CHAPTER XXXIPaddy Makes a New Friend.For one moment Paddy was utterly at a loss, and bit her lips in evident vexation, while the colour deepened still further in her face.“How do you do, Paddy?” said Lawrence. “You seem to be in difficulties as usual. May I introduce you to your other timely helper, Miss Grant-Carew?”Paddy bowed very stiffly, but as Gwen promptly held out her hand, she was obliged to take it. She managed, however, to avoid doing likewise with Lawrence. Gwen pretended not to notice her coldness, and remarked laughingly:“I’m so glad I didn’t miss that. You can’t think how funny it looked—in Regent Street of all places, too?”Paddy was constrained to laugh again at the recollection, but she busied herself trying to rearrange the tomatoes in a secure fashion, and absolutely refused to look at Lawrence.“I think they will be all right now,” she said. “Thank you so much for helping me to pick them up. I’m in rather a hurry, as I have to be at the surgery by half-past five—if you will excuse my running off. Good-by!” and in two seconds she was vanishing in the crowd.Gwen looked at Lawrence drolly.“She’s a good hater,” she remarked. “Gwen isn’t used to being put off in that summary fashion. She doesn’t like it, Lawrie.”“It’s your own fault. You practically pushed me into the introduction.”“Because I wanted to know her. It isn’t often people don’t want to know Gwennie. I don’t understand!—mene comprenez pas, Lawrie. This is going to be interesting,” she ran on. “I shall insist upon Doreen inviting me to meet her in Cadogan Place.”Paddy meanwhile scrambled on to her ’bus, tomatoes held safely this time, and started homeward feeling furious.“How dare he introduce me!” she mused angrily. “He knows I hate her. How dare he stop me at all in that cool fashion!” calmly ignoring the fact that the tomatoes and her own carelessness, not Lawrence, had done the stopping. “How pretty she is!” she went on in the same angry way. “She’s as pretty as Eileen. I wouldn’t have cared so much if she had been plain, I think, but she’s just lovely. Oh, I hate her, I hate her—I just hate them both!”The bottles got rather banged about that evening, and the good doctor looked up once or twice from his writing, in his little inner sanctuary, and gently marvelled. Basil happened to be at home, and strolled into his father’s den, though only with the idea of strolling out again through the surgery door upon suitable pretext. While hovering round there was a sudden crash, which made the doctor start somewhat violently. Basil looked amused.“Rather stormy this evening, eh?” he suggested. “Perhaps I’d better go and help to pick up the pieces,” and he strolled out at the other door.“Is it blowing great guns and glass bottles, to-night?” he asked of Paddy, showing himself somewhat gingerly.Paddy vouchsafed no reply.“I understand it rained tomatoes in Regent Street this afternoon,” he went on, nothing daunted.She could not forbear to smile.“Who told you so?”“Pat nearly lost his life trying to scramble off the top of a ’bus in time to pick them up for you. As far as I can make out, when he arrived on the scene a gay Lothario and a wonderful Diana were in possession of the field, and he thought well to decamp, and nearly broke his neck over again boarding another ’bus, with his eyes occupied in the wrong direction.”“Tell Mr O’Connor he shouldn’t tell tales out of school.”“Is it the tomato incident that is making you cross?”“I’m not cross.”“Well, of course I can’t contradict you, but, like the parrot, I can still think a lot.”“I shouldn’t if I were you. The unusual strain may hurt your brain.”“Whew—as bad as all that, is it? No letter from Africa this mail, I suppose?”Paddy preserved a contemptuous silence.“Too bad,” said Basil.“What’s too bad?” said Paddy. “Your last attempt at a joke?”“The pater’s getting anxious.” he went on without heading her. “He’s sitting in there,” nodding toward the surgery, “strung up to an awful pitch of nervousness lest you should be blind with—er—well, we’ll call it annoyance, and poison someone by accident.”“Go away,” said Paddy.“I’ve nowhere to go.”“Go and look for a picture book to keep you quiet.”“Don’t be a silly kid, Paddy,” persuasively. “What’s the matter? I’ve a strong right arm you can command as you wish. Do you want someone hit?”“No.”