Garthoyle Gardens/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III.
I thought about the ghost girl for several days. She was no more a house-maid than I was; housemaids don't have voices like that, and it was her voice that chiefly stuck in my mind. I kept an eye, or rather both eyes, through my uncle's field glasses on Number Nine on the chance of seeing her come out of it. I wanted to see whether her face matched her voice.
All the while I was hard at work, and I did not find work such a bore as I had expected. For one thing, it was a change to have things to do that had to be done; and its being a change softened it. Besides, it was pleasant to find that I could do things. Mugging up price lists of house fittings sounds an awful grind; but when I found that I did get prices into my head, it did not bore me. I found that knowledge of price lists useful in interviewing contractors. I soon began to enjoy interviewing contractors.
Jack Thurman and I, but chiefly Jack, of course, were not very long in discovering that, thanks to the broad and generous ideas of Siddle & Wodgett, his house agents, my uncle had paid through the nose for the upkeep and repairs of the Gardens. I felt that I could spend my money just as well as my contractors could spend it for me. Therefore, I set about getting fresh estimates, and making fresh contracts for all the work. Every contractor came to his interview with an iron resolve to pull my leg. Most of them seemed to want to lick my boots, too, because I was a peer. But it was quite clear that they were not going to let that fact, which seemed to make the leg-pulling process so very easy, interfere with it. The idea seemed to be to pull my leg while they were licking my boots.
I just humored them. I stuck my eyeglass in my eye, left my mouth open, and drawled at them like a perfect ass. After a dozen drawls, the prices soared and soared. Then I dropped my eyeglass, shut my mouth, and explained to them that I was not going to pay fifty per cent too much for things. In the jar of the surprise, I got better terms than I should have done if I had not started with the eyeglass.
I was getting on nicely with the new contracts when there came the trouble with the kitchen ranges. Complaints about their kitchen ranges had come from seven out of the twenty-one houses in the Gardens. An expert examined them for me, and reported that they were nearly worn out. Jack and discussed the matter, and we decided that it would save a good deal of money to buy twenty-one kitchen ranges, and have one contract for the fixing of the lot. It would be far better than buying the seven needed at the moment and then two or three at a time as others wore out. I mugged up some price lists, and went forth to examine the kitchen range in its lair. They will not send kitchen ranges for your inspection.
I had had no idea that there were so many tricks to a kitchen range, or that to the inexperienced they are such a tiresome business. All the morning I looked at kitchen ranges, and explored their tricks till my head hummed with them. After lunch I started out to see more at some works at Fulham. I was bent on finding the best kitchen range in England before I interviewed a contractor about putting them in.
At Hyde Park corner we were held up by the traffic going into the park. When we started again, Gaston, my chauffeur, asked me to stop. His acute ear had caught something wrong with the sound of the engine. I pulled up just in front of St. George's Hospital; he got out and raised the bonnet of the car.
My mind was full of kitchen ranges, and I was paying no particular attention to anything outside me. Then I saw the pretty girl and the children. She was such a pretty girl that she cleared the kitchen ranges out of my mind. Her eyes were big, and they shone like the stars; wonderful eyes in the prettiest face—a face like a flower!
The children were standing around her—a slip of a girl, about fourteen, pale-faced and thin, holding a thin baby; a boy of eleven; and a thin little girl of seven or eight. They were very poor children, and, judging from their patched clothes, they did not belong to the pretty girl. She was dressed very simply, but prettily, in a light summer frock, and she was wearing it as if she knew how to wear clothes. The children were watching her anxiously.
I just glanced at them, but stared at her. I could not help it. She did not notice it, she did not even see me. She was in trouble of some kind, and was frowning anxiously, as she grappled with one of those out-of-the-way pockets that women love.
Then she stopped grappling with it, and her eyes shone brighter than ever because there were tears in them, and the corners of her mouth drooped.
“I'm so sorry, children, dear,” she said. “But I've lost my purse, and shan't be able to take you, after all. It's no good my going home for more money; it was my last half sovereign.”
