Part 48 (1/2)

”There!” he said triumphantly.

”You would be much more comfortable in a smoker.”

”So would you. We'll take a smoker; I've got the sort of cigarette you like.”

At the junction they got a smoker, and Miles saw to it that they had it to themselves; he also persuaded the guard to give Meg a square wooden box to put her feet on, because he thought the seats were too high for her.

It seemed a very short journey.

Major Morton was awaiting Meg when they arrived; a little gentleman immaculately neat (it was quite clear whence Meg got her love of detail and finish)--who looked both washed-out and dried-up. He embraced her with considerable solemnity, exclaiming, ”G.o.d bless you, my dear child!

You look better than I expected.”

”Papa, dear, here is Captain Middleton, a friend from Amber Guiting. We happened to travel together.”

”Pleased to meet you, sir,” said the little Major graciously; and somehow Miles contrived in two minutes so to ingratiate himself with Meg's ”poor little papa” that they all walked out of the station together as a matter of course.

Then came the question of plans.

Meg had shopping to do, declared she had a list as long as her arm, but was entirely at her father's disposal as to whether she should do it before or after lunch.

Miles boldly suggested she should do it now, at once, while it was still fairly cool, and then she could have all her parcels sent to the station to meet her. He seemed quite eager to get rid of Meg. The little Major agreed that this would be the best course. He would stroll round to his club while Meg was shopping, and meet her when she thought she would have finished. They walked to the promenade and dropped her at Cavendish House. Miles, explaining that he had to go to Smith's to look at a horse, asked for directions from the Major. Their way was the same, and without so much as bidding her farewell, Miles strolled up one of the prettiest promenades in England in company with her father. Meg felt rather dazed.

She prided herself on having reduced shopping to a fine art, but to-day, somehow, she didn't get through as quickly as usual, and there was a number of items on her list still unticked when it was time to meet her father just outside his club at the top of the promenade.

Major Morton was the essence of punctuality. Meg flew to meet him, and found he had waited five minutes. He was not, however, upset, as might have been expected. He took her to his rooms in a quiet terrace behind the promenade and comfortably near his club. The sun-blinds were down outside his sitting-room windows, and the room seemed cool and pleasant.

Then it was that Meg discovered that her father was looking at her in quite a new way. Almost, in fact, as though he had never seen her before.

Was it her short hair? she wondered.

Yet that was not very noticeable under such a shady hat.

Major Morton had vigorously opposed the nursemaid scheme. To the sympathetic ladies who attended the same strictly evangelical church of which he was a pillar, he confided that his only daughter did not care for ”a quiet domestic life.” It was a grief to him--but, after all, parents are shelved nowadays; every girl wants to ”live her own life,”

and he would be the last man to stand in the way of his child's happiness. The ladies felt very sorry for Major Morton and indignant with the hard-hearted, unfilial Meg. They did not realise that had Meg lived with her father--in rooms--and earned nothing, the Major's delicate digestion might occasionally have suffered, and Meg would undoubtedly have been half-starved.

To-day, however, he was more hopeful about Meg than he had been for a long time. Since the Trent episode he had ceased even to imagine her possible marriage. By her own headstrong folly she had ruined all her chances. ”The weariful rich” who had got her the post did not spare him this aspect of her deplorable conduct. To-day, however, there was a rift in these dark clouds of consequence.

Captain Middleton--he only knows how--had persuaded Major Morton to go with him to see the horse, had asked his quite useless advice, and had subtly and insidiously conveyed to the Major, without one single incriminating sentence, a very clear idea as to his own feelings for the Major's daughter.

Major Morton felt cheered.

He had no idea who Miles really was, but he had remarked the gunner tie, and, asking to what part of the Royal Regiment Miles belonged, decided that no mere pauper could be a Horse-Gunner.

He regarded his daughter with new eyes.

She was undoubtedly attractive. He discovered certain resemblances to himself that he had never noticed before.

Then he informed her that he had promised they would both lunch with her agreeable friend at the Queen's Hotel: ”He made such a point of it,”

said Major Morton, ”I could hardly refuse; begged us to take pity on his loneliness, and so on--and I'm feeling rather better to-day.”