“Verdomd! Do you suppose I’ll have you, my young lady, keep my carriage horses out again as you did last night, so that they went to sleep in the goods van this morning! The Countess of Mansfeld’s yesterday and the Duchess of Aerschot’s to-morrow and you not up until dinner to-day. My servants eating me out of house and home; you haven’t kept your household accounts for a week! Don’t answer me, miss, I have looked at your market book, not written up—not written up—no commercial ideas! But let me tell you,” adds the old gentleman, “if this happens again, down you come at eight in the morning and attend to women customers in the wareroom,” he points toward the commercial end of the house. “Remember that!”
And bottling up his wrath, Papa Bodé Volcker makes adieu to Guy and Oliver, remarking that he must attend to business if none of the rest of the family do, but dragging off the snickering boy Jakob.
“Papa is very eccentric. This sort of discussion always begins with the tenth penny tax,” remarks the young lady solemnly. Then she half sighs, half laughs: “We have this every week or two, though not generally in public. He’ll be coming back again in a minute,” giving a little horrified snicker as the old gentleman fulfils her prophecy by popping his head in at the door and crying:
“And that French jumping-jack, who teaches you to sling your feet about! I flung him out, waistband and neck ruff, this morning!”
But this news is too much for the fair Wilhelmina’s complacency. She springs up with a scream of horror, “Oh, papa! Poor, dear little Monsieur de Valmy!” and there are tears in her eyes.
“Yes, and the music master, that spinet playing fellow, goes also. No more flipping the heel and raising the toe; no more semi-quavers and high Italian [[92]]screeches,” jabbers the ex-burgomaster. “Remember the tenth penny tax! Some day I will be a music teacher myself,” and with this extraordinary prophecy Bodé Volcker darts for his counting room.
But this astounding prediction is too much for every one. They go into laughter, which Miss Wilhelmina leads, ejaculating: “A music teacher, indeed! Screeches and semi-quavers!”
Tossing herself into a chair in front of a near-by spinet, she gives out smilingly a little Provençal chançon with such unaffected ease and grace that both Guy and Oliver declare it would be a shame if the music master should be suppressed, tenth penny tax or no.
This seems to put them all at their ease, Miss Bodé Volcker regaling the gentlemen with an account of the grand fête of the Countess Mansfeld in honor of Doña de Alva the night before, mentioning the names of the Signeurs de la Noircarmes, D’Avila, Mondragon, Gabriel de Cerbolloni, and other officers and nobles as being present, as well as the younger Countess Mansfeld, the aristocratic Baroness d’ Ayala, and the beautiful Doña Anica de la Medrado, just come with the latest Madrid fashions. “I was the only one from the town,” she adds innocently, “but my dancing was greatly admired.”
A moment after they have proof of this.