“You may take my harm, if you like,” suggested Miss Sellars, as we crossed St. George's Circus; and linked, we pursued our way along the Kennington Park Road.
Fortunately, there was not much need for me to talk. Miss Sellars was content to supply most of the conversation herself, and all of it was about herself.
I learned that her instincts since childhood had been toward gentility. Nor was this to be wondered at, seeing that her family—on her mother's side, at all events,—were connected distinctly with “the h ighest in the land.” Mesalliances, however, are common in all communities, and one of them, a particularly flagrant specimen—her “Mar” had, alas! contracted, having married—what did I think? I should never guess—a waiter! Miss Sellars, stopping in the act of crossing Newington Butts to shudder at the recollection of her female parent's shame, was nearly run down by a tramcar.
Mr. and Mrs. Sellars did not appear to have “hit it off” together. Could one wonder: Mrs. Sellars with an uncle on the Stock Exchange, and Mr. Sellars with one on Peckham Rye? I gathered his calling to have been, chiefly, “three shies a penny.” Mrs. Sellars was now, however, happily dead; and if no other good thing had come out of the catastrophe, it had determined Miss Sellars to take warning by her mother's error and avoid connection with the lowly born. She it was who, with my help, would lift the family back again to its proper position in society.
“It used to be a joke against me,” explained Miss Sellars, “heven when I was quite a child. I never could tolerate anything low. Why, one day when I was only seven years old, what do you think happened?”
I confessed my inability to guess.
“Well, I'll tell you,” said Miss Sellars; “it'll just show you. Uncle Joseph—that was father's uncle, you understand?”
I assured Miss Sellars that the point was fixed in my mind.
“Well, one day when he came to see us he takes a cocoanut out of his pocket and offers it to me. 'Thank you,' I says; 'I don't heat cocoanuts that have been shied at by just anybody and missed!' It made him so wild. After that,” explained Miss Sellars, “they used to call me at home the Princess of Wales.”
I murmured it was a pretty fancy.