A Crooked Mile Part 2

"Too small!" Dorothy exclaimed. "Of course they aren't. Why, Noel was only nine, and that's pretty big, and Jackie only just over eight-and-a-half, though he put on weight while you watched him. They're just right."

Lady Tasker reached for a chair. "But they _are_ for Jackie, aren't they?"

Dorothy's blue eyes were as big as the plates in her cupboards.--"Jackie! Good gracious, auntie!----"

"Eh?" said Lady Tasker, sitting down. "Not Jackie? Dear me. How stupid of me. Of course, I did hear, but I've so many other things to think of, and n.o.body'd suppose, to look at you----"

Dorothy ran to her aunt and gave her a kiss and a hug, a loud kiss and a hug like two.

"You dear old thing!--Really, I'd begun to _hate_ all the horrid kind people who asked me how I felt to-day and whether I shouldn't be glad when it was over! What business is it of theirs? I nearly made Stan sack Ruth last week, she looked so, and I positively refuse to have a young girl anywhere near me!... But wasn't it sweet of Eva? I'll give you some tea and then read you her letter. Indian or China?"

"China," Lady Tasker remarked.

"China, Ruth, and I'll have some more too. I don't know whether His Impudence is coming in or not; he's gadding off somewhere, I expect....

But you weren't only _pretending_ just now, were you, auntie?----"

She put the plug of the spirit-kettle into the wall.

"Well, how are the Bits?" Lady Tasker asked....

(Perhaps "His Impudence" and "The Bits" require explanation. Both expressions Dorothy had from her "maid," Ruth Mossop. "Maid" is thus written because Ruth was a young widow, who, after a series of disciplinary knockings-about by the late Mr. Mossop, was not over-troubled with maternal anxiety for the four children he had left her with. When asked by Dorothy whether she would prefer to be called Mrs. Mossop or Ruth, Mrs. Mossop had chosen the latter name, giving as her reason that it had been like Mr. Mossop's impudence to ask her to accept the other name at all; and very many other memories also, brooded on and gloomily loved, including the four children, had been bits of Mr.

Mossop's impudence. Stan had adopted the phrase, finding in it chuckles of his own; and so His Impudence he had become, and Noel and Jackie the fruits thereof.)

Dorothy put her fair head on one side, as if she considered the absent Bits critically and dispa.s.sionately, and really thought that on the whole she might venture to approve of them.

"Ra-ther little dears; but oh, Heaven, how _are_ we going to manage with a third!"

Her aunt dissociated herself from the problem with a shrug.--"Well--if Stan will persist in thinking that his dressing-room is merely a room for him to dress in----"

"So I tell him," Dorothy murmured, with great meekness. "But--but flats aren't made for children. We did manage to seize the estate agent's little office for a nursery when all the flats were let, but when Stan brings a man home we have to sleep him in the dressing-room as it is--," (Lady Tasker shook her head, but the words "Wrong man" were hardly audible), "--and a house will mean stair-carpets, and hall furniture, and I don't know what else. Besides, Stan hasn't time to look for one----"

"No?" said Lady Tasker drily.

"He really hasn't, poor boy," Dorothy protested. "And he's after something really good this time--Fortune and Brooks, the what-d'-you-call-'ems, in Pall Mall----"

"What about them?"

"Well, Stan's been told that they pay awfully good commissions, for introductions, new accounts, you know; Stan dines out, say, and makes himself nice to somebody with whole stacks of money, and mentions Fortune & Brooks's chutney and pickled peaches and things, and--and----"

"I know," remarked Lady Tasker, with not much more expression than if she had been a talking doll and somebody had pulled the string that worked the speaking apparatus. She did know these dazzling schemes of her smart and helpless nephew's--his club secretaryships, his projects for journals that should combine the various desirable features of the "Field" and "Country Life" and the "Sporting Times" and "Punch," his pony deals, and his other innumerable attempts to make of his saunters down Bond Street to St. James's and back _via_ the Junior Carlton and Regent Street a source of income. Perhaps she knew, too, that Dorothy knew of her knowledge, for she went on, "Well, well--let's hope there's more in it than there was in the fishing-flies--now tell me what Eva's got fresh."