Her voice matched her eyes; it was charming. But the odd thing was that I seemed to know it, yet I could not think where I had heard it.
The elder girl looked at her in a way that made me feel uncomfortable; it was so despairing. Then she lifted the baby so that he was against her face, hiding it, and her shoulders shook. The little girl burst into a howl, and the boy stamped on the pavement once, hard. The pretty girl blinked her eyes—and I saw her teeth catch on her quivering lip. It was like the end of a sad play, only it made me ever so much more uncomfortable, and I stepped out of the car.
The boy pulled himself together, and said in a husky voice to the elder girl:
“Buck up, Cherlie! Don't tyke on. We'll go inter the park, an' Miss Amber'll plye wiv us.”
“The park ain't Kew Gardings. It ain't Kew Gardings!” wailed the little girl.
“What's the matter?” I said.
The boy looked me up and down distrustfully, and I fancied that he liked my face better than my clothes. Then he said:
“Miss Amber's lost 'er purse with 'alf a suvrin in it. She was tyking hus to Kew Gardings for a treat—an' now she can't.”
The elder girl took her face, wet with tears, out of the baby's frock, and said, in a heartbroken voice:
“It's Steppie! Steppie's never bin furder out of London than Kensington Gardings; an' 'e was looking forward to it so.” I gathered that Steppie was the baby “An' Verie was lookin' forward to it, too. But she's bin to Kew Gardings once—when she was older nor Steppie. She remembers them, though.”
And the tears ran down her cheeks.
“I wants ter go agyne—now!” wailed Verie. “There was a squir'l in a tree.”
The boy turned to her and said gruffly:
“It ain't no use you tykin' on, Verie. It ain't, really. The money's gorn.”
Verie broke into a louder howl, Cherlie sobbed twice, and I feared that the baby would join in.
I turned to the pretty girl, raised my hat, and said:
“This is a regular tragedy, don't you know? And it's got to be stopped. Suppose we take them out into the country, in my car.”
She drew back, frowning a little, and I went on:
“I can't handle them myself, don't you know? I couldn't give them a good time.”
She looked from me to the children, and from the children to me; she wrung her hands, and said softly:
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!”
It was hard for her, of course, to make up her mind what to do—whether she ought to go motoring with a perfect stranger, or let the children slide.
I did not say anything; it was the kind of thing that she must settle for herself. She looked at them again, and the children won.
Her face cleared, she smiled at me; then she said:
“Oh, it would be good of you! It is such a cruel disappointment for them.”
I turned to the children and said:
“It's all right. I'm going to take you into the country—the real country—in my motor car.”
Verie stopped howling. Cherlie's eyes opened wide, and so did her mouth; and I never saw such thankfulness in any one's face before.
“Oh, Steppie, the real country! Steppie in the real country—where the cows are!” she said, in a whispering voice.
“In you get,” I ordered cheerfully, and the two girls stepped quickly toward the car
“'Ere, old on! Wyte a bit!” cried the boy. “She don't mind, Miss Amber don't; but this gov'ner won't want to tyke the likes of us.” Then, turning to me, he added sternly: “We're anarchists, we are; an' don't you myke any mistyke abart it!”
Cherlie stopped, the thankfulness dying out of her face; but she looked at the boy as if he had to be obeyed. Verie looked at him, scowled at him defiantly, and climbed into the tonneau
“Come out of it, Verie!'” he said sternly.
“Oh, Robbie, don't you think we might—just fer once? Think of Steppie in the country,” pleaded Cherlie, in such a pitiful voice that it gave me a lump in my throat.
“Oh, that's all right! I don't mind!” I said quickly. “Anarchists—I rather like 'em. In fact, I'm a bit of an anarchist myself. I never could stick the House of Lords—never—I give you my word. I tell you what—I'll be a fullblown anarchist myself all the afternoon.”
I said it straight off without a break, for the children had got to go.
“Strite?” asked the boy.
“Straight,” declared I.
