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Without ceasing to play, changing only the time of the tune, the orchestra swung into a fox-trot. Lanyard glanced across the table to see Cecelia Brooke rising in response to the invitation of dapper Mr. Revel. In his turn, he rose with Sophie Weringrode. "Be patient with me," he begged. "It is long since I danced to music more frivolous than a cannonade."
Cecelia Anne gabbled the words of starting, shut her eyes tightly, fired the rifle into the air, threw it on the ground and set off after the swiftly moving Jimmie. Early in his first lap she was up to him. As they passed the pump, she was ahead.
Jimmie often reads me parts of it after I go to bed at night. There's a poem in it he taught me that by heart and if I think to say it the last thing before I go to sleep he says I'll get so's nothing can scare me." "Recite it for Mr. Debrett," urged Mrs. Hawtry. And Cecelia Anne obediently began, with a jerk of a curtsey and a shake of her delicate embroideries and blue sash.
Already two hours had passed and, since he meant to call at the house on West End Avenue well in advance of the hour when Cecelia Brooke might be there presuming Blensop to have given her the same appointment as he had given "Mr. Ember," that is, nine o'clock it was now time to prepare.
"Why Jimmie," she whimpered contrary to his most stringent rule. "Why Jimmie what's the matter?" "You're a sneak," said Jimmie darkly and vouchsafed no more. There was indeed no more to say. It was the last word of opprobrium. They pattered on in silence for a short but dusty distance, Cecelia Anne struggling with the temptation to lie down and die; Jimmie upborne by furious temper.
The door closed gently behind him as he stood politely bowing, conscious that the four faces turned his way were distinguished by a singular variety of expression. Miss Cecelia Brooke was nearest him, beside a chair from which she had evidently just risen, her pretty young face rather pale and set, a scared look in her candid eyes.
Hawtry's "beloved granddaughter Cecelia Anne" was not yet too big to find solace in sleep when she was tired and uninterested, being indeed but nine years old and exceedingly small of stature and babyish of habit. So she slept on and missed hearing all the provisions which were meant to protect her in the enjoyment of her estate but which were equally calculated to drive her guardian distracted.
There's the making of a good business man in Jimmie." It was part of what Mrs. Hawtry for a long time considered the interference of Cecelia Anne's grandmother that the child should have a monthly allowance, small while she was small and growing with her growth. She was to be allowed to spend it without supervision and to keep an account of it.
This playful insistence, the light stress she laid upon her suggestion that Cecelia Brooke dance with him, considered in conjunction with her recent admonition, impressed Lanyard as significantly inconsistent. Sophie was no more a woman to make purposeless gestures than she was one sufficiently wanting in finesse to signal him by pressures of her foot.
The Doctor looked very sharp at Mrs. Finley so sharp that she stooped down, pretending to pick something from the floor, that he needn't see her blush. "I don't know how I am to nurse a sick child," grumbled Mrs. Finley; "there's John Madison Harrison Polk, and Sarah Jenny Lind, and Malvina Cecelia Victoria, and Napoleon Bonaparte, four children of my own to look after. It's a hard case, Doctor."
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