Now appeared the slattern maid, card between finger and thumb, picking her way like a cat along the tangled garden path in the direction of the girl.
Mr Bevan turned away from the window and looked at the books lining the wall, his eye travelling from Humboldt's works to the tooled back of Milton—he was trying to recollect who Schopenhauer was—when of a sudden the door opened and an amazingly pretty girl of the old-fashioned school of beauty entered the room. She was dark, and she came into the room laughing, yet with a half-frightened air as if fearful of being caught missing from some old canvas.
"You won't tell," said she as they shook hands like intimate acquaintances. "If father knew I had asked Mr Hancock, you know what, he'd kill me; I really believe he would." She put down her tennis racquet on the table, her hat she had left outside, and evidently in a hurry, to judge by the delightful disorder of her hair.
Mr Bevan, who was trying to stiffen his lip and appear very formal, had taken his seat on a low chair which made him feel dwarfed and ridiculous. He had also, unfortunately, left his hat on the table some yards away, and so had nothing with which to occupy his hands; he was, therefore, entirely at the mercy of Miss Lambert, who had taken an armchair near by, and was now chattering to him with the familiarity, almost, of a sister.
"It seems so fortunate, you know," said she suddenly, discarding a discussion about the weather. "It seems so fortunate that idea of mine of speaking to Mr Hancock. I hate fighting with people, but father loves it; he'd fight with himself, I think, if he could find no one else, and still, if you knew him, he's the sweetest-tempered person in the world, he is, he would do anything for anybody, he would lay his life down for a friend. But you will know him now, now that that terrible affair about the fish stream is settled."
Mr Bevan swallowed rapidly and cast frantic glances at his hat. Had Miss Lambert been of the ordinary type of girl he might possibly have intimated that the fish stream business was not so settled as she supposed, but with this sweet-tongued and friendly beauty, it was impossible. He felt deeply exasperated at the false position in which he found himself, and was endeavouring to prepare some reply of a non-committal character when, of a sudden, his eye caught a direful sight, which for a moment made him forget both fish stream and false position—the little boot of Miss Lambert peeping from beneath her skirt was old and broken.
"I would not deny him anything, goodness knows," continued Fanny Lambert, as if she were talking of a child. "But this action costs such a lot, and there are so many people he could fight cheaply with if he wants to," she broke into an enchanting little laugh. "I think, really, it's the expense that makes him think so much of it; he has a horror of cheap things."
"Cheap things are never much good," conceded Mr Bevan, upon whose mind a dreadful sort of imbecility had now fallen, his will cried out frantically to his intellect for help, and received none. Here had he come to demand explanations, to put his foot down—alas! what is the will of man beside the beauty of a woman?
"That's what father says," said Fanny. "But as for me, I love them, that is to say bargains, you know."