Sally laughs out. "How very absurd of Tishy!" she says. "She hadn't even got the name you said right. She said it was Palliser. It sounds like Harrisson." She stopped to think a minute. "But even if she had said it right it wouldn't be my father, because his name, you know, was Graythorpe—like mine before we both changed to Nightingale—mother and I. We did, you know."
Old Jack assents to this with an expenditure of breath not warranted where breath is so scarce. He cannot say "of course," and that he recollects, too often. Perhaps he is glad to get on a line of veracity. The General says "of course," also. "Your mother, my dear, was Mrs. Graythorpe when I knew her at Umballa and on the boat." Both these veterans call Sally "my dear," and she doesn't resent it.
But her message is really given, and she ought to get back. She succeeds in finally overruling Major Roper's scheme of coming out into the fog, which has contrived to get blacker still during this conversation; but has more trouble with the other old soldier.
She only overcomes that victor in so many battle-fields by representing that if he does see her safe to Ball Street she will be miserable if she doesn't see him safe back to the club. "And then," she adds, "we shall go on till doomsday. Besides, I am young and sharp!" At which the old General laughs, and says isn't he? Ask his granddaughters! Sally says no, he isn't, and she can't have him run over to please anybody. However, he will come out to see her off, though Old Jack must do as he's told, and stop indoors. He watches the little figure vanish in the fog, with a sense of the merry eyebrows in the pretty shoulders, like the number of a cab fixed on behind.
When General Pellew had seen Sally out, to the great relief of Gibbon of the various reds in the lobby, he returned and drew a chair for himself beside Major Roper, who still sat, wrestling with the fog, where he had left him.
"What a dear child!... Oh yes; she'll be all right. Take better care of herself than I should of her. She would only have been looking after me, to see that I didn't get run over." He glanced round and dropped his voice, leaning forward to the Major. "She must never be told."
"You're right, Pelloo! Dam mistake of mine to say! I'm a dam mutton-headed old gobblestick! No better!" We give up trying to indicate the Major's painful interruptions and struggles. Of course, he might have saved himself a good deal by saying no more than was necessary. General Pellew was much more concise and to the purpose.
"Never be told. I see one thing. Her mother has told her little or nothing of the separation."
"No! Dam bad business! Keep it snug's the word."