“Well, let, me help anyway. I’ll wrap up the bottles for you.”She demurred, but he finally ensconced himself on a high stool beside her and presently talked her into a better humour, afterward going home with her, which was really rather kind of him after the manner of his reception.Three days later, Paddy received a most affectionate letter from Doreen Blake, begging her to come to tea, as she was quite alone.“Mother and Kathleen are slaying in Eastbourne,” she wrote, “as Kathleen has been ill, and I had to remain in London because I had accepted so many invitations. Miss Wells is here to look after the house, but you and I can have a long, cosy chat all to ourselves. If you don’t come I shall be dreadfully disappointed and hurt. I want to hear all about the dispensing and everything.”As Doreen had always been Paddy’s special chum, there was nothing unusual in Eileen being left out of the invitation, but Paddy tried to make it an excuse not to go. Her mother would not hear of it, however.“I want you to go, dear,” she said, “because I like Mrs Blake and Doreen and Kathleen very much, and if they are going to remain in town for the season it will be nice for you to go and see them sometimes while Eileen and I are away.”It had been arranged that they two should go to Omeath and stay at the Parsonage for three months, leaving Paddy at the doctor’s, and later on Paddy was to join them for her summer holiday, and Mrs Adair and Eileen to come back. This arrangement had been made owing to Eileen’s ill-health and the doctor’s advice that they should not remain in London all the summer, and as there was barely room for three visitors together at the Parsonage, they decided to go in detachments.In the end Paddy gave in and accepted the invitation, and at half-past three on the appointed day presented herself at the Blakes’ house in Cadogan Place. A butler ushered her in, in a lordly fashion, which Paddy afterward mimicked much to Eileen’s and her mother’s amusement, and she presently found herself alone in an enormous drawing-room, which seemed to her just a conglomeration of fantastic chairs and looking-glasses. A few seconds later there was a swish-swish outside and Doreen appeared. For one second the girls looked at each other with the unspoken question, “Are you changed?” and then with little exclamations of delight they literally flew at each other.“Paddy, this is just lovely!” exclaimed Doreen when they had finished embracing. “I’ve been longing to see you for months.”“Silk linings!” said Paddy, walking round Doreen quizzically. “We are grand nowadays! If there’s one thing I want more than another, it’s to go swish-swish as I walk.”“Nonsense!” said Doreen. “I know better. You don’t care a fig about it, and neither do I for the matter of that. It’s as much Lawrence’s fad as anyone’s. When Kathleen and I go out with him he likes us to be lined with silk,” and she laughed merrily, adding, “But what a swell you are, Paddy, and how pretty you have grown!”“It’s only my hair,” answered Paddy. “I spend ten minutes on it now instead of two. It’s awfully jolly to find you just the same, Doreen. What a heap we’ve got to tell each other. Are we going to say in this ‘throne-room’ or what?”“Don’t you like it? We can sit on the rug by the fire, and no one will come. I told James to say ‘not at home.’”“Is James the overpowering individual who condescended to show me upstairs? I nearly said ‘Thank you, sir!’ by mistake.”Doreen pulled up two big cosy chairs, and they were soon talking nineteen to the dozen, or rather Paddy twenty to Doreen’s ten, with such vigour, that neither of than heard the door open and a light footstep enter. At the sound of a bracelet jingling, however, they looked round in surprise, to find Gwendoline, resplendent in a lovely new spring costume, standing watching them with laughter in her glorious eyes.“I knew you would be ‘not at home,’ Doreen,” she said, “so I just made Lawrence lend me his latchkey. Don’t be vexed. I’m sick of private views, and spring shows and things, and I just wanted awfully to come and see you and Miss Adair.”Doreen sprang up and made room for her eagerly, not noticing Paddy’s sudden stiffness.