Mentally, too, she had a healthy boy’s outlook, although emotionally feminine. Joy in life radiated from her. Dames of Lady Selina’s quality might (and did) stigmatise this as pagan. Long ago, Miss Spong had rebuked her for dancing or prancing to church. But, despite rebuke, she had gone on dancing, conscious, possibly, of slim ankles and high insteps.
Tiddy being an only child, it might be reasonably inferred that she was spoilt by adoring parents. Nothing of the kind. Sir Nathaniel had become a millionaire by the exercise of brains and indomitable will. Tiddy’s mother, as we have said, began womanhood in a shoe factory. Both Sir Nathaniel and she were excellent types of the successful industrial class in this nation. The beacon which had led them upwards and onwards was undiluted common sense. Sir Nathaniel had his weaknesses—what great man is without them?—pride in what he had accomplished, pardonable vanity, an ambition that vaulted as high as the Upper House, and an ever-increasing desire to play the part of a magnate. But he remained, like his wife, sound and simple at core. He had never, for example, turned his back upon relations who had not soared. He was of the people, and much too fond of saying so. Tiddy had inherited from him democratic instincts. And if, with accumulating riches, Sir Nathaniel had become, as his daughter hinted, conservative in regard to property, he never faltered in his allegiance to the class from which he had sprung. His great factories were models of organisation and administration. He boasted that no strikes had taken place in them. Possibly his greatest pleasure in life was taking appreciative guests—particularly personages—round his factories, and, in their presence receiving the homage of pleasant smiles and grateful words from his employés. It was after such an agreeable excursion that the honour of knighthood had been bestowed.
II
Tiddy duly arrived at Wilverley, and that night Cicely and she sat up talking till the small hours. As a rule, the nursing staff took their meals together. Mrs. Roden and Wilverley dined apart. But, inasmuch as Tiddy was Cicely’s friend, the two V.A.D.s were asked to square the family circle at dinner. Tiddy would join the staff on the following morning.
Cicely was amused to see that she made an immense impression both upon Wilverley and his sister, asking innumerable questions, all of them to the point, and describing her experiences in a big Red Cross Hospital in the Midlands, not run upon model lines.
“Friction everywhere,” declared Tiddy. “Matron on bad terms with sisters and nurses, favouritism——”
“Were you a favourite, Miss Tiddle?” asked Wilverley, much amused.
“Yes,” replied Tiddy. “As a martyr I might have stuck it, but just because Daddy weighed in with big cheques they were much too civil to me, and I loathed it. That’s why I’m here to-night,” she concluded with a gay laugh.
“Pray go on,” entreated Mrs. Roden. “This is most instructive. We may profit by your experiences, my dear young lady.”
“As to that,” said Tiddy frankly, “I should keep mum, if I didn’t know from Cis that things are humming along here on the right lines. The poor duchess meant well——”