She rose to her feet, shook out her skirts, and said, "Now, Louis, give me your arm and take me back to Lady Lucy. I don't think I shall dance any more to-night. You had better come with us to Raincy House! Good-night, Prince! I suppose we shall see you to-morrow!"
And so departed with the honours of war, leaving Eitel and Mrs. Arlington to console each other as best they might.
CHAPTER XXX
A CREDIT TO THE "GREEN DRAGON"
The average riverine loafer about the Kew Waterfront, really a potential cheat, robber, and occasional murderer, looked upon the recent arrival at the "Green Dragon" as a prey specially destined by Providence for his necessities. He was never more completely mistaken. Kennedy McClure was, in the loafer's own language, "fly to the tricks of all wrong coves." Had he not held his own (and more) for thirty years in a hundred markets with horse-fakers and cattle-drovers? He did not "go after the lush"—still less "follow the molls." He never walked by the waterside by night, and on the one occasion when a rush had been tried as he strolled back in the twilight from Hanover Lodge, he had cracked Jem Simcoe's head so thoroughly, that there was little likelihood of its ever being much good to him in this world—a pretty thing for a man living by his wits and with a family of three or four young wives intermittently depending upon his efforts.
It was soon known that Mr. Kennedy McClure did not carry his money about with him. He had deposited his pocket book with the city correspondents of Sir Willliam Forbes's bank, and now walked about with a light step, his blackthorn cudgel in his hand, and a glad light of battle in his eye.
"Tell me the day before your bill is due and I shall have the money," he said to the landlord of the "Green Dragon." And on the appointed morning a messenger from the city brought the amount, which Kennedy would open in the presence of Mr. Wormit himself, pay him, and send back the receipt to his correspondents in the city, thus gaining the reputation of being a man who knew his way about, and making a devoted slave of the landlord, who liked all ready-money men as much as he hated all fools.
In this way, by the free speech of the admiring landlord of the "Green Dragon," whose words admitted of no reply, Kennedy McClure grew daily in honour and stature. To Mr. Wormit, himself no mean man, he had at first appeared as a mere pensioner on the bounty of the inhabitant of the royal Lodge. But he soon grew into the Superintendent of her Estates. He became "her confidential man"—"him as looks after her business." He ended by being the Princess's adviser on all her affairs, and in addition a mint of power and wisdom on his own account.
Had he not got the landlord's second son James Wormit into the Lodge gardens, where he had been appointed auxiliary to Miss Aline? Had he not, though declaring himself wholly ignorant of English law, furnished the hint which led to the favourable settlement of the long-disputed case of H. M. Excise Board versus Wormit? Altogether a wonderful man, the landlord declared Kennedy to be, and a credit to the house any way you looked at it.