As I went along the side verandah, kettle in hand, I passed the window of the office in which Mrs Valetta and her party had their quarters. The room was brightly lighted with the N.C.’s rose-red lamp, round which a dozen woolly moths were buzzing, seeking destruction. The whole party was seated at the table playing cards. And Mrs Skeffington-Smythe was staring at her husband with a look of positive hatred in her eyes.
“I don’t cheat,” she was furiously asserting.
“Yes, you do; you always do; you think it’s funny. And all the time everybody else is hating you for it,” responded the warlike Monty amiably. Mrs Valetta and Miss Cleeve exchanged glances of the utmost boredom and disgust. Indeed, if there is anything more desperate in the way of ennui than to listen to a husband and wife quarrelling over cards, I don’t know it.
When I got back to our peaceful little den I felt inclined to decorate Mrs Rookwood with a gold medal with “Hurrah” on it in diamonds. Mrs Marriott had turned into another woman. To look at her one could almost believe that it was she who was emancipating herself from the drug habit. All her droopiness had gone. She looked like a flower upon which dew had fallen after long drought. She was not middle-aged any more. The Frenchman who wrote that age never comes to a woman who is loved, knew something about women and life!
My bed was not very comfortable that night, but I wrapped myself to sleep in a new dream of joy in my Anthony, who by his action in taking Dr Marriott in the face of all opposition had brought back fresh hope to two souls that bad seemed doomed to defeat and despair.
Chapter Eleven.
The Children Call.
“Linger longer, laager,
Linger longer loo.
If we have no laager,
What will Col. Blow do?
“Stair will ne’er desert him,
‘Monty’ will be true.
Then linger longer, laager,
Linger longer, loo.”
Laager Ballads.