“Anyhow, it’s quite nice to look at; and here comes the coffee,” said he. “It’s a queer room—gives even an ignorant chap like me a feeling that it’s all right—furnished throughout, and not on the hire-purchase system.”
Then he drank his coffee and looked about him, and then at his visitors—first at one and then at the other. They were standing together at one of the oval windows looking out upon a flagged terrace with a balustrade and piers and great stone vases of classical design.
“A really nice room,” he said, as if he were summing up the result of his survey of the young women. “I think, you know, that I make its acquaintance in rather happy circumstances,” he added. “I hope I may consider that you have left cards on me so that I may ask you to dinner or something. I went into the dining-room the first thing, and then down to the cellar. I don’t think that the dining-room looks so finished as this room. I felt a bit uneasy, you know, to see all those frames with hand-painted ancestors grinning down at me. They seemed to be winking at one another and whispering, ‘Lord, what a mug!’ I didn’t feel at all at home among them—pretty bounders they were to make their remarks—silk coats and satin embroidered waistcoats and powdered hair worn long! Bounders to a man! I felt a bit lonely among them, and that’s why I told the woman I should have my plate laid in the library. I didn’t want any of their cheek. I was thinking what a rather dismal homecoming it was for me—not a soul to say a word of welcome to a chap. I felt a bit down on my luck, and I suppose that’s why I fell into that doze. Only five minutes I could have slept, and when I opened my eyes—I give you my word I had a feeling—that halfwaking feeling, you know—that it was the ghosts of two of the nicest of my ancestors come back to say a word of encouragement to me to make up for the bad manners of those satin-upholstered ones. I do hate the kind of chap that gets painted in fancy dress!”
The notion of the Georgian portraits being in fancy dress sent the young women into a peal of laughter; and then he laughed too.
“That’s like coming home,” he said a minute later. “That’s what I looked for, and if I didn’t feel grateful to you both——”
“Grateful to the rain, the thunder and lightning,” suggested Rosa.
“All right, thunder and lightning and rain and all the rest. I’ll have a greater respect for them in the future; but all the same the gratitude will go to you. You have turned a failure into a success, and no other girls would have been able to do so much. They would have giggled and gone the moment they caught sight of me. Yes, I’m grateful.”
“And we are glad,” said Priscilla, gently. “And we’re quite sorry that the rain is over so that we have no excuse for—for—oh, yes, trespassing on your hospitality.”
“But you have only shown me one of the rooms, and there are about forty others, I believe. Think of me getting lost in a rabbit warren of bedrooms and dressing-rooms and still rooms and sparkling! Wouldn’t it be on your conscience if you heard of that happening?”
“Our conscience—Mr. Wingfield takes it for granted that we have only one conscience between us,” said Priscilla.