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I took the Lump to see her the day after we came back from Pyechurch; and she said I was growing quite the lady." "She would put it like that," said the Honourable John Ruffin sadly. "And then she said that after all it wasn't to be wondered at, seeing who Mr. Francis was. But when I asked her what she meant, she wouldn't say any more."
In the main, doubtless, he may be right; but there must be natures, exceptional natures, on which it does not exercise this disastrous effect; and it is curious that there should be two human beings in so small a place as Pyechurch at the same time of this very nature.
The baron would indeed miss her; and he was one of the saddest men in Pyechurch that day. With the departure of Pollyooly his hours of ease came to an end. No longer could he in his sunnily disposed deck-chair read the sweet books he loved in a perfect serenity. Once more he must follow his royal charge up and down the sands and keep an ever watchful eye on him.
At any rate there was no sign of degradation in his behaviour. He now walked about Pyechurch beach as peacefully as you could wish: he destroyed no castles; he kicked no children. Even that fierce, stout, moustachioed and military Prussian, the Baron von Habelschwert, seemed to have derived benefit from his violent impingement on the left shoulder of the Honourable John Ruffin.
"Oh, thank you, sir!" said Pollyooly in a tone of profound gratitude. "We will go to Pyechurch. There's an old family servant of ours who lets lodgings at Pyechurch. I made her life a burden to her when I was young; and consequently, with true womanliness, she has always entertained the strongest affection for me.
The change from Pyechurch to the Temple was trying; but the unrepining Pollyooly soon grew used to it, though she missed for a while the wide spaces of the sea and marsh, and the inspiriting breezes from the sea. The Honourable John Ruffin made some changes: she was to continue to call him John, or Cousin John; she was to do her work in gloves; and she was always to wear a large apron.
"Ach, zo?" said the grand duke, who made a point of speaking English in England; and he descended with earth-shaking majesty from the creaking barouche. "Ve vill go to zem," he said after testing the soil of Pyechurch with a cautious foot to make sure that it was equal to his weight.
Then two mornings later there came a telegram to inform him that the Grand Duke of Lippe-Schweidnitz, on his way to answer the letter of appeal in person, was already in London, and would reach Pyechurch early in the afternoon. The baron was a glad man.
Pollyooly, though all the while she kept a careful eye on him, left him in the care of Emily Gibbs, till the train was actually outside London. Then she took him into her corner and pointed out objects of interest to him. She was convinced that he had made a great advance in intelligence since his journey down to Pyechurch: not once did he hail a sheep as a gee-gee.
She was surprised, because she had no reason to believe that the coldness which the Honourable John Ruffin had told her subsisted between himself and the duke had been dissipated; but, like the well-mannered child she was, she did not let her surprise be seen, but bowed politely as she had seen ladies at Pyechurch bow, for since she had been promoted to the position of the Honourable John Ruffin's cousin she had abandoned the curtsey as out of keeping with that more exalted station.
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