The Splendid Folly Part 14

"The big coal-scuttle really doesn't hold twopenny-worth more coal than the others," observed Miss Bunting tentatively.

A dull flush mounted to Mrs. Lawrence's cheek. She liked the prospect of s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g an extra twopence out of one of her boarders, but she hated having the fact so clearly pointed out to her. There were times when she found Miss Bunting's conscientiousness something of a trial.

"It's a much larger box," she protested sharply.

"Yes. I know it is--outside. But the lining only holds two more k.n.o.bs than the sixpenny ones."

Mrs. Lawrence frowned.

"Do I understand that you--you actually measured the amount it contains?"

she asked, with bitterness.

"Yes," retorted Miss Bunting valiantly. "And compared it with the others. It was when you told me to put the eightpenny scuttle in Miss Jenkins' room. She complained at once."

"Then you exceeded your duties, Miss Bunting. You should have referred Miss Jenkins to me."

Miss Bunting made no reply. She had acted precisely in the way suggested, but Miss Jenkins, a young art-student of independent opinions, had flatly declined to be "referred" to Mrs. Lawrence.

"It's not the least use, Bunty dear," she had said. "I'm not going to have half an hour's acrimonious conversation with Mrs. Lawrence on the subject of twopennyworth of coal. At the same time I haven't the remotest intention of paying twopence extra for those two lumps of excess luggage, so to speak. So you can just trot that sarcophagus away, like the darling you are, and bring me back my sixpenny scuttle again."

And little Miss Bunting, in her capacity of buffer state between Mrs.

Lawrence and her boarders, had obeyed and said nothing more about the matter.

"I have to go out now," continued Mrs. Lawrence, after a pause pregnant with rebuke. "You will receive Miss Quentin on her arrival and attend to her comfort. And put the large coal-box in her sitting-room as I directed," she added firmly.

So it came about that when, half an hour later, a taxi-cab buzzed up to the door of No. 24, with Diana and a large quant.i.ty of luggage on board, the former found herself met in the hall by a cheerful little person with pretty brown eyes and a friendly smile to whom she took an instant liking.

Miss Bunting escorted Diana up to her rooms on the second floor, while Henri brought up the rear, staggering manfully beneath the weight of Miss Quentin's trunk.

A cheerful fire was blazing in the grate, and that, together with the daffodils that gleamed from a bowl on the table like a splash of gold, gave the room a pleasant and welcoming appearance.

"But, surely," said Diana hesitatingly, "you are not Mrs. Lawrence?"

Miss Bunting laughed, outright.

"Oh, dear no," she answered. "Mrs. Lawrence is out, and she asked me to see that you had everything you wanted. I'm the lady-help, you know."

Diana regarded her commiseratingly. She seemed such a jolly, bright little thing to be occupying that anomalous position.

"Oh, are you? Then it was you"--with a sudden, inspiration--"who put these lovely daffodils here, wasn't it? . . . Thank you so much for thinking of it--it was kind of you." And she held out her hand with the frank charm of manner which invariably turned Diana's acquaintances into friends inside ten minutes.

Little Miss Bunting flushed delightedly, and from that moment onward became one of the new boarder's most devoted adherents.

"You'd like some tea, I expect," she said presently. "Will you have it up here--or in the dining-room with the other boarders in half an hour's time?"

"Oh, up here, please. I can't possibly wait half an hour."

"I ought to tell you," Miss Bunting continued, dimpling a little, "that it will be sixpence extra if you have it up here. '_All meals served in rooms, sixpence extra_,'" she read out, pointing to the printed list of rules and regulations hanging prominently above the chimney-piece.

Diana regarded it with amus.e.m.e.nt.

"They ought to be written on tablets of stone like the Ten Commandments,"

she commented frivolously. "It rather reminds me of being at school again. I've never lived in a boarding-house before, you know; I had rooms in the house of an old servant of ours. Well, here goes!"--twisting the framed set of rules round with its face to the wall.

"Now, if I break the laws of the Medes and Persians I can't be blamed, because I haven't read them."

Miss Bunting privately thought that the new boarder, recommended by so great a personage as Signor Baroni, stood an excellent chance of being allowed a generous lat.i.tude as regards conforming to the rules at No.

24--provided she paid her bills promptly and without too careful a scrutiny of the "extras." Bunty, indeed, retained few illusions concerning her employer, and perhaps this was just as well--for the fewer the illusions by which you're handicapped, the fewer your disappointments before the journey's end.

