IV
“MAKE haste now with them crevets!”
“For shame, Miss. I shall go straight to the Dean!”
“Cr-r-r-evets!” Miss Sinquier called.
Clad in full black, with a dark feltchapeau de resistanceand a long Lancastrian shawl, she felt herself no mean match for any man.
“C-r-r-r,” she growled, throwing back her shawl.
After all, were not the things her own?
She laughed gaily.
“If dear Mrs. Bromley could see me,” she beamed, tucking dexterously away an apostolic spoon.
“‘St. Matthew—St. Mark—St. Luke—St. John—Thesesprang into bed with their breeches on.’”
“‘St. Matthew—St. Mark—St. Luke—St. John—Thesesprang into bed with their breeches on.’”
“‘St. Matthew—St. Mark—St. Luke—St. John—Thesesprang into bed with their breeches on.’”
“‘St. Matthew—St. Mark—St. Luke—St. John—
Thesesprang into bed with their breeches on.’”
At a friendly frolic once, a Candidate for Orders had waltzed her about to that.
She recalled Fräulein’s erudite query still:
“Pray, why did they not take off all like the others?”
And the young man’s significant reasons and elaborate suppositions, and Fräulein’s creamy tone as she said shequiteunderstood.
Miss Sinquier turned a key.
S-s-s-st!
“Butter fingers.”
In a moment she must run.
Terrible to forgo her great tureen....
She poked it. What magnitude to be sure!
Impossible to tow it along.
Under the circumstances, why not take something less cumbersome instead?
There were the Caroline sauce-boats, or the best Anne teapot, hardly, if ever, in use.
Her ideas raced on.
And who could resist those gorgeous grapes, for the train?
Together with their dish....
“Tudor, ‘Harry’!” she breathed.
From the corridor came a hum of voices.
Flinging her wrap about her, Miss Sinquier slipped quietly out by way of a small room, where the Canon preserved his lawn.
Outside, the moon was already up—afull moon, high and white, a wisp of cloud stretched across it like a blindfold face.
Oh Fame, dear!
She put up her face.
Across the garden the Cathedral loomed out of a mist as white as milk.
“The damp,” she reasoned, “alone, would justify her flight.”
She shivered.
How sombre it looked in the lane.
There were roughs there frequently, too.
“Villains....”
She felt fearfully her pearls.
After all, the initial step in any career was usually reckoned the worst.
Some day, at the King’s, or the Canary, or the Olive, in the warmth of a stage dressing-room, she would be amused, perhaps, and say:
“I left my father’s roof, Sir, one sweet spring night—without so much as a word!”