Tears were not at all to Pollyooly's liking. She considered them the sign of a feeble heart and softening brain. The Honourable John Ruffin had thrown quite a new light on them in suggesting that they could be used as a weapon; and she considered this use of them most of the way to Ricksborough House.
She reached it soon after half-past two. She found its gloomy nineteenth-century facade, black with the smuts of ninety years, a little daunting, and mounted its broad steps in some trepidation. But she rang the bell hard and knocked firmly.
Lucas, the butler of the duke, himself opened the door. At the sight of Pollyooly he started back; for the moment he thought that his lost young mistress stood before him.
Pollyooly stepped across the threshold, and said firmly:
"I want to see the Duke of Osterley, please."
The words showed Lucas his mistake; he perceived that before him stood not his mistress, but that young red Deeping who had once made a manifestly genuine offer to bite him; and he hesitated.
"It's very important. Please tell him that Miss Bride wants to see him," said Pollyooly.
"Um—er—come this way, miss. I'll see if his grace will see you," said Lucas in a doubtful voice.
He would have liked to refuse to let her into the house; but he was doubtful about her social standing. Therefore he took her to the nearest drawing-room, said that he would inform his grace, and betook himself to his master in the smoking-room, wearing a perturbed air, for the duke had as complete a vocabulary as any nobleman in England, and he might easily take it ill that this formidable red Deeping had not been refused admission to his house.
"If you please, your Grace, there's a young lady—leastways a little girl of the name of Bride—wants to see your Grace," said Lucas. "It's the little girl you brought home as turned out not to be Lady Marion."
"What the deuce did you let her in for?" said the duke on the instant; and he frowned at him.
"She said it was very important, your Grace," said Lucas in an unhappy tone.
The duke continued to frown, considering: Pollyooly might have brought word of his missing daughter; and he would by no means let slip an opportunity of getting information about her. On the other hand he might be about to be called upon to pay more for his kidnapping exploit. He had, however, just lunched ducally; and he was in a vainglorious mood, ready to face anything female.
At last he said bitterly:
"I seem to have every jackass in London in my service. Bring her here."
Lucas gloomily announced the readiness of the duke to receive her to Pollyooly. She followed him eagerly and came into the smoking-room with a brave air, though she was not feeling as brave as she looked. The duke stood on the hearthrug and glowered at her.
She did not hesitate; she gazed at his unamiable face with limpid eyes and said tranquilly:
"How do you do, your Grace?"
The duke grunted; then grew articulate, and said:
"What do you want?"
Pollyooly sat down deliberately in one of the big easy chairs facing him, and answered:
"If you please, your Grace, I came to see you about an orphan."
"An orphan?" said the duke a little less grumpily. He was somewhat impressed by the angel face of his visitor. During her last, compulsory visit it had been so much more red Deeping than angel. Also her costume so amber and so expensive impressed him.
"Yes: her name is Millicent Saunders; and they wanted to send her to the workhouse because her mother died who used to dance at the Varolium in the second row, but of course I couldn't let them do that, could I?" said Pollyooly in an explanatory tone.
"I don't know. What's it got to do with me?" said the duke quickly.
"Millicent is one of those orphans who wouldn't be much good working for herself, though of course she'd work hard and be very willing," said Pollyooly speaking very clearly in the explanatory tone, and looking at him with very earnest eyes.
"Then she'd better go to the workhouse. She'll have an idle enough time there," said the duke who was staunchly conservative in feeling.
"But she can't go to the workhouse," said Pollyooly in a deeply shocked tone.
"Why not?" said the duke.
Pollyooly looked at him very sternly, and said in a very stern voice:
"Her mother was a very respectable woman; she was in the second row of the Varolium ballet for years and years; and she always kept Millie very respectable. Besides, you can't let people go to the workhouse."
"Why can't you, if it's the proper place for them?" said the duke stubbornly, for he hated to hear the workhouse in any way disparaged, since he regarded it as a bulwark of society.
"How would you like your little girl to go to the workhouse?" said Pollyooly in a deeply reproachful tone.
"It's a prospect we needn't consider," said the duke haughtily.
"We never know what we may come to," said Pollyooly with a happy remembrance of the pious wisdom of her Aunt Hannah. "But Millie isn't going into the workhouse anyhow. I'm not going to let her. But she ought to go to a home and be trained to marry an empire-builder. She's that kind of orphan: Mr. Ruf—a gentleman says that she is. And I came to ask you if you'd give her a nomination so that she could go into the Bellingham Home. They'll do anything you tell them there; and if you said so, they'd take her in at once. And she'd be ever so much obliged to you. She'd never forget it—never. And so should I."
She was leaning forward with clasped hands and shining, imploring eyes. The duke was not insensible to the charm of her beauty, or to the appeal of her pleading voice. He was even more sensible to the tribute she had paid to his power in the matter of the Bellingham Home. But he was in a captious mood; and he did not wish to oblige her. His mind was chiefly full of the fact that he had made himself look foolish by kidnapping her and had had to pay her six pounds compensation. He was still sore about the foolishness and also about the money, for his was a thrifty soul.
But Pollyooly's angel face made a direct refusal difficult. He coughed and said:
"I—er—don't—er—do things in this—er—irregular way. My—er—nominations are—er—only given after I have been approached in the proper way and received testimonials and—er—sifted them out so as to nominate the most deserving orphan among the many applicants for admission."
"There couldn't be a more deserving orphan than Millie," said Pollyooly quickly.
"That remains to be proved. There are often fifty or sixty applicants. And besides, this isn't the time of year when vacancies in the home are filled up," said the duke, hardening himself in his resistance, now that he could throw the odium of it on to the machinery of the home.
Pollyooly's face had fallen, for her instinct told her that he did not intend to grant her petition, and was only making excuses. She said slowly:
"But that wouldn't matter, because if you told them to take in Millie at any time of the year they'd do it."
"But the applications have to be written, setting forth the applicant's claims in the proper way," said the duke, falling yet more firmly back behind the safe barrier of red tape. "The matter has to receive careful consideration."
Pollyooly frowned thoughtfully: "Well, I could write. There are people who would tell me what to write," she said in the sad tone of one confronted with an uncongenial task. "Then you could consider Millie carefully. I'm sure you couldn't find an orphan who's more—more of an orphan than Millie."
"I'm afraid it wouldn't be any use—not at this time of year," said the duke almost cheerfully, as he saw that in an irreproachable fashion he was getting his own disobliging way.
Pollyooly filled with the bitter sense of defeat. She heaved a deep sigh and was on the point of rising to go, when the last adjuration of the Honourable John Ruffin flashed into her mind, and on the instant she grew eager to try the new weapon he had suggested. She looked at the duke with a calculating eye. Nature, thinking probably that if was enough for a man to be a duke, had not been lavish of beauty to him: his somewhat small features were often set in an unamiable expression, and with the faint light of evil satisfaction at baulking Pollyooly now on them, they looked more unamiable than usual. He did not indeed seem to be a man to be easily softened. But the matter was far too important for her to lose the only chance left.
Very deliberately she drew her handkerchief from her pocket, blinked her eyes hard to make them water, hid them under the handkerchief, sniffed once but loudly, and then sobbed.
"It's very—hard—on Millie—she'll be—dreadfully—disappointed!"
A sudden consternation smote the duke. He had looked to make himself completely disagreeable at his ease, certainly without any such assault on his feelings as this. He shuffled his feet and said hurriedly:
"It's no good crying about it. It can't be helped, you know."
Pollyooly's quick ear caught the change in his tone. She sobbed more loudly:
"Oh, yes—it can—you could do it—if you wanted to!"
"These things have to be done in the proper way," protested the duke.
"It isn't that. You—you—don't like Millie!" sobbed Pollyooly, watching the weakening face of the perturbed nobleman with an intent eye over the top of her handkerchief. "You—you—hate her!"
"Why, I've never set eyes on her!" cried the duke.
"Oh, yes: you do—and it's—it's beastly," sobbed Pollyooly.
No duke likes to hear his conduct described as beastly by an angel child—especially when the description happens to be accurate—and the duke ground his teeth.
Pollyooly, watching him, sobbed on—louder.
The duke gazed at her in a dismal discomfort. He shuffled his feet till the shuffle was almost a dance. Then he said in a feebly soothing tone:
"There—there—that'll do."
Pollyooly's sobs grew yet louder—heartrending.
The duke took a hurried turn up and down the room.
Pollyooly, a huddled figure of desperate woe, sobbed on.
The duke grabbed at his scrubby little moustache and held on to it firmly. It was no real help.
He ground his teeth; he tugged at his moustache; and then in a tone of the last exasperation, he cried:
"Oh, hang it all! Stop that infernal howling; and I'll give you the nomination!"
Pollyooly softened her sobs a little; the duke flung himself down into the chair before the writing-table, at the other end of the room, and seized pen and paper.
"What's the brat's name?" he growled.
"Millicent—Saunders," sobbed Pollyooly.
The duke wrote the nomination, put it in an envelope, addressed it to the secretary of the Bellingham Home, licked the flap of the envelope with wolfish ferocity, and banged it fast.
He came hastily across the room with it to Pollyooly, held it out, and said with even greater ferocity:
"Here you are—and—and—much good may it do her!"
Pollyooly rose quickly and took it. She could hardly believe her shining eyes.
"Oh, thank you, your Grace! Millicent will be so glad!" she cried joyfully.
The duke growled in his throat; but in some way Pollyooly's radiant angel face blunted his ferocity. Also it robbed his surrender of its sting. He rang the bell; then opened the smoking-room door for her and bade her good day quite in the manner and tone of an English gentleman.
On the threshold, like the well-mannered child she was, she paused to thank him again. When she went out he shut the door quite gently; and by the time he had settled down again in his easy chair, he was feeling truly magnanimous.
The motor-bus which carried Pollyooly home crawled, to her impatient fancy, no faster than the old horse-bus, so eager was she to pour the news of her success into the ears of Millicent.
Millicent, however, after her first joy on hearing that the path which would ultimately lead her to the altar with an empire-builder was open to her, grew sad.
"It's a pity I couldn't stay on and on with you here," she said very plaintively. "I'm sure I shall never be so happy anywhere else."
"Oh, yes: you will," said Pollyooly firmly. "You'll find the home ever so nice."
Millicent shook her head doubtfully and said:
"And I shan't see anything of you and the Lump any more."
"Oh, yes: you will. You let us know when visiting day is—there's sure to be a visiting day to a home; and we'll come and see you."
Millicent's face grew a little brighter.
The Honourable John Ruffin congratulated Pollyooly warmly on her success; then he said:
"I trust you were not driven to use the weapon I suggested. Osterley's cantankerousness didn't go so far as that?"
"Oh, well, sir," said Pollyooly, hesitating a little—"I—I did have to pretend to cry."
The Honourable John Ruffin laughed gently.
"Poor Osterley!" he said.
