"It's for me to thank you," said he. "I'm awfully afraid I'm getting the best of the bargain, though. Wouldn't you rather go somewhere first and consult an expert?"
"No, indeed," said I. "Maybe the expert would tell us the lace was worth only five pounds, not ten. What I'm in a hurry to do is to dash to Selfridge's, and buy the dress I want before some beast of a girl gets it before me. Oh, horror! Maybe she's there already!"
"The worst of it is," said my new friend—I felt he was that—"I haven't got the ten pounds on me. I meant to have anything I might decide to buy sent home and paid for at my hotel."
"Can't I go with you to your hotel, and you give me the money there?" I wanted to know. "You see, I'm in such a hurry about the dress."
He glanced at me with a funny look in his eyes, and somehow I read what it meant. He hadn't called me a "little girl," and had behaved as respectfully as if I were a hundred; but I could see that he thought me about twelve or thirteen; and now he was saying to himself: "No harm carting a child like that about without a chaperon."
This was the first time I'd ever been glad that I had sacrificed myself for Di, and come to London in my old frocks up to the tops of my boots, and my hair hanging in two tails down to my waist. Of course, if any one were caddish or cattish enough to look her up in the book, it could be found out at a glance that Lady Diana O'Malley was twenty-three; but even if a person is a cad or a cat, he (or she) is often too lazy to go through the dull pages of Debrett or Burke; and besides, there is seldom one of the books handy. Therefore, Di had a sporting chance of being taken for eighteen, the sweet conventional age of a débutante on her presentation. Every one did know, however, that Father had married twice, and that there must be a difference of five or six years between Diana and the chocolate child. Accordingly, if I could be induced to look thirteen at most, it would be useful. As for me, I hadn't cared particularly. I knew I shouldn't get any grown-up fun in London, whether my hair were in a tail or a twist, or whether my dresses were short or long. Sometimes I had been sorry for beginning in that way, but now I saw that virtue was going to be rewarded.
"All right," said my friend. "Maybe it will be the best arrangement." And we left Nebuchadnezzar looking as the dog in the fable must have looked, when he snapped at the reflected bit of meat in the water and lost the bit in his mouth.
A taxi was passing, and stopped at the flourish of a cane. I jumped in before I could be helped. The man followed; and though I was looking forward only to a little fun, my very first adventure in London "on my own," the chauffeur was speeding us along a road that didn't stop at the Waldorf Hotel: it was a road which would carry us both on and on, toward a blazing bonfire of wild passion and romance.