“There is a great deal more than we shall require. It is quite a large bottle.” That statement was very true. It was a decidedly large bottle.
The Dragon scowled over the fur clad shoulder of her mistress, whom she would willingly have slain. Nevertheless Miss Cass had to yield to force majeure.
“Those plain round biscuits are strongly recommended. They make an excellent combination”—clever old Pikey to have thought of those!—“You see, there is any amount—far more than we shall want.”
Resistance was vain. Miss Gray Eyes accepted a plain round biscuit and then she drank of the full-bodied wine from the famous cellar of Castle Carabbas.
“This is for you and me, Pikey.” The Dragon, a figure of grim disapproval, had charged the one remaining tumbler. “You must have the first drink. That is your side of the Atlantic,” Lady Elfreda humorously drew an imaginary line across the mouth of the tumbler. “This is my side.”
Pikey drank. But her nose was so long that it seemed to stretch from Queenstown to Old Point Comfort.
Yes, a great wine, as none knew better than Pikey. She could not bear to see it wasted on Miss No-Class. If Pikey’s will had prevailed it would have choked the lady of the green ulster. What right had she to be drinking it, much less to be having a tumbler to herself?
Who knows what imprisoned genius lurked in that magic bottle from the cellar of Castle Carabbas? Miss Cass had never had such a meal. A modest repast, if you like, yet full of a peculiar virtue. Her thoughts began to fly round, her blood to course quicker; imprisoned forces were unsealed in her brain; phrases, ideas began to shape themselves. The moment with its pains and its fears began to press less heavily. Suddenly she became free of a great kingdom that her dreams had hinted at.
Suppose—entrancing supposition!—she were not an obscure, timid little governess at all, but the daughter of a marquis. She could have looked the part anyway; that was to say, had she been privileged to wear the clothes of the lady opposite she could have made an equally good showing. Privately she felt that with an equal chance she would have made a better. At any rate, if a glass could be depended on, her eyes, which were her chief asset, a rather curious gray, would have gone extremely well with that beautiful skunk collar.
Miss Cass grasped her pencil with a confidence she had never felt before. “The great charm of Mr. Galsworthy’s novels, which they share with the novels of Mr. H. G. Bennett and Mr. Arnold Wells——”