The duke's letter plainly stirred the Bellingham Home to instant activity, for a letter came for Pollyooly by the first post to say that an official of the home would come for Millicent that very afternoon.
During the morning Millicent wept several times at the thought of leaving the Lump; and her final farewell was tearful indeed. But Pollyooly believed that her sadness would not last long: they had decided that the empire-builder would have fair hair and a large and flowing moustache.
After Millicent's departure their life settled down into its usual even tenour. Pollyooly missed her; and doubtless the Lump also missed his devoted and obedient slave, though he was of too placid a nature to raise an outcry about his loss. She wrote to Pollyooly on the day after her arrival at the home; and the letter made it clear that her first impressions of it were pleasing.
It was on the fifth morning after her going that the Honourable John Ruffin made the great announcement. It was his habit to chant in his bath what Pollyooly believed to be poetry; and it is improbable that an observant child of twelve, who had passed the seven standards at Muttle Deeping school, could have been mistaken in a matter of that kind. At any rate his chanting was rhythmical. The habit may have borne witness to the goodness of his conscience, or it may not (it may merely have been a by-product of an excellent digestion), but that morning it seemed to her that he chanted more loudly and with a finer gusto than usual.
She was not greatly surprised therefore, when she brought in his carefully grilled bacon, at his saying in a very cheerful tone:
"I have had a windfall, Mrs. Bride—a windfall of thirty-five pounds. It fell out of an auction-bridge tree—a game you do not understand—and it has made the heat-wave, which ought to be called the heat-flood, more unbearable than ever. Therefore I have resolved to go away for a while to the sea."
"Yes, sir," said Pollyooly in a tone of amiable congratulation.
But her face fell a little; for though the departure of the Honourable John Ruffin meant that she would have less work; it also meant that she would have to spend more on food for herself and her little brother the Lump, since the Honourable John Ruffin did not eat all his bread or drink all his milk; and there was often half a cake with which he refused to continue his afternoon tea on the ground that it was stale. Besides, life was a far more cheerful business when he was at home; his talk was Pollyooly's chief diversion, though she was hardly conscious of the fact; and it frequently gave her to think deeply.
"But the thing that has kept me so long in London submerged in the heat-flood has not been so much the want of money (I have had enough for my own escape) as the great bacon difficulty," he said and paused.
"Yes, sir," said Pollyooly.
"But, thanks to this windfall, I can get over that difficulty by taking you to the sea to grill my bacon for me, and the Lump to keep you occupied while you are not grilling it, that Satan may not find some mischief still for idle hands to do," he said sententiously.
Pollyooly's large blue eyes opened very wide; and her mouth opened too.
"Oh, sir, me and the Lump, sir!" she said in a hushed, breathless voice of incredulous rapture.
"You and the Lump. The Lump and the sea were made for one another. I look to see him an admiral one of these days. It is time that England had a red-headed admiral; I'm tired of these refined, drab-haired ones. It is my patriotic duty to give him a taste for the sea early."
"Oh, thank you, sir!" said Pollyooly in a tone of profound gratitude.
"We will go to Pyechurch. There's an old family servant of ours who lets lodgings at Pyechurch. I made her life a burden to her when I was young; and consequently, with true womanliness, she has always entertained the strongest affection for me. It would be no use taking you to any other lodgings because you wouldn't be allowed to grill my bacon for me. But Mrs. Wilson knows that I must be humoured; and humoured I shall be. Also she will look after you while I am playing golf at Littlestone—not that I have ever known you to need looking after."
"Oh, sir, it will be nice!" said Pollyooly, still somewhat breathless.
The Honourable John Ruffin smiled at her amiably.
"This morning we will pack; this afternoon we will go," he said.
Pollyooly had to slip up to their attic at once to tell the Lump, who was playing there peacefully, the splendid news. He received it in placid silence; apparently it did not seem to him to be a matter on which he was called to comment either favourably or unfavourably. Pollyooly moved about the world on very light, dancing feet; and as soon as she had washed up the breakfast things she packed their small wardrobes in the brown tin box. Then the Honourable John Ruffin, having finished his cigar and Morning Post, summoned her to help him pack.
For a while she observed his fashion of doing so with pain and dismay. He put his clothes in the portmanteau anyhow and crushed them firmly down. Sometimes he stood on them, quietly.
Standing painfully now on one leg and now on the other, she endured the sight for several minutes; then she said:
"Oh please, sir: you'd better let me do it."
"Why? What's wrong with my way of doing it?" said the Honourable John Ruffin, looking down at the confused mess with some surprise.
"Look how you're crumpling your shirts, sir," said Pollyooly.
"I thought that that was what trunks and portmanteaux were for. But have it your own way. Deal with it yourself," said the Honourable John Ruffin with airy indifference.
He lighted another cigar and watched Pollyooly take the clothes out of the portmanteau and replace them neatly with some regard to their shape and the space to be filled, finding room for a dozen things which he had been forced to leave out. Then, when she had filled half the portmanteau, he said:
"Always fresh accomplishments, Mrs. Bride. If you go on at this rate, you will certainly go down to posterity as the Admirable Pollyooly."
He sent down to the Inner Temple kitchen for his lunch; and Pollyooly gave the Lump his dinner. She ate little herself; she was too excited. They drove, proudly, in a taxicab to Cannon Street Station; and they travelled, proudly, first-class.
