Part 28

I hastily turned to your mother, saying: "I was just going to ask you and your sister if you would dine with me."

Lord Z, who was at Balliol with me, you remember, said: "Then perhaps you will allow us to come to your table for coffee, Hogg?" Your mother gazed at him, astounded that his noble tongue could utter the name. Then she actually and gracefully "fell" for the dinner, lured by the bait of the post-prandial coffee with the distinguished trio, and the Philadelphia aunt kept things going serenely. She is a delightful person and will be a perfect companion for your mother when--you know when--when she needs one--and I no longer do!

("There never was a man who said things like Duke!" interpolated Dolly ecstatically.)

All would have gone swimmingly to the end had not a page suddenly entered the room bawling: "Mr. Hogg wanted at the telephone: Mr. Hogg? Telephone message for Mr. HOGG!"

Only capitals can give an idea of the volume of voice. My ear-drum, grown painfully sensitive since I met your mother, echoed and reëchoed with the tone as I threaded my way through the crowded room, followed by every eye, while I imagined people saying: "I wonder if he's called to the stockyard?" (It is queer, but I never felt this way in Oxford, for they still remember Hogg, the Scottish poet, and I hung myself to his revered coat-tails.)

The telephone message was from my secretary, and healed my wounded vanity, for it came from the British Embassy conveying the thanks of the Foreign Office for Mr. Hogg's friendly and helpful action in conducting negotiations for the chartering of ex-enemy ships lying in South American ports.

("You see what he is!" exclaimed Dolly, looking up from the letter with eyes full of unshed tears! "Of course he has five or six superiors in office but I suppose really that Duke's extraordinary talent keeps that whole shipping board going! You mark my words, Charlotte, when Duke gives up his position and goes to Plattsburg there'll be an absolute slump in that office! But just hear what follows; it is so discouraging!")

But when, glowing with the delight that always comes to me when I have any little tribute to lay with my love at your charming number-three feet, when I returned to my table your mother had gone to her room and the Philadelphia aunt remained to explain that she had been taken suddenly ill.

"It will all come right, Mr.--my dear boy!" she said. "My sister has one weakness, an abnormal sensitiveness to public opinion. She thinks constantly what people will say of this, that, or the other trifling thing, and in that way perpetually loses sight of the realities of life. There is a great deal of good in her that you have never seen because for the moment she is absolutely obsessed by her objection to your name and her conviction that Dorothea might and should marry a title. My sister married Reginald Valentine more for the effect on her future visiting-card than anything else, but Dorothea's father bequeathed his good looks, his sunny disposition, his charm, and his generous nature to his daughter. You have chosen wisely, my dear Mr.--boy, but not more wisely, to my mind, than Dorothea has!"

So it ended, but I somehow hope that I may have converted your mother from an enemy alien to an armed neutral!

"There is nothing more of--of--general interest," said Dolly tearfully, as she slipped the letter in the envelope. "Aunt Maggie is a trump. Oh, Charlotte! if only you had ever had a love-problem like mine and could advise me! Duke always wondered that you never married."

(Dorothea ought to be cuffed for impertinence, but she is too unconscious and too pretty and lovable for corporal punishment.)

"Perhaps there may still be hope even at thirty!" I said stiffly.

"Oh, I didn't mean that! You might have anybody by lifting your finger! We only wonder you've never lifted it! But you could be happy only with a very learned and prominent man, you are so clever!"

"I'm clever enough to prefer love to learning, if I have to choose, Dolly, my dear."

"I'm so sorry you didn't get a letter, Charlotte," said the girl, snuggling sympathetically to my side on the bench.

This was more than flesh and blood or angel could bear!

I kissed her, and, shaking her off my shoulder vigorously, I said, as I straightened my hat: "As a matter of fact, Miss Valentine, I have had a letter every day since we left New York; a letter delivered before breakfast by the steward. You have had but one, yet you are twenty and I am thirty!"

"Charlotte!"

"Don't add to your impudence by being too astonished, darling," I continued. "Come! let's go and pick bananas and pineapples and tamarinds and shaddocks and star-apples and sapodillas!"

"I won't budge a step till you tell me all about it!"

"Then you'll grow to this green bench and have to be cut away by your faithful Marmaduke!"

"Is it a secret?"

"It doesn't exist at all for you. You are not of age, Dolly."

"I'm old enough to know the things one can learn by heart!" was Dolly's comment.

When the Diana was leaving St. Thomas at sunset and we were well on our way to St. Croix, Dolly made a half confidence.

"You are not my chaperon, Charlotte, because in my hour of need I simply fastened myself to you like a limpet, or an albatross, or a barnacle, or any other form of nautical vampire that you prefer. Still, I might as well confess that I cabled to Duke, or wirelessed, or did something awfully expensive of that sort at St. Thomas while you were having that interminable talk with the captain, who, by the way, is married and devoted to his wife, they say."

"That was foolish and extravagant, my child," I answered. "I don't know what you said, but I have the most absolute confidence in your indiscretion. I hope you remembered that all messages are censored in war-time?"