"You haven't told me your name," said Diana, when the lady-help reappeared with a small tea-tray in her hand.

"Bunting," came the smiling reply. "But most of the boarders call me Bunty."

"I shall, too, may I?--And oh, why haven't you brought two cups? I wanted you to have tea with me--if you've time, that is?"

"If I had brought a second cup, '_Tea, for two_' would have been charged to your account," observed Miss Bunting.

"What?" Diana's eyes grew round with astonishment. "With the same sized teapot?"

The other nodded humorously.

"Well, Mrs. Lawrence's logic is beyond me," pursued Diana.

"However, we'll obviate the difficulty. I'll have tea out of my tooth-gla.s.s"--glancing towards the washstand in the adjoining room where that article, inverted, capped the water-bottle--"and you, being the honoured guest, shall luxuriate in the cup."

Bunty modestly protested, but Diana had her own way in the matter, and when finally the little lady-help went downstairs to pour out tea in the dining-room for the rest of the boarders, it was with that pleasantly warm glow about the region of the heart which the experience of an unexpected kindness is p.r.o.ne to produce.

Meanwhile Diana busied herself unpacking her clothes and putting them away in the rather limited cupboard accommodation provided, and in fixing up a few pictures, recklessly hammering the requisite nails into the walls in happy disregard of Rule III of the printed list, which emphatically stated that: "_No nails must be driven into the walls without permission_."

By the time she had completed these operations a dressing-bell sounded, and quickly exchanging her travelling costume for a filmy little dinner dress of some soft, s.h.i.+mmering material, she sallied downstairs in search of the dining-room.

Mrs. Lawrence met her on the threshold, warmly welcoming, and conducting her to her allotted place at the lower end of a long table, around which were seated--as it appeared to Diana in that first dizzy moment of arrival--dozens of young women varying from twenty to thirty years of age. In reality there were but a baker's dozen of them, and they all painstakingly abstained from glancing in her direction lest they might be thought guilty of rudely staring at a newcomer.

Diana's _vis-a-vis_ at table was the redoubtable Miss Jenkins of coal-box fame, and her neighbours on either hand two students of one of the musical colleges. Next to Miss Jenkins, Diana observed a vacant place; presumably its owner was dining out. She also noticed that she alone among the boarders had attempted to make any kind of evening toilet. The others had "changed" from their workaday clothes, it is true, but a light silk blouse, worn with a darker skirt, appeared to be generally regarded as a sufficient recognition of the occasion.

Diana's near neighbours were at first somewhat tongue-tied with a nervous stiffness common to the Britisher, but they thawed a little as the meal progressed, and when the musical students, Miss Jones and Miss Allen, had elicited that she was actually a pupil of the great Baroni, envy and a certain awed admiration combined to unseal the fountains of their speech.

Just as the fish was being removed, the door opened to admit a tall, thin woman, wearing outdoor costume, who pa.s.sed quickly down the room and took the vacant place at the table, murmuring a curt apology to Mrs. Lawrence on her way. To Diana's astonishment she recognised in the newcomer Olga Lermontof, Baroni's accompanist.

"Miss Lermontof!" she exclaimed. "I had no idea that you lived here."

Miss Lermontof nodded a brief greeting.

"How d'you do? Yes, I've lived here for some time. But I didn't know that you were coming. I thought you had rooms somewhere?"

"So I had. But I was obliged to give them up, and Signor Baroni suggested this instead."

"Hope you'll like it," returned Miss Lermontof shortly. "At any rate, it has the advantage of being only quarter of an hour's walk from Grellingham Place. I've just come from there." And with that she relapsed into silence.

Although Olga Lermontof had frequently accompanied Diana during her lessons with Baroni, the acquaintance between the two had made but small progress. There had been but little opportunity for conversation on those occasions, and Diana, instinctively resenting the accompanist's cool and rather off-hand manner, had never sought to become better acquainted with her. It was generally supposed that she was a Russian, and she was undoubtedly a highly gifted musician, but there was something oddly disagreeable and repellent about her personality. Whenever Diana had thought about her at all, she had mentally likened her to Ishmael, whose hand was against every man and every man's hand against his. And now she found herself involved with this strange woman in the rather close intimacy of daily life consequent upon becoming fellow-boarders in the same house.