The Honourable John Ruffin had bought picture papers for the two children and a novel for himself, and now and again he paused in his reading to observe them. It was always a pleasure to a man of his aesthetic sensibility to gaze at Pollyooly's angel face in its frame of beautiful red hair and at that redder-headed but authentic cherub, the Lump. As they ran through London, curiously curled round the Lump, she was busy showing him the pictures in the papers and receiving his monosyllabic comments on them, with the ecstatic delight with which his disciples receive, or should receive, the pregnant utterances of a genius. When they came into the country she was busy pointing out to him, with an even more excited delight the common railside objects. It was more than a year since he had been in the country; and he had to be told earnestly and more than once that a cow was a cow and a sheep a baa-lamb, for he was inclined to class them all alike under the genus gee-gee. When at last he did correctly hail a sheep as a baa-lamb, the triumphant pleasure of Pollyooly passed all bounds.
The Honourable John Ruffin read and observed the children, and observed the children and read. But when they were nearing their journey's end, he shut up his book and said:
"I think it will be well for you to cease to be my housekeeper at Pyechurch, Mrs. Bride. People will ask you about our relations of course, because by the sea there is so much time for idle curiosity; and you had better tell them that you are a cousin of mine. That is nothing but the truth, for you are undoubtedly a red Deeping; and all the Deepings, red or neutral-tinted, are cousins, first, second, third, fourth, and so on, of mine."
"Yes, sir," said Pollyooly gravely.
"Also I think that you had better give yourself a few airs. You will have a better time that way, for airs procure you a welcome in the best circles. Be a red Deeping—not too truculent, you know, but firm."
Pollyooly's eyes sparkled a little; and she said:
"Yes, sir: I should like to. I like being a red Deeping, sir, rather. I liked it when I was at Ricksborough Court."
"Good. You have the right spirit. One of these days you will become what the newspapers call a society leader. I foresee it," he said in a tone of the most assured conviction.
"Yes, sir," said Pollyooly.
"There's one difficulty though, and that's your hands. At present they're hardly the hands of a red Deeping," he said thoughtfully. "Not that they're not small and well-shaped!" he interjected hastily. "But I expect that a week's idleness will let your nails grow; and brushing will do the rest."
"Yes, sir," said Pollyooly.
She had never considered her hands from the aesthetic standpoint. She had been content to keep them clean. She considered them now, ruefully. It is indeed hard to do the work of two sets of chambers in the Temple without the hands showing it. Her nails were very short and rather jagged; a thumbnail was broken; the skin about them was rough and broken. She looked from them to the white, carefully kept hands, with pink shining nails, of the Honourable John Ruffin, and sighed.
"I think that for the future you'd better work in gloves," he said in a sympathetic tone.
"I think I'd better try," said Pollyooly doubtfully. To her firm spirit the idea of working in gloves savoured of dilettantism.
"You see a lady—and all red Deepings are gentlefolk of course—a lady must have good hands," said the Honourable John Ruffin in a deprecating tone.
"Yes, sir," said Pollyooly solemnly.
It was the first time that the meaning of the fact that the Deeping blood ran in her veins had been brought home to her; and she flushed faintly with honourable pride at the thought that she was a lady, for all that she did the work of two sets of chambers in the Temple. She sat a little more upright.
"And there's another thing," he went on. "At Pyechurch I shall call you Pollyooly; and you will call me John, or cousin John."
"I—I'll try to remember, sir," said Pollyooly, again flushing with pride.
"You'll soon get into it," said the Honourable John Ruffin cheerfully. "And it will be very nice for me to have a cousin always to hand."
Pollyooly flushed again; and the gratitude in her eyes as they rested on him was beyond words.
The train, one of the South-Eastern best, sauntered leisurely through the pleasant, sunny landscape, stopping meditatively at stations and between stations, as the whim took it, but at last it reached Hythe.
They drove from there, proudly, in a wagonette to Pyechurch, along the edge of Romney Marsh, with the shining sea on their left hand. Pollyooly enjoyed the felicity of showing it to the Lump, who had never before seen it; but she was somewhat taken aback by his hailing a ship as a baa-lamb.
They found Mrs. Wilson eagerly awaiting them. There was no doubt of her affection for the Honourable John Ruffin. She had a sumptuous tea ready for them; and after the journey and its excitement they dealt with it heartily.
Any fear that the Honourable John Ruffin had felt of Mrs. Wilson's objecting to Pollyooly's grilling his bacon passed away when he saw how her heart went out to the two children. Indeed, before tea was over he was driven to say:
"I see what it is, Mrs. Wilson: the Lump is going to usurp my place in your regard."
"No one could do that, Master John; and well you know it," said Mrs. Wilson firmly.
Tea over, the Honourable John Ruffin proposed that he should take them to the sands; and Pollyooly agreed eagerly. But as they came out of the house, two little girls, bare-legged and wearing sandals, passed them.
He looked from them to Pollyooly's stout shoes and black stockings, stopped short and said firmly:
"We must change all this."
He turned to the right down the street and led them into the chief shop of the village. Apparently he was well known there, for the proprietor greeted him with respectful warmth. He bought sandals, bathing-dresses, blue linen frocks, a sunbonnet for Pollyooly, a linen hat for the Lump, spades and buckets.
Loaded with these purchases he came out into the street, and took his way back to Mrs. Wilson's, saying:
"You must hurry up and change into these things. First impressions are so important at the seaside; people have so much leisure to be pernickety in; and you must look all right!"
Pollyooly was not long making the change; and when she came out of the house in the blue linen frock and sunbonnet, he smiled at her with warm approval and said:
"There's no doubt about it, you have got the knack of wearing clothes, Pollyooly."
To Pollyooly his utterance was entirely cryptic; but she gathered that it was complimentary and returned his smile.
