Part 18 (1/2)

Millicent, however, after her first joy on hearing that the path which would ultimately lead her to the altar with an empire-builder was open to her, grew sad.

”It's a pity I couldn't stay on and on with you here,” she said very plaintively. ”I'm sure I shall never be so happy anywhere else.”

”Oh, yes: you will,” said Pollyooly firmly. ”You'll find the home ever so nice.”

Millicent shook her head doubtfully and said:

”And I shan't see anything of you and the Lump any more.”

”Oh, yes: you will. You let us know when visiting day is--there's sure to be a visiting day to a home; and we'll come and see you.”

Millicent's face grew a little brighter.

The Honourable John Ruffin congratulated Pollyooly warmly on her success; then he said:

”I trust you were not driven to use the weapon I suggested. Osterley's cantankerousness didn't go so far as that?”

”Oh, well, sir,” said Pollyooly, hesitating a little--”I--I did have to pretend to cry.”

The Honourable John Ruffin laughed gently.

”Poor Osterley!” he said.

The duke's letter plainly stirred the Bellingham Home to instant activity, for a letter came for Pollyooly by the first post to say that an official of the home would come for Millicent that very afternoon.

During the morning Millicent wept several times at the thought of leaving the Lump; and her final farewell was tearful indeed. But Pollyooly believed that her sadness would not last long: they had decided that the empire-builder would have fair hair and a large and flowing moustache.

After Millicent's departure their life settled down into its usual even tenour. Pollyooly missed her; and doubtless the Lump also missed his devoted and obedient slave, though he was of too placid a nature to raise an outcry about his loss. She wrote to Pollyooly on the day after her arrival at the home; and the letter made it clear that her first impressions of it were pleasing.

It was on the fifth morning after her going that the Honourable John Ruffin made the great announcement. It was his habit to chant in his bath what Pollyooly believed to be poetry; and it is improbable that an observant child of twelve, who had pa.s.sed the seven standards at Muttle Deeping school, could have been mistaken in a matter of that kind. At any rate his chanting was rhythmical. The habit may have borne witness to the goodness of his conscience, or it may not (it may merely have been a by-product of an excellent digestion), but that morning it seemed to her that he chanted more loudly and with a finer gusto than usual.

She was not greatly surprised therefore, when she brought in his carefully grilled bacon, at his saying in a very cheerful tone:

”I have had a windfall, Mrs. Bride--a windfall of thirty-five pounds.

It fell out of an auction-bridge tree--a game you do not understand--and it has made the heat-wave, which ought to be called the heat-flood, more unbearable than ever. Therefore I have resolved to go away for a while to the sea.”

”Yes, sir,” said Pollyooly in a tone of amiable congratulation.

But her face fell a little; for though the departure of the Honourable John Ruffin meant that she would have less work; it also meant that she would have to spend more on food for herself and her little brother the Lump, since the Honourable John Ruffin did not eat all his bread or drink all his milk; and there was often half a cake with which he refused to continue his afternoon tea on the ground that it was stale.

Besides, life was a far more cheerful business when he was at home; his talk was Pollyooly's chief diversion, though she was hardly conscious of the fact; and it frequently gave her to think deeply.

”But the thing that has kept me so long in London submerged in the heat-flood has not been so much the want of money (I have had enough for my own escape) as the great bacon difficulty,” he said and paused.

”Yes, sir,” said Pollyooly.

”But, thanks to this windfall, I can get over that difficulty by taking you to the sea to grill my bacon for me, and the Lump to keep you occupied while you are not grilling it, that Satan may not find some mischief still for idle hands to do,” he said sententiously.

Pollyooly's large blue eyes opened very wide; and her mouth opened too.

”Oh, sir, me and the Lump, sir!” she said in a hushed, breathless voice of incredulous rapture.