“If it's like that, thank yer, gov'ner,” said the boy with a grunt of thankfulness. And he grinned all over his face as he held Cherlie's arm while she got into the car.
I held open the door for Miss Amber.
“It is good of you,” she said, as she stepped into it. And she looked at me in a way that I couldn't have deserved if I had given the children a house in Garthoyle Gardens and an income to keep it up.
“Harrod's!” I ordered Gaston, and got in after her.
The tonneau is big, but it was only when I saw how much room the children left on the broad seat that I realized what thin little things they were. As we settled down, I took stock of them. I saw that there were a great many patches in their clothes. But their faces were clean, and all the more recent dirt had been scrubbed off their discolored little claws. They were claws.
It struck me that there had been a lot of careful preparation for their jaunt to Kew.
They were sitting rather stiffly, looking very serious, as if they were a bit overcome by the grandeur of their position. They were still busy getting used to it when we came to Harrod's.
I stepped out, went to the provision department, and said that I wanted a picnic hamper for a dozen children, and that it must have lots of nourishing food in it, chickens and tongues. Also, I wanted a kettle and tea things; and I wanted them now—right away—my car was waiting. They know me in that department, and they bustled. In about five minutes, I followed the hamper out, saw it set in front beside Gaston, and got into the car.
“Chipperfield Common,” I said to Gaston. Verie's words about a squirrel in a tree had suggested it to me.
The children had been chattering in an excited way when I came out of Harrod's; but when I got into the car they turned stiff again.
Then Robbie broke the ice by saying:
“My! Ain't it fine? A real moter car!”
Cherlie bent down to the baby in her lap, and cooed:
“In a moter car, Steppie—ridin' in a moter car!”
“So you're anarchists, are you?” I asked, to set them going.
All their faces turned to me, and Robbie responded promptly:
“Yes, we're anarchists, an' so's father. My name's Robespierre Briggs—after 'im what myde the French Revolution. An' Cherlie's name is Charlotte Corday Briggs; an' Verie's is Vera Sassiliwitch Briggs—after “er wot threw bombs at the czar. An' Steppie—he's Stepniak Briggs. He threw bombs, too, did Stepniak.”
“I'm goin' to throw bombs when I grow up,” announced Verie.
“An' so am I when Steppie's grown up enough not to want me lookin' after 'im any more,” said Cherlie, in a cheerful voice
“An' I'm goin' to myke bombs for 'em to throw. I've got a book on chemistry, an' father 'elps me to learn it in the evenin's,” said Robbie.
“Well, they are a desperate band!” I exclaimed to Miss Amber.
She was looking at them with pitiful eyes.
“I think it's rather dreadful,” she said.
“But if you throw bombs, you'll go to prison!” I said to the children.
“Yes; but then we'll be martyrs of the revolution, an' that's a glorious thing to be,” declared Robbie.
“P'r'aps we'll be 'anged,” put in Verie cheerfully.
“An' if you're 'anged, you're hever so much more a martyr of the revolution. Everybody says so,” said Robbie.
“I'm goin' ter throw bombs at ministers,” said Verie. “I told Carrie Evans I was goin' ter throw a bomb at 'er minister, an' she pulled my 'air.”
“There you go agyne, Verie! You do mix things up so,” said Robbie, in a vexed tone. “I keep tellin' yer that it's cab'net ministers, an' not chapel ministers as you throw bombs at.”
“Carrie Evans said she's got a minister, an' I said I'd throw a bomb at 'im, an' she pulled my 'air; an' I will throw a bomb at 'im,” repeated Verie firmly.
“She won't understand; an' I've told her agyne an' agyne,” said Robbie, in a tone of aggravation
“I'm goin' ter throw a bomb at Carrie Evans' minister when I grow up,” said Verie, in a singsong.
Cherlie had been holding Stepniak up and pointing things out to him. Now she cried:
“Look! There's a cow! Look, Steppie! Look! There's a cow in a field!”