He took them down to the sands; and they were soon at the height of happiness, building a castle, paddling, and picking up shells. He left them to it; and went for a stroll down the sea wall. Since it was a hot evening, at seven he fetched them to bathe; and since he let them bathe in their own timid way, the timid way of children bathing for the first time, they enjoyed it exceedingly. The Lump found eight inches of water deep enough for him, Pollyooly eighteen.
The next morning they bathed again at seven.
The house was near enough to the sea to allow them to go straight from their bedrooms to it in their bathing dresses. After their bath the Honourable John Ruffin returned firmly to bed for an hour and so gave Pollyooly time to make a leisurely and complete breakfast before grilling his bacon. He had explained to Mrs. Wilson that it was necessary to his happiness that it should be grilled by Pollyooly, and she had raised no objection. She observed the process with interest, but not with approval.
"All that time spent over cooking a few slices of bacon!" she said with the womanly air of one sniffing, when it was transferred from the frying-pan to the dish.
Pollyooly's brow puckered in a thoughtful frown; and she said gravely:
"But that's the only way to get it right."
Mrs. Wilson sniffed outright.
After his breakfast the Honourable John Ruffin departed to Littlestone to golf; and Pollyooly and the Lump went down to the sands. There are no niggers, pierrots, or bands at Pyechurch, only a few donkeys and a cocoanut-shy. But at low tide there are a thousand acres of firm sand, a children's paradise. Pollyooly enjoyed it beyond words: not only the sands and the sea but also the freedom from care. Food, excellent food and plenty of it, awaited them, paid for, at Mrs. Wilson's.
The Lump was the cause of Pollyooly's first introduction to fellow-sojourners in this delectable land. A little girl of four, with very large brown eyes, who was playing near them, was quite suddenly attracted by him, and without further ado took possession of him. Pollyooly was pleased that he should have a playmate of his own age; the little girl's nurse, observing that they were dressed as other children and that Pollyooly spoke "prettily," and was inclined to be uncommonly haughty with her, assented to the acquaintance. The little brown-eyed girl's blue-eyed sister, Kathleen, who was seven, mothered her little sister, whose name was Mary. Also now and again she mothered the Lump; but Pollyooly was not jealous.
At first the Lump was somewhat taken aback by this sudden acquisition of a female friend; but his remarkable placidity stood him in good stead, and he endured it with an even mind. Presently indeed he seemed to be taking pleasure in it, for he began to bully her in the manliest fashion.
Then the mother of the little girls joined them and was at once charmed by the Lump. Pollyooly found no need to display the airs of a red Deeping, with which she had been treating the nurse, to her; and presently they were chatting in the friendliest way. Mrs. Gibson, as the nurse called her, seemed as taken with Pollyooly's serious outlook on life as with the charm of the Lump; and presently she asked her if her mother would let them come to tea with Kathleen and Mary and to games on the sands after it that afternoon.
Pollyooly explained that they were staying with their cousin John, who had gone to golf at Littlestone and would not be back till late; therefore she accepted the invitation herself. Mrs. Gibson was impressed by the discovery that cousin John was the Honourable John Ruffin; but she expressed her surprise that he should have gone away for the day and left them to themselves without a nurse to look after them. Pollyooly, with an air of considerable dignity, assured her that she would never dream of trusting the Lump to a nurse; and Mrs. Gibson admitted that she was right.
Pollyooly and the Lump enjoyed the party exceedingly. There were a dozen children, fellow-guests; and at tea the manners of the Lump, under Pollyooly's anxious eye, were beyond reproach. Her hands indeed troubled her, and she kept them out of sight as much as she could. After all they were not very large hands to withdraw from view. After tea the younger children played in the charge of nurses; the elder children, to the extreme delight of Pollyooly, who loved to run fleetly, disported themselves in more swift and violent games. She had much to tell the Honourable John Ruffin on his return from Littlestone. He congratulated her warmly on their début.
The next day she found herself well launched in the society of the sands, with many playmates, and entered upon the fullest and most delightful life. But there is always a fly in the finer ointments; and the Pyechurch fly was Prince Adalbert of Lippe-Schweidnitz.
That morning Pollyooly had her first sight of him. She and the Lump were playing with Kathleen and Mary, when Kathleen cried in a tone of dismay, "Here's the prince!" picked up Mary, who would have gone quicker on her own feet, and staggered off toward their nurse with her.
Pollyooly picked up the Lump and came with her, though she could see no reason for Kathleen's dismay, for the prince was but a fat little boy of ten, small-eyed, thick-lipped, and snub-nosed. His white sailor suit seemed to give his ugliness its full values.
Under the wing of their nurse Kathleen and Mary surveyed him with the eyes of terror; and Kathleen poured into Pollyooly's attentive ear the story of his dreadful doings: how he had pushed a little boy over the edge of the sea-wall, kicked several others; how he had hit little girls with their own spades and pulled the hair of others; how he never passed a carefully built castle without kicking a breach in it, and always threw any spades or buckets he could lay hands on far into the sea.
Pollyooly observed this terror with the unimpressed eye of a connoisseur. When she had lived with her Aunt Hannah in the little slum at the back of the King's Bench Walk, she had fought many battles with the small boys of Alsatia; and she was not at all impressed by the physique of the prince. She was of the opinion that Henry Wiggins would make very short work of him; and she could hold Henry Wiggins (by the hair) with her left hand and smack him with her right till she was nearly as tired of smacking as he was of being smacked. She knew that she could because she had done it.
The prince came to the castle they themselves had been building and kicked down one wall of it.
