Part 41 (1/2)

Cartwright's bedroom; a chorus of comment half exasperated, half amused.

Raids were less of a terror by night than a source of deep boredom to Londoners by this time.... They had all been in them before; they knew (with luck) just what would happen from the first whistling signals of the ”Take cover” to the ”All clear.”

”_Bother_ them,” exclaimed little Olwen, disgusted. ”In the middle of the party for _you_, Golden!”

The men, coated and capped, thronged the tiny lobby, waiting.... Mr.

Brown and Captain Ross's friend would escort Mrs. Cartwright's niece to her hotel. Young Mr. Ellerton was all eagerness to see Miss Howel-Jones all the way home again. Agatha's sergeant had secured a taxi to take his _fiancee_ Victoria-wards; they offered a lift to Golden, imagining that the young bride would now return to her father's house in Grosvenor Gardens. But in the midst of the little bustle of departure Mrs.

Cartwright had given a gentle clasp to the American girl's arm.

”Don't go,” she said softly. ”I am going to put you up, Golden. You are to stay with me. He told me he wanted you to stay with me tonight----”

As she finished speaking, the first warning maroon went off with a bang.

CHAPTER X

HER BRIDAL NIGHT

”An airy devil hovers in the sky And pours down mischief.”

Shakespeare.

Presently the growling of the guns began to reverberate over London.

First came the far-off rumbling that is felt rather than heard; the hint whereat the mothers of households drop book or work to exclaim, ”Hus.h.!.+... It _is_!...”

”Don't think so, dear,” return the men folk; to retract a couple of minutes later with an ”Ah, yes; blast 'em. Here they are. I'll bring the kids down.”

Then came the long, nerve-irritating pause.

In Mrs. Cartwright's Westminster flat there were no children to cause those anxieties with which the enemy had made himself more detested than by any legitimate act of war. Her son, as he would have wished you to note, was hardly a kid to be roused from his sleep. As he strolled back from the staircase window, hands in pockets, his manner was nonchalant in the extreme. He was no callow scout, either, to wait in a police-station for that thrilling moment when he should be allowed out to sound the bugle-call.

”Like the gramophone on again?” he suggested (luckily in the more manly of his two voices). ”It would drown that boring noise for you.”

”I don't think so, darling, thanks,” said his mother. A pause; silence.

”They may not get through after all. Won't you go to bed, Keith?”

”Oh, I don't know”--the over-grown lad was already dropping with sleep.

”Wouldn't you women rather I stopped up with you?”

Golden and Mrs. Cartwright exchanged a tiny smile before the mother said, ”Do you know, I don't think we'll stop up. I am going to show Mrs.

Awdas to her room now. You do as you like.”

The Master of the House moved from the traditional att.i.tude, flat back against the sitting-room mantelpiece, feet wide apart on the Persian rug. ”Oh, well, I don't see why I should hang about, waiting up for those wretched Huns, either,” he p.r.o.nounced, his pink mouth twisting sidewards as he strangled his yawns. ”I'll turn in too, if you're sure you don't mind.”

And he walked across the sitting-room to hold the door open for his mother and her guest to precede him.

Golden, who considered this English schoolboy ”perfectly lovely,” gave him a smiling good night over her shoulder.