The sight diverted the minds and talk of the other anarchists from bombs; and little by little, as it slid deeper into the country, the car became a perfect babel. They were all calling to one another at once to look at this and look at that, and all at the same time asking us questions about what they saw. Always there was something fresh, and the eyes of the anarchists grew bigger and bigger.
Miss Amber was charming with them. She answered their questions, and her pretty eyes hunted the countryside for things to point out to them. Her face was glowing with pleasure at their pleasure. I did enjoy looking at it, and helping her find fresh things for the anarchists to admire.
But all the while her voice bothered me. I could have sworn that I had heard it before; but for the life of me I could not remember when or where. It was odd, too, that I did not believe that I had ever seen her face before. I could not have forgotten it if I had, for I never forget a pretty face, and I can very soon recall when and where I have seen it before. It was certainly strange that I should know her voice and not her face.
Bushey and Watford gave the children a rest from their excitement. Once in the streets again, they did not trouble even to look about them. They gave their eyes a rest, and sat back, telling one another again and again of things that they had seen.
In the middle of it, Robbie asked:
“What's yer nyme, gov'ner? We can call Miss Amber by hern; but we don't know yourn to call yer by.”
I hesitated a moment; then I said:
“My name's Garth.”
Somehow, I couldn't say Lord Garthoyle. It did not seem to go with these children. Besides, all my friends call me Garth, and it is my business name. After all, I had come out to buy kitchen ranges for Garth & Thurman.
When we came out of Watford into the country again, the anarchists again grew excited; and I grew yet more friendly with Miss Amber, helping her to tell them things. We reached Chipperfield Common, all rather hot and out of breath, though we had been sitting still for nearly an hour. But when once the anarchists were out of the car, on the common itself, among the flowers and the pine trees, they just went mad. Robbie and Verie ran round us in rings, screaming; and Cherlie jumped up and down, with her eyes starting out of her head, as she tried to point out to the staring Stepniak everything at once.
“Look here! They're going mad! What are we going to do with three mad anarchists?” I asked Miss Amber.
“They won't go mad; they're too happy,” she assured me, smiling.
“Well, it's your show, not mine. You'll take the responsibility,” I said.
“Oh, no, no! It's your show. They owe it to you. I could never have given them anything like this,” she cried.
“Not a bit of it. It's your idea altogether. I should never have dreamed of it. Therefore, it's your show. And it's awfully fine of you to do this kind of thing.”
“Fine? Why, I love it!” she cried.
“I expect you do love fine things,” I said.
She turned away from my eyes with a little blush. I fancy that I was looking what I thought of her.
“Cherlie, give Steppie to me. You must want to run about with the others,” she said.
She gave Steppie a finger, and I gave him another, and he toddled along between us like a kind of link.
“How did you meet these anarchists?” I asked.
“I found them in the park one afternoon, and then they came several times to see me, and by degrees I've got to know them quite well. They are such nice children.”
“And I suppose you have spent all your pocket money on them ever since?”
“I haven't enough really to do anything for them,” she said, with a sigh. “I can only give them a treat now and then—tea and cakes. The expedition to Kew was quite out of the common—a great affair. At least, it would have been, if it had come off. But this is much better; absolutely splendid!”
“Have you many of these protégés, or are these all?” asked.
“There are two other lots of small children I have found in the park; but they're not as poor as the Briggses and not nearly so interesting.”
“That anarchist talk is rather strong, though.
“Oh, do you think so? Don't you think it's very natural—for them? Why, even I—sometimes—when I think of the. wretched, poisonous life these children lead—I feel could be an anarchist myself.”
“And throw bombs?”
“Yes: I feel I could,” she declared quite seriously. “There are thousands and thousands of children like these. But, of course, you don't understand. You haven't seen them faint with hunger.”
“Things do seem wrong. I wonder that the government doesn't do something to stop it,” said I.
“Things are so stupid—so utterly stupid!” she exclaimed, frowning.