"If only you weren't a prince, I'd teach you, my fine young gentleman," said the nurse softly.
"You mind the Lump! I'll go and smack him hard!" cried Pollyooly with eager confidence.
"No! No! He's a prince! You mustn't touch a prince, miss!" cried the nurse in a tone of the last horror, gripping Pollyooly's wrist tightly. "Besides, he'd hurt you. He's a very nasty, spiteful little boy."
"Oh, I don't mind him! I'm not afraid of a little boy like that!" cried Pollyooly; and she tugged at the restraining grip, hard but in vain, eying the pest with the bright light of battle in her eyes.
"I wouldn't let my children play with him like some people do just because he's a prince—not was it ever so. I should be frightened all the time," said the nurse.
"If he ever touches the Lump, I'll teach him!" Said Pollyooly with a cold, impressive ferocity.
"If ever he touches one of us, papa will spank him hard. Papa doesn't care much for princes," said Kathleen.
"I should think he didn't—if they're like that," said Pollyooly with conviction.
They watched the devastating royal progress with indignant eyes. The back view of the prince was nearly as unpleasant as the front, for he slouched along with his fat little figure hunched forward in a very ugly fashion. The children fled before him as he came, and from the shelter of their nurses, or their mothers, angrily watched him destroy the castles they had built. But most of their mothers regarded him with a gloating admiration; they felt that the beach was more glorious for his royal presence.
About forty yards behind him came a companion figure, his equerry the Baron von Habelschwert, a stout, pig-eyed, snub-nosed man of forty-five who walked with the stiffness of a ramrod of the best Bessemer steel. His legs were, unfortunately, rather short, and since the lower part of his body was of a fine protuberant rotundity which the breadth of his shoulders and the thickness of his chest failed dismally to equal, he displayed an uncommonly exact resemblance of a perambulating pear. He had a rich expanse of fat cheek and a small, but dimpled, chin. He was saved by his fierce moustache, which, upturned in the imperial fashion, gave him the ferocious air required by his military profession and his sentiments of a superman of the latest Prussian brand.
Happiness sat enthroned upon his brow. A passion for blacking is a distinguishing characteristic of his military caste; and his natural love of licking the boots of members of the many royal families of the Fatherland was finding its full expression. In Prince Adalbert he had a perpetual boot to lick. Sometimes indeed the boot licked him: that very morning the prince had kicked his shins in a masterly fashion, on being invited to wash his face for the day. The baron bore it very well.
His clothes fitted him with an extreme, but somewhat unfortunate, military tightness. They were of an unpleasant greenish tint which did not match the green Homberg hat he wore. In his right hand he carried a short cane and yellow gloves. The morning was hot; his boots were patent leather. Diffusing an agreeable odour of pomatum on the breeze, he walked with the air of one taking his ease in a conquered country, for he was one of the gallant German war-party, and he looked forward with touching certainty to the day when the mailed fist of his imperial master should sweep England with fire and sword from sea to sea. He often talked in a gloating fashion of that great day to his young charge. Possibly that was one of the reasons which induced Prince Adalbert of Lippe-Schweidnitz to make so free with the castles and persons of the children of the so-soon-to-be-subjugated English.
The ogres of the sands having disappeared down the beach, the children repaired the damage to their castles and once more played in peace. That afternoon there was another royal progress of the same devastating kind but more complete, since the prince surprised a little girl and pulled her hair. The fond English mothers still observed him with a gloating air, happy to be on the same stretch of sand with him. They said indulgently to one another: "Boys will be boys," or, with conviction: "Such a manly little fellow."
This time the Baron von Habelschwert walked only fifteen yards behind the prince. He smiled benignly on the destruction of the castles; plainly he felt that his young charge was treating the so-soon-to-be-subjugated English in the right spirit.
There was only one check to the royal progress. The sand-castle on which Pollyooly and Kathleen had worked so hard stood directly in the line of it. Kathleen and Mary fled to their nurse at the approach of the prince, calling wildly to Pollyooly to follow. Pollyooly leaving the Lump in the castle, stepped out of it, and spade in hand calmly awaited the coming of the prince.
When he was three yards from her she said quietly but very distinctly:
"You keep away."
The prince advanced two steps and stopped. There was that in Pollyooly's deep blue eyes which gave him pause. He advanced another step, and stopped again. Then he called her "pig-dog," in his native tongue, turned aside, and pursued his way. As he went he kept looking back at her, scowling malevolently.
Pollyooly gazed after him with unchanging face. She would have liked to put her tongue a long way out at him; but she felt that red Deepings did not do so.
The nurse came down to the castle with Kathleen and Mary, and said in a tone of respectful awe:
"However you dare, miss! And him a prince too!"
"I don't care a pin for him," said Pollyooly calmly.
She stepped back to the castle and continued the work of construction.
The royal progress was the event of the morning and afternoon for several days before it occurred to Pollyooly to tell the Honourable John Ruffin about it. Then one evening, on their way to bathe, she told him.
The Honourable John Ruffin stood still on the edge of the sea, looked at her thoughtfully, and said:
"This is interesting indeed. I had no idea that German aggression had extended to this retired spot."
"And he's such an ugly little boy," said Pollyooly.
"And he is all alone?"
"Oh, no: there's a baron with him to look after him—with a large moustache. He's very ugly too," said Pollyooly frankly.
"This grows more interesting still. I think I should enjoy looking into this matter. Prussian barons always need a firm hand. But I'm too full up with golf to deal with it for the next day or two. I must bear it in mind."