“Come along,” she exclaimed, “I’m delighted to see you. I know you and Paddy will get on first-rate.”Gwen held out her hand to Paddy and looked frankly into her face, as much as to say, “I know you hate me, but I mean to change all that,” and Paddy, slightly disarmed, shook hands and said, “How do you do,” with a little less starchiness.For ten minutes, results hung in the balance. Gwen was at her best; she was indeed most charming; but Paddy was obstinate, not to say somewhat pig-headed, and when she was in that mood, to quote Basil, you might almost as well try to persuade a lamp-post to walk across the road.But Basil was not Gwen, and if he had tried for a life-time, he could not have cultivated such powers of persuasion as hers and in this she meant to win. Paddy would have needed to be made of adamant to withstand her. In the end, of course, she gave in, and by the time the stately butler condescended to serve them with tea, a merrier trio it would have been difficult to find.Lawrence heard their gay laughter down in the hall, as he hung up his hat, and smiled a little grimly.“Gwen’s won,” he said to himself. “I wonder what sort of a reception I shall get?”He walked slowly upstairs, and as slowly entered the drawing-room. Paddy was entertaining the other two with some of her dispensing adventures and for a moment he remained unnoticed. Paddy saw him first.“I was reaching to a high shelf—” she was saying, and then she stopped short suddenly, with her eyes on the door.The other two looked round quickly, as Lawrence advanced, saying, “Yes, you were reaching to a high shelf, and—”“Nothing,” said Paddy, “or at least nothing that would interest you.”“Try me.”“Come along, Lawrie,” cried Gwen. “We’re having a regular, jolly old school-girl afternoon. You’ll find it an education gratis, and you can eat as much cake as you like. We are all eating as if we had never ate before, to make up for the times we went hungry at school.”Lawrence sat down by Doreen, opposite to Paddy.“Delighted,” he murmured. “Always thought therôleof school-girl would suit me down to the ground. Touching this high shelf—don’t let me interrupt you, Paddy.”Paddy looked furious and got scarlet in the face. She was determined shewould notbe friendly with Lawrence, and yet here she was, almost on intimate terms with hisfiancée, and fairly caught as regards himself.Gwen dropped her long lashes to hide a decided gleam of amusement, while Doreen, pouring out tea and noticing nothing, said, “Go on, Paddy, you needn’t mind Lawrence.”“Of course not,” he said, keeping his eyes fixed on her. “Why should she?”Still Paddy bit her lip and hesitated. “It’s time I was going,” she said at last, very lamely, looking around for her gloves.Gwen’s mouth twitched desperately at the corners and Doreen looked up in surprise. Doreen’s expression made Paddy pull herself together.“It wasn’t really anything worth telling,” she said, “only that, instead of standing on something to make myself taller as I ought to have done, I tried to tilt the jar over into my hand, and while doing so the stopper flew out. The jar was full of black powder, and before I could help myself I had most of it in my face and over my hair. You never saw anything so awful as I looked. Brushing it off left long black streaks in all directions, and the taste on my lips was filthy; the three people waiting for their medicine nearly had convulsions, and the doctor came out to see what was the matter.”“Oh, how delicious!” cried Gwen in enjoyment. “Whatever did he say?” while Doreen, laughing heartily, gasped:“Oh, Paddy, you must have looked piebald!”“Goodness only knows what I did look like,” she said. “I thought the doctor was going to faint. I tried to explain, but I was laughing so myself, and meanwhile getting such horrid tastes of the wretched stuff, that I couldn’t frame a sensible sentence. Finally, he grasped the situation for himself, and stayed to get on with the dispensing, while I went to try and get my face clean.” While they were still laughing, she got up to go.“I’m coming to call on you if I may?” said Gwen as they shook hands.Paddy looked doubtful.“It’s rather an awful place to come to,” she explained, “the ugliest part of Shepherd’s Bush. You’d never find it.”“Oh, yes, I will. I’ll have a taxi, and refuse to get out until he stops at your door. He’ll find it after a time.”“I’m only a visitor at my uncle’s now, though,” she continued in the same doubtful voice, “and—well, to tell you the honest truth, my aunt is rather tedious. She’s quite sure to help me entertain you, and she’ll give you a detailed history of every church work in the parish, from its earliest infancy.”