We were silent a while. I was thinking that I might look into this matter of the children a little. I was finding my work as house agent not half bad. I might put in a little work in the House of Lords, and try to get this matter of the children looked into. In the meantime, I might arrange a series of anarchist outings; and she might help me with them, as she was helping me this afternoon. And I wanted her to help me very much. I did like the way she carried herself, and she walked so lightly!
We went on among the pines slowly, to suit Stepniak's toddle; and the other anarchists kept rushing up to show us the wonderful things that they had found, or to shout at us the wonderful things that they had seen.
Then we came to the Pool of the Twelve Apostles, and she said:
“You have brought us to a beautiful place.”
“I never saw it look so beautiful,” I returned; and I never had. I had never seen it with her in it before.
I think she understood, for she flushed a little.
“Fancy being able to motor here any day you like, and to be able to bring children—children like—these—with you! Oh, if only I could do things like that for children!” she cried.
I nearly offered, then and there, to put myself and my cars at her disposal often as she wanted us But am not impatient, and I thought it wise to go slow. If I tried to hurry things, it was very likely that I should spoil it all.
Then Verie came rushing up, purple with joy, screaming:
“There's a squir'l in a tree! There's a squir'l in a tree! Bring Steppie to see the squir'l!”
I picked up Stepniak, and we hurried off to see the squirrel, Miss Amber as excited and delighted as the anarchists. We all tried, in an excited way, to get Stepniak to see the squirrel; I grew as keen on making him see it as Cherlie and Miss Amber. They were sure he saw it; I was not; and we argued about it almost in a heated way. Stepniak seemed awfully solemn for his age, and I did not believe that he was really keen on seeing a squirrel. Miss Amber said that I underrated his intelligence.
The squirrel took us to a tree where he found two other squirrels, and they played about in it. The anarchists were a long time getting tired of watching them; and, when they did, I found that it was nearly four o'clock.
“Hadn't they better have tea now?” I asked Miss Amber. “Then they will be ready for supper before we start back. They may as well have two meals while they are about it. They look as if they could do with them.”
“Oh, you do have good ideas! That will be splendid!” she cried, and her eyes shone brighter than ever.
“It's just common sense,” I said. “By the way, is Amber your Christian name or your surname?”
“It's my Christian name; my surname's Devine.” She answered with a shade of hesitation.
“I suppose you spell it with an 'i'? You ought to,” I said firmly.
She smiled.
“No; it's spelled with an 'e,' that's how it ought to be spelled.”
“With an 'i,'” said I.
“With an 'e,'” said she.
“Well, I know best; but we won't argue about it,” said I.
We went back in a body to the car. Gaston had got hot water for the tea, and a big jug of milk for the anarchists. I thought that a fire would be better fun for them than a spirit stove, and they grew immensely excited about it. There seemed to be no limit to their power of getting excited.
When it had burned up a little, we began to unpack the hamper. We laid the tablecloth between two pine trees, and set the knives and forks and tea-cups on it. Then Amber took a cake out of the hamper. At the sight of it, the children, who had been crying out to one another how pretty the cups were and how the spoons and forks shone, suddenly were quite silent. We paused in our unpacking and looked at them. They were staring at the cake in a painful kind of way, with a horrible craving in their eyes. They made me think of hungry little wolves. Verie's mouth was working as if she were already eating. Then Stepniak wailed, and held out his hands.
“Why—why—they must have been hungry all the while—all the time they have been laughing and screaming and enjoying themselves! Hungrier than ever I was in my life—all the way from town!” I said, more than a bit shocked.
“Yes; they forgot it. How dreadful!” said Amber, in a hushed voice.
She had turned rather pale.
It took me about five seconds to cut up that cake and hand it around. To see the look of thankfulness on those children's faces as their mouths filled made me feel positively beastly.
“Steady, now, children! Don't wolf it!” I ordered.
I might just as well have spoken to real wolves.
Amber had already mixed a cup of cake and milk for Stepniak, and was feeding him slowly. I got out a dish of chicken and tongue, and a pile of bread and butter, and sat the children down to it. They seemed to find cutting up the slices too slow for their appetites. When they got a leg or a wing bone, they just took it in their fingers and gnawed it happily.
