“Molloy is my nurse,� explained Mr. Dampierre Carabyne. “He was one of the hospital orderlies at Calcutta, and looked after me when I was ill. And the Pater thought it best that he should valet me on the voyage, being a useful, experienced kind of man.�
“As to this illness you speak of?� said Lady Cranberry.
“It happened six months ago....�
“Ago! I see a glimmer,� said Lady Cranberry.
“When I was thrown out of a bamboo-cart in which I was driving a friend of mine—a very great friend.�
Again the young man colored.
“The woman who had got hold of him,� murmured Lady Cranberry to herself. “And ‘more than a little child’ means ‘more than a little wild.’ I should have seen that in his eye without a hint from Mrs. Carabyne.�
Thus, bit by bit, the determined lady translated Julia’s letter, which ran as follows:
“He was christened Dampierre (there is French blood on the mother’s side); but everybody calls him ‘Dumps.’ He has the sweetest nature, and splendid health until six months ago, when he was thrown out of his bamboo-cart with a woman who had got hold of him at the time—a most dreadful creature—and sustained a severe concussion of the brain. (You will gather by this that the poor dear is inclined to be more than a little wild.) Now the doctors have positively ordered him home, and we have not the least idea where to send him. In this dilemma I thought of you. The General shakes his head, but I have carried my point, and Dumps and his nurse sail by the Ramjowrah next Thursday, and when arrived in London will come straight to you. I have every faith in your goodness of heart, and know that poor dear Dumps could be placed in charge of no kinder friend.... He is extremely affectionate.... From pursuits which ruin many of the most promising young men in India (if you have read Rudyard Kipling I need not be more definite) we look to your gentle influence to wean him.�
Lady Cranberry took off her pince-nez and refolded the letter. As she did so she glanced toward the snug nook by the fireplace, where the pretty widow, entrenched behind the barricade of her afternoon tea-table, was making but a feeble show of resistance to the raking fire of Dumps’s handsome eyes. In such a mood such a woman as Lady Cranberry shares a corner of the mantle of the Prophets. It occurred to her that the infantile Paradise upstairs might not, if all went merrily as marriage bells, remain so very long untenanted.