"_Stanor Vaughan, Secondary Hero_, a beauteous youth of fair estate.

Stanor being ardently in love with himself, does not return her pa.s.sion. He treats her with sisterly affection. Patricia hides her chagrin beneath a mask of gaiety.

"How's that for a start, Honey? Pretty thrilling, eh? Don't be anxious about the mask! It's so life-like that it deceives even myself into believing that it's the genuine article, but when dramatic happenings are around, it isn't Pixie O'Shaughnessy who will stand aside and take no part!

"On Wednesday we went for a picnic. It was meant to be a picnic _de luxe_, but fate was kind to us, and it turned out very alfresco indeed.

We started in the big car, Geoffrey driving, and all sorts of good things piled up in hampers, and at an appointed place the chauffeur met us and took possession, while we walked on through the woods. Such woods, Bridgie; all sweet, and dim, and green, the trunks of the great old beeches standing up straight and tall like the pillars of a great cathedral, and sweet, innocent little primroses peeping up through the moss, and last year's leaves crackling under foot. Those primroses went straight to my head; I felt quite fey.

"Strictly, between me and your sisterly ear, I was _very amusing indeed_, and they all appreciated me very much! And we laughed and talked, and finally began to sing.

"'You have a quite too beautiful voice, Miss O'Shaughnessy. Won't you sing to us in the drawing-room to-night?'

"'How sweet of you! Really, I shall be _too_ charmed!' (This is the orthodox fashionable manner of speaking. Let us be fashionable or die!)

"We sang glees. Esmeralda and I took contralto; there was practically no treble, for Honor's squeak was drowned fathoms deep; Geoffrey and Mr Carr droned ba.s.s, and Stanor Vaughan took tenor, rather out of tune it's true, but no man with that profile could be expected to condescend to _ba.s.s_! We sang 'Come and _see_ the daylight dawning, on the meadow far away,' and Mr Carr said he must really make a point of going some day, and we've planned an early walk for next week, if any one can wake up in time. We roared 'All among the barley,' until the primroses looked quite abashed, and turned into 'Good-night, good-night beloved,' to soothe them down again, and we grew so intimate and festive, and they all said, 'What next, Miss O'Shaughnessy, what next?' Really, my dear, I was a _succes fou_.

"But more is yet to come. It was so lovely and we were enjoying ourselves so much, that we dallied about, and took extra little detours, so that it was nearly two o'clock when we arrived at the appointed spot, and imagine, my dear, our thwarted hunger and thirst, when not a vestige of a car could we behold! It was no use _waiting_, because if all had gone right it should have been waiting for us for an hour at least. So we held a council of war at the side of the road.

"_Esmeralda_. 'I shall give Dawson notice _At Once_! He has made some stupid mistake, and gone to the wrong place. I've no patience with blunderers.' (She hasn't.)

"_Geoffrey_. 'Something may have gone wrong with the car. Don't blame the poor fellow till you are sure he deserves it.'

"_Stanor_. 'I don't care one rap about Dawson. I want my lunch!

_With_ the luxuries! What price expectation _now_, Miss O'Shaughnessy?'

"_Honor_. 'I'm sorry to be disagreeable, but I've a blister on my heel. If it's a case of walking back, I must bid you all a fond adieu and take to a forest life.'

"_Robert Carr_. 'What can you expect if you start out on a country walk in ball-room slippers?'

"Honor said: 'They aren't, and, anyway, I don't expect sympathy from _you_,' and _I_ said: 'Isn't there an opening into the road a little nearer the village where the car may be waiting all the time?'

"'Mrs d.i.c.k,' quoted Geoffrey,--'your common sense is invaluable!' and off he started in advance while we all trailed in the rear, along the dusty high-road this time, and not by any means in a singing mood.

Esmeralda stalked, and Honor limped. She hadn't done it a bit before, so it came on rather suddenly, and Stanor offered her his arm, and she hung upon it, and Mr Carr talked politics to me, and I tried to quote d.i.c.k's remarks and appear intelligent, but it didn't come off.