Plainly he did bear it in mind, for on the afternoon of the third day, to Pollyooly's delight, he joined them on the sands. She introduced him to Mrs. Gibson; and he thanked her for having had his two little cousins to tea, and chatted to her in his cheerful and engaging fashion till Prince Adalbert of Lippe-Schweidnitz came slouching along on his devastating course. The Honourable John Ruffin observed him with every appearance of the liveliest interest; but the Baron von Habelschwert seemed to afford him even greater pleasure than did his young charge; and upon him he gazed with a fascinated, loving eye.
"I have rarely seen a more perfect pair," he said to Mrs. Gibson in a tone of deep content.
"Detestable creatures!" said Mrs. Gibson with some heat.
"Perhaps—but how incomparably Prussian!" said the Honourable John Ruffin with warm appreciation. "And you let these unpleasant ones terrorise your children?"
"Well, what can I do?" said Mrs. Gibson. "My husband would have stopped it, if he had been down here; but he isn't. I have spoken to one or two men, acquaintances, about it. But they seem afraid to interfere."
"We are getting too highly civilised," said the Honourable John Ruffin in a melancholy tone. "The fine old English spirit is dying out; and they're afraid of getting into the papers. But evidently what is needed is the giving of lessons; and the proper person to give them is a fierce small boy—Irish for choice—one who is always and nobly spoiling for a fight. Unfortunately I have not a fierce small Irish boy to hand; but, thank goodness! there are still red Deepings left in England."
"What is a red Deeping?" said Mrs. Gibson.
"The red Deepings are an old East Anglian strain—red-haired and very fierce and cantankerous when roused. My little cousin Pollyooly here is a red Deeping."
"Oh, do you think she could cope with that horrid little boy?" said Mrs. Gibson eagerly.
"I'm sure of it," said the Honourable John Ruffin with decision. "Come here, Pollyooly."
Pollyooly came; and he felt her biceps carefully. Then he said:
"Didn't Mr. Vance tell me a story of a boy called Henry Wiggins whom you found disrespectful and taught manners?"
Pollyooly flushed faintly; but she said bravely, in an explanatory tone:
"I had to. He was always bothering."
"I should think that Henry Wiggins was a far more active and difficult boy in a fight than this fat little prince," said the Honourable John Ruffin.
"Oh, Henry Wiggins is tough but really he is quite easy. You've only got to get hold of his hair," said Pollyooly quickly. "But of course the prince has very short hair, only he isn't tough at all," she added in the grave tones of one weighing the chances of battle.
"He certainly is cropped. The Prussians have no aesthetic sense," said the Honourable John Ruffin in a disparaging tone. "But I should think that you could get over the difficulty of the hair."
"Oh, yes: I'm nearly sure I could," said Pollyooly; and her deep blue eyes began to shine. "May I smack him if he interferes with us?"
"Not on any account unless I am at hand," said the Honourable John Ruffin quickly. "I have a deep, patriotic distrust of the chivalry of Prussian barons. I do not think that this one could be trusted to see fair play. You might have a baron on your hands as well as a prince; and it might be too much for a red Deeping of your size. A prince at a time should be your motto."
"It would be very amusing," said Mrs. Gibson; and her eyes danced.
"You shall see it," said the Honourable John Ruffin amiably. "Unbiased spectators of a dramatic scene are always desirable; and it won't be difficult to arrange your presence, for the business will need a little stage-managing. You watch the prince, Pollyooly, and see how far he goes down the beach, so that we can arrange the exact place for his instruction."
The next day Pollyooly followed the prince to the end of his royal progress twice; and she had little doubt that she would be able to draw him into the battle for which she yearned, for he never saw her without scowling darkly upon her.
On the second day the Honourable John Ruffin returned from his golf in time to lunch with the two children; and he informed Pollyooly that he proposed to spend the afternoon on the sand with them. They found Mrs. Gibson with her children; and she accompanied them to the spot at which the prince usually turned in his course. Twenty yards beyond it the Honourable John Ruffin bade Pollyooly build a castle; and then he and Mrs. Gibson left her and the Lump to build it, and retiring to the sea-wall forty yards away, they sat down and fell into polite conversation. As they left her, the Honourable John Ruffin's last words to Pollyooly were:
"I don't forbid you to scratch him. Scratching is harmonious with the female nature."
The statement afforded Mrs. Gibson grounds for the beginning of their polite conversation.
Pollyooly and the Lump worked steadily away at the building of the castle. Pollyooly did the digging; now and again the Lump would pat a wall placidly. They had been at work for rather more than half an hour; and the castle was already beginning to wear the rotund air so dear to the eye of the builder when the progressive prince came in sight.
Pollyooly's joyful heart began to beat quickly. He was slouching along to his doom nearly fifty yards in front of the fragrant baron; and since there were children to annoy all the way, he came but slowly. It gave Pollyooly time to lead the Lump half-way to Mrs. Gibson, and send him toddling the rest. She was back at her castle, and at work again when the prince caught sight of her.
He stopped short, his unhasty mind slowly taking in the situation. That she should be working in loneliness, thirty yards beyond the line of nurses and children along the beach, seemed too good to be true. Presently his unhurrying mind grasped the fact that it was true; his heart blazed in his bosom; he threw back his head and, had his nose been larger, he would have sniffed the breeze like a warhorse. He advanced upon her in a quick, shambling slouch.
