"I did whip her rather hard," confessed Mrs. Gibbs half-apologetically.

"I was real vexed with her when I found her with her fingers in the jar!

But there, she's been wanting a smacking long enough, and I expect it'll do her good," she finished up cheerfully.

"Poor Lu! And she'd been so looking forward to to-night!" Toni's soft heart was wrung for the culprit. "Did she have any tea, Auntie?"

"Not she. I sent her straight off to bed." Mrs. Gibbs' tone was uneasy now. "And she didn't eat no dinner to-day, she was that excited!"

"Oh, poor Lu! Can't I take her up something, Aunt Jean?"

Mrs. Gibbs appeared to consider the question, though everyone at the table knew very well that her mother-heart had relented towards her darling long ago.

"Well, I don't mind if you do take her just a bite," she said presently; and amid much laughter and sympathetic joking a tray was fitted out with various delicacies and entrusted to the willing hands of Antonia.

Up she went, finding Lu's room in darkness, Lu herself lying sullenly awake, refusing to be comforted.

Her plump little person had strongly resented the force of her mother's stern hand; but her vanity was more severely hurt by the fact that the visitors downstairs would know both the cause and the method of her punishment. Therefore she turned away and pretended to be asleep; but Toni's gentle hand pulling down the clothes, Toni's soft voice murmuring of forgiveness and compensation were too much for the child.

She sat up, disclosing the tear-stains on her round cheeks in the light of the candle Toni carried, and allowed herself to be comforted with alternate bites of chicken and sips of lemonade.

"That's better!" Toni gave her a plate of trifle, and brushed back the tangled curls from the hot little forehead. "Now eat that up and then I must run away. They're waiting for me, you know, so when you've finished you must give me a kiss and go straight to sleep."

"Yes, Toni." Lu lay obediently down, soothed by the girl's kind tone.

"I'll go to sleep all right if ... if Ma'll come up and say good-night!"

"Of course she will!" Toni smiled at the child's involuntary clinging to the mother who had punished her. "I'll tell her you're waiting--and now I must fly! Good-night, Ducky, sleep well!"

She kissed the child, her eyes very soft as she bent over the bed; and then, picking up the tray, she ran swiftly downstairs again and re-entered the room where tea was rapidly drawing to an end.

"How kind-hearted you are, Miss Toni," said Mr. Dowson admiringly as she slipped into her seat beside him. "Lots of people would have said the kiddy deserved to be whipped and sent to bed."

"I daresay she did, but that didn't make it any better--for her,"

laughed Toni, with a vivid remembrance of her aunt's corrective powers.

"I know what Auntie's whippings are like, you see, and they're no joke!"

"You don't mean to say Mrs. Gibbs ever dared to ... to punish you, Miss Antonia?" His pale-blue eyes were aghast at the thought of such sacrilege.

"Oh, rather!" Toni laughed joyously at his face of horror. "She's whipped me heaps, of times.... I expect I deserved it, too, for I can a.s.sure you I was never a pattern child!"

"I ... I would like to see anyone venture to lay a hand on you," said Mr. Dowson earnestly--too earnestly for Toni's liking. "Miss Antonia, if you ... if you would only give me the right ..."

Bang! An hilariously-disposed little Gibbs had exploded a cracker in the young man's ear; and Mr. Dowson, blushing to the very edge of his extremely high collar, subsided rather wrathfully.

Much to Antonia's relief the party rose from the table a moment later; and with a stern determination in her mind not to allow Mr. Dowson another opportunity to make the avowal which she knew very well trembled on his lips, Toni bustled gaily about, helping to clear the table and make things ready for the evening's festivity.

Mr. Dowson's pale eyes followed her about rather wistfully. To him the white-clad, black-crowned little figure represented a dream--the fulfilment, rather, of an ideal which he had never dared to hope would materialize in his own hard-working, rather grey and sordid life.

Although, thanks to a kindly patron, Leonard Dowson had been able to carry out his desire and qualify as a dentist, he was under no delusion as to his social position. He came of humble, illiterate folk, and he knew well enough that in a fashionable, high-cla.s.s practice he would be altogether out of place.

