Part 46 (2/2)
”I wasn't thinking only of your drawings, my dear.” He pondered. ...
”f.a.n.n.y tells me you're going to have a birthday. You're quite a little April girl, aren't you?”
2
It was Barbara's twenty-fourth birthday, and the day of her adoption. It had begun, unpropitiously, with something very like a dispute between Horatio and f.a.n.n.y.
Mr. Waddington had gone up to London the day before, and had returned with a pearl pendant for f.a.n.n.y, and a green jade necklace for Barbara (not yet presented) and a canary yellow waistcoat for himself.
And not only the waistcoat--
On the birthday morning f.a.n.n.y had called out to Barbara as she pa.s.sed her bedroom door:
”Barbara, come here.”
f.a.n.n.y was staring, fascinated, at four pairs of silk pyjamas spread out before her on the bed. Remarkable pyjamas, of a fierce magenta with forked lightning in orange running about all over them.
”Good G.o.d, f.a.n.n.y!”
”You may well say 'Good G.o.d.' What would you say if you'd got to...?
I'm not a nervous woman, but--”
”It's a mercy he didn't get them eighteen years ago,” said Barbara, ”or Horry might have been born an idiot.”
”Yellow waistcoats are all very well,” said f.a.n.n.y. ”But what _can_ he have been thinking of?”
”I don't know,” said Barbara. Somehow the pattern called up, irresistibly, the image of Mrs. Levitt.
”Perhaps,” she said, ”he thinks he's Jupiter.”
”Well, I'm not What's-her-name, and I don't want to be blasted. So I'll put them somewhere where he can't find them.”
At that moment they had heard Mr. Waddington coming through his dressing-room and Barbara had run away by the door into the corridor.
”Who took those things out of my wardrobe?” he said. He was gazing, dreamily, affectionately almost, at the pyjamas.
”I did.”
”And what for?”
”To look at them. Can you wonder? Horatio, if you wear them I'll apply for a separation.”
”You needn't worry.”
There was a queer look in his face, significant and furtive. And f.a.n.n.y's mind, with one of its rapid flights, darted off from the pyjamas.
”What are you going to do about Barbara?” she said.
”_Do_ about her?”
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