In the Bishops Carriage | Page 5

of the Bishop with his gentle, thin old arm about my shoulders, holding me for just a second as though I was his daughter! My, think of it! And me, Nance Olden, with that fat man's watch in my waist and some girl's beautiful long coat and hat on, all covered with chinchilla!
"There's some mistake, my little girl," he said, shaking me gently to wake me up, for I was going to sleep again, he feared.
"Oh, I knew you were kept at the office," I interrupted quickly. I preferred to be farther from the station with that girl's red coat before I got out. "We've missed our train, anyway, haven't we? After this, daddy dear, let's not take this route. If we'd go straight through on the one road, we wouldn't have this drive across town every time. I was wondering, before I fell asleep, what in the world I'd do in this big city if you didn't come."
He forgot to withdraw his arm, so occupied was he by my predicament.
"What would you do, my child, if you had--had missed your--your father?"
Wasn't it clumsy of him? He wanted to break it to me gently, and this was the best he could do.
"What would I do?" I gasped indignantly. "Why, daddy, imagine me alone, and--and without money! Why--why, how can you--"
"There! there!" he said, patting me soothingly on the shoulder.
That baby of a Bishop! The very thought of Nancy Olden out alone in the streets was too much for him.
He had put his free hand into his pocket and had just taken out a bill and was trying to plan a way to offer it to me and reveal the fact to poor, modest little Nance Olden that he was not her own daddy, when an awful thing happened.
We had got up street as far as the opera-house, when we were caught in the jam of carriages in front; the last afternoon opera of the season was just over. I was so busy thinking what would be my next move that I didn't notice much outside--and I didn't want to move, Tom, not a bit. Playing the Bishop's daughter in a trailing coat of red, trimmed with chinchilla, is just your Nancy's graft. But the dear little Bishop gave a jump that almost knocked the roof off the carriage, pulled his arm from behind me and dropped the ten-dollar bill he held as though it burned him. It fell in my lap. I jammed it into my coat pocket. Where is it now? Just you wait, Tom Dorgan, and you'll find out.
I followed the Bishop's eyes. His face was scarlet now. Right next to our carriage--mine and the Bishop's--there was another; not quite so fat and heavy and big, but smart, I tell you, with the silver harness jangling and the horses arching their backs under their blue-cloth jackets monogrammed in leather. All the same, I couldn't see anything to cause a loving father to let go his onliest daughter in such a hurry, till the old lady inside bent forward again and gave us another look.
Her face told it then. It was a big, smooth face, with accordion-plaited chins. Her hair was white and her nose was curved, and the pearls in her big ears brought out every ugly spot on her face. Her lips were thin, and her neck, hung with diamonds, looked like a bed with bolsters and pillows piled high, and her eyes--oh, Tom, her eyes! They were little and very gray, and they bored their way straight through the windows--hers and ours--and hit the Bishop plumb in the face.
My, if I could only have laughed! The Bishop, the dear, prim little Bishop in his own carriage, with his arm about a young woman in red and chinchilla, offering her a bank-note, and Mrs. Dowager Diamonds, her eyes popping out of her head at the sight, and she one of the lady pillars of his church--oh, Tom! it took all of this to make that poor innocent next to me realize how he looked in her eyes.
But you see it was over in a minute. The carriage wheels were unlocked, and the blue coupe went whirling away, and we in the plum-cushioned carriage followed slowly.
I decided that I'd had enough. Now and here in the middle of all these carriages was a bully good time and place for me to get away. I turned to the Bishop. He was blushing like a boy. I blushed, too. Yes, I did, Tom Dorgan, but it was because I was bursting with laughter.
"Oh, dear!" I exclaimed in sudden dismay. "You're not my father."
"No--no, my dear, I--I'm not," he stammered, his face purple now with embarrassment. "I was just trying to tell you, you poor little girl, of your mistake and