Part 9 (1/2)

”Well, well, you may have a baby yet, only you would find you'd have to be more particular as to bits and pieces strewed everywhere,” and Mrs.

Pryor stooped to pick up some leaves which Salome had dropped as she filled the two stiff white vases with the Maplestone flowers.

Mrs. Wilton and the boys were expected that evening. Raymond and Reginald were to meet them at the station; and Salome had been following Stevens about the house, giving finis.h.i.+ng touches here and there, and trying to hope her mother would be pleased. The ”parlour,” now called the drawing-room, was wonderfully improved by pus.h.i.+ng the table back against the wall, and covering it with books and a little flower-basket from the old home. Then there was a ”nest” of small tables, which Salome and Stevens separated, and covered two of them with some bits of scarlet cloth, round which some lace was run by Stevens. On these tables some photographs were set in little frames, and two brackets were nailed up with a book-shelf. Salome looked round with some satisfaction as the sun struggled through the clouds and seemed to smile on her efforts.

Reginald enjoyed all the wrenching of nails from boxes and running out on messages; and altogether things a.s.sumed a brighter aspect.

Raymond had been out the greater part of the two days, and only came in to meals. He was moody and disagreeable: selfish and discontented in the days of prosperity, he naturally made no effort to sweeten the days of adversity.

”Have you got any money, Salome?” he asked his sister, as she sat down in the dining-room with ink and pens before her and a large blotting-case, which had once been a music portfolio, and was now filled with a great variety of scribbled paper, the beginnings of many stories which had been read to her little brothers by the nursery fire at Maplestone, and were considered, by them at least, the ”jolliest tales that were ever told--much jollier than printed books.”

Out of this chaotic heap Salome thought of forming a story for children, of which visions floated before her, bound in olive green, and embossed with gold, and ill.u.s.trated with pictures, and advertised in the papers!

Only Reginald was to be in the secret. And then the joy of giving her mother the money she should get for her book. The little heap of gold was already rising from ten to twenty, nay, to thirty sovereigns, when Raymond's question broke in on her dream,--

”I say, Salome, have you got any money?”

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”'I say, Salome, have you got any money?'” _Page 80._]

”Money! No, Raymond, only a few s.h.i.+llings; but mother will have some this afternoon.”

”Well, you see, I spent nearly a pound of my own for the tickets, and the omnibus, and cab, and porters.”

”Not for the omnibus and cab. I gave Reginald seven s.h.i.+llings for them.

And as to the tickets, you ought not to have taken first cla.s.s tickets.

One was a waste, because Reginald did not use it.”

”A lucky thing I had the sense to take first cla.s.s tickets. Fancy St.

Clair finding _me_ in a third cla.s.s carriage--and _you_, worse still! If Reginald was such a fool, I can't help it, it was not my concern; but I have a right to look after you, and I know my father would never have allowed you or Ada to travel third cla.s.s with a lot of half-tipsy navvies, for all I could tell.”

Raymond said this with a grandly magnanimous air, as if he were to be commended for brotherly attention.

Salome bit the end of her pen-holder, and could scarcely repress a smile, but she only said,--

”What do you want money for, Raymond?”

”What do I want it for? That's my business. I am not going into Roxburgh without a penny in my pocket. It's not likely.”

”Well,” Salome said, ”I hope you will not tease mother for money. I hope you will spare her as much as you can. I believe I have some money of my own,--ten or twelve s.h.i.+llings,--and I can let you have it, or some of it.” Salome put her hand in her pocket to get out her purse. Alas! no purse was there. ”I must have left it upstairs,” she said.

And Raymond exclaimed,--

”A nice hand you'll make of keeping money for the family.”

”Stevens,” Salome said, rus.h.i.+ng up to Stevens, ”have you seen my purse?”

”No; you've never lost it?”

”I can't have lost it.--Reginald,--I say, Reginald, have you seen my purse? I thought it was in my pocket.”

Reginald called out from his mother's bed-room, where he was fastening up a bracket for her little clock,--