that so straightforward and simple a kindness would draw on him and on the children shame and censure almost immeasurable.

So he just sat and was sorry for them, till he saw two of them t.i.tter together and look at him.

Then he got out of the car and went into the shop--they sold toys there as well as everything else--to buy something himself. He could not find exactly what he wanted--in shops crowded with glittering uselessnesses it is rarely that you can find the particular uselessness on which you have set your heart--but Tommy of the Five Bells had no fault to find with the big, brown-papered parcel which reached him by the next day's afternoon post. He could not imagine any soldiers more perfectly satisfying than these, no bricks more solid and square, no drafts more neatly turned, no dominoes more smoothly finished. To Mr. Basingstoke's old nurse the world seemed to hold nothing fairer than the lace collar and the violet-silk necktie. "Do me for Sundays for years," she said, putting them back in their tissue-paper and turning her attention to the box of sweets and the stockings for the children. The girl who sold Mr.

Basingstoke the lace collar sn.i.g.g.e.red apart with a kindred sn.i.g.g.e.rer as she sold it to him, and delayed to make out his bill, but the other girl, almost a child, with a black bow tying her hair, sold him the stockings and was sympathetic and helpful.

"How many stockings ought a child to have, so as to have plenty?" he asked her, confidentially. At the lace-counter he had made his own choice, in stern silence.

"Three pairs," said the girl; "that's one in wear, one in the wash, and one in case of accidents." She glanced through the gla.s.s door at the motor, and decided that he could afford it. "But, of course, four would be better."

"I should think six would be best," said he, "that's one for each day in the week, and on Sat.u.r.day they can stay in bed while their mother does the washing."

"You don't wash on Sat.u.r.days," said the girl, her little, plain face lighting up with a smile. She saw the eye of the shop-walker on her and added, nervously, "Shall we say six, then, sir; and what size? I mean what aged child? About what price?"

"Three to eleven," said he.

"They're one and eleven-three," said she.

"I mean the children, not the stockings--there are five of them--what's five sixes?"

"Thirty," the girl told him, with a glance at the shop-walker that was almost defiant in its triumph.

"That's it, then," said he, "and sort out the sizes properly, please, will you? Three six, two sevens, ten and eleven. And put in some garters--children's stockings are always coming down, you know--"

The girl had not before sold garters to insane but agreeable gentlemen.

She hesitated and said in a low voice, "I don't think garters, sir.

Suspenders are more worn now--"

"Well, suspenders then. The means doesn't matter--it's the keeping up that's the important thing." He laid a five-pound note on the counter, just as the shop-walker came up to her with a slightly insolent, "Serving, Miss Moore?"

"Sign, sir," said Miss Moore, defending herself from his displeasure with the bill. "Anything more, sir?"

"I want some sweets," said Edward, and was directed to "the third shop on the left, through there."