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Updated: June 25, 2025
The baron watched the confused performance of his little charge with a strong feeling that something very serious indeed was the matter with the order of nature. When Pollyooly's side went out to field, he was no more satisfied by the prince's performance.
At the words "well-paid" the duke started in his chair with a look of pain; but Pollyooly's deep blue eyes shone suddenly like bright stars, and she smiled a heavenly smile. It was not that she was mercenary. "Yes?" she said a little breathlessly. "He wants you to go down to his house in the country and pretend to be his little daughter, Lady Marion Ricksborough.
Under the wing of their nurse Kathleen and Mary surveyed him with the eyes of terror; and Kathleen poured into Pollyooly's attentive ear the story of his dreadful doings: how he had pushed a little boy over the edge of the sea-wall, kicked several others; how he had hit little girls with their own spades and pulled the hair of others; how he never passed a carefully built castle without kicking a breach in it, and always threw any spades or buckets he could lay hands on far into the sea.
Gibson, as the nurse called her, seemed as taken with Pollyooly's serious outlook on life as with the charm of the Lump; and presently she asked her if her mother would let them come to tea with Kathleen and Mary and to games on the sands after it that afternoon.
His gloom did not at all lessen Pollyooly's enjoyment of her bath and she spent the pleasantest half-hour in the sea. She graciously suffered the detective to pay for it. She returned to the hotel with a glorious appetite and made a glorious breakfast. Mr. Wilkinson congratulated her on the healthiness of her appetite, with a somewhat envious air.
They could not conceive that, since she had to work for a living, Pollyooly's natural grace and the agility she had acquired in her earlier childhood, at the village of Muttle Deeping, and still retained, could be put to more agreeable and profitable use than that of helping to supply this demand for angels, and so help to raise the British ideal of womanly beauty.
Pollyooly's sobs grew yet louder heartrending. The duke took a hurried turn up and down the room. Pollyooly, a huddled figure of desperate woe, sobbed on. The duke grabbed at his scrubby little moustache and held on to it firmly. It was no real help. He ground his teeth; he tugged at his moustache; and then in a tone of the last exasperation, he cried: "Oh, hang it all!
The Lump approved greatly of the gardens; but he was a little doubtful about the dogs, and kept a firm hold of Pollyooly's skirts. It was nearly ten minutes before, encouraged by the very friendly way in which Pollyooly treated them, he really unbent. He showed a truly marvellous instinct for discovering which dog would let him pull his tail, and which would not.
She could hardly believe her shining eyes. "Oh, thank you, your Grace! Millicent will be so glad!" she cried joyfully. The duke growled in his throat; but in some way Pollyooly's radiant angel face blunted his ferocity. Also it robbed his surrender of its sting. He rang the bell; then opened the smoking-room door for her and bade her good day quite in the manner and tone of an English gentleman.
And besides, this isn't the time of year when vacancies in the home are filled up," said the duke, hardening himself in his resistance, now that he could throw the odium of it on to the machinery of the home. Pollyooly's face had fallen, for her instinct told her that he did not intend to grant her petition, and was only making excuses.
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