“There’s nothing much to see up those stairs, except George’s bedroom, and I daren’t take you in there. It is quite commonplace, too; not like the rest of the house, but very, very comfortable.”
“Oho! Your father reminds me of the man who plays Othello, and doesn’t trouble to black more than his face and arms,” said The Bittern man. “And your rooms?”
“Oh, our rooms are cupboards. Bowers, George calls them, and says we have more room to keep our clothes in than the lady of a mediæval castle would have. Now that’s all, and——”
The truth was, I wanted him to go before George came home, for I thought it might be awkward for me if I were found entertaining a newspaper man. George might have preferred to do his own interview, who knows? This reflection only just occurred to me, as all reflections do, too late. The Bittern man was very quick, however, and understood me. He thanked me very much, far more than he need, for on reflection I did not see how he was going to make an interview out of all the scrappy things I had told him, and I said so. He assured me I need be under no uneasiness on that score, that this particular interview would be unique of its kind, and would gain him great credit with his editor, and increase the circulation of the paper. If it had nothing else, he said, it would at least have a succès de scandale, at least I think that is what he said, for I don’t understand French very well. While he was making all those pretty speeches we stood in the hall, and I heard the little grating noise in the lock that meant that George was fitting his key in, and oh, how I just longed to run away! But I didn’t. George opened the door, and came in and shook off his big fur coat. Then he saw The Bittern man and came forward, and The Bittern man came forward too, with his funny little smile on his face that somehow reminds me of the Pied Piper we used to read of when we were little.
“I came from The Bittern,” he said, and George nodded, to show he knew what for. “To ask you to grant me the favour of an interview——”
“I am sorry I happened to be out!” began George, and then I knew, by the sound of his voice, that The Bittern was a good paper. “But if it is not too late, I shall be happy——”
“No need, no need to trouble you now, my dear sir,” the interviewer said, waving his hand a little. “I came, and I go not empty away, but with the material of a dozen articles of sovereign interest in my pocket. You left an admirable locum tenens in the person of your daughter here, who kindly consented to be my cicerone and relieved me of the necessity of troubling you. You will doubtless be relieved also. I shall have the pleasure of sending you a proof to-morrow. Good-day!”
And before George could say what he wanted to say, Mr. Cook had opened the door for himself and had gone. I said he had plenty of cheek. George said so, too, and a great deal worse. I was black and blue for a week, and The Bittern man never sent a proof after all, so when the article came out—“Interviewing, New Style. A Talk with Miss Tempe Vero-Taylor,”—I got some more. That is the first and last time I was ever interviewed. George has peculiar theories about interviewing, I see, and I shall not interfere with them in future. I should think Mr. Frederick Cook would get on, making tools of honest children to serve his ambition like that. George didn’t punish him, of course, he is a power on a paper; while I am but a child in the nursery.
CHAPTER VII
I WONDER if other families have got tame countesses, who come bothering and interfering in their affairs? I don’t mind our having a house-warming party at all, but I do hate that it should be to please Lady Scilly.