The deep dimple Sherbrand remembered showed in the full oval of one of her white cheeks. Slowly the pale rose-flush sweetened and warmed the whiteness. Her eyes were dusky stars under the barbaric wealth of beech-leaf tresses. A slow smile curved her mouth, the scarlet lips parted widely, showing two perfect rows of gleaming teeth.
"Two half-jimmies!" said the rich, mellow woman's baritone. Why did it talk such awful slang? "Half my screw for one whole week of letter-writing, running errands, doing shopping, and generally sheepdogging for my friend, Lady Beauvayse!"
"Then please take this!" This was a fat bright sovereign. "And be kind and say that I may stick to the purse?"
"If you care to—" Patrine began, dubiously.
"I care—most awfully!" He went on quickly. "Lady Beauvayse—your friend—I've seen her—if she's very pretty and tremendously American?"
She nodded.
"You've spotted her! That's Lady Beau—the dear thing! But she only talks Yankee Doodle to bounders or fogies, or people who seem to expect it from her. Her English is as good as mine."
"You don't mean it!" His keen face crinkled with laughter. She was superbly unconscious of its cause. He went on, rather ashamed of having made fun of her: "That accounts for the Old Kent Road-cum-Whitechapel I've heard from the august lips of British duchesses. At cricket-matches when Eton and Harrow were playing 'Varsity."
"Does it? I think not! The duchesses weren't amusing themselves, or trying to snub swankers. They were just mothers—real mothers—trying to talk cricket to their boys. And the boys—the sweets!—grinning up their blessed young sleeves, and saying 'Yes'm!' and 'No'm!' How I do love boys! Don't you?" Her smile contracted with a spasm of anguish. "And I'm sitting here, gobbling and gabbling, when my darling!—" She rose taller than ever, from the little table, caught up her feather stole from a chairback near and slung it vigorously round her, straightened the tinsel hat with a side-glance at the strip of a looking-glass nailed in a frame of cheap gilt beading on the matchboarded wall at her right hand, picked up the vanity-bag and the long-sticked sunshade, and declared herself ready to go.
CHAPTER XXXIX