Lady Good-for-Nothing | Page 8

Dicky advanced to the shop-board, and as he did so the girl turned and

recognised him with a faint, very shy smile.
"If you please," he said politely, "I want change for this--if you can
spare it."
"Bless my soul!" exclaimed the man, staring. "What, another?"
"The bird-seller up the road had no change about him. And--and, if you
please," went on Dick hardily, with a glance at the girl, "she hurt her
hands putting out a fire just now. I expect my father gave her the
money for that. But she must have burnt her hands dreffully!"--Dicky
had not quite outgrown his infantile lisp--"and if she's come for stuff to
put on them, please I want to pay for it."
"But I don't want you to," put in the girl, still hesitating by the counter.
"But I'd rather insisted Dicky.
"Tut!" said the drug-seller. "A matter of twopence won't break either of
us. Captain Vyell's boy, are you? Well, then, I'll take your coppers on
principle."
He counted out the change, and Dicky--who was not old enough yet to
do sums--pretended to find it correct. But he was old enough to have
acquired charming manners, and after thanking the drug-seller, gave the
girl quite a grown-up little bow as he passed out.
She would have followed, but the man said, "Stay a moment. What's
your name?"
"Ruth Josselin."
"Age?"
"I was sixteen last month."
"Then listen to a word of advice, Ruth Josselin, and don't you take
money like that from fine gentlemen like the Collector. They don't give
it to the ugly ones. Understand?"

"Thank you," she said. "I am going to give it back;" and slipping the
guinea into her pocket, she said "Good evening," and walked swiftly
out in the wake of the child.
The drug-seller looked after her shrewdly. He was a moral man.
Ruth, hurrying out upon the side-walk, descried the child a few paces
up the road. He had come to a halt; was, in fact, plucking up his
courage to go and demand the bird-cage. She overtook him.
"I was sent out to look for you," she said. "I oughtn't to have wasted
time buying that ointment; but my hands were hurting me. Please, you
are to come home and change your clothes for dinner."
"I'll come in a minute," said Dicky, "if you'll stand here and wait."
He might be called by that word again; and without knowing why, he
dreaded her hearing it. She waited while he trotted forward, nerving
himself to face the crowd again. Lo! when he reached the booth, all the
bystanders had melted away. The bird-seller was covering up his cages
with loose wrappers, making ready to pack up for the night.
"Hello!" he said cheerfully. "Thought I'd lost you for good."
He took the child's money and handed the canary cage across the sill;
also the bird-whistle, wrapped in a scrap of paper. Many times in the
course of a career which brought him much fighting and some little
fame, Dicky Vyell remembered this his first lesson in courage--that if
you walk straight up to an enemy, as likely as not you find him
vanished.
But he had not quite reached the end of his alarms. As he took the cage,
a parrot at the back of the booth uplifted his voice and squawked,--
"No prerogative! No prerogative! No prerogative!"
"You mustn't mind him," said the bird-seller genially. "He's like the
crowd--picks up a cry an' harps on it without understandin'."

Master Dicky understood it no better; but thanked the man and ran off,
prize in hand, to rejoin the girl.
They hurried back to the Inn. At the gateway she paused.
"I let you say what was wrong just now," she explained. "Your father
didn't give me that money for putting out the fire."
Here she hesitated. Dicky could not think what it mattered, or why her
voice was so timid.
"Oh," said he carelessly, "I dare say it was just because he liked you.
Father has plenty of money."
Chapter IV.
FATHER AND SON.
The dinner set before Captain Vyell comprised a dish of oysters, a fish
chowder, a curried crab, a fried fowl with white sauce, a saddle of
tenderest mutton, and various sweets over which Manasseh had thrown
the elegant flourishes of his art. The wine came from the Rhone
valley--a Hermitage of the Collector's own shipment. The candles that
lit the repast stood in the Collector's own silver candlesticks. As an old
Roman general carried with him on foreign service, packed in panniers
on mule-back, a tessellated pavement to be laid down for him at each
camping halt and repacked when the troops moved forward, so did
Captain Vyell on his progresses of inspection travel with all the
apparatus of a good table.