“Yes, it’s certainly carriage exercise,” Verrian admitted in the same spirit, if it was a drolling spirit. He could not help being amused by the situation in which they had been brought together, through the vigorous promptitude of Miss Macroyd in making the victoria her own, and the easy indifference of Mrs. Westangle as to how they should get to her house. If he had been alone he might have felt the indifference as a slight, but as it was he felt it rather a favor. If Miss Shirley was feeling it a slight, she was too secret or too sweet to let it be known, and he thought that was nice of her. Still, he believed he might recognize the fact without deepening a possible hurt of hers, and he added, with no apparent relevance, “If Mrs. Westangle was not looking for us on this train, she will find that it is the unexpected which happens.”
“We are certainly going to happen,” the girl said, with an acceptance of the plural which deepened the intimacy of the situation, and which was not displeasing to Verrian when she added, “If our friend’s vehicle holds out.” Then she turned her face full upon him, with what affected him as austere resolution, in continuing, “But I can’t let you suppose that you’re conveying a society person, or something of that sort, to Mrs. Westangle’s.” His own face expressed his mystification, and she concluded, “I’m simply going there to begin my work.”
He smiled provisionally in temporizing with the riddle. “You women are wonderful, nowadays, for the work you do.”
“Oh, but,” she protested, nervously, anxiously, “it isn’t good work that I’m going to do—I understand what you mean—it’s work for a living. I’ve no business to be arriving with an invited guest, but it seemed to be a question of arriving or not at the time when I was due.”
IX.
Verrian stared at her now from a visage that was an entire blank, though behind it conjecture was busy, and he was asking himself whether his companion was some new kind of hair-dresser, or uncommonly cultivated manicure, or a nursery governess obeying a hurry call to take a place in Mrs. Westangle’s household, or some sort of amateur housekeeper arriving to supplant a professional. But he said nothing.
Miss Shirley said, with a distress which was genuine, though he perceived a trace of amusement in it, too, “I see that I will have to go on.”
“Oh, do!” he made out to utter.
“I am going to Mrs. Westangle’s as a sort of mistress of the revels. The business is so new that it hasn’t got its name yet, but if I fail it won’t need any. I invented it on a hint I got from a girl who undertakes the floral decorations for parties. I didn’t see why some one shouldn’t furnish suggestions for amusements, as well as flowers. I was always rather lucky at that in my own fam—at my father’s—” She pulled herself sharply up, as if danger lay that way. “I got an introduction to Mrs. Westangle, and she’s to let me try. I am going to her simply as part of the catering, and I’m not to have any recognition in the hospitalities. So it wasn’t necessary for her to send for me at the station, except as a means of having me on the ground in good season. I have to thank you for that, and—I thank you.” She ended in a sigh.