“She’s safer than she would be, with you or me. She couldn’t have a smarter young fellow to look after her.”
“It’ll be awful thick at Hyde Park Corner,” said Bunting. “It’s always worse there than anywhere else. If I was Joe I’d ’a taken her by the Underground Railway to Victoria—that ’ud been the best way, considering the weather ’tis.”
“They don’t think anything of the weather, bless you!” said his wife. “They’ll walk and walk as long as there’s a glimmer left for ’em to steer by. Daisy’s just been pining to have a walk with that young chap. I wonder you didn’t notice how disappointed they both were when you was so set on going along with them to that horrid place.”
“D’you really mean that, Ellen?” Bunting looked upset. “I understood Joe to say he liked my company.”
“Oh, did you?” said Mrs. Bunting dryly. “I expect he liked it just about as much as we liked the company of that old cook who would go out with us when we was courting. It always was a wonder to me how the woman could force herself upon two people who didn’t want her.”
“But I’m Daisy’s father; and an old friend of Chandler,” said Bunting remonstratingly. “I’m quite different from that cook. She was nothing to us, and we was nothing to her.”
“She’d have liked to be something to you, I make no doubt,” observed his Ellen, shaking her head, and her husband smiled, a little foolishly.
By this time they were back in their nice, cosy sitting-room, and a feeling of not altogether unpleasant lassitude stole over Mrs. Bunting. It was a comfort to have Daisy out of her way for a bit. The girl, in some ways, was very wide awake and inquisitive, and she had early betrayed what her stepmother thought to be a very unseemly and silly curiosity concerning the lodger. “You might just let me have one peep at him, Ellen?” she had pleaded, only that morning. But Ellen had shaken her head. “No, that I won’t! He’s a very quiet gentleman; but he knows exactly what he likes, and he don’t like anyone but me waiting on him. Why, even your father’s hardly seen him.”
But that, naturally, had only increased Daisy’s desire to view Mr. Sleuth.
There was another reason why Mrs. Bunting was glad that her stepdaughter had gone away for two days. During her absence young Chandler was far less likely to haunt them in the way he had taken to doing lately, the more so that, in spite of what she had said to her husband, Mrs. Bunting felt sure that Daisy would ask Joe Chandler to call at Belgrave Square. ’Twouldn’t be human nature—at any rate, not girlish human nature—not to do so, even if Joe’s coming did anger Aunt Margaret.