The Argosy — page 254: what you’re looking at

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

Lady Postlethwaite’s Will. 235 “Miss Dorrian,” as I discovered her name to be, through the hall into the large conservatory with its banks of bloom—the dear old lady’s one extravagance, as I was informed. “She'll spend her money right royally for other people’s good—or their pleasure— that’s the best good to some of us, you know,” laughed the girl. Two little maids, in big aprons and mob caps, looked up from scrubbing the encaustic tiles as we passed. “ Look at them—miserable little lodging-house slaveys when she _ discovered them. She'll teach and train them into perfect little servants—she has the gift—and then, when she might begin to get some comfort out of them, send them off into good places and begin all over again with a series of fresh incapables. The house is full of them—and of us.” ‘Who are ‘us’?” J enquired, as we made our way from the azaleas into the palm house. “Odds and ends, waifs and strays of girls wanting holidays or music lessons, or pretty frocks, or anything we can’t get and she can give us. She’s a saint upon earth,” Miss Dorrian went on with enthusiasm it was pretty to see. ‘*A comical, cozy, comfortable saint, helping the needy, never sparing herself, wise and kind and unselfish. Why shouldn’t a saint wear satin gowns and smart caps ?” I was unable to raise an objection, so we wandered on from the palms into the orchid house and so back again, by which time I had mentally voted skating very poor fun, and Hendon the last place I wished to see that afternoon. Just as we gained the entrance to the hall, Miss Dorrian stopped suddenly. <A loud imperative knock and ring resounded through the house. Then a loud imperative voice enquired for Lady Postle- thwaite, and someone passed in with a heavy martial tread. “That man again!” she whispered with a black frown. ‘‘Do you know him? That converted Colonel ?” «Salvation Army rank, I suppose ?” ** Nothing so respectable. Her Majesty dispensed with his services for some very good reasons that his friends don’t care to enquire into. He says he has a mission to the upper classes. I don’t know what he does in the West End, but here all the little suburban gentilities run after him to revel in the society of the aristocratic fellow-converts he introduces them to. Lord Levant relates his turf experiences with penitence and abasement, and Lady Mildred Bagley holds forth about the dark days when she was a worldling and a society beauty.” ‘““T know them both, professionally. Not in connection with any- thing approaching a religious service by any means, unless it’s the collection.” We had gained the drawing-room door, and Miss Dorrian nodded, laughed and left me to enter by myself. The reverend Colonel stood with his big feet firmly planted on the white rug before the fire. A tall, broad-shouldered fellow, floridly conniclooolkks (CO)