“I know!” cried Gwen with a sudden idea. “We’ll go to the surgery, Doreen. We’ll hunt up some old prescriptions, and pretend we’re poor people come for medicine. Yes, that will be much better fun! I’ve never seen a dispensary, and I’d love to poke about in all the drawers and bottles,” to which Doreen agreed readily and Paddy turned, to the door.Lawrence followed her.“Shall I get my head bitten off if I venture to escort you to the hall?” he asked, so that she alone could hear.“I would not trouble you for the world,” she replied frigidly, and offered her hand.Lawrence looked into her eyes, and something like a flash of sword-play passed between them.“All the same,” he remarked, coolly, “I am going to send you home in a hansom, and see you into it myself.”Paddy saw it was useless to object there and did not want to make a scene, so went stiffly downstairs. In the hall the lordly James stood waiting.“Call a hansom,” said Lawrence briefly.“Not for me,” said Paddy, with her nose in the air. “I am going in a ’bus.”“But it is raining fast, and you will only get wet.” Lawrence spoke a little urgently, while the butler waited with impassive face.“I love getting wet,” icily.The faintest suspicion of a smile hovered over Lawrence’s lips, but he only turned to the butler and said, “Go and ask Miss Doreen’s maid for a cloak and umbrella.”Paddy was unpleasantly aware that she could not afford to risk getting her one smart costume spoiled, so she yielded with a bad grace.When they were alone he turned to her again, and his thin lips compressed into a straight line.“I see you are a good hater,” he said, “but I only like you the better for it. Do you remember—I said you had given me a new interest in life, and that I would subdue you some day? I am going to begin now.”“And I replied that I despised you. I have seen no reason to change my mind. It is not of the least consequence to me what you do.”There was a gleam in his eyes that might have meant either admiration or war, but Paddy, a moment later, only flung out of the house without deigning him so much as a glance.When she had gone, Lawrence did not return to the drawing-room. He went into his den and closed the door. On the hearthrug he stood looking silently at the floor.“By Jove,” he muttered a last, “who would have thought she would develop like this. Paddy-the-next-best-thing,” with a little smile, “has become Patricia-the-Great.”
For one moment Paddy was utterly at a loss, and bit her lips in evident vexation, while the colour deepened still further in her face.
“How do you do, Paddy?” said Lawrence. “You seem to be in difficulties as usual. May I introduce you to your other timely helper, Miss Grant-Carew?”
Paddy bowed very stiffly, but as Gwen promptly held out her hand, she was obliged to take it. She managed, however, to avoid doing likewise with Lawrence. Gwen pretended not to notice her coldness, and remarked laughingly:
“I’m so glad I didn’t miss that. You can’t think how funny it looked—in Regent Street of all places, too?”
Paddy was constrained to laugh again at the recollection, but she busied herself trying to rearrange the tomatoes in a secure fashion, and absolutely refused to look at Lawrence.
“I think they will be all right now,” she said. “Thank you so much for helping me to pick them up. I’m in rather a hurry, as I have to be at the surgery by half-past five—if you will excuse my running off. Good-by!” and in two seconds she was vanishing in the crowd.
Gwen looked at Lawrence drolly.
“She’s a good hater,” she remarked. “Gwen isn’t used to being put off in that summary fashion. She doesn’t like it, Lawrie.”
“It’s your own fault. You practically pushed me into the introduction.”
“Because I wanted to know her. It isn’t often people don’t want to know Gwennie. I don’t understand!—mene comprenez pas, Lawrie. This is going to be interesting,” she ran on. “I shall insist upon Doreen inviting me to meet her in Cadogan Place.”
Paddy meanwhile scrambled on to her ’bus, tomatoes held safely this time, and started homeward feeling furious.
“How dare he introduce me!” she mused angrily. “He knows I hate her. How dare he stop me at all in that cool fashion!” calmly ignoring the fact that the tomatoes and her own carelessness, not Lawrence, had done the stopping. “How pretty she is!” she went on in the same angry way. “She’s as pretty as Eileen. I wouldn’t have cared so much if she had been plain, I think, but she’s just lovely. Oh, I hate her, I hate her—I just hate them both!”
