I did not love these orders, but I made a bit of money, and I needed clothes badly. It was impossible to go around with Reggie in my thin and shabby things. Moreover, an especially cold winter had set in and I did want a new overcoat badly. I hated to have to wear my old blanket overcoat. It looked so dreadfully Canadian, and many a time I have seen Reggie look at it askance, though, to do him justice, he never made any comment about my clothes. In a poor, large family like ours, there was little enough left for clothes.
About the middle of winter, the Count began to have bad spells of melancholia. He would frighten me by saying:
“Some day ven you come in the morning, you vill find me dead. I am so plue, I vish I vas dead.”
I tried to laugh at him and cheer him up, but every morning as I came through those ghostly old halls, I would think of the Count’s words and I would be afraid to open the door.
One day, about five in the afternoon, when I was getting ready to go, the Count who was sitting near the fire all hunched up, said:
“Please stay mit me a little longer. Come sit by me a little vile. Your radiant youth vill varm me up.”
I had an engagement with Reggie and was in a hurry to get away. So I said:
“I can’t, Count. I’ve got to run along.”
He stood up suddenly and clicked his heels together.
“Miss Ascough,” he said, “I think after this, you better vork some other place. You have smiles for all the stupid Canadian poys, but you vould not give to me the leastest.”