The Argosy — page 45: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

30 Godmother Dorothy. get five hours in London, with entrance to the Exhibition, eight hours’ railway travelling included. “Oh Auntie, what ave we to do?” I heard a girlish voice ex- claiming. “It’s foo bad of Colonel Wriothesley ! J/ust we wait here till the next train?” “‘ Certainly not,” spoke a voice to match the chin ; soft and round and resolute. ‘‘ Wecan find our way alone ; we—or he—must have made some mistake about the day. If only we can get anything in the shape of a carriage at Rocksedge!”’ Here another train came in, not ours, but it brought the two ladies to the door, as if there had been some faint possibility of the missing Colonel appearing from the other end of England. It was an opening for me, and I seized it. “You are expecting Colonel Wriothesley, I believe. He is a friend of mine. You may have heard him mention my name—Tra- vers—Major Travers—if I can be of any service in his absence.” She took a good look at me, as a sensible woman should; a cool, deliberate, considering gaze; then accepted the introduction frankly. ‘“T am a cousin of Colonel Wriothesley—Mrs. Darsie Pierpoint —and was relying on him to meet me here and take us down to Rocksedge. This is a strange land to us, and I am not quite sure of being able to find my way to my own house when I get there—as I have been rash enough to take it without seeing it.” I assured her of my intimate acquaintance with the place and its ways, and she ended by introducing ‘‘ My niece, Miss Leyland,” whereon the bud blushed as is not the wont of even buds to blush in these days. We had a pleasant journey down, during which Mrs. Pierpoint ex- plained that she had taken a cottage for a month at Rocksedge on Colonel Wriothesley’s recommendation, in search of quiet and sea- breezes ; and I in turn told her how I came to be there. How I was in command of a detachment at Fort Limpet, a small military penitentiary, situated on a forlorn little spit of land at one end of the strip of pebbly beach along which Rocksedge extends its stucco lines of terraces and esplanades. ‘‘ Then we are quite near neighbours,” she was pleased to say, with a charming smile. ‘‘I believe my cottage, Tamarisk Lodge, is near the fort, quite away from the town. I hope you will come and see us soon.” I drove the ladies home in my trap, there being nothing on wheels procurable at Rocksedge without special notice, and received and accepted an invitation to luncheon for the next day. ‘Something to write about to-night at least,” I thought, when I re- treated to my room that evening after mess to despatch my weekly letter to my regular correspondent, the widow of my late godfather, whom—at first in fun, and also partly to keep her position well before my own mind, and afterwards because I didn’t quite know what else to call her—I had always addressed as ‘‘ Godmother.” I am, it is as well to explain at once, a creature of routine; my life is made up of little practices and habits, from which it is pain and grief to me to GEomicbooks.co m