"Oh, lawks a-mercy!" she said. "Lawks a-mercy!"
It was as though some solemn old Egyptian sphinx had broken into broad Cockney, and, having given vent to its feelings, relapsed into the historic pose of unfathomable and supercilious meditation. Sigrid Fersen closed her book. She rested her head on its smooth yellow surface with a curious tenderness.
"You mustn't be unhappy, Smithy, and you mustn't try to prevent me. One way or the other, my days are numbered, and each one of them has to be an episode, something definite and new, something to take with me or to look back on. Afterwards——" Her voice lifted from its veiled softness and rang clearer. "We have travelled a long, long way, Smithy, and now we are almost at the end. You have seen it all with your wise old eyes, perhaps better than I have, and you know what life is. What shall it be, Smithy?"
The old woman clasped her knotted hands together and rocked herself slowly backwards and forwards.
"I don't know—I don't know. It's just a nightmare. I wake up sometimes o' nights and ask myself if I've gone clean mad, or what we're doing here in this awful heathen country—you, the greatest of 'em all, hobnobbing with ninnies wot don't know Taglioni from Queen Elizabeth, and me trying to be a lady by dint of keeping my mouth shut like a mouse-trap—me, that stood and waited for you night after night and 'dressed' you quicker than the smartest of them—lawks a-mercy, wot am I doing here?"
Sigrid Fersen got up slowly, putting her book on the table, and came and stood at her companion's side. She caressed the grenadine-clad shoulder lightly, affectionately. "You're here because I am, and because you've stuck to me through everything. You can't help sticking to me any more than I can help wanting you somewhere in the background. And I'm here because of this"—she laid her hand on her left side—"and this——" She opened a drawer in the table, and, taking out a little shiny-backed note-book, dropped it into the old woman's lap. "Open it. Now take the bottom figure on the right-hand column from the bottom figure on the left. What does it leave?"
Mrs. Smithers coughed apologetically.
"I never was a hand at figures, Sigrid."
"Never mind. Take your time."
"I don't know rightly—it looks to me like a thousand."