Rodens Corner | Page 7

"Oh, how splendid! Look, Tony, look! A medal! Is it"--she paused, looking at it closely--"is it--the Victoria Cross?" she asked, and stood looking from one man to the other, her eyes glistening with something more than excitement.
"Um--yes," admitted White.
Tony Cornish had risen to his feet also. He held out his hand.
"I did not know that," he said.
There was a pause. Tony and Joan returned to their circulars in an odd silence. The Haberdashers' Assistants seemed suddenly to have diminished in importance.
"By-the-by," said Joan Ferriby at length, "papa wants to see you, Tony. He has a new scheme. Something very large and very important. The only question is whether it is not too large. It is not only in England, but in other countries. A great international affair. Some distressed manufacturers or something. I really do not quite know. That Mr. Roden--you remember?--has been to see him about it."
Cornish nodded in his quick way. "I remember Roden," he answered. "The man you met at Hombourg. Tall dark man with a tired manner."
"Yes," answered Joan. "He has been to see papa several times. Papa is just as busy as ever with his charities," she continued, addressing White. "And I believe he wants you to help him in this one." "Me?" said White, nervously. "Oh, I'm no good. I should not know a haberdasher's assistant if I saw him."
"Oh, but this is not the Haberdashers' Assistants," laughed Joan. "It is something much more important than that. The Haberdashers' Assistants are only----"
"Pour passer le temps," suggested Cornish, gaily.
"No, of course not. But papa is really rather anxious about this. He says it is much the most important thing he has ever had to do with--and that is saying a good deal, you know. I wish I could remember the name of it, and of those poor unfortunate people who make it--whatever it is. It is some stuff, you know, and sounds sticky. Papa has so many charities, and such long names to them. Aunt Susan says it is because he was so wild in his youth--but one cannot believe that. Would you think that papa had been wild in his youth--to look at him now?"
"Lord, no!" ejaculated White, with pious solidity, throwing back his shoulders with an air that seemed to suggest a readiness to fight any man who should hint at such a thing, and he waved the mere thought aside with a ponderous gesture of the hand.
Joan had, however, already turned to another matter. She was consulting a diary bound in dark blue morocco.
"Let me see, now," she said. "Papa told me to make an appointment with you. When can you come?"
Cornish produced a minute engagement-book, and these two busy people put their heads together in the search for a disengaged moment. Not only in mind, but in face and manner, they slightly resembled each other, and might, by the keen-sighted, have been set down at once as cousins. Both were fair and slightly made, both were quick and clever. Both faced the world with an air of energetic intelligence that bespoke their intention of making a mark upon it. Both were liable to be checked in a moment of earnest endeavour by a sudden perception of the humorous, which liability rendered them somewhat superficial, and apt of it lightly from one thought to another.
"I wish I could remember the name of papa's new scheme," said Joan, as she bade them good-bye. When they were in the cab she ran to the door. "I remember," she cried. "I remember now. It is malgamite."
CHAPTER III
BEGINNING AT HOME.
"Charity creates much of the misery it relieves, but it does not relieve all the misery it creates."
Charity, as all the world knows, should begin at an "at home." Lord Ferriby knew as well as any that there are men, and perhaps even women, who will give largely in order that their names may appear largely and handsomely in the select subscription lists. He also knew that an invitation card in the present is as sure a bait as the promise of bliss hereafter. So Lady Ferriby announced by card (in an open envelope with a halfpenny stamp) that she should be "at home" to certain persons on a certain evening. And the good and the great flocked to Cambridge Terrace. The good and great are, one finds, a little mixed, from a social point of view.
There were present at Lady Ferriby's, for instance, a number of ministers, some cabinet, others dissenting. Here, a man leaning against the wall wore a blue ribbon across his shirt front. There, another, looking bigger and more self-confident, had no shirt front at all. His was the cheap distinction of unsuitable clothes.
"Ha! Miss Ferriby, glad to see you," he said as he entered, holding out a hand which had the usual