Part 39 (1/2)
”Yes, he's rich,” Paddy answered, ”and he has a lovely place near Omeath. I wonder when they will be married? I don't like the idea of somebody fresh coming there at all. I'm sure I shan't like her.”
”I think you will. She's very popular in India. Everybody likes her.”
”I'm rather difficult to please,” a.s.serted Miss Paddy with her nose in the air and Guy O'Connor wondered why she seemed so unnecessarily down upon both Gwendoline and Lawrence.
At Lancaster Gate the two brothers got off, and Paddy and Basil proceeded alone. Paddy was very thoughtful, and Basil wanted to talk, which made her somewhat cross.
”I don't know what's happened to you,” he said. ”You're looking real stunning! I could scarcely believe my eyes when I first saw you.”
”Don't talk nonsense,” snapped Paddy. ”I've only got a new dress on, and there's nothing so very extraordinary in that.”
”But there is,” he insisted, ”it's all very extraordinary. The last time I saw you, you were just dressed anyhow, and suggested milking-stools and hayfields; now you're--well, you're a Londoner.”
”I'm _not_,” emphatically. ”I wouldn't be a Londoner for all the world--grasping, conceited, money-grubbing lot.”
”Whew!” whistled Basil softly. ”What's Captain O'Connor been saying to get her little temper up?”
”Nothing, only you're so silly, and I haven't the patience to talk to boys.”
Basil proceeded to do a little sum on his fingers, looking abnormally grave.
”Umph! thirty-five I should think,” he said musingly, ”though you hardly look it. No chicken that! eh--what?”
Paddy was obliged to burst out laughing.
”Do you know I think you're improving rather,” she told him. ”You aren't half such a namby-pamby c.o.xcomb as you were when I first came to London at Christmas.”
”Not easy when you're about,” he commented, adding, ”I think we might be said to have formed a mutual improvement society. If you only knew what you looked like that first night! A sort of antediluvian Joan of Arc!
I thought you were the oddest fish I had ever come across.”
”Why Joan of Arc?”
”Because you had war in your eyes from the first moment we met. I didn't recognise it so quickly then as I should now, but I couldn't help seeing you didn't mean to waste much cousinly affection on me.”
”I thought you were an awful idiot,” she remarked, with smiling candour.
”And you tried to show it with more force than politeness; which was cheek when you weren't anything much to boast of yourself.”
They had reached the terminus and now climbed down, walking off homeward together at a brisk pace.
”By the way, how's that long-legged, broad-shouldered British bull-dog specimen who came to say good-by before going to South Africa?” he asked.
”Umph! sour grapes!” with a little snort.
Basil was pleased. He felt as if he were getting a little of his own back again.
”Feeling a bit love-sick, eh?” he asked.
”If I were, I should think I had caught it from you,” scathingly.
”Oh, I've given all that sort of thing up now; but I'm naturally interested in your affairs, being a cousin. When did he say he should be back?”