“Probably has Irish blood,” thought Mary, sorting out her impressions of him.
“Take the car around—no; what am I thinking of? Of course Mrs. Garden must see it. She’s not down yet, Mary?” asked Win.
“MARY, THIS IS WILFRID WILLOUGHBY, WHO DRIVES SPLENDIDLY AND IS GOING TO LOOK AFTER US THIS SUMMER.”
“No, but I’m sure she’ll not be long. I’ll tell her you’ve come. I’m so glad you’re back, you three! I wonder what I should do if I had to be separated from you long? Florimel, what is in that basket?” Mary stopped and looked reproachfully at Florimel, for the basket unmistakably wriggled in a most unnatural way.
“It was lost, Mary!” cried Florimel. “It rubbed up against us in the street. Jane said we mustn’t let it rub, or its bones would prick right through, it is so thin. But it will be beautiful when it’s fed and petted a little while. It was so grateful! Win went into a restaurant and bought one of those terrible thick saucers, like a scooped-out cobblestone, and some warm milk, and fed it right in a convenient to-let doorway, in the street. And it was so hungry it shook so it could hardly eat, and so grateful when it had taken it all up! We stood around it, of course, keeping off frights from it. Jane said if we left it, we’d be worse than the cruel uncles of the Babes in the Wood, for there wasn’t the ghost of a chance for it, not even of robins covering it, if it died in the street! And we all said one more in Vineclad, and this big place, would never be noticed, so we bought this basket and we took it back to the hotel and smuggled it in, and Win bribed the chambermaid to help us, and she did, and it has ridden up here as contented as we were! Even when Willoughby let the car out, to show what it could do, it never minded a speck! So I knew you’d be glad we came along and saved one starving thing! If everybody saved just one, there wouldn’t be one left to suffer! Isn’t that a hard thing to know, when they won’t do it?”
“You certainly expect your hearers to sort out sentences, Mellie!” cried Mary.
Willoughby, apparently without consciousness that his position forbade such comment, said:
“My word, she’s a charming child! We’ve had a great time with Miss Florimel and her protégée in the basket, coming up!”
Mary had an instant in which to wonder at this freedom in a well-trained English servant, as she said: