“You needn’t be afraid to leave the boy here,” she said, sharply. “I can look after myself and him better than any two of you if I am blind. I suppose there’s a servant in the house, so that I can send for anything if it’s wanted?”
The captain reassured her upon that point, and she jerked her head at him in dismissal. The captain courteously bade her “Good-day,” patted Comethup on the shoulder as he passed, and went out. After a few moments of silence she asked the boy abruptly: “Your voice startled me so that I forget what you said your name was. What is it?”
Comethup told her, slurring the word as much as he could to get over the cumbrousness of it; but she made him repeat it again and again, and each time more slowly, until she had got it completely; then she turned it over and over angrily, pronouncing it quickly and slowly, and with the accent here and the accent there; finally shook her head over it and exclaimed: “I can’t think what they gave you that ridiculous name for; I don’t like it. We’ll change it.”
Comethup thought of ’Linda, and of how she had expressed her appreciation of it, and said courageously, “I like it.”
“Oh, then we won’t change it,” said Miss Carlaw, and began to talk of other things.
Now it happened that the captain, on his way to his house, ran full tilt against Mr. Robert Carlaw, who was coming round a corner looking very dejected. He informed the captain that he had been to the station five times and had met every possible train, that he had engaged rooms, that he had done everything, and still there was no sign of that dear eccentric creature, his sister.
“Of course, you see, the difficulty is, one never knows when she may swoop down, so to speak, upon one, and a man does not like to be taken at a disadvantage; naturally he does not. This sort of thing is worrying.”
“I think I can relieve your mind,” said the captain, with a smile. “I’ve just seen your sister.”
Mr. Robert Carlaw seized him excitedly by the arm. “Where? When? Take me to her, I beg!”