Pollyooly saw his eager advance; but she affected not to see it. She was eager for the fray, but fearful lest a display of that eagerness should dash the royal courage; moreover she wished the prince to be flagrantly the aggressor. She worked at the farther wall of the castle with her back to him. A fray was the last thing the prince looked for. There had been but one fray in his sheltered life: with a brother prince carelessly admitted to his society. A fray with a child not of the blood royal was beyond dreaming. He sprang on to the castle wall and began to stamp and kick a breach in it with furious, but clumsy, energy.
Then Pollyooly turned and sprang. The prince was hardly aware of her spring; he was only aware of a stinging smack, and then the shock of her impetus toppled him over on to his back on the sand. Pollyooly came down too, but not on the sand; she came down on the prince, and far more heavily than her fragile air warranted. Before he could collect any scattered wits he may have chanced to have, she was kneeling astride him, with a painful, grinding knee on either of his arms, and slapping his face.
The Honourable John Ruffin walked briskly down from the sea-wall with a smile of profound pleasure on his face. The perfumed baron had not yet perceived his charge's plight.
Pollyooly did not smack very hard at first, for she was resisting the wriggling of the prince; but once she had dug her toes firmly into the sand, she gave her mind to delivering each smack with the full swing of her arm; and the prince began to bellow. Then the baron saw the terrible, treasonable indignity the hope of the house of Lippe-Schweidnitz was enduring. He broke into a curious toddling run, uttering odd, short shrieks of the last horror as he came.
The Honourable John Ruffin placed himself athwart the course of the toddling deliverer and said quietly:
"Don't hurry, Pollyooly, but smack him hard."
A smile of understanding wreathed Pollyooly's flushed but angel face; and she did smack him hard. The Honourable John Ruffin's back was turned to the headlong baron; but his head was bent a little sideways; and as the already breathless rescuer made his final spurting rush he moved sharply to the left.
It was unfortunate (but since he had not eyes in the back of his head, it could not be helped) that the left shoulder of the Honourable John Ruffin, jerking upward hard, should have impinged upon the onrushing right shoulder of the deliverer. The baron left the firm earth, twirled in the air in a fashion which would have won him the plaudits of the most exacting music-hall audience, came down on his back on the sand with a violence which shook the little breath left out of his body and lay gasping in a darkened world.
It was a full minute and a half before the bellowing of his sufficiently besmacked charge came again, dimly, to his comprehending ears. Then he grew aware, also dimly, that the Honourable John Ruffin was standing over him and asking loudly, with every appearance of just indignation, what he meant by not looking where he was going. The baron was strongly of the opinion that the interposed shoulder had been no accident; but he was much too busy with his breathing to say so. Then when his breath came more easily and he had the power to say so, he had no longer the inclination, for the knowledge of the terrible position in which he stood, or rather lay, had flashed on him: he, a German officer, had been knocked down by a civilian and was forever disgraced.
Pollyooly continued to smack the bellowing prince; the Honourable John Ruffin continued to ask the baron what the devil he meant by it; and the poor wits of the panting nobleman continued to work on his dreadful problem. Then a flash of inspiration showed him the saving solution: he could accept his noisy questioner's view that his fall had been an accident. He sat up and began to apologise faintly and sulkily for having been knocked down.
The hands of Pollyooly were sore from smacking Prince Adalbert, but not so sore as his royal cheeks; and still she smacked on. She interjected between the smacks requests for an assurance that he would cease to annoy the children on the beach. His fine Prussian determination not to be robbed of his simple pleasures prevented him from giving it. He preferred to bellow. But there are limits even to royal endurance; and as the baron rose shakily to his feet, the prince howled the assurance she demanded.
"And mind you do, or I'll smack you again," said Pollyooly coldly.
She rose to her feet, flushed and triumphant, and rubbed gently together her stinging hands. The prince lay where he was, blubbering.
Ten yards away Mrs. Gibson stood holding the hand of the Lump, who gazed at the scene in placid wonder; and she was laughing gently. Ten yards away, on her right, stood a dozen children, surveying their blubbering pest with joyful, vengeful eyes. Behind them distractedly hovered three shocked nurses, quivering with horror at the upheaval of the social edifice; and horror-stricken mothers were slowly approaching the dreadful spot.
The baron slowly took in the humiliating significance of the scene; he saw that the glory of a royal house had been levelled to the dust, or rather to the sand. He caught his blubbering charge by the arm, jerked him to his feet, and led him away by one large ear.
The Honourable John Ruffin looked after them and laughed quietly but joyfully. Then he said:
"I congratulate you, Pollyooly—an excellent piece of work very neatly done. The haughty foreigner will trouble you no more."
Mrs. Gibson came forward and added her congratulations to his. The children gazed at Pollyooly with deep respect. Only the nurses and the mothers held aloof; an earthquake shock would hardly have astonished and confused them more than had this smacking of royalty. Had any one but the little cousin of the Honourable John Ruffin smacked, they would have been unable to refrain from an outburst of open disapproval.
To judge from the royal progress next morning, Pollyooly had indeed done her work. The Baron von Habelschwert still perfumed the air as he walked; but it was no longer obviously the air of a conquered country. His moustache was less fierce, his stride less proprietary. Indeed he might easily have been mistaken, by those to whom his name and dignities were unknown, for the pear-shaped but inoffensive keeper of a delicatessen shop. Prince Adalbert of Lippe-Schweidnitz was also changed. He no longer roamed afield; he kept within six feet of his protective equerry. He slouched less; and he had ceased to scowl arrogantly on the children who no longer fled at his approach. He regarded little English girls with a respectful, not to say timid, eye, and edged closer to the baron as he passed one. To his mind the little English girl was stored with the potentialities of a powder-magazine.