"I couldn't, your Grace. I couldn't really."
It looked indeed like a blind alley; but in the end the duke yielded. His heart was set on carrying through this scheme for regaining his duchess. His mind was so rarely guilty of ingenuity that he could not bear to discourage it. They set themselves, therefore, to making the presence of the Lump at Ricksborough Court plausible. Fortunately he was too young to spoil their plan by indiscreet babble, had he been a babbling child. To the minds of the servants at Ricksborough Court, minds so carefully trained in the board schools of England, his pregnant grunts would convey no meaning.
Then arose the question of a becoming outfit; and into this matter the Honourable John Ruffin threw himself with enthusiasm. He saw his way to remove the burden of new summer clothes for herself and the Lump from Pollyooly's slender resources for several years.
More than once the duke protested that he was not taking the children to live at the court for the rest of the century; and when the Honourable John Ruffin thoughtfully tried to edge in a few winter vests, he protested hotly that he was not fitting out an expedition to discover the North Pole, or the South.
His warm opposition only excited the combative instinct of the Honourable John Ruffin. Coldly he urged the well-known inclemency of the English summer; surely the duke did not wish to have two pneumonic children on his hands; and the vests slipped into the outfit.
The duke was resolved to give the affair the strongest possible air of verisimilitude; and he engaged a governess, a Miss Belthrop, for Pollyooly. That led to his engaging a nurse, Emily Gibbs, for the Lump, though Pollyooly protested that it was quite unnecessary.
The duke was indeed falling more and more deeply in love with his scheme the nearer it came to putting it into effect. On three afternoons he came to coach Pollyooly in the topography of Ricksborough Court and its gardens, and in the habits of Lady Marion Ricksborough. He was astonished and impressed by her intelligence. He was called on to tell her hardly a single thing twice. He spoke of it to the Honourable John Ruffin with great respect.
Then on the tenth day after his first visit he came in a taxicab, greatly excited, for them and their luggage, and drove them to Waterloo Station. On the platform they found Emily Gibbs, in charge of Lawrence, the duke's valet, awaiting them. She found favour in the exigent eyes of Pollyooly, who let her take charge of the Lump without a single anxious qualm. Emily Gibbs fell in love with him at first sight.
Pollyooly, though all the while she kept a careful eye on him, left him in the care of Emily Gibbs, till the train was actually outside London. Then she took him into her corner and pointed out objects of interest to him. She was convinced that he had made a great advance in intelligence since his journey down to Pyechurch: not once did he hail a sheep as a gee-gee. She promoted him to the use of his proper Christian name, and called him Roger. The duke had grown calm once more, and read a four-penny-half-penny magazine with every appearance of absorbed interest.
In the motor car which carried them from Ricksborough station to the court, Pollyooly insisted on having the Lump on her knee. Motor drives did not come their way so often that she could bear to be parted from him in an hour of such delight.