Mr. Dale returned home to find metamorphosis; for Betty and John, egged on by nurse, had taken advantage of his day from home to turn out the study. This study had not been properly cleaned for years. It had never had what servants are fond of calling a spring cleaning. Neither spring nor autumn found any change for the better in that tattered, dusty, and worn-out carpet; in those old moreen curtains which hung in heavy, dull folds round the bay-window; in the leathern arm-chair, with very little leather left about it; in the desk, which was so piled with books and papers that it was difficult even to discover a clear space on which to write. The books on the shelves, too, were dusty as dusty could be. Many of them were precious folios—folios bound in calf which book-lovers would have given a great deal for—but the dust lay thick on them, and Betty said, with a look of disgust, that they soiled her fingers.
“Oh, drat you and your fingers!” said nurse. “You think of nothing but those blessed trashy novels you are always reading. You must turn to now. The master is certain to be back by the late afternoon train, and this room has got to be put into apple-pie order before he returns.”
“Yes,” said John; “we won’t lose the chance. We’ll take each book from its place on the shelf, dust it, and put it back again. We have a long job before us, so don’t you think any more of your novels and your grand ladies and gentlemen, Betty, my woman.”
“I have ceased to think of them,” said Betty.
She stood with her hands hanging straight to her sides; her face was quite pale.
“I trusted, and my trust failed me,” she continued. “I was at a wedding lately, John—you remember, don’t you?—Dick Jones’s wedding, at the other side of the Forest. There was a beautiful wedding cake, frosted over and almond-iced underneath, and ornaments on it, too—cupids and doves and such-like. A pair of little doves sat as perky as you please on the top of the cake, billing and cooing like anything. It made my eyes water even to look at ’em. You may be sure I didn’t think of Mary Dugdale, the bride that was, nor of poor Jones, neither; although he is a good looking man enough—I never said he wasn’t. But my heart was in my mouth thinking of that dear Dook of Mauleverer-Wolverhampton.”
“Who in the name of fortune is he?” asked nurse.
“A hero of mine,” said Betty.
Her face looked a little paler and more mournful even than when she had begun to speak.
“He’s dead,” she said, and she whisked a handkerchief out of her pocket and applied it to her eyes. “It was bandits as carried him off. He loved that innocent virgin he took for his wife like anything. Over and over have I thought of them, and privately made up my mind that if I came across his second I’d give him my heart.”