The Chauffeur and the Chaperon | Page 4

American girl, you long to bully her.
She is taller than I am (as she ought to be, with Burne-Jones nose and
eyes), but this morning, when I sprang at her out of the bath-room, like
a young tigress escaped from its cage on its ruthless way to a

motor-boat, she looked so piteous and yielding, that I felt I could carry
her--and my point at the same time--half across the world.
She had made cream eggs for breakfast, poor darling (I could have
sobbed on them), and actually coffee for me, because she knows I love
it. I didn't worry her any more until an egg and a cup of tea were on
duty to keep her strength up, and then I poured plans, which I made as I
went on, upon her meekly protesting head.
The boat, it appeared, lay in Holland, which fact, as I pointed out to
Phil, was another sign that Providence had set its heart upon our using
her; for we've always wanted to see Holland. We often said, if we ever
took a holiday from serials and the type-writer, we would go to Holland;
but somehow the time for holidays and Holland never seemed to arrive.
Now, here it was; and it would be the time of our lives.
Poor Captain Noble meant to use the boat himself this summer, but he
was taken ill late in the season on the Riviera and died there. It was
from Mentone that Mrs. Keithley wrote what was being said among his
friends about a huge legacy for us; and we, poor deluded ones, had
believed.
Captain Noble, a dear old retired naval officer, was a friend of Phyllis's
father since the beginning of the world, and, though Phil was sixteen
and I fifteen when our respective parents (widowed both, ages before)
met and married, the good man took my mother also to his heart. Phil
and I have been alone in the world together now for three years; she is
twenty-two, I twenty-one. Though many moons have passed since we
saw anything of Captain Noble except picture postcards, we were not
taken entirely by surprise when we heard that he had left us a large
legacy. It is easy to get used to nice things, and far more difficult to
crawl down gracefully from gilded heights.
Crawl we must, however; so I determined it should be into that
motor-boat floating idly on a canal in Holland.
The letter from the solicitor (a French solicitor, or the equivalent,
writing from the Riviera) told us all about the boat and about the

money. The boat must be got by going or sending to Rotterdam, the
money obtained in London.
A thirty horse-power (why not thirty dolphin-power?) motor-boat
sounds very grand to read about; and as I recovered from my first
disappointment I began to feel as if I'd suddenly become proprietor of a
whole circus full of champing steeds. I tried to persuade Phyllis that I
should write better stories if I could travel a little in my own
motor-boat, as it would broaden my mind; therefore it would pay in the
end. Besides, I wasn't sure my health was not breaking down from
overstrain; not only that, I felt it would be right to go; and, anyhow, I
just would go--so there.
I argued till I was on the point of fainting or having a fit, and I've no
doubt that it was my drawn face (what face wouldn't have been drawn?)
to which Phil's soft heart and obstinate mind finally succumbed.
She said that, as I seemed determined to go through fire and water (I
never heard of any hot springs in the canals of Holland), she supposed
she would have to stick by me, for she was older than I and couldn't
allow me to go alone under any consideration, especially with my
coloring and hair. But, though experience of me had accustomed her to
shocks and, she must confess, to sacrifices, she had never expected
until now that she would be called upon for my sake to become an
adventuress.
As for the two hundred pounds, that part didn't signify. I needn't
suppose she was thinking of it; thank Heaven, whether we worked or
were idle we would still have our settled hundred and twenty pounds a
year each. It was our reputation for which she cared most, and she was
sure the least evil that could befall us would be to blow up.
"Better do it on a grand scale in a thirty horse-power motor-boat than in
a gas-meter bath-tub of a five-room flat in Clapham," I remarked; and
somehow that silenced Phyllis, except for a sigh.
Since then I've been in a whirl of excitement preparing my watery path
as a motor-boat adventuress,