The bottles got rather banged about that evening, and the good doctor looked up once or twice from his writing, in his little inner sanctuary, and gently marvelled. Basil happened to be at home, and strolled into his father’s den, though only with the idea of strolling out again through the surgery door upon suitable pretext. While hovering round there was a sudden crash, which made the doctor start somewhat violently. Basil looked amused.
“Rather stormy this evening, eh?” he suggested. “Perhaps I’d better go and help to pick up the pieces,” and he strolled out at the other door.
“Is it blowing great guns and glass bottles, to-night?” he asked of Paddy, showing himself somewhat gingerly.
Paddy vouchsafed no reply.
“I understand it rained tomatoes in Regent Street this afternoon,” he went on, nothing daunted.
She could not forbear to smile.
“Who told you so?”
“Pat nearly lost his life trying to scramble off the top of a ’bus in time to pick them up for you. As far as I can make out, when he arrived on the scene a gay Lothario and a wonderful Diana were in possession of the field, and he thought well to decamp, and nearly broke his neck over again boarding another ’bus, with his eyes occupied in the wrong direction.”
“Tell Mr O’Connor he shouldn’t tell tales out of school.”
“Is it the tomato incident that is making you cross?”
“I’m not cross.”
“Well, of course I can’t contradict you, but, like the parrot, I can still think a lot.”
“I shouldn’t if I were you. The unusual strain may hurt your brain.”
“Whew—as bad as all that, is it? No letter from Africa this mail, I suppose?”
Paddy preserved a contemptuous silence.
“Too bad,” said Basil.
“What’s too bad?” said Paddy. “Your last attempt at a joke?”
“The pater’s getting anxious.” he went on without heading her. “He’s sitting in there,” nodding toward the surgery, “strung up to an awful pitch of nervousness lest you should be blind with—er—well, we’ll call it annoyance, and poison someone by accident.”
“Go away,” said Paddy.
“I’ve nowhere to go.”
“Go and look for a picture book to keep you quiet.”
“Don’t be a silly kid, Paddy,” persuasively. “What’s the matter? I’ve a strong right arm you can command as you wish. Do you want someone hit?”
“No.”
“Well, let, me help anyway. I’ll wrap up the bottles for you.”
She demurred, but he finally ensconced himself on a high stool beside her and presently talked her into a better humour, afterward going home with her, which was really rather kind of him after the manner of his reception.
Three days later, Paddy received a most affectionate letter from Doreen Blake, begging her to come to tea, as she was quite alone.
“Mother and Kathleen are slaying in Eastbourne,” she wrote, “as Kathleen has been ill, and I had to remain in London because I had accepted so many invitations. Miss Wells is here to look after the house, but you and I can have a long, cosy chat all to ourselves. If you don’t come I shall be dreadfully disappointed and hurt. I want to hear all about the dispensing and everything.”
As Doreen had always been Paddy’s special chum, there was nothing unusual in Eileen being left out of the invitation, but Paddy tried to make it an excuse not to go. Her mother would not hear of it, however.
“I want you to go, dear,” she said, “because I like Mrs Blake and Doreen and Kathleen very much, and if they are going to remain in town for the season it will be nice for you to go and see them sometimes while Eileen and I are away.”
It had been arranged that they two should go to Omeath and stay at the Parsonage for three months, leaving Paddy at the doctor’s, and later on Paddy was to join them for her summer holiday, and Mrs Adair and Eileen to come back. This arrangement had been made owing to Eileen’s ill-health and the doctor’s advice that they should not remain in London all the summer, and as there was barely room for three visitors together at the Parsonage, they decided to go in detachments.
In the end Paddy gave in and accepted the invitation, and at half-past three on the appointed day presented herself at the Blakes’ house in Cadogan Place. A butler ushered her in, in a lordly fashion, which Paddy afterward mimicked much to Eileen’s and her mother’s amusement, and she presently found herself alone in an enormous drawing-room, which seemed to her just a conglomeration of fantastic chairs and looking-glasses. A few seconds later there was a swish-swish outside and Doreen appeared. For one second the girls looked at each other with the unspoken question, “Are you changed?” and then with little exclamations of delight they literally flew at each other.
“Paddy, this is just lovely!” exclaimed Doreen when they had finished embracing. “I’ve been longing to see you for months.”
