"By the way he shot through the crowd like a streak of greased lightning, I should say it wasn't fatal," Tony cheered me. "But if you'd like to have me do a bit of secret service work and 'phone to a few hotels or hospitals——"
I shook my head decidedly. "I know the hotel where he goes," I said. "I shan't send. I think if he were very badly wounded, he would let me know. He'd trust me to stand between him and—the others. Now—let's go and see Di cut her wedding cake. You can have a piece to dream on if you like."
"No good!" said Tony. "I always dream of you anyhow, when I dream at all—except when I eat welsh rabbit: then I dream of the devil." But he went with me like a lamb, and we spoke no more of Captain March.
CHAPTER XVI
I think if Sidney Vandyke had never taken the trouble actually to hate me, he exerted himself to that extent on his wedding day.
I kept my distance when the others gave the bride and bridegroom a send-off of waving hands and showering rice as they skimmed away in the Grayles-Grice car (ready at last); but I'd caught a wandering glance or two meanwhile from my new brother-in-law, and thanked my stars that Heaven hadn't made me some poor private soldier under his command. Di turned her cheek with the look of a martyred saint when I was supposed to kiss her good-bye; and altogether I fancied that I should not be urged to visit in Park Lane when the happy pair came back in the autumn. I intended to be at Ballyconal then; but a thousand things were fated to change my scheme and the schemes of all the other unsuspecting mice in England and Europe.
The first thing—oh, such a small thing compared to those that were to follow—which happened after Di's marriage was an announcement from Father. He had proposed to Mrs. Main, and she had been "good enough to accept him." That was his formal way of breaking the news to me, for we had been on official terms only for some days following the wedding; though to his darling Di he would probably have put it "Look here, girl, she's jumped at me! Hurrah! The luck of Ballyconal's come right side up again!" And Di would have congratulated dear old Bally, reminding him that third times were always successful.
Of course, whenever I stopped to think of it, I had told myself that this announcement was bound to come, and to come soon. But my head had been full as a hive of bees with other thoughts; and besides, I hadn't realized how I should feel the blow when it fell.
Vaguely, I'd taken it for granted that life would go on for me as before. I liked Kitty, and she didn't dislike me, though, of course, Di had been brilliantly her favourite. I had told myself that Kitty and Father would trot off somewhere and leave me free at Ballyconal to hibernate in some neglected corner, while the place was glorified into a stately British home for an American millionairess. Then (I had gone on dimly planning) they would return in state, and Kitty would be duly honoured by a picturesque welcome from the hastily cleaned up tenants. After that, nobody would take much notice of little Peggy. I should be tacitly permitted to play among my books, and the peasants I loved the best, for whose sake I had been trying to learn the art of nursing.