Uncle Marcus looked at Diana—if her hair had been done in one pigtail instead of two, and her eyes had not been so innocent and truthful in their appeal, he would have been very, very angry. As it was he looked so kind that she ventured: “Mine wasn’t a real—policeman.”
“Not a real policeman? Then who was he?”
“Just a man staying at the Lodge up the river.”
“And I gave him ten pounds!”
“No, darling; that was to the real policeman who happened to come for a subscription. We changed policemen while you were upstairs asking my advice. You were upstairs with me while I was downstairs with two policemen: it all sounds rather muddling, but it’s really quite simple.”
“What an ass he must have thought me!” said Marcus, thinking of the real policeman.
“Oh, no; he just thought you were the English tenant of Glenbossie, that’s all.”
Marcus got up and, walking about the room, came to a standstill before a pile of things on the top of a chest of drawers. “What are these abominations?” he asked.
“The things I bought at the bazaar,” said Diana, disappearing under the bedclothes.
When Mrs. Scott met Marcus she said: “It was so good of him to subscribe so largely to their cottage hospital.” And Marcus said: “Not at all!”