The Argosy — page 54: what you’re looking at

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

Godmother Dorothy. ' 39 road to the station I ordered my trap to meet us there, and off we started. | The Colonel had a great deal to say about ruins, and we amused ourselves harmlessly for some time, tracing out foundations, peering into holes and corners, and examining vestiges of ancient decorative work. He was in the middle of explaining authoritatively how the whole place came to be built, when I felt a cold thrill shoot through me, as a voice I knew sounded through the roofless aisle from the other side of the mouldering wall. “I don’t want to hurry you, but isn’t it almost time to start?” I cried. The Colonel had turned away, and was digging excitedly in a corner with his umbrella. “Roman, distinctly Roman!” declared he, straightening himself. “It’s not easy to mistake the handiwork. Just see here for your- self, Travers. There has been an inner coating of cement; I grant you that.” (As if I had ever disputed it! And the voices drawing nearer and nearer.) ‘‘ Have that carefully cleared, and you'll find as fine an example of herring-bone work ” (There was Scrap’s black nose round the gap in the wall.) ‘The Saxons imitated it, you know, but they hadn’t the stuff to work with 4 : ‘Of course ; they did, there’s some up there,” I declared. (A yellow Japanese parasol appeared at the opening, and paused.) “Where? Saxon herring-bone work ?” asked Wriothesley, eagerly. “Of course ; up there. Lots of it,” and I dragged him up a grassy mound where was once a chancel. ‘‘ Don’t you see something like it hereabouts?” Another minute and we should have descended safely on the far side, but, as luck would have it, in that minute Scrap spied me, and with a sociable bark came tearing up to us, and May after Scrap. She stopped on seeing us and bowed demurely. ** Who's that?’ demanded the Colonel—as great a connoisseur, I knew, in female beauty as in Roman tiling. He caught my arm, and Mrs. Pierpoint stepped into the sunlighted space in front of us. “Eh! What!” and Colonel Wriothesley adjusted his pince nez ina violent hurry. I saw the startled look on her face—the detected look. I saw, with a sense of sickening humiliation, her glance of dismay at the sight of me. But all my worst imaginings paled and faded before the shock that followed. “Eh?” cried the Colonel. ‘It is—no really—little May Algar and —tLady Dorothy Champneys,” and he trotted down the bank with outstretched hands to greet—my Godmother! I don’t know what the proper bearing of the hero of such a dra- matic situation should have been ; I only know what I did. I made off as quickly as possible, and without a word. I don’t know what the Colonel thought, or how he got into the dog-cart and away to the train. I heard his wheels roll off as I sat on a fragment of an over- turned pillar in a secluded angle of the ruined transept, holding my head in my hands and struggling with the bewilderment of this most Gomichboo (E@) m