Clementina caught a whimsical gleam in Poynter’s eye.
“Oriental diplomacy!” she remarked.
He shook his head. “You’re wrong. Go deeper.”
Clementina flushed and stroked the child’s fair hair.
“I’m afraid I’ve got to learn a lot of things.”
“In the most exquisite school in the world,” said Poynter.
Quixtus came downstairs about four o’clock, pale and shaky, and found Clementina in the dark and stuffy writing-room of the hotel. She had petted the child to her afternoon sleep, about half an hour before, and had left her in the joint care of the Chinese nurse and the dirty white plush cat tightly clasped to her breast. She had just finished a letter to Tommy. Either through the fault of the deeply encrusted hotel pen, or by force of painting habit, a smear of violet ink ran a comet’s course across her cheek. She had written to Tommy:
“If you don’t want to know what has happened, you ought to. I find my poor friend dead on my arrival. Elysian fields for him, which I’m sure are not as beautiful as the English lanes his soul longed for. To my amazement he has left a fairy child to the joint guardianship of your uncle and myself. Your uncle’s a sick man, and needs looking after. What I’m going to do with all you helpless chickens, when I ought to be painting trousers, God alone knows. I once was an artist. Now I’m a hen. Yours, Clementina.”
She had also written to Etta in similar strain, and at the same inordinate length, and was addressing the envelope when Quixtus entered the room.
She wheeled round.