PATRINE IS ENGAGED
"Don't tell me—not that you ever have—that there ain't such a thing as Providence!" Thus Franky, after lunch upon the fateful Third of August, from the hearthrug of the drawing room at 00, Cadogan Place. "When," he went on, "just as I'm on the point of sendin' in my papers to please you—good old England kerwumps into War!"
He continued, as Margot shrugged her small shoulders:
"All right, best child! Bet you twenty to one in gloves it comes off!—as sure as the Austrian monitors were shellin' Belgrade, and the British Cabinet were sittin' on Sunday, and the weekly rags selling like hot cakes, when you and me and the rest of the congregation were slowly oozin' out of Church. Why, the Kaiser and the Tsar have been at loggerheads since Saturday. German troops are swampin' Luxembourg, and the next move will be the Invasion of France. There We come in—and the rest of the big European Powers! Like a row of beehives kicked over!—all the swarms mixed and stingin', and Kittums' little Franky in the middle of the scrum!"
"Why are you so—frightfully keen about it?"
Margot's great dark deer-eyes were vaguely troubled. She got up from her writing-table, a lovely thing in Russian tulip-tree, the shelf of which was graced by a row of mascots: Ti-Ti and the jade tree-frog, Jollikins, Gojo, and half a dozen more.
"Best child, I'm not keen!" asserted Franky. "But I'm pattin' myself on the back—gloatin' over the knowledge that I'm not a bally Has Been—but a real live soldier—just when I'm likely to be wanted to be one! Switch on?"
He added, as Margot shook her head: "My grammar's a bit off, but I know what I mean if I can't express it. Here's a telegraph-kid on a red spider. Two to one in cough-drops that yellow screed's for me! Callin' me to Headquarters just as I'd got into my civvy rags to spend the afternoon with my wife!"
The prophecy proved correct. Franky vanished upstairs to peel, plunge into his Guards' uniform, and whirl away, borne by a taxi, into the dim conjectural regions known as Headquarters.
Margot went back to her desk to re-read a type-written letter from the Secretary of the Krauss and Wolfenbuchel Fraüenklinik at Berlin, counselling the honoured English lady whose introduction, supplied by a former lady-client, was specially satisfactory!—to secure a room at the Institute, by the payment of a moiety of the fee in advance. The crowd of applicants desirous to subject themselves to the wonderful "Purple Dreams" treatment, was so large, the accommodation, by comparison, so restricted, that to follow this course would be the only wise plan. Similar treatment could be obtained in Paris and Brussels, but to ensure success beyond doubt it was wisest to seek it at the German fountainhead. One hundred guineas would secure admission to the Berlin Fraüenklinik. By cheque made payable to the British Agent of Professors Krauss and Wolfenbuchel, Mr. Otto Busch, 000, Cornhill, London, E.C. It would be advisable were the English client to follow her remittance, taking up residence in Berlin within the next few days. Travelling might not be so easy in October, mildly hinted the Secretary of the Institute.