“No, I dare say not, but I shan’t put myself in the way of a snub. I’ve got one thing that’s been very useful to me in this life—that’s tact. I shan’t make a nasty row or a talk, but you’ll not see more of me than you want to. I’m a lady—I’ll never let anybody deny that—but I’ve knocked about the world a bit, and it’s a rough place, and that soft dainty manner people admire so, rubs off pretty soon fighting one’s own battles. The aristocracy can afford to keep it on. Clothes does it, largely. Where you’re wearing chiffon, I’ll be wearing linen, that’s the diff. Now I’m off—‘on’ first act and share a dresser with three other cats, where there isn’t room to swing one. Ta-ta! I’m not as vulgar as you think!”
She put on her picture-hat carefully with sixteen pins in it, and went away. Mother asked me why I hadn’t been drying my hair in the garden all this time? Because I wanted to hear what Aunt Gerty had to say, I answered, and Mother accepted the explanation. But now I went and found a cool place and meditated on my sins.
I am not what is called a strictly naughty child. I am too busy. Satan never need bother about me or find mischief for me to do, for my hands are never idle, and I can generally find it for myself.
On the eventful morning that decided our fate three weeks before this incident, I was in the drawing-room, where we hardly ever sit, making devils with George’s name with the ink out of the best inkstand. I spilt it. Why do these things happen? It is the fault of fatality.
There is nothing I hate more than the sickening smell of spilt ink, or rather, the soapy rags they chose to rub it up with, so I went up to my room quietly intending to get my hat and go out till it had blown over, or rather soaked in. Sarah was there, tidying or something, and she said immediately, “Now whatever have you been up to?” I told her that the word “ever” was quite surplus in that sentence, and that George objected to it strongly. Thus I got away from her, wishing I had a less expressive face.
I found myself in the street without an object. I have got beyond the age of runaway rings, thank goodness, but they did use to amuse me, till one day an old gentleman got hold of me and went on about the length of kitchen stairs generally, and the shortness of cooks’ legs, and the cruel risk of things boiling over. He changed my heart. So this day I just walked along to a motor-car, that I saw at the end of the next street but one, standing in front of the “Milliner’s Arms,” with nobody in it. I expected the man was having a drink, for it was piping hot. I got into the car and sat down, and just put my hand on the twirly-twirly thing in front, considering if I should set the car going. It was the very first time I had ever been in a motor in my life, and I simply hadn’t the heart to miss the chance.
A lady came out of the Public. I never saw anything so pretty, and her dress was all billowy, like the little fluffy clouds we call Peter’s sheep in a blue sky, and the hem of it was covered with sawdust off the public-house floor. Yet I can’t say she looked at all tipsy.
“I wanted a pick-me-up so badly, I just had to go in and get it.” She said this in an apologizing sort of way, while I was just wondering how I should explain my presence in her car. She settled that for me, by saying with a little sweet smile, “Well, you pretty child, how do you like my motor-car?”
“It is the first time I——”
“Oh, of course! Would you like to be in one while it is on the move?”