[CHAPTER XI]
MAJOR RUCK
"A tramp!" said Mrs. Lilly, with dignified disgust. "However did he get in here?"
"I ain't no tramp, lydies," said the man, twisting a piece of straw in his rabbit mouth. "I've got a 'ouse in town, an' a box in Scotlan', an' a yatsh at Cowes, I 'ave. Blimme me, if I ain't a gent at large, and devoted"--he bowed and leered--"to the genteel sect."
Beatrice looked at him with a shiver. He wore a suit of clothes too large for him, a dirty red wisp round his lean throat, and carpet slippers bound with string to his large feet. He was of no great height, and his shock of red hair made him look even smaller. His face was clean-shaven, or rather it ought to have been, for apparently it had not been touched by a razor for quite a week. Twisting the straw in his mouth, and a ragged cricketing cap in his hairy hands, he straddled with his short legs and leered impudently. It was the animal eyes of the man that made Beatrice shiver: they were green and shallow, like those of a bird, and the expression in them was evil in the extreme. The creature evidently had been steeped in iniquity from his cradle, and the foulness of his presence marred the perfect beauty of that still garden sleeping in the sunshine, so clean and wholesome.
"What do you want?" asked Miss Hedge sharply and shortly.
"I wos jest atellin' y'," said Waterloo--as he called himself--and his voice rasped like a file. "I wants t'see Mr. Paslow."
"He is in town," snapped Mrs. Lilly, surveying the creature with still deeper disgust. "Have you a message for him?"
Waterloo laid a warty finger on one side of his pug nose, and winked in a horribly familiar manner. "Thet's tellin's," said he, grinning, "an' not evin' to th' sect I'm so fond of, does I give myself away. Oh no, not at all, by no means, you dear things."
"Go away," cried Beatrice, putting her handkerchief to her nose, for the atmosphere was tainted by the presence of the man; "if you don't, I'll call Durban." This was a happy inspiration, as she knew that Durban was on the premises.