The Adventures of Sally | Page 5

and was standing behind him with her arms round his neck. She spoke
across him with a sob in her voice.

"My brother," she stammered, directing a malevolent look at the
immaculate Fillmore, who, avoiding her gaze, glanced down his nose
and smoothed another wrinkle out of his waistcoat, "has not said
quite--quite all I hoped he was going to say. I can't make a speech,
but..." Sally gulped, "... but, I love you all and of course I shall never
forget you, and... and..."
Here Sally kissed Mr. Faucitt and burst into tears.
"There, there," said Mr. Faucitt, soothingly. The kindest critic could not
have claimed that Sally had been eloquent: nevertheless Mr. Maxwell
Faucitt was conscious of no sense of anti-climax.

2

Sally had just finished telling her brother Fillmore what a pig he was.
The lecture had taken place in the street outside the boarding-house
immediately on the conclusion of the festivities, when Fillmore, who
had furtively collected his hat and overcoat, had stolen forth into the
night, had been overtaken and brought to bay by his justly indignant
sister. Her remarks, punctuated at intervals by bleating sounds from the
accused, had lasted some ten minutes.
As she paused for breath, Fillmore seemed to expand, like an
indiarubber ball which has been sat on. Dignified as he was to the
world, he had never been able to prevent himself being intimidated by
Sally when in one of these moods of hers. He regretted this, for it hurt
his self-esteem, but he did not see how the fact could be altered. Sally
had always been like that. Even the uncle, who after the deaths of their
parents had become their guardian, had never, though a grim man, been
able to cope successfully with Sally. In that last hectic scene three years
ago, which had ended in their going out into the world, together like a
second Adam and Eve, the verbal victory had been hers. And it had
been Sally who had achieved triumph in the one battle which Mrs.
Meecher, apparently as a matter of duty, always brought about with

each of her patrons in the first week of their stay. A sweet-tempered
girl, Sally, like most women of a generous spirit, had cyclonic
potentialities.
As she seemed to have said her say, Fillmore kept on expanding till he
had reached the normal, when he ventured upon a speech for the
defence.
"What have I done?" demanded Fillmore plaintively.
"Do you want to hear all over again?"
"No, no," said Fillmore hastily. "But, listen. Sally, you don't understand
my position. You don't seem to realize that all that sort of thing, all that
boarding-house stuff, is a thing of the past. One's got beyond it. One
wants to drop it. One wants to forget it, darn it! Be fair. Look at it from
my viewpoint. I'm going to be a big man ..."
"You're going to be a fat man," said Sally, coldly.
Fillmore refrained from discussing the point. He was sensitive.
"I'm going to do big things," he substituted. "I've got a deal on at this
very moment which... well, I can't tell you about it, but it's going to be
big. Well, what I'm driving at, is about all this sort of thing"--he
indicated the lighted front of Mrs. Meecher's home-from-home with a
wide gesture--"is that it's over. Finished and done with. These people
were all very well when..."
"... when you'd lost your week's salary at poker and wanted to borrow a
few dollars for the rent."
"I always paid them back," protested Fillmore, defensively.
"I did."
"Well, we did," said Fillmore, accepting the amendment with the air of
a man who has no time for chopping straws. "Anyway, what I mean is,
I don't see why, just because one has known people at a certain period

in one's life when one was practically down and out, one should have
them round one's neck for ever. One can't prevent people forming an
I-knew-him-when club, but, darn it, one needn't attend the meetings."
"One's friends..."
"Oh, friends," said Fillmore. "That's just where all this makes me so
tired. One's in a position where all these people are entitled to call
themselves one's friends, simply because father put it in his will that I
wasn't to get the money till I was twenty-five, instead of letting me
have it at twenty-one like anybody else. I wonder where I should have
been by now if I could have got that money when I was twenty-one."
"In the poor-house, probably," said Sally.
Fillmore was wounded.
"Ah! you don't believe in me," he sighed.
"Oh, you would be all right if you had one thing," said Sally.
Fillmore passed his qualities in swift review before his mental eye.
Brains? Dash?