"Oh, yes!" cried Dorothy, plunging her hand into her letters. "Eva sent the things, but here's Dot's first--look at the darling's writing!----"

And from a sheet of paper with a regimental heading Dorothy began to read:

"DEAREST AUNT DOROTHY,--

"were in murree and we got a servant that wigles his toes when we speak to him and he loves baba and makes noises like him and there are squiboos in the tres--"

--(she means squirrels)--

"--and ive got a parrot uncle tony bought me and uncle tony says the monsoon will praps fale and the peple wont have anything to eat but weve lots and i like this better than kohat the shops are lovely but there are lots of flees and they bite baba and he cries this is a long letter how are Jackie and noel i got the photograf--"

--(that's the new one on the mantelpiece)--

"--were going to tifin at major hirsts little girls one is called marjorie and were great friends----"

"Where's the other page got to? It was here----"

She found the other page, and continued the reading of the child's letter.

Suddenly Lady Tasker interrupted her.

"Had Jack to borrow money to send them up there?"

"To Murree? I really don't know. Perhaps he had. But as adjutant of the Railway Volunteers he'd have his saloon."

"H'm!... Anyway, the child oughtn't to be there at all. India's no place for children."

"I know, auntie; but what can one do? They do come."

"H'm!... They didn't to me. Thank goodness I've done with love and babies." (Dorothy laughed, perhaps at a mental vision of the houses in Ludlow and Cromwell Gardens.) "Anyway, now they are here somebody's got to look after them. They may as well be healthy...."

She mused, and Dorothy reached for other letters.

Lady Tasker's additions to her responsibilities usually began in this way. Dorothy had very little doubt that presently little Dot also would be handed like a parcel to some man or other coming home on leave, and Lady Tasker would send to the makers for yet another cot.... Therefore, pushing aside her last letter, she exclaimed almost crossly, "I _do_ think it's selfish of Aunt Eliza! There she is, with Spurrs all to herself, and she never once thinks that Jack might like to send Dot to England!"

"Neither would I if I had my time over again," said Lady Tasker resolutely. "You needn't look like that--I wouldn't. Cromwell Gardens is past praying for, and in another year there won't be a stick at the Brear that's fit to be seen. The next batch I certainly intend to charge for. I'm on the brink of the poorhouse as it is."

This time it was Dorothy who mused. She was a calculating young woman; the wife of His Impudence had to be; and she was far too shrewd to suppose for a moment that her aunt could ever escape her destiny, which was to be imposed upon by her own flesh and blood while hardening her heart against the rest of the world. Dorothy, and not Stan, had had to keep that flat going, and the flat before it; unless Fortune & Brooks turned up trumps--a rather remote contingency--she would have to continue to do so; and she was quite casuistical enough to argue that, while Aunt Eliza might keep her old Spurrs, Aunt Grace might properly be victimized because Dorothy loved Aunt Grace. Therefore there were musings in Dorothy's wide-angle blue eyes ... musings that only the sound of a key in the outer lock interrupted.

"Hallo, that's His Impudence," Dorothy exclaimed. "I do hope he hasn't brought anybody. I shall simply rush out if he has."

Stan hadn't. He came in at the door drawing off a pair of lemon-yellow gloves, said "Hallo, Aunt Grace," and rang the bell. He next said, "Hallo, Dot! Been out? Beastly smelly in town. No, I've not had tea.

Look here, you've eaten all the hot cakes; never mind; bread and b.u.t.ter'll do, if you've got some jam--no, honey. Got an invitation for you, Dot, to lunch, with Ferrers on Monday; can't you buck up and manage it?... Well, Aunt Grace, what brings you up here? Bit off your beat, isn't it? Awfully rude of me, I know, but it is a long way. Glad I came in."

"I've been to see the Cosimo Pratts," said Lady Tasker.

Dorothy looked suddenly up.

"Oh, auntie, you didn't tell me that!" she exclaimed.

A grin lighted up Stan's good-looking face.

"Oh? How many annas to the rupee are they to-day? By Jove, they are a rum lot up there! Any new prime cuts?"

"Stan, you mustn't!" said Dorothy, peremptorily. "Please don't! Don't listen to him, auntie; he's outrageous."