Little Miss Grouch Part 19

"To escape the false prince. More fairy-tale."

"But I _am_ twenty-one and I've got the very watch that papa gave me on my birthday."

"Let me see it."

She drew out a beautiful little diamond-studded chronometer of foreign and very expensive make.

"Most inappropriate for a child of your age," commented the other severely. "Ha! Here we are. Fairy G.o.dfather--that's me--to the rescue."

He read from the inner case of the watch. "'To my darling Cecily on her 21st birthday, from Father.' Not strictly legal, but good enough," he observed. "We shall now go forth and kill the dragon. That is to say, tell the captain the time of day."

"What fun! But--Judge Enderby."

"Well?"

"Don't tell Mr.--your other client, will you?"

"Why not?"

"I don't want him to know."

"But, you see, my duty to him as his legal adviser certainly demands that--"

"You're _my_ legal adviser, too. Isn't my five dollars as good as his?

Particularly when it really is his five dollars?"

"Allowed."

"Well, then, my age is a confidential communication and--what do you call it?--privileged."

"Oh, wise young judge! But, fair Portia, don't let me perish of curiosity. Why?"

"My revenge isn't complete yet."

"Look out for the inner edge of that tool," he warned.

With the timepiece in his hand, Judge Enderby bearded the autocrat of the Clan Macgregor on his own deck to such good purpose that Miss Cecily Wayne presently learned of the end of her troubles so far as prospective incarceration went. The knowledge, preserved intact for her own uses, put in her hand a dire weapon for the discomfiture of the Tyro.

Thereafter the ship's company was treated to the shameful spectacle of a young man hunted, harried, and beset by a Diana of the decks; chevied out of comfortable chairs, flushed from odd nooks and corners, baited openly in saloon and reading-room, trailed as with the wile of the serpent along devious pa.s.sageways and through crowded a.s.semblages, hare to her hound, up and down, high and low, until he became a byword among his companions for the stricken eye of eternal watchfulness. Sometimes the persecutress stalked him, unarmed; anon she threatened with a five-dollar bill. Now she trailed in a deadly silence; again, when there were few to hear, she bayed softly upon the spoor, and ever in her eyes gleamed the wild light and wild laughter of the chase.

Once she penned him. He had ensconced himself in a corner behind one of the lifeboats, where, with uncanny instinct, she spied him. Before he could escape, she had shut off egress.

"How do you do?" she said demurely.

He took off his cap, but with a sidelong eye seemed to be measuring the jump to the deck below.

"You've forgotten me, I'm afraid. I'm Little Miss Grouch. Would this help you to remember?"

She extended a five-dollar bill. He took it with the expression of one to whom a nice, shiny blade has just been handed for purposes of hara-kiri.

"I have missed you," she pursued with diabolical plaintiveness. "Our child--our adopted child," she corrected, the pink running up under her skin, "has been crying for you."

"Go away!" said the Tyro hoa.r.s.ely.

"Are these the manners of a Perfect Pig?" she reproached him. And with adorable sauciness she warbled a nursery ditty:--

"Lady once loved a pig.

'Honey,' said she, 'Pig, will you marry me?'

'Wrrumph!' said he.

"I can't grunt very nicely," she admitted. "_You_ do it."

"Go away," he implored, gazing from side to side like a trapped animal.

"Somebody'll see you. They'll lock you up."

"Me? Why?" Her eyes opened wide in the loveliness of feigned surprise.

"Much more likely you. I doubt whether you really should be at large.

Such a queer-acting person!"

"I--I'll write and explain," he said desperately.

"If you do, I'll show the letter to the captain."

He regarded her with a stricken gaze. "Wh--why the captain?"

"Being a helpless and unchaperoned young lady," she explained primly, "he is my natural guardian and protector. I think I see him coming now."

Legend is enriched by the picturesque fates of those who have historically affronted Heaven with prevarications no more flagrant than this. But did punishment, then, descend upon the fair, false, and frail perpetrator of this particular taradiddle? Not at all. The Tyro was the sole sufferer. Had the word been a bullet he could scarcely have dropped more swiftly. When next he appeared to the enraptured gaze of the heckler, he was emerging, _ventre a terre_, from beneath the far end of the life-boat.

"I'll be in my deck-chair between eight and nine to receive explanations and apologies," was her Parthian shot, as he rose and fled.

At the time named, the Tyro took particularly good care to be at the extreme other side of the deck, where he maintained a wary lookout. Not twice should the huntress catch him napping. But he reckoned without her emissaries. Lord Guenn presently sauntered up, paused, and surveyed the quarry with a twinkling eye.

"I'm commanded to bring you in, dead or alive," he said.

"It will be dead, then," said the Tyro.

"What's the little game? Some of your American rag-josh, I believe you call it?"

"Something of that nature," admitted the other.

"This will be a blow to Cissy," observed his lordship. "She's used to having 'em come to heel at the first whistle. I say, Mr. Daddleskink--"

"My name's not Daddleskink," the Tyro informed him morosely.

"I beg your pardon if I misp.r.o.nounced it. How--"

"Smith," said the proprietor of that popular cognomen.

"I say," cried the Briton in vast surprise, "that's worse than our p.r.o.nouncing 'Castelreagh' 'Derby' for short!"