Part 15 (1/2)

”Yes, sir! I am Annie's friend from Gresham. We have been intimate from the day we entered school.”

”Yes, yes! I know much of you and your courtesy. But tell me, Miss Allison, are you American?” (His American was so different from ours one could almost spell it A-m-e-h-r-i-k-e-n.)

”Yes, Mr. Pore, I am American, but my mother was English.”

”Ah! I thought as much. Her name was Lucy Page, was it not?”

”Yes,” I answered, wondering at his knowledge of my mother's name.

”Oh, Page! Page! Only think of it!” exclaimed Annie impulsively. ”Lucy Page was my mother's little friend, the one who lent her the slippers to wear to the Charity Bazaar,” and her enthusiasm went unrebuked by her father. Indeed, he seemed almost as excited as Annie. The poor man had been a long time away from persons who knew him and whom he knew and he had the absurd notion that very few ”Amehrikens” were his social equal; now he found that his daughter had made friends with the child of his wife's old friend.

”To think of it, to think of it! My word, but it is strange! I knew the moment I saw you that I had seen either you or your counterpart before.

Tell me, child, all about your mother, and your grandfather, Major Page.

What a fine old soldier he was!”

And so I sat on the porch by this strange, stiff Englishman, no longer stiff, but positively limber, Dum declared, and told all I knew of my poor little mother and the fine old soldier, her father. They had come to America to look up some investments made by the retired Army officer, had settled near Warrenton and there had met my father,--and the marriage had ensued.

”All I have left of my old English grandfather is his hat-tub, which I still use when I am at Bracken,” I said.

”My word, how I should like to own one! I have not seen a hat-tub for twenty years,” he sighed. ”But tell me, Miss Allison, do you never see nor hear from your mother's family in England?”

”I think all correspondence with them died a natural death many years ago. Father used to write once a year to a great-aunt, Gwendoline was her name, but she died; after that some of her daughters wrote once or twice and then stopped. I don't even know whether they are alive and I fancy they neither know nor care whether I am.”

”I have never seen a more striking likeness than you have to your mother. She was much younger than my wife when I knew her. We had all been visiting at the home of the Earl of Garth, my wife's uncle. Little Lucy Page was really not old enough to be out of the nursery, certainly should have been in charge of a governess; but Major Page had his own ideas about such things and took his daughter wherever he went. She was about sixteen, I fancy.”

”Just your age!” tweedled the Tuckers, who had been listening, with open mouths and eyes, in speechless silence to Mr. Pore's revelations. When he spoke of the Earl of Garth as his wife's uncle they looked, as poor dear Blanche expressed it, ”fittin' to bust.” And then when in the most casual manner he let drop that his own father was a baronet, I know it was a relief to them that the hammock rope broke at the crucial moment and they were precipitated to the floor with Mary Flannagan who was between them.

”If something had not happened and happened pretty quick 'a kersplosion was eminent,'” whispered Dee to me. ”And now I am going to beat it to the hotel as fast as my legs can carry me and let that hateful Mabel Binks know that she has been nasty to the n.o.bility. Oh, I am going to be tactful and not let her know I came for the express purpose. I am going to ask her to tea and be generally sweet, and then just casually let it drop that Mr. Pore knew your mother while all of them were visiting at an earl's, and that said earl was Mrs. Pore's uncle. I'll rub in that it means that our modest, little English friend, called by Mabel and her ilk Orphan Annie, is the great-granddaughter of an earl on her mother's side and the granddaughter of a baronet on her father's.”

All this Dee whispered to me while the hammock was being tied up more securely by Zebedee. The solemn Englishman was evidently much amused by the mishap, as he laughed in a manner almost hilarious for one so dignified and sober. I have always heard an accident like that spoken of as an English joke, and truly it did seem to strike him as very funny.

Harvie Price and Shorty made their appearance soon after. Harvie greeted Mr. Pore with great respect and in a few moments they were conversing most affably about Harvie's grandfather, General Price, and news of the settlement.

Mr. Pore seemed to like the boy and Harvie evidently liked him. Once he had told me that he admired Mr. Pore greatly as one who could think in Latin.

It was easy to see that Mr. Pore was not going to be such a difficult visitor, after all. He had evidently decided that we were good enough socially for him, because of my mother's having been at the Earl of Garth's. He had already admitted Harvie to his exclusive circle since he had permitted Annie to play with him when they were children. He liked Zebedee and Zebedee's cigars and Zebedee's children, who cracked such delicious jokes in falling out of hammocks. Altogether he intended to have a very pleasant weekend. I fancied he was a little sorry that he had spoken of his connections, as it was a subject he evidently had not touched on to strangers, but it had slipped out in his delight in meeting someone he considered of his world, that world that he had turned his back on so many years before but the world to which he still belonged. He had never identified himself with his ”Amehriken”

neighbours and had always held himself as an alien among them.

Annie looked a little startled and very happy. This was a new father to her, a genial gentleman who actually talked to her friends and admitted having t.i.tled connections in the old country. He had not censured her once and now he was talking to Harvie with actual affability.

”Oh, Page,” she whispered to me, ”how glad I am I accepted your slippers that night of the musicale at Gresham. You remember I said to you that my mother had borrowed slippers, too, when she had worn that dress, and that she did not mind borrowing them because she knew her friend loved her. To think of that friend's being your mother! Oh, Page, I am so happy!”

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE MACHINATIONS OF MABEL.

Dee must have laid it on rather thick with Mabel Binks, as anything like that young woman's change of manner towards Annie could not have been brought about by a light touch. I am afraid Dee represented Mr. Pore's brother, the present baronet, as in the last stages of some wasting disease, and by some juggling of facts in regard to English t.i.tles gave the impression that Annie was in a fair way to become the d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough or at least the Honourable Anne. She afterwards told Dum and me when we accused her of not having drawn it mild, that she had neglected to tell Mabel the exact connection with the earl, but had hinted that it was very close and one likely to lead to untold honours to our little friend.