Cotillion

‘Oh!’ said Freddy. ‘Very good notion, I daresay. At least—No wish to throw a damper, but what are you going to do there?’

‘That’s just it!’ said Kitty, her face much flushed, and large tear-drops trickling down her cheeks. ‘I was too angry to think of that, but I thought of it when I was walking along the lane, and I don’t know what I’m going to do, or where I am to stay, for I haven’t a friend in the world, and every word Hugh said was true!’

‘No, no!’ said Freddy feebly.

Miss Charing, after an abortive search for her handkerchief, began to mop her face with a corner of her cloak.

Mr Standen’s dismay gave place to shocked disapproval. ‘Here, Kitty, I say! No!’ he protested. ‘Take mine!’

Miss Charing accepted, with a loud sob, the delicate handkerchief held out to her, and blew her small nose with determination. Mr Standen, reflecting that he had several handkerchiefs in his portmanteau, applied himself to the task of consolation. ‘No sense in crying,’ he said. ‘Think of some shift or other! Bound to!’

This well-meant suggestion caused Kitty’s tears to flow faster. ‘I have been thinking and thinking, and there is nothing I can do! And, oh, I would rather die than go back to Arnside!’

At this moment, an interruption occurred. The landlord, not unnaturally consumed with curiosity, had hit upon an excuse for re-entering the coffee-room. He came in bearing a steaming bowl of rum-punch, which he set down on the table, saying: ‘Your punch, sir. You did say nine o’clock, sir, didn’t you? Just on nine now, sir!’

Mr Standen could not recall that he had said anything at all, and he was about to repudiate the punch when he realized that it was clearly the moment for him to fortify himself. He was thankful to perceive that Kitty had stopped crying, and had turned her face away. He ventured to offer her a glass of ratafia. She shook her head silently, and the landlord, setting two glasses down beside the bowl, said: ‘Perhaps Miss would fancy just a sip of punch, to keep the cold out. Snowing quite fast, it is, though not laying, sir. I hope no bad news from Mr Penicuik’s, sir?’

Freddy, who had been hurriedly inventing a tale to account for Miss Charing’s unconventional presence in the Blue Boar, now rose to the occasion with considerable address. ‘Lord, no! Nothing of that sort!’ he said airily. ‘Stupid looby of a coachman forgot his orders, that’s all! Ought to have fetched Miss Charing an hour ago. She’s been visiting: obliged to walk back to Arnside. Started to snow, so she had to seek shelter.’

If the landlord thought poorly of a story which featured a host so lost to propriety as to permit an unattached damsel to leave his house at dusk, on foot and unescorted, and which left out of account the modest carpet-bag, at present reposing in the passage outside the coffee-room, Kitty at least had no fault to find with it. No soon had Mr Pluckley departed, than she turned to look admiringly at Freddy, and to thank him for his kind offices. ‘I had no notion you could be so clever!’ she told him.

Mr Standen blushed, and disclaimed. ‘Made it all up beforehand,’ he explained. ‘Daresay you wouldn’t think of it, but the fellow was bound to start nosing out your business. Oughtn’t to be out alone, you know. Ought to have brought the Fish with you.’

‘But, Freddy, you must see that I couldn’t run away to London if I brought Fish! She would never consent!’

‘Mustn’t run away to London,’ said Freddy. ‘Been thinking about that, and it won’t do. Pity, but there it is!’

‘You don’t feel that there might be something I could do to support myself?’ asked Miss Charing, with a last flicker of hope. ‘Of course, I don’t wish to starve, but do you think I should? Truthfully, Freddy?’

Keeping his inevitable reflections to himself, Mr Standen lied manfully. ‘Sure of it!’ he said.

‘Not if I became a chambermaid!’ said Kitty, suddenly inspired. ‘Hugh says I am too young to be a housekeeper, but I could be a chambermaid!’

Mr Standen brought her firmly back to earth. ‘No sense in that. Might as well stay at Arnside. Better, in fact.’

‘Yes, I suppose I might,’ she said despondently. ‘Only I would like so much to escape! I do try not to be ungrateful, but oh, Freddy, if you knew what it is like, keeping house for Uncle Matthew, and reading to him, and pouring out his horrid draughts, and never speaking to anyone but him and Fish! It makes me wish he never had adopted me!’

‘Must be devilish,’ nodded Mr Standen, ladling punch into one of the glasses. ‘Can’t think why he did adopt you. Often puzzled me.’

‘Yes, it used to puzzle me too, but Fish thinks that he formed a lasting passion for my mama.’

‘Sort of thing she would think,’ remarked Freddy. ‘If you ask me, he never formed a lasting passion for anyone but himself. I mean, look at him!’

‘Yes, but I do feel she may be right,’ Kitty insisted. ‘He hardly ever speaks of her, except when he says I am not nearly as pretty as she was, but he has her likeness. He keeps it in his desk, and he showed it to me once, when I was a little girl.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t have believed it!’ said Freddy, apparently convinced.

‘No, but I fancy it was so. Because George, you know, thought I was Uncle Matthew’s daughter. Hugh said that he never did so, but I have a strong notion he did!’

‘Shouldn’t think so at all,’ said Freddy. ‘George might, because he’s a gudgeon. Daresay Dolph might, but nobody else would. In fact, Dolph wouldn’t either, because he don’t think anything. If you was my uncle’s daughter, he wouldn’t behave so shabbily. Wouldn’t want to leave his money to one of us, either.’

‘N-no. I daresay he might wish me to marry one of his great-nephews, but he wouldn’t cut me off without a penny if I refused, would he?’

‘He don’t mean to do that?’ exclaimed Freddy, shocked.

She nodded, and gave a rather watery sniff into his handkerchief. ‘Yes, he does, and of course I quite see that I can never hope to form an eligible connection if I’m to be a pauper. It makes me feel horridly low!’

‘What you need, Kit, is a drop of something to put some heart into you,’ said Freddy decidedly. ‘If you won’t take some ratafia—mind, I don’t say I blame you!—you’d better have a mouthful of this. It ain’t the right thing, but who’s to know?’