This was his parting message to the drunkard in the next room,—and having uttered it, he drew a long breath as of one who prepares to plunge into unknown seas, and resigned himself to ‘Kiss-Letty,’ who led him gently along, accommodating her graceful swift step to his toddling movements, through the hall and outside to her brougham, where the footman in attendance, smiling broadly at the sight of Boy, lifted the little fellow in, and seated him cosily on the soft cushions. Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir and the servant Gerty watched his departure from the house door.
“I will take every care of him!” called Miss Letitia, as she followed her small guest into her carriage—“Don’t be at all anxious!”
She waved her hand,—the footman shut the door, and mounted the box,—and in another minute the smart little equipage had turned the corner of Hereford Square and disappeared. Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir remained for a few seconds on the steps of her house, airing herself largely, and patronising with a casual glance the clear blue of the afternoon sky.
“What a vain old woman that Miss Leslie is!” she remarked to Gerty—“Really she tries to pass herself off as about thirty!”
Gerty sniffed, as usual.
“Oh, I don’t think so, ’m!” she said—“I don’t think she tries to pass herself off as anything, ’m! And I wouldn’t never call her vain. She’s just the real lady, every inch of her, and of course she can’t help herself lookin’ nice. And what a mercy it is for Master Boy to be took away just now!—for I didn’t like to mention it before, ’m, but I don’t know what we’re goin’ to do with the Cap’en,—he’s goin’ on worse than ever,—an he’s bin an’ torn nearly every mossel of his clothes off,—an’ a puffeckly disgraceful sight he is, ’m, lyin’ sprawled on the floor a-playin’ ‘patience’!”
CHAPTER III
Miss Letitia’s house, her “great big house,” as Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir had expansively described it to Boy, was situated on the sunniest side of Hans Place. It was tastefully built, and all the window-ledges had floral boxes delightfully arranged with flowers growing in pots and hanging baskets, over which on warm bright days spacious crimson-and-white awnings stretched forth their protective shade, giving the house-front quite a gay and foreign effect. The door was white, and a highly-polished brass knocker glinted in the sunshine with an almost knowing wink, as much as to say—“Use me—And you shall see—Hospitalitee!” When Miss Letty’s brougham drove up, however, this same knowing knocker was not called into requisition, for the butler had heard the approaching wheels, and had seen the approaching trotting roans through a little spy-window of his own in the hall, so that before Miss Letty had stepped from the vehicle and had “jumped” her small visitor out also, the door was opened and the butler himself stood, a sedate figure of civil welcome on the threshold. Without betraying himself by so much as a profane smile, this dignitary of the household accepted the Cow and the brown paper parcel which constituted all Boy’s belongings. He took them, so to speak, to his manly bosom, and then, waving away the carriage, coachman, footman and horses with a slight yet stately gesture, he shut the house door and followed his “lady” and the “young gentleman” through the hall into a room which beamed with light, warmth and elegance,—Miss Letty’s morning-room or boudoir—where, with undisturbed serenity he set the Cow on the table between a cabinet portrait of Mr. Balfour and a small bronze statuette of Mercury. The Cow looked rather out of place there, but it did not matter.
“Will you take tea, Madam?” he asked, in a voice rendered mellifluous by the constant and careful practice of domestic gentleness.
“No, thank you, Plimpton,” replied Miss Letty cheerfully; “we have had tea. Just ring the bell for Margaret, will you?”