“It’s all too wonderful,” she said, “and I don’t know that I’ve the right to let you help me.”
“Nonsense,” said Miss Mason gruffly. “Might just as well say I’ve no right to ask you to give me the pleasure of doing a little thing like this; but I’m going to ask you, all the same. Now go and put on a hat.”
Bridget left the room. In a few moments she came down in a dark blue linen coat and skirt, and a black straw hat swathed with rose-coloured silk. She had brushed her hair and looked a different being.
“Can we get a four-wheeler?” asked Miss Mason. “Came in a taxi, but didn’t enjoy it.”
“There’s a train and an omnibus,” said Bridget, “that will take us to Notting Hill Gate, and we can get any amount of cabs from there.”
So for the first time in her life Miss Mason mounted to the top of an omnibus and thoroughly enjoyed it. She peered over garden walls as they passed, and did her best to look through windows, and made up a good many quite fascinating stories about the inhabitants of the houses—stories very different from the mental pictures of the very same lives that Jasper had been wont to paint. In Miss Mason’s stories there was always a mother—a mother clasping the downy head of a new-born baby to her heart; a mother watching the first toddling steps of a tiny child; a mother hearing a little white-nightgowned figure lisp a childish prayer. The father in these stories—of course there was a father—took an extraordinarily back seat.
Her thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a question from Bridget.
“How did Jasper come to tell you our story?” she asked.
“We were looking at a picture of Pippa,” replied Miss Mason quietly, “and he said that little Stella would have been nearly the same age.”
Bridget nodded. For a moment she was silent. Then she spoke again. “Who,” she asked, “is Pippa?”