“Cab!” cried the girl, taking his arm affectionately. “One would think you were a millionaire. You can go in a cab if you like, but I'm going home in a 'bus. Come along. We'll get one at Piccadilly Circus.”
She hurried him on girlishly, talking of the play they had just seen. It was heavenly, she repeated. She had never been in the stalls before. She wished kind-hearted managers would send them seats every night. Then suddenly:
“Why did n't you tell me how beautiful she was?”
“Who, dear?”
“Why, Miss Hardacre. I think she is the loveliest thing I have ever seen. I could sit and look at her all day long. Why don't you paint her portrait—in that wonderful ivory-satin dress she was wearing to-night? And the diamond star in her hair that made her look like a queen—did you notice it? Why, Jimmie, you are not paying the slightest attention!”
“My dear, I could repeat verbatim every word you have said,” he replied soberly. “She is indeed one of the most beautiful of God's creatures.”
“Then you'll paint her portrait?”
“Perhaps, deary,” said Jimmie, “perhaps.”
Meanwhile in the brougham King was giving Norma an account of Jimmie's guardianship. She had asked him partly out of curiosity, partly to provide him with a subject of conversation, and partly to annoy her mother, whose disapproving sniff she had noted with some resentment. And this in brief is the tale that King told.
Some ten years ago, John Marden, a brother artist of Jimmie Padgate's, died penniless, leaving his little girl of seven with the alternative of fighting her way alone through an unsympathetic world, or of depending on the charity of his only sister, a drunken shrew of a woman, the wife of a small apothecary, and the casual mother of a vague and unwashed family. Common decency made the first alternative impossible. On their return to the house after the funeral, the aunt announced her intention of caring for the orphan as her own flesh and blood. Jimmie, who had taken upon himself the functions of the intestate's temporary executor, acquiesced dubiously. The lady, by no means sober, shed copious tears and a rich perfume of whisky. She called Aline to her motherly bosom. The child, who had held Jimmie's hand throughout the mournful proceedings, for he had been her slave and playfellow for the whole of her little life, advanced shyly. Her aunt took her in her arms. But the child, with instinctive repugnance to the smell of spirits, shrank from her kisses. The shrew arose in the woman; she shook her vindictively, and gave her three or four resounding slaps on face and shoulders. Jimmie leaped from his chair, tore the scared little girl from the vixen's clutches, and taking her bodily in his arms, strode with her out of the house, leaving the apothecary and his wife to settle matters between them. It was only when he had walked down the street and hailed a cab that he began to consider the situation.