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"I'm more my own master now," he said. "I should like to look in upon you all again, Deleah." "You had better not. Good-bye." "Wait! Wait! One minute! I say, are you going to this concert to-night?" "Of course. All of us. Even Franky. Half-guinea places. Why need you ask?" "But if I get you some tickets? You and Bessie and Mrs. Day? I will, you know. I will, Deleah, if you'll say you'll go "
But, one of the girls proving tender-hearted on the subject of cats, bottles were substituted, Franky being admitted to the perfect joy of seeing Mr. Gibbon try to hit them from his bedroom window. An honour and privilege highly appreciated by the child. Mr.
Franky having temporarily deserted his paint-box and the Illustrated News he had designed to colour for many tinted sheets of gelatine, saved from the crackers on last night's supper table, now held them in turn before his eyes.
Preferring to keep the matter to herself, she had eluded her mother and sister by going without her tea, gaining only by the delay the addition, to those already agog for her news, of the innocent Franky, of the ever-curious Emily, of an Honourable Charles consumed with jealous fears. They would not even let her take her place at table before they were upon her.
Mary obeyed, but started as she opened the drawer, for there, on the top, lay a small, old-fashioned miniature, of a fair young child, so nearly resembling Franky, that the tears instantly came to her eyes. "What is it?" asked Mrs Campbell, and Mary replied, "This picture, so much like brother Franky. May I look at it?" "Certainly," said Mrs. Campbell. "That is a picture of my sister."
Deleah, chaperoned by Franky, could have no excuse. She refused him very gently, because of his subdued demeanour, and because, absurd as it was of him, his voice had faltered when he made his appeal, and his eyes had grown moist. "But you must not take Franky, Reggie," she said, and called on the child to descend, and come in to his tea. "Le'me go, Deda! Le'me go!" Franky pleaded.
Franky was screaming too. He had got down from the table and rushed round to his younger sister, who, white, and shaking like a leaf, took the child in her arms. Bernard had risen, ashen-faced, staring. "It isn't true!" he shouted savagely at his father's traducer. "It's a lie!" "Didn't you know?"
Oh, if he could have got you tickets and you would have gone, how heavenly, heavenly everything would have been to-night!" Tea was ready in the sitting-room above the shop when Deleah reached home. Tea with thick bread-and-butter, dry toast, water-cress, little dishes of sliced ham, and pastry-tarts made in Emily's best fashion; and Bessie and Franky were already seated at the table.
Franky went to his mother and climbed on her lap, and Deleah sat close to her side, a little too apparently, perhaps, leaving the young man and Bessie to carry on their sparkling conversation uninterrupted. When Emily came in, to lay the tea-table, the two men got up to go. "Mama, Reggie will stay if you ask him," Bessie said.
Sometimes, with little Franky, on a Sunday afternoon, she had walked by the side of the river where it ran away from the ugly black wharves upon its shores to the meadows where Franky loved to see the toads slip down through the weeds to the clear water, loved to get his boots wet in trying to catch the darting minnows in his hands, loved to gather the forget-me-nots, and river-mint, and ragged robin, to carry home to Deleah.
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