Part 24

“Compels us most reluctantly”--But here she stopped short. Colonel Starbottle, who had risen with a deep bow at their entrance and remained standing, here walked quietly towards them. His usually high color had faded except from his eyes, but his exalted manner was still more pronounced, with a dreadful deliberation superadded.

“I believe--er--I had--the honah--to send up my kyard!” (In his supreme moments the colonel's Southern accent was always in evidence.) “I may--er--be mistaken--but--er--that is my impression.” The colonel paused, and placed his right hand statuesquely on his heart.

The two women trembled--Miss Tish fancied the very shirt frill of the colonel was majestically erecting itself--as they stammered in one voice,--

“Ye-e-es!”

“That kyard contained my full name--with a request to see my ward--Miss Stannard,” continued the colonel slowly. “I believe that is the fact.”

“Certainly! certainly!” gasped the women feebly.

“Then may I--er--point out to you that I AM--er--WAITING?”

Although nothing could exceed the laborious simplicity and husky sweetness of the colonel's utterance, it appeared to demoralize utterly his two hearers--Miss Prinkwell seemed to fade into the pattern of the wall paper, Miss Tish to droop submissively forward like a pink wax candle in the rays of the burning sun.

“We will bring her instantly. A thousand pardons, sir,” they uttered in the same breath, backing towards the door.

But here the unexpected intervened. Unnoticed by the three during the colloquy, a little figure in a black dress had peeped through the door, and then glided into the room. It was a girl of about ten, who, in all candor, could scarcely be called pretty, although the awkward change of adolescence had not destroyed the delicate proportions of her hands and feet nor the beauty of her brown eyes. These were, just then, round and wondering, and fixed alternately on the colonel and the two women. But like many other round and wondering eyes, they had taken in the full meaning of the situation, with a quickness the adult mind is not apt to give them credit for. They saw the complete and utter subjugation of the two supreme autocrats of the school, and, I grieve to say, they were filled with a secret and “fearful joy.” But the casual spectator saw none of this; the round and wondering eyes, still rimmed with recent and recalcitrant tears, only looked big and innocently shining.

The relief of the two women was sudden and unaffected.

“Oh, here you are, dearest, at last!” said Miss Tish eagerly. “This is your guardian, Colonel Starbottle. Come to him, dear!”

She took the hand of the child, who hung back with an odd mingling of shamefacedness and resentment of the interference, when the voice of Colonel Starbottle, in the same deadly calm deliberation, said,--

“I--er--will speak with her--alone.”

The round eyes again saw the complete collapse of authority, as the two women shrank back from the voice, and said hurriedly,--

“Certainly, Colonel Starbottle; perhaps it would be better,” and ingloriously quitted the room.

But the colonel's triumph left him helpless. He was alone with a simple child, an unprecedented, unheard-of situation, which left him embarrassed and--speechless. Even his vanity was conscious that his oratorical periods, his methods, his very attitude, were powerless here. The perspiration stood out on his forehead; he looked at her vaguely, and essayed a feeble smile. The child saw his embarrassment, even as she had seen and understood his triumph, and the small woman within her exulted. She put her little hands on her waist, and with the fingers turned downwards and outwards pressed them down her hips to her bended knees until they had forced her skirts into an egregious fullness before and behind, as if she were making a curtsy, and then jumped up and laughed.

“You did it! Hooray!”

“Did what?” said the colonel, pleased yet mystified.

“Frightened 'em!--the two old cats! Frightened 'em outen their slippers! Oh, jiminy! Never, never, NEVER before was they so skeert! Never since school kept did they have to crawl like that! They was skeert enough FIRST when you come, but just now!--Lordy! They wasn't a-goin' to let you see me--but they had to! had to! HAD TO!” and she emphasized each repetition with a skip.

“I believe--er,” said the colonel blandly, “that I--er--intimated with some firmness”--

“That's it--just it!” interrupted the child delightedly. “You--you--overdid 'em”

“What?”

“OVERDID 'EM! Don't you know? They're always so high and mighty! Kinder 'Don't tech me. My mother's an angel; my father's a king'--all that sort of thing. They did THIS”--she drew herself up in a presumable imitation of the two women's majestic entrance--“and then,” she continued, “you--YOU jest did this”--here she lifted her chin, and puffing out her small chest, strode towards the colonel in evident simulation of his grandest manner.

A short, deep chuckle escaped him--although the next moment his face became serious again. But Pansy in the mean time had taken possession of his coat sleeve and was rubbing her cheek against it like a young colt. At which the colonel succumbed feebly and sat down on the sofa, the child standing beside him, leaning over and transferring her little hands to the lapels of his frock coat, which she essayed to button over his chest as she looked into his murky eyes.

“The other girls said,” she began, tugging at the button, “that you was a 'cirkiss'”--another tug--“'a nigger minstrel'”--and a third tug--“'a agent with samples'--but that showed all they knew!”

“Ah,” said the colonel with exaggerated blandness, “and--er--what did YOU--er--say?”

The child smiled. “I said you was a Stuffed Donkey--but that was BEFORE I knew you. I was a little skeert too; but NOW”--she succeeded in buttoning the coat and making the colonel quite apoplectic,--“NOW I ain't frightened one bit--no, not one TINY bit! But,” she added, after a pause, unbuttoning the coat again and smoothing down the lapels between her fingers, “you're to keep on frightening the old cats--mind! Never mind about the GIRLS. I'll tell them.”