“Silk linings!” said Paddy, walking round Doreen quizzically. “We are grand nowadays! If there’s one thing I want more than another, it’s to go swish-swish as I walk.”
“Nonsense!” said Doreen. “I know better. You don’t care a fig about it, and neither do I for the matter of that. It’s as much Lawrence’s fad as anyone’s. When Kathleen and I go out with him he likes us to be lined with silk,” and she laughed merrily, adding, “But what a swell you are, Paddy, and how pretty you have grown!”
“It’s only my hair,” answered Paddy. “I spend ten minutes on it now instead of two. It’s awfully jolly to find you just the same, Doreen. What a heap we’ve got to tell each other. Are we going to say in this ‘throne-room’ or what?”
“Don’t you like it? We can sit on the rug by the fire, and no one will come. I told James to say ‘not at home.’”
“Is James the overpowering individual who condescended to show me upstairs? I nearly said ‘Thank you, sir!’ by mistake.”
Doreen pulled up two big cosy chairs, and they were soon talking nineteen to the dozen, or rather Paddy twenty to Doreen’s ten, with such vigour, that neither of than heard the door open and a light footstep enter. At the sound of a bracelet jingling, however, they looked round in surprise, to find Gwendoline, resplendent in a lovely new spring costume, standing watching them with laughter in her glorious eyes.
“I knew you would be ‘not at home,’ Doreen,” she said, “so I just made Lawrence lend me his latchkey. Don’t be vexed. I’m sick of private views, and spring shows and things, and I just wanted awfully to come and see you and Miss Adair.”
Doreen sprang up and made room for her eagerly, not noticing Paddy’s sudden stiffness.
“Come along,” she exclaimed, “I’m delighted to see you. I know you and Paddy will get on first-rate.”
Gwen held out her hand to Paddy and looked frankly into her face, as much as to say, “I know you hate me, but I mean to change all that,” and Paddy, slightly disarmed, shook hands and said, “How do you do,” with a little less starchiness.
For ten minutes, results hung in the balance. Gwen was at her best; she was indeed most charming; but Paddy was obstinate, not to say somewhat pig-headed, and when she was in that mood, to quote Basil, you might almost as well try to persuade a lamp-post to walk across the road.
But Basil was not Gwen, and if he had tried for a life-time, he could not have cultivated such powers of persuasion as hers and in this she meant to win. Paddy would have needed to be made of adamant to withstand her. In the end, of course, she gave in, and by the time the stately butler condescended to serve them with tea, a merrier trio it would have been difficult to find.
Lawrence heard their gay laughter down in the hall, as he hung up his hat, and smiled a little grimly.
“Gwen’s won,” he said to himself. “I wonder what sort of a reception I shall get?”
He walked slowly upstairs, and as slowly entered the drawing-room. Paddy was entertaining the other two with some of her dispensing adventures and for a moment he remained unnoticed. Paddy saw him first.
“I was reaching to a high shelf—” she was saying, and then she stopped short suddenly, with her eyes on the door.
The other two looked round quickly, as Lawrence advanced, saying, “Yes, you were reaching to a high shelf, and—”
“Nothing,” said Paddy, “or at least nothing that would interest you.”
“Try me.”
“Come along, Lawrie,” cried Gwen. “We’re having a regular, jolly old school-girl afternoon. You’ll find it an education gratis, and you can eat as much cake as you like. We are all eating as if we had never ate before, to make up for the times we went hungry at school.”
Lawrence sat down by Doreen, opposite to Paddy.
“Delighted,” he murmured. “Always thought therôleof school-girl would suit me down to the ground. Touching this high shelf—don’t let me interrupt you, Paddy.”
Paddy looked furious and got scarlet in the face. She was determined shewould notbe friendly with Lawrence, and yet here she was, almost on intimate terms with hisfiancée, and fairly caught as regards himself.
Gwen dropped her long lashes to hide a decided gleam of amusement, while Doreen, pouring out tea and noticing nothing, said, “Go on, Paddy, you needn’t mind Lawrence.”