Amber kept saying:
“Gently, gently! children! Don't eat so fast, please!”
They looked at her in a helpless sort of way, as if they would have liked to do as she wanted, but could not. I did not get out any more food; and when they had come to the end of that I said:
“Nothing more to eat for five minutes. Come along and let's boil the kettle.”
They came, and were interested in the boiling of the kettle and the making of the tea; but all the while they kept looking at the hamper as if they couldn't keep their eyes off it. When the five minutes were up, their eyes still glistened at the food, but they ate it more slowly. They did enjoy it. But it was only toward the end of the meal that Cherlie remembered their manners and reminded them sternly. When Stepniak was full, he went to sleep; and when the other anarchists were full, they lay on their sides, looking drowsy and very happy, talking in jerks about the chicken and the cakes.
They were not quiet long; they were soon on their feet again, and running about, leaving us to talk to one another. I had made up my mind that I had never heard Miss Devine's voice before, but I did not find it any less pretty. We talked about the children. She told me that they were motherless; that their father worked for a sweatshop tailor; and that his earnings were wretched.
We talked over the whole state of things in the slums; but of course we did not know how it was to be stopped. Only it was plain that that was what the government was there for—we were both sure of that—and I began to think seriously about going down to the House of Lords and looking into the matter. I might put the fat in the fire, and get a little quiet fun out of doing it.
Then Robbie came running up, very eager.
“Will you come and plye anarchists wiv us, Miss Amber?” he begged. “There ain't no one to throw bombs at!”
We rose, and I said:
“This is a new game. How do you play it?”
“She knows. She's plyed it wiv us in the park,” answered Robbie, and he ran off
“It's very simple,” she explained, smiling. “They throw bombs at us, and we fall down dead.”
“It sounds a cheerful game,” said I.
We walked through the pines, and, suddenly, with loud cries of “Bang!” the hidden anarchists threw bombs of bracken at us. We fell down dead, and the anarchists fled, yelling joyfully, to their lairs. Then we rose, and they stalked us again and threw more bombs at us.
When they threw the fifth lot of bombs, to make it a bit more realistic, Amber gave a little scream. I fell down, all right; but I got up very slowly, almost as upset as if the bombs had been real. I knew now where I had heard her voice; the scream had brought it back to me. She was the ghost girl, the girl whom Scruton had employed as ghost to frighten me into letting him live rent free at Number Nine. So she had screamed when I had sprung across the bedroom and caught her.
I was sick. When I got up I found that a kind of dullness had come over the common, though I suppose the sun was shining as brightly as ever. This girl had taken a hand in Scruton's shady game; she actually had helped him trick my uncle out of a quarter's rent.
It seemed simply incredible; but it wasn't. I could have sworn to the ghost girl's voice among a million voices, and it was the voice of Amber Devine. I looked at her, and, sure as I was, it was hard to believe it. She looked too pretty—far too pretty, with her flushed face and shining eyes—to have been mixed up in a shady game like that. She was so happy because the children were happy. And then the way she had treated those children, spending her last half sovereign to take them to Kew, trying all she knew to give them a good time It was past understanding; it did not go with that ghost trick at all. I must be wrong. But I wasn't.
We went on playing anarchists, but I had lost interest in the game. Then the children tired of it. We sat down on the bank of the pool, and Amber told them stories. For anarchists, they seemed to me uncommonly fond of fairies. I did not listen much to the stories, though she told them very well. The ghost trick was worrying me—the stories did not fit in with it—and I was glum. She seemed to see that something had gone wrong with me, for two or three times she looked at me in a questioning way.
I was glad when we set about giving the anarchists their supper. It took my mind off the ghost trick. They were very hungry again; and she was hungry, too, and enjoyed her supper thoroughly. I wished that I had thought to bring some champagne for her.
