I wonder what the fees amount to. I am inclined to think that it is my duty to see Selby-Harrison through. I should not like to think of his whole career being wrecked. At the same time I am inclined to think that it would be waste to turn him into a doctor. He ought to make his mark as a chartered accountant if he gets a chance. I shall speak to my mother about him when I go home and see what she suggests.
“Hilda’s mother has written saying that Hilda is not to spend next hols with me; which was all arranged before the fuss began. I can’t see what objection she can possibly have. Anyhow it is frightful tyranny and of course we don’t mean to stand it. Selby-Harrison says that perhaps if you wrote to her she would give in; but I don’t want you to do this. I hate crawling, especially to Hilda’s mother and people like that, but if you like to do it you can. Selby-Harrison says that your mother being an honourable, will make a lot of difference, though I don’t see what that has to do with me. Still if you think it will be any use there’s no reason why you shouldn’t mention it. Hilda has cried buckets full since the letter came.”
I am sorry for Hilda but I shall not write to her mother. I have enough on my hands without that. Besides, as Lalage says, I do not see the connection between my mother’s position in society and Hilda’s mother’s schemes for her daughter’s holidays.
“P.S. I hope you got your 8 per cent, all right. I told Selby-Harrison to send it. We were all three stony at the time and had to borrow it from another girl who is going in for logic honours, but she’s quite rich, so it doesn’t matter. Hilda didn’t want to, and said she’d give her two gold safety pins, which she got last Christmas, if Selby-Harrison would pawn them for her. But he wouldn’t, and I thought it was hardly worth while for the sake of one and fourpence, besides making her mother more furious than ever. We ought not to have had to borrow more than fourpence, for Selby-Harrison had a shilling the night before, but went and spent it on having a Turkish bath. Rather a rotten thing to do, I think, when we owed it. But he said he’d forgotten about the 8 per cent, and had to have the Turkish bath on account of the way the Prov. talked to him. That was yesterday, of course, not to-day.”
I was glad when I read this that I had made out my cheque for the whole ten pounds. Selby-Harrison will be in a position to pay the other girl back. She may be quite rich, but she will not like being done out of her money. The fact that she is going in for logic honours shows me that she has a precise kind of mind and a good deal of quiet determination. I should be surprised if she submitted meekly to the loss of one and fourpence.
“P.P.S. I always forget to tell you that Pussy (Miss Battersby) says she left a hat pin with a silver swallow on the end of it in that first hotel in Lisbon. Would you mind going in the next day you are passing and asking for it? I hate to bother you and I wouldn’t, only that we don’t any of us remember the name of the hotel and so can’t write.”
I rather shrank from asking that hotel keeper for a pin supposed to have been dropped in one of his bedrooms during the previous August. But Miss Battersby, at least, does not deserve to suffer. I spent a long afternoon going round the jewellers’ shops in Lisbon and in the end secured a pin with two silver doves and a heart on it. I sent this to Miss Battersby and explained that it was the nearest thing to her original swallow which the hotel keeper had been able to find. She is, fortunately, quite an easy person to please. She wrote thanking me for the trouble I had taken.
CHAPTER IX
My friends were singularly successful in their negotiations on my behalf. Not a single bishop proceeded with his libel action against Lalage. Nor was I forced to buy any of them off by building even a small cathedral. I attribute our escape from their vengeance entirely to the Provost. His clear statement of the impossibility of obtaining damages by any legal process must have had its effect.