Happy Pollyooly: The Rich Little Poor Girl — John Shaqi
Happy Pollyooly: The Rich Little Poor GirlJepson, Edgar
General
Happy Pollyooly: The Rich Little Poor Girl
Jepson, Edgar
England -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction; Girls -- Fiction
"Well, we must spend the night at the hotel," he said grumpily. "If I
left your ladyship here, there's no saying when I should see you again."
Pollyooly scowled again, and Eglantine burst into loud and excited
protest:
"Her ladyship must sleep in the house--in her own bed--properly."
The lawyer paid no heed to her protest, but bade her pack her young
mistress's clothes at once. He said that the sooner she was at the
hotel, the safer he would feel. He did not get his way without further
and louder protests from Eglantine; but in the end he got it. She
packed the little kit-bag for Pollyooly with clothes of Lady Marion.
The detective carried it. As they were starting she gave Pollyooly two
sovereigns wrapped up in a five-pound note, saying that the duchess had
left it for her. The extra two sovereigns were for expenses, since she
might need money to escape.
The sum warmed Pollyooly's heart.
She bade Eglantine an affectionate farewell and invited her to come to
see her whenever she was in London. Then she set out with her captors.
On the way down the hill the lawyer was very respectful and agreeable
to Pollyooly, proclaiming his eager desire to secure her welfare, and
dwelling on the pleasure she must be feeling at the prospect of being
re-united with her affectionate father, the duke. No such prospect lay
before her; and she displayed no interest in the matter. But when the
lawyer, with a fatherly solicitude of his own, suggested that it would
be safer if he took care of her money for her, she rejected the
proposal with an uncommon, haughty curtness. He seemed somewhat hurt,
but he did not press the matter. The detective addressed him as Mr.
Wilkinson.
Pollyooly was not pleased to leave the pleasant and comfortable house
of the duchess and its so noble breakfasts and teas, though it was some
consolation that she was moving from it to an hotel where, in her
ignorance of provincial England, she supposed that she would fare
luxuriously. She was much less pleased to exchange the society of the
lively Eglantine, so full of interesting confidences, for that of the
ponderous and doubtless uncommunicative Mr. Wilkinson.
He was fully alive to his importance as being in charge of the daughter
of a duke, and did not dream for a moment of putting her into the care
of the detective. Indeed, in spite of his greater experience in taking
charge of people, that worthy fellow was far too sleepy to be trusted
with so elusive a child.
Mr. Wilkinson was far more affable and urbane with her than any one
whom Pollyooly had ever met. He was careful to ask her whether she
disliked the smell of tobacco smoke before taking her into the
smoking-room, where he made a light meal on whiskey and soda and
biscuits. He invited her to share his biscuits; but the noble tea was
so recent that she was forced to decline.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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