“Of course not,” he said, keeping his eyes fixed on her. “Why should she?”
Still Paddy bit her lip and hesitated. “It’s time I was going,” she said at last, very lamely, looking around for her gloves.
Gwen’s mouth twitched desperately at the corners and Doreen looked up in surprise. Doreen’s expression made Paddy pull herself together.
“It wasn’t really anything worth telling,” she said, “only that, instead of standing on something to make myself taller as I ought to have done, I tried to tilt the jar over into my hand, and while doing so the stopper flew out. The jar was full of black powder, and before I could help myself I had most of it in my face and over my hair. You never saw anything so awful as I looked. Brushing it off left long black streaks in all directions, and the taste on my lips was filthy; the three people waiting for their medicine nearly had convulsions, and the doctor came out to see what was the matter.”
“Oh, how delicious!” cried Gwen in enjoyment. “Whatever did he say?” while Doreen, laughing heartily, gasped:
“Oh, Paddy, you must have looked piebald!”
“Goodness only knows what I did look like,” she said. “I thought the doctor was going to faint. I tried to explain, but I was laughing so myself, and meanwhile getting such horrid tastes of the wretched stuff, that I couldn’t frame a sensible sentence. Finally, he grasped the situation for himself, and stayed to get on with the dispensing, while I went to try and get my face clean.” While they were still laughing, she got up to go.
“I’m coming to call on you if I may?” said Gwen as they shook hands.
Paddy looked doubtful.
“It’s rather an awful place to come to,” she explained, “the ugliest part of Shepherd’s Bush. You’d never find it.”
“Oh, yes, I will. I’ll have a taxi, and refuse to get out until he stops at your door. He’ll find it after a time.”
“I’m only a visitor at my uncle’s now, though,” she continued in the same doubtful voice, “and—well, to tell you the honest truth, my aunt is rather tedious. She’s quite sure to help me entertain you, and she’ll give you a detailed history of every church work in the parish, from its earliest infancy.”
“I know!” cried Gwen with a sudden idea. “We’ll go to the surgery, Doreen. We’ll hunt up some old prescriptions, and pretend we’re poor people come for medicine. Yes, that will be much better fun! I’ve never seen a dispensary, and I’d love to poke about in all the drawers and bottles,” to which Doreen agreed readily and Paddy turned, to the door.
Lawrence followed her.
“Shall I get my head bitten off if I venture to escort you to the hall?” he asked, so that she alone could hear.
“I would not trouble you for the world,” she replied frigidly, and offered her hand.
Lawrence looked into her eyes, and something like a flash of sword-play passed between them.
“All the same,” he remarked, coolly, “I am going to send you home in a hansom, and see you into it myself.”
Paddy saw it was useless to object there and did not want to make a scene, so went stiffly downstairs. In the hall the lordly James stood waiting.
“Call a hansom,” said Lawrence briefly.
“Not for me,” said Paddy, with her nose in the air. “I am going in a ’bus.”
“But it is raining fast, and you will only get wet.” Lawrence spoke a little urgently, while the butler waited with impassive face.
“I love getting wet,” icily.
The faintest suspicion of a smile hovered over Lawrence’s lips, but he only turned to the butler and said, “Go and ask Miss Doreen’s maid for a cloak and umbrella.”
Paddy was unpleasantly aware that she could not afford to risk getting her one smart costume spoiled, so she yielded with a bad grace.
When they were alone he turned to her again, and his thin lips compressed into a straight line.
“I see you are a good hater,” he said, “but I only like you the better for it. Do you remember—I said you had given me a new interest in life, and that I would subdue you some day? I am going to begin now.”
“And I replied that I despised you. I have seen no reason to change my mind. It is not of the least consequence to me what you do.”
There was a gleam in his eyes that might have meant either admiration or war, but Paddy, a moment later, only flung out of the house without deigning him so much as a glance.
When she had gone, Lawrence did not return to the drawing-room. He went into his den and closed the door. On the hearthrug he stood looking silently at the floor.
“By Jove,” he muttered a last, “who would have thought she would develop like this. Paddy-the-next-best-thing,” with a little smile, “has become Patricia-the-Great.”