The servant answered the bell and stood waiting for his orders by
the doorway.
'Harris, will you tell Jenkins at once that I shall want
the carriage at half-past eleven?'
'Yes, my lady.'
'All right then. That'll do. Don't stand staring at me there like
an image, but go this minute and do as I tell you.'
'Beg pardon, my lady, but her ladyship said she wanted the carriage
herself at twelve puncshual.'
'She can't have it, then, Harris. That's all. Go and give my message
to Jenkins at once, and I'll settle about the carriage with my lady
myself.'
'She's the rummest young lady ever I come across,' the man murmured
to himself in a dissatisfied fashion, as he went down the stairs
again: 'but there, it's none of my business, thank goodness. The
places and the people she does go and hunt up when she's got the
fit on are truly ridic'lous: blest if she didn't acshally make Mr.
Jenkins drive her down into Camberwell the other mornin', to see
'ow the poor lived, she said; as if it mattered tuppence to us in
our circles of society 'ow the poor live. I wonder what little game
she's up to now? Well, well, what the aristocracy is coming to in
these days is more'n I can fathom, as sure as my name's William
'Arris.'
The little game that Lady Hilda was up to that morning was one that
a gentleman in Mr. Harris's position was certainly hardly like to
appreciate or sympathise with.
The evening before, she had met Arthur Berkeley once more at a small
At Home, and had learned from him full particulars as to the dire
straits into which the poor Le Bretons had finally fallen. Now,
Hilda Tregellis was a kind-hearted girl at bottom, and when she
heard all about it, she said at once to Arthur, 'I shall go and
see them myself to-morrow, Mr. Berkeley, whether mamma allows me
or not.'
'What good will it do?' Arthur had answered her quickly. 'You
can't find work for poor Le Breton, can you? and of course if you
can't do that you can be of no earthly use in any way to the poor
creatures.'
'I don't know about that,' Hilda responded warmly. 'Sympathy's
always something, isn't it, Mr. Berkeley? Nobody ought to know that
better than you do. Besides, there's no saying when one may happen
to turn up useful. Of course, I've never been of the slightest use
to anybody in all my life, myself, I know, and I dare say I never
shall be, but at least there's no harm in trying, is there? I'm on
speaking terms with such an awful lot of people, all of them rich
and many of them influential--Parliament, and Government offices,
and all that sort of nonsense, you know--people who have no end
of things to give away, and can't tell who on earth they'd better
give them to, for fear of offending all the others, that I might
possibly hear of something or other.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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