Frank's eyes filled with tears. How hard he had been on her! Nay, had he not misjudged her? She looked so frail, so little, so childish, what guile could she know? It was all mere surface-froth on her lips! How narrow to set up his life, his ideals, as models, patterns! The poor little thing had her own tastes, her own individuality! How hard she worked to earn her own living! He bent down and kissed her forehead, remorsefully, as one might kiss an overscolded child. She drew his head down lower and kissed him—passionately—on the lips. "Let us wait a little," she said, as he spoke of sending for a hansom. "Sloman, the lessee, gives a little supper on the stage after the show—he'll be annoyed if I don't stay. He'll be delighted to have you."
The pantomime had gone better than anyone had expected. It had been insufficiently rehearsed, and though everybody had said "it'll be all right at night"—in the immemorial phrase of the profession—they had said it more automatically than confidently. Consequently everyone was in high feather, and agreeably surprised at the accuracy of the prophesying. Even Georgie Spanner ceased to scowl under the genial influences of success and Sloman's very decent champagne. The air was full of laughter and gaiety, and everybody (except the clown) cracked jokes. The leading ladies made themselves pleasant, and did not swear. Everybody seemed to have acquired a new respect for Lucy, seeing her with such a real Belgravian swell. Probably she would soon have a theatre of her own.
It was the Prig's first excursion into Bohemia, and he thought the natives very civil-spoken, naïve, and cordial. Frank had no doubt now that Lucy was right, that he was a Prig to want to redeem mankind. And the conviction that he lacked worldly wisdom was sealed for aye.
V.
So he married her.
An Odd Life.
It was the most curious case of croup I had ever attended. Not that there was anything unusual about the symptoms—they were so correct as to be devoid of the slightest interest. Certainly they were not worth while being called up for in the middle of the night. The patient it was that attracted my attention. He was a handsome baby of one year and nine months—by name Willy Streetside—with such an expression of candour and intelligence that I was moved to see him suffer. I sat down by his bedside, took his poor little feverish hand, and felt the weak quick pulse, and knew it had not much longer to beat. I put the glass of barley and water to his lips, and he drank eagerly. He seemed to be an orphan, in charge of a strange, silent serving-man, apparently the only other occupant of the luxurious and artistically furnished flat. I judged Downton to be a man of some culture, from the latest magazines strewn about the bedroom; but I could not help thinking that a female, more familiar with infantile ailments, might have been more useful. Apathetic and torpid though I was, from eighteen hours' continuous activity in a hundred sickrooms, my eyes filled with tears, and I sat for an instant, holding the little hand, listening to the poor child's painful breathing, and speculating on the mystery of that existence so early recalled. All his organs were sound. But for this accidental croup, I told myself, he might have lived till eighty. "Poor Willy Streetside!" I murmured, for his curious name clung to my memory.
Suddenly the baby turned his blue eyes full on me, and said: