“Then you did not give him a little clue, or tell him your name?” and Tossie thrust her red-and-white face close to mine, and stared into my eyes with her unflinching blue orbs.
“Of course not,” I answered impatiently. “Why should I?”
“If it had been me, I’d have done it! Well now, there is three striking and I must go to my bed. The meet is at Harper’s Cross at eleven—but you can sleep it out!”
On my return from the Manor to “The Roost,” I related to Lizzie the history of my illegitimate outing. With more than usual glibness my tongue wagged freely, as I described the dance, the supper, the music, the most notable costumes, and my various partners—all except one; and she, kind and unsuspicious creature, declared that she was delighted to hear I had enjoyed myself so thoroughly, but added:
“If the tidings of this little escapade were ever to reach the ears of Mrs. Lingard, I believe I should be compelled to emigrate!”
CHAPTER V
THE GREAT INVASION
It is strange but true that my future lot was profoundly affected by the microbe of influenza. Influenza accomplishes various evils; this obnoxious germ carries weakness, depression and death, but it is rare to find it a medium that launches a young woman into the great wide world.
An excursion to London every January was one of the hard-and-fast rules of “The Roost”; about the middle of the month, when Christmas festivities had waned, the professor and his niece journeyed together to a boarding-house in Bayswater, and there enjoyed—each in their own way—a fortnight of the Metropolis. She, in attending sales and classical concerts, looking up old friends and going to “teas” arrayed in her best clothes. He, in personally worrying managers and dramatic agents, patronising theatres, telephoning incessantly, and giving expensive entertainments to needy professionals, who fed his insatiable vanity with enormous helpings of the sweetest flattery, and sent him back to his dull old den with a swollen head and a somewhat empty pocket.
Just before this half-yearly expedition, when rooms had been engaged, luggage packed, and our arrival formally notified, Lizzie suddenly collapsed under a violent attack of “flu.” As her temperature was found to be 103, a journey was out of the question. The doctor who was summoned ordered bed and nursing, and declared the ailment to be of a particularly virulent type. Lizzie, painfully distressed and apologetic, endeavoured to assert herself and talked of “being all right in a couple of days,” but when the doctor uttered the word “pneumonia” she succumbed.
At first the attitude of the professor was sympathetic, then by degrees he became silent, sullen, and finally morose; as vexed at his postponed holidays as any spoilt child.