“C. Q.”; or, In the Wireless House
covered with kisses a tiny pair of shoes surreptitiously drawn from the bottom of her sewing bag. No, the world of men and of most women would have classified her as a rather smart-looking, rather hard-looking, rather wicked-looking and distinctly good-looking French girl, who knew a thing or two and probably more than she ought, who had her price, perhaps, but realized when she was well off and stuck to the bridge that carried her over. Yet she had her other side, and every penny that she could save went into the Postal savings bank for her “pauvre Philippe.” She had been with Mrs. Trevelyan five years and during that period had never been guilty of the slightest indiscretion nor seen any. Such women sometimes become the mothers of deputies and cabinet ministers.
Now the maid pushed aside the silk curtain of the berth and assisted her mistress to rise, and when the starchy stewardess arrived with a hot special breakfast prepared under the second steward’s own particular eye, Mrs. Trevelyan, rosy from her bath, was reclining in an armchair in a blue Japanese dressing-gown heavily embroidered with roses and dragons,99