"It was a mile, and more. It seemed like three, and when we arrived at the opening the car was not there. We sat down against the dusty hedgerow and gave way to despair. Here we were stranded five weary miles from our base, i.e. the hampers, and what were we going to do?

Every one had a different suggestion, but the object of them all was the same--_get something to eat_. It's humiliating how greedy people become when they are defrauded of a meal! Dawson and the car were forgotten, everything was forgotten, and when I said that doctors were agreed that we ate too much, and an occasional starve was the most healthy thing that could happen, they looked coldly on me, and Stanor said doctors might keep their theories, but give him _foie gras_! Finally we agreed to be scouts and go forth on a foraging expedition through the tiny village, seeking what we might devour. Geoffrey was the scout-master, and we were to meet him at the second lamp-post and report.

"There were half a dozen cottages, one shop, and a yard where they sold coal and fresh eggs. So that meant a cottage each, and the stores thrown in. Our orders were to knock on each door and stand close so as to have a good view of the interior when it was opened. If it was a dirty interior we were to dissemble, and ask the way; if it was clean, we were to say, 'Oh, if you please, we are stranded motorists, and do you supply plain teas?' In case of _two_ being clean, the choice was to be left with the scout-master, who would decide between them with tact and discretion.

"Bridgie, it _was_ sport! They were _all_ clean, and they _all_ supplied plain teas, but the astounding part was that no one could supply milk! (Esmeralda says she has never yet raided an English cottage where they _could_.) And they all offered the same bill of fare--tea with tinned milk, eggs, and spring onions! We chose the biggest and airiest cottage, ordered eggs, looked haughtily at onions, adjourned to the village store and tried to discover some accessories among the rope, firewood, and linoleum. There was tinned salmon, but Esmeralda said she objected to us dying on her hands, and loaf sugar, and treacle, and bull's-eyes in a gla.s.s bottle, and gingerbread biscuits (but the snap had departed, and they were so soft that you could have rolled them in b.a.l.l.s), and some _very_ strong-looking cheese, and rows of dried herrings packed in a box.

"It was Hobson's choice, so we bought a herring apiece, and insisted on having each one wrapped up in paper, and carrying it across the road in our own separate hands, and _I_ bought a pound of bull's-eyes. They are such encouraging things on a long walk!

"It was a _delicious_ tea. The milk was rather greasy and hard to mix, but if you didn't think about it, it tasted almost as good as real, the eggs were fresh, and the herrings so good that Stanor ran across the road for more, and we made time with bread and b.u.t.ter until they were cooked. And we gave not a thought to the motor; it was only when the sixth plate of bread and b.u.t.ter had been eaten to a crumb that we remembered the miles between us and the nearest station. Five or six it was, nothing to trouble ordinary people, even if they would have preferred a comfortable car, but there was Honor! She had slipped off her shoe under the table, and when she tried to put it on again it hurt so badly that she could hardly hobble across the room, and there was not a vehicle within miles.

"We all fussed and wondered what could be done, except Mr Carr, who strolled calmly out of the house without a word, lighting a cigarette as he went, and after that Honor's foot got so suddenly worse that the tears came to her eyes. Five minutes later when we were still fussing and settling nothing, back he came, and in his hands, what do you think?--you'd never guess--a pair of men's carpet slippers! I remember in a dim, sub-conscious fashion having seen them hanging up in drab and crimson bunches from the ceiling of the shop, but it had never occurred to me that they were to _wear_!"

"'You can walk in these!' said Mr Carr coolly, and without waiting to hear Honor's reply, he went down on his knees, and began unb.u.t.toning her shoe. She has the daintiest mite of a foot you ever saw--it looked like a doll's in his big, strong hand--but she wasn't a bit grateful. There was a look on her face which sent all the others crowding to the door, but she glared at me to stay, and, being curious, I obeyed.

"'Mr Carr,' says she,--'this is too much! It is usual in my country for a man to ask a girl what she wants, before he takes it upon himself to dictate!'

"He went on unfastening the shoe.

"Occasionally one meets people who don't know what they _do_ want!

"'Well, I reckon I _do_. And it don't happen to be carpet slippers.