Supper refreshed the anarchists, and we played hide and seek in the twilight. It ought to have been delightful playing hide and seek with Amber Devine among the pines; but the ghost trick stuck in my mind. It had spoiled everything.
It was dusk when we started back to town. I carried the sleeping Stepniak to the car, for the ghost girl and Cherlie had about run their legs off. At the car, the anarchists lingered a little, as if they could not drag themselves away from the common. In the car, they chattered for a little about the things they had seen, and done, and eaten.
Cherlie said:
“Oh, it was a beautiful day! Such a beautiful day for Steppie!”
Then they all fell asleep in a lump.
The ghost girl took the sleeping Stepniak from the sleeping Cherlie. I covered the sleeping children with a rug, and drew another round ourselves. We sat quiet for a while, and I could see her eyes shining. Then she began to talk about the anarchists again, and the children like them—how she wished that she could take a hundred of them into the country every day, and feed them. Her voice grew angry and thrilling as she talked of what a shame it was that they should live, half fed and half clothed, in the pigsties they called homes. But somehow or other, I had lost my keenness; and I did not think any more about the House of Lords.
She was sincere enough in her talk, and that again did not go with the ghost trick. All the time that she talked, I kept thinking of it, and two or three times it was on the tip of my tongue to ask her why she had played it. But I pulled myself up. She said that she had had a beautiful time; why should I spoil the end of it?
We ran into London, the children still asleep, and I could see her face again now in the light of the lamps. She told me that the anarchists lived in Lambeth, in one room, with their father; and on the way she helped me slip the gold out of my sovereign case, wrapped in a tenner, into the pocket of the sleeping Cherlie.
Then we awoke Robbie to guide us; and he piloted the car through very dirty streets to the very dirtiest. As we pulled up, a man came rushing out of the house, and cried in a frightened, shaky voice:
“My Gord! Which of 'em's bin run over?”
“We're all right, father. We've bin for a moter ride in the country,” Robbie said, in an important voice.
“Lor'! What a turn the car did give me! I thought for cert'in as 'ow one of yer 'ad bin run over.” Mr. Briggs was panting.
We helped the sleepy children out, and their father took Stepniak. He stood looking rather dazed from the fright that the car had given him, and they huddled around him, telling him of their afternoon. I pulled the hamper out of the car—there were a couple of meals left in it—and set it down beside them.
Cherlie was saying:
“Think of it, father! Steppie in the country—the real country—all the afternoon! An' ridin' in a moter car!”
I told Gaston to start the car, to get off before the thanks began. As it slid away, we called back, “Good night, children!” And they called good night to us shrilly, again and again.
I was glad, very glad, that I had been able to give them a good time; but did wish that had not found out that Amber Devine was the ghost girl
When we came out of the slums, I asked:
“And now where shall I drive you home?”
“Garthoyle Gardens, please,” she said.
“Oh, you live in Garthoyle Gardens? Do you know Lord Garthoyle himself?” I said.
“No. Is there a Lord Garthoyle? I didn't know,” she said.
She was certainly speaking the truth, and it made things more puzzling than ever. She had evidently played the trick on me without knowing who I was. It was a good thing that I had been as hoarse as a crow that night, so that she had not recognized my voice as I had recognized hers. That would certainly have robbed the anarchists of their afternoon. Besides, there was that kiss.
At the end of the Gardens, she asked me to stop, and I helped her out of the car. The light fell full on her face and shining eyes as she thanked me for having given the children such a happy afternoon. Then she paused. I felt that she was waiting for me to suggest taking them out again; but I would not arrange anything of the kind.
I could keep an eye on the anarchists—I knew their address. I could send them money at times, or I might find a job for their father down at Garth Royal. But at the moment I did not want to see Miss Devine again. At least, I did want to, but I thought that I had much better not.
“Good night, and again thank you a thousand times,” she said, and held out her hand.
I shook it, and said good night. She turned, and went down the pavement. A few steps off I heard her sigh.
I got into the car, feeling very gloomy. If only I had not recognized her as the ghost girl!