He set up his surgery, therefore, in the populous neighbourhood of Brixton; and now, after five years' strenuous toil, he was beginning to pay his way, beginning also to dream of a wife to bear him company in the dingy, narrow house in which he dwelt.

That Antonia Gibbs would ever consent to be his wife he almost feared to believe. He wooed her persistently, quietly, bringing her books--which she seldom opened--an occasional bunch of flowers, or, more rarely still, a box of sweets of some variety which his professional soul warranted harmless, for Mr. Dowson was conscientiousness itself, and nothing would have persuaded him to place his lady-love's little white teeth in jeopardy, even though by such means she might be brought into contact with him.

For her sake he sc.r.a.ped and saved, denying himself the least luxury, so that if she came to him he could at least offer her a decent home; and every act of petty self-sacrifice was sweet to him because it was endured for her.

Yet Toni never gave him a second thought. To her, in her vivid youth, Mr. Dowson, with his thirty-five years, his prematurely bald head, his narrow chest, was a being of another race than her own. She knew--the minx--that the man was deeply and quietly in love with her, but with the unconscious cruelty of youth she ignored his suffering, and possibly despised him ever so little that he continued to sigh for something which he ought to have known was, for him, unattainable.

Yet to-night, her spirits raised by her unexpected good-fortune, Toni showed herself more than usually bewitching; and although she managed to stave off the declaration which still trembled on the young man's lips, she played games with him in the most friendly fashion, and bade him good-night at last with so sweet a smile that he almost fell upon his knees then and there and kissed the slim little feet in their cheap patent shoes!

He did not do it, fortunately. He retained just sufficient common sense to know that the proceeding would have annoyed his divinity; and instead he merely squeezed her hand and murmured a few inarticulate words which meant a good deal more than they contrived to convey.

Then, arriving at home, he went to bed--and dreamed of Toni.

But Toni's dreams--the rainbow dreams of happy youth--were of a very different quality.

CHAPTER V

Precisely at nine o'clock on the following morning Antonia presented herself at the office of the new review; and was forthwith conducted to the editor's room.

Here Owen and Barry were waiting for her; and at the sight of the trim little figure in the doorway the faces of both men brightened.

In truth Toni was pleasant to look upon. She had taken off her hat and coat in the little ante-room, and as she stood there in her black frock, with its demure little white turn-down collar, she looked very young, very shy, and if the truth must be told, very pretty. Whereupon Barry, who loved all pretty girls in a harmless, kindly fashion, rejoiced exceedingly; while even Owen, to whom things feminine were at present anathema, owned to himself that she was certainly more attractive to have about the place than her sour-faced predecessor.

It was Barry who put her at her ease, of course. Not being troubled with shyness he greeted her in friendly fashion, bade her come in, and pointed out to her the chair, behind the typewriter, which she was expected to fill.

Yes, she said, in answer to questioning, she was used to a Remington.

No, she had never been connected with journalism before. Yes, she was well up in ordinary office work, and--in answer to Owen, this--she knew pretty well the rules of composition, grammar, etc.

"That's good." Owen spoke formally, and Toni decided instantly that she liked Mr. Raymond the better of the two. "Well, I have here an article I want you to type at once, and then--can you read proof?"

Blushing, she owned her inability to do so. Privately, she was not at all sure what he meant, but dread of Miss Hardy's wrath should she be returned to the office marked "Incompetent" forced her to add quickly:--

"But I'm sure I could learn if--if you wouldn't mind showing me how to do it."

"I'm sure you could." Barry spoke kindly and she turned to him with a feeling of relief. "When you have typed that article for Mr. Rose I'll show you how, and then you'll manage all right."

"Teach her now," advised Rose, looking up from the ma.n.u.script he was scanning. "This stuff wants a bit of revising, and you might as well do something for your living, Barry, you lazy wretch."

Barry smilingly disclaimed any right to the t.i.tle.

"I'm ready to work as hard as anyone," he said gaily.

"But as I'm only considered fit to do the theatrical criticisms and play office-boy to you, Owen, naturally I find time to make holiday now and then. Well, Miss ... er ..."

"Gibbs." She supplied him with the name as he hesitated.