I'd look a guy. What are you taking off that shoe for anyway? That foot's all right!'

"'It wouldn't be right long. One flat shoe and one French heel make a poor pair. You are going to wear both.'

"'They're miles too large. They'd fall off on the road.'

"'Oh, no they won't. I'll take care of that,' he said coolly, and took from his pocket two strong black bootlaces which he proceeded to criss-cross over the instep and round the ankles. She sat quite still watching him, her eyes very bright, her hands twisted together on her lap. When he had finished she put out her feet and stared at them--they _did_ look boats!--then she looked down at him. He was still kneeling, and there was not a sound to be heard in that kitchen but the tick of the old clock and the beat, beat, beat of Pixie O'Shaughnessy's heart.

"'Don't you care,' said she softly, 'a mite _how_--I--look?'

"'Not a mite,' says he coolly. 'I care how you _feel_!'

"There was a look in his eyes which was not carpet slippers, far from it, and Honor leaped up and swept to the door with what was intended to be a haughty 'sweep,' but the slippers pad-padded at each step in a sort of shuffle, which was the unhaughtiest thing you could possibly imagine.

Then Mr Carr gathered up the two tiny brown shoes and dusted them carefully with his handkerchief, and slipped one into each pocket of his Norfolk coat. Honor never bothered about her shoes: I suppose you don't when you own factories, but Mr Carr walked all the way with his hands in his pockets as if he had got something there that he liked to hold.

"The children of the village followed us as we went, and called out, 'Hi, look at her feet! Hi, Miss, is there room for me in them slippers?' as of course they would, bless them! And I will say for her she took it smiling.

"Two miles along the road the car met us, poor Dawson apoplectic with distress and confusion. The engine had gone wrong, and he had had a terrible time getting it put right, and was distracted because he could find no way of sending on the hampers. We tumbled in and whirled home in peace and safety, but some of us were glad it had not come before.

"Don't you wonder how I've accomplished this mammoth letter? There are so many times a day in this house when one has to dress in something different, to do the next thing on the programme, and experience has proved that I change in about a quarter the time taken by the others, so down I sit and fill up the wait by scribbling a page or two more, and I hope, my dear, the result will amuse you.

"I wear my best clothes all day long, eat indigestible food, go to bed late, get up later, and have Esmeralda's maid to do my hair. You'd think it would need an effort to change into a fine lady all at once, but it doesn't; you just slip in, and feel like a sleek, stroked cat.

My dear, I was born to be a Society Belle!

"Pixie."

CHAPTER NINE.

A RIFT.

"Let me break it to you tenderly," said Mrs Hilliard to her guests at breakfast on the morning after the picnic, "that on Thursday there is a bazaar, and that it's no use any of you making plans for that day or the morning before. The real reason why I invited you all just at this particular time is that you might a.s.sist, and be bright and pleasant and make my stall a success."

She smiled beguilingly as she spoke, and no one could be more beguiling than Joan when it suited her own purpose. But her blandishments failed to propitiate her hearers, who one and all laid down knives and forks and fell back in their seats in att.i.tudes expressive of dismay.

"A bazaar. _a.s.sist_? What bazaar? Where? What for? This is too sudden! Why were we not warned?"

Joan twinkled mischievously.

"I was afraid you would run away. People are so surly about bazaars.

It's in the village; for a parish nurse. She's new, and needs a cottage and furniture, and clothes and salary, and the money has to be found. I wanted Geoffrey to give it right out, it's so much simpler, but he wouldn't. He thought it was right that other people should help."

Geoffrey Hilliard said nothing. It was true that he thought it a wrong att.i.tude for a whole parish to depend upon the gifts of one rich man, but an even stronger reason had been his desire to induce his wife to take some active interest in her poorer neighbours and to occupy herself on their behalf. When Joan had unwillingly consented to take the princ.i.p.al stall at the bazaar, he had complacently expected a succession of committee meetings and sewing-bees, which would make a wholesome interest in a life spent too entirely in self-gratification; but the weeks had pa.s.sed by, and the bazaar was at hand, and so far he had observed no symptoms of work on its behalf.