“You needn’t scowl at old Helwise like that!” Harriet flung at him, brutally undoing the family diplomacy in a breath. “Why shouldn’t she go round catching pennies if she wants? It’s no business of yours!”
Lanty looked at her seethingly, the memory of the bicycle handle still rankling, but before he could answer, Wiggie was at his elbow with a teacup. He remembered him now as the singer in the Lane, and a further memory, of much older standing, fretted vainly at the back of his brain. A moment later he heard him telling Helwise that he had found half a sovereign in the gutter, and couldn’t in conscience spend it on himself. The gentle voice was so convincing, the purring answer so ecstatic, that he smiled unwillingly, meeting deprecating flower-blue eyes at his side.
“It seems so rotten to rook you at a first call!” he broke out. “I expect you’ve come up against a fearful lot of that sort of thing already, and it can’t impress you very favourably. That’s the worst of the country. Everybody has some sort of a show wanting a leg-up, and all the giving falls on the same people. You’ve got to help, even when you’re not interested, or half the things would never run at all. But new-comers should have a certain amount of rope. You must stand out when it gets to rank robbery, and ask for time!”
“We’ll consult Watters!” Dandy said promptly. “This is a very strong-minded house—did you know? We have to give in to it dreadfully. It was simply hateful to our Halsted friends, especially the Tango ones—you didn’t like them either, did you?—and now it has taken a dislike to the gardener we brought with us—drops slates on him in a dead calm, smokes him out of the potting-shed, and, if he tries to put up a ladder, simply humps its back and throws it off again! I’m afraid he’ll have to go. It’s bearing us, so far, but of course we’re very careful. Mother wanted to turn the old nursery into a linen-room, but the minute she suggested it a patch of damp appeared on the ceiling, though there hadn’t been any rain for weeks; so we had to give up the idea. It likes Wiggie tremendously, though. His bathwater is always hot, and his room’s always full of spiders, and stacks of little sunbeams follow him everywhere, patting him on the head.”
Lanty laughed, and she felt quite disproportionately pleased. When he laughed, he looked years younger and a hundred times less worried. Then Harriet plunged into the lightened atmosphere with the pawing of a battle-horse.
“I say—what about this matrimonial agency of yours? We’ve all been hearing about Francey Dockeray and young Lup. What did you say to the girl, and how did she take it?”
The transient boyish look left his face. Dandy had drawn him into a quaint little world where tenants and their troubles had no place, but Harriet hauled him out again.
“Aren’t you asking a bit too much?” he answered as amiably as he could. “You’re a Bluecaster tenant, too, remember! You’ll like your sermon kept private, I fancy, if ever I come arbitrating in your love-affairs!”
It was said merely to chill her curiosity, but its actual effect was quite unaccountable. Harriet blushed—a slow, surprising blush from the rigid silk collar to the smooth hair—but she met his eye with fierce contempt in spite of it.
“Oh, well, be an oyster, if you choose! I shan’t die of it! You didn’t do much good, from all accounts. Have you seen Brack Holliday, lately? They say he’s raking up the old fuss about the Lugg.”