CHAPTER VII
THERE ARE SUCH WOMEN IN THE WORLD
Duly carrying out his intention on the very next day, Anthony was annoyed to find the room full, and Jenny flitting hither and thither like the choice butterfly that defies the collector's net. More than that, the basket-maker's wife, who was acquiring an ever-deepening interest in the restaurant business, was being initiated into the art of serving customers, in preparation for the expected crush of race time; and this unattractive person it was who brought him his tea and scone.
Very sedately he sat in the chair that looked best able to bear his weight until his tray was placed beside him, and it became evident that he was to get no satisfaction out of Jenny beyond that of looking at her. He looked at her for some minutes with an interest that surprised himself, and she was conscious of the direction of his eyes, and of every turn of his head, as if she had herself a hundred eyes to watch him. Then he quietly took up cup and plate, and passed over to Sarah's table. Sarah's table was a common, four-legged cedar affair, with an æsthetic cloth on it, and bore only her money bowls and the needlework that she was accustomed to occupy herself with at odd moments. It stood in a retired corner, partly sheltered by the screen.
"Do you mind if I sit here with you?" he said pleasantly—with proper respect, of course, but not with the deference she had noted in his attitude to Jenny. "I feel so out of it, with no lady to excuse my presence, monopolising one of those pretty little tables that were never meant for such as me."
Now Sarah was a child in years, but she was old in novel-reading and like exercises of the mind; and she had already cast a hungry eye upon Mr. Anthony Churchill and her sister, scenting a possible romance before a thought of such a thing had occurred to either of them. During their interview on the previous afternoon she had observed them with quite a passionate interest; and all through the night she had listened to Jenny's restless movements in her adjoining bed, like a careful doctor noting the symptoms of incipient fever. She had been all day watching for his return to the tea-room, as for a potential lover of her own—lovers, she knew, were not for her—abandoning her dreams of European travel to build gorgeous air-castles on Jenny's behalf. "If this should be the result of keeping a restaurant—oh, if this should be the reward of her goodness and courage, and all her hard work!" she sighed to herself, in an ecstasy of exultation. "Oh, if he should marry her, and make a great lady of her—as she deserves to be—what would Joey say to the tea-room then?"
So, when Mr. Churchill presented himself, he found no difficulty in making friends with her. She swept her work-basket from the table, to give him room for his cup and plate, and responded to his advances with a ready self-possession that surprised him in a girl so young; for Sarah, under-sized and crippled, did not look her age by several years. For herself she would have been shy and awkward, but for Jenny she was bold enough. She had determined that, if she could help to bring about the realisation of her new dream, her best wits should not be wanting.
He soon began to speak of Jenny.
"Your sister seems very busy," he said, with a lightness of tone that did not deceive the listener.