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Gave it to old man Jornicroft to read and insisted on his reading it. He's impressed. Never thought I had it in me. Can't see, however, where the commercial value of it comes in." "Wait till you show him your first thumping cheque," sympathised my wife. "I'm going to," he exclaimed boyishly. "I might have done it this afternoon.
"Luggage?" He looked at Mr. Jornicroft as if he had suggested the impossibility of going abroad without a motor veil or the Encyclopædia Britannica. "What the blazes has luggage got to do with it?" His roar could be heard above the din of the hurrying station. "I don't want luggage."
Jornicroft had made luxurious arrangements for her comfort an ambulance carriage from St. John's Wood, a special invalid compartment in the train; but at the station, as at Doria's wedding, Jaffery took command.
After the letter was posted my spirits sank. What in the world would we do with ponderous old man Jornicroft? But in the course of a few posts my gloom was lightened by a refusal. Mr. Jornicroft had been in the habit for many years of spending Christmas at the King's Hotel, Hastings, and had already made his arrangements. "Who else is there?" asked Barbara.
John's Wood and begin her life anew with Adrian's beloved ghost, and she had issued orders to servants to have everything in readiness for her arrival, but Barbara had intervened and so had Mr. Jornicroft, a man of limited sympathies and brutal common sense.
The stem broke and the wine flowed over the cloth. He started, and with a flash the old Adrian came back, manifesting itself in his smiling dismay, his boyish apology to Mr. Jornicroft for smashing a rare glass, spoiling the tablecloth and wasting precious wine. The incident served to disequilibrate, as one might say, the two discussions on Wilmot and Abyssinia. Coffee came and liqueurs.
Jornicroft at all," said I. "It impressed my tailor, who cashed it, deducting a quarter of his bill." "Do you mean to say, my dear Adrian," I questioned, "that you went to your tailor with a cheque for a hundred pounds and said, 'I want to pay you a quarter of what I owe you, will you give me change?" "Of course."
For the first time I praised Old Man Jornicroft. He had brought up his daughter far from the madding mechanics of the literary life. To my great relief, Doria swallowed the incredible story. "It was careless of you not to have given special instructions for the manuscript to be saved, I must say. But if it's gone, it's gone. I'm not unreasonable."
So, I must confess, did Barbara and I. When Jaffery met us at the station he had no more intention of escorting Doria to Nice than we had ourselves. "I can't permit it it's too kind there's no necessity we'll get on all right!" spluttered Mr. Jornicroft. "You won't. She has got to be carried. You're not going to take any risks." "But, my dear fellow it's absurd you haven't any luggage."
Ho! ho! ho!" His Homeric laughter must have shattered the Trunk Telephone system of Great Britain, for after that there was silence cold and merciless. Well, perhaps it was just as well, for if we had been allowed to converse further I might have told him that another female woman, Doria Jornicroft, was staying at Northlands, and he might not have come.
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