When Ghost Meets Ghost Part 137

"What can you expect?"

"Oh--it's all right, you know, as far as that goes. But she'll be a grown-up young woman before we know it."

"Well?"

"What the dooce shall we do with her, then?"

"All parents," said the lady, somewhat didactically, "are similarly situated, and have identical responsibilities."

"Yes--but it's gettin' serious. I want her to stop a little girl."

"Fathers do. But we need not begin to fuss about her yet, thank Heaven!"

"'Spose not. I say, I wonder what's become of those two young monkeys?"

"Now, you needn't begin to fidget about _them_. They can't fall into the ca.n.a.l."

"They might lose sight of each other, and go huntin' about."

"Well--suppose they do! It won't hurt you. But _they_ won't lose sight of one another."

"How do you know that?"

"Dave is not a boy now. He is a responsible man of five-and-twenty. I told him not to let her go out of his sight."

"Oh well--I suppose it's all right. You're responsible, you know. _You_ manage these things."

"My dear!--how can you be so ridiculous? See how young she is. Besides, he's known her from childhood."

The story does not take upon itself to interpret any portion whatever of this conversation. It merely records it.

The last speech has to continue on reminiscent lines, apparently suggested by the reference to the childhood of the speaker's daughter; one of the young monkeys, no doubt. "It does seem so strange to think that he was that little boy with the black grubby face that Clo's carriage stopped for in the street. Just eighteen years ago, dear!"

"The best years of my life, Constantia, the best years of my life!

Well--they think a good deal of that boy at the Foreign Office, and it isn't only because he's a _protege_ of Tim's. He'll make his mark in the world. You'll see if he doesn't. Do you know?--that boy ..."

"Suppose you give these crumbs to the Hippopotamus! I've been saving them for him."

The gentleman looked disparagingly in the bag the lady handed to him.

"Wouldn't he prefer something more tangible?" said he. "Less subdivided, I should say."

"My dear, he's grateful for absolutely anything. Look at him standing there with his mouth wide open. He's been there for hours, and I know he expects something from me, and I've got nothing else. Throw them well into his mouth, and don't waste any getting them through the railings."

"Easier said than done! However, there's nothing like trying." The gentleman contrived a favourable arrangement of sundry scoriae of buns and biscuits in his palms, arranged cupwise, and cautiously approaching the most favourable interstice of the iron railings, took aim at the powerful yawn beyond them.

"Good shot!" said he. "Only the best bit's. .h.i.t his nose and fallen in the mud!"

"There now, Percy, you've choked him, poor darling! How awkward you are!" It was, alas, true! For the indiscriminate shower of crumbs made straight, as is the instinct of crumbs, for the larynx as well as the oesophagus of the hippo, and some of them probably reached his windpipe.

At any rate, he coughed violently, and when the larger mammals cough it's a serious matter. The earth shook. He turned away, hurt, and went deliberately into his puddle, reappearing a moment after as an island, but evidently disgusted with Man, and over for the day. "You may as well go on with what you were saying," said Mrs. Pellew.

"Wonder what it was! That fillah's mouth's put it all out of my head.

What _was_ I saying?"

"Something about David Wardle."

"Yes. Him and that old uncle of his--the fighting man. The boy can hardly talk about him now, and he wasn't eight when the old chap died.

Touchin' story! He _has_ told me all he recollects--more than once--but it only upsets the poor boy. I've never mentioned it, not for years now.

The old chap must have been a fine old chap. But I've told you all the boy told me, at the time."

"Ye-es. I remember the particulars, generally. You said the row wasn't his fault."

"His fault?--no, indeed! The fellow drew a knife upon him. You know he was that awful miscreant, Daverill. There wasn't a crime he hadn't committed. But old Moses killed him--splendidly! By Jove, I _should_ like to have seen that!"

"Really, Percy, if you talk in that dreadful way, I won't listen to you."

"Can't help it, my dear, can't help it! Fancy being able to kill such a d.a.m.nable beast at a single blow!" The undertone in which Mr. Pellew went on speaking to his wife may have contained some particulars of Daverill's career, for she said:--"Well--I can understand your feeling.

But we won't talk about it any more, please!"

Whereto the reply was:--"All right, my dear. I'll bottle up. Suppose we turn round. It's high time to be getting home." So the chairman put energies into a return towards the tunnel. But for all that, the lady went back to the subject, or its neighbourhood. "Wasn't he somehow mixed up with that old Mrs. Alibone at Chorlton--Dave's aunt she is, I believe. At least, he always calls her so."

"Aunt Maria? Of course. She _is_ his Aunt Maria. He was--or had been--Aunt Maria's husband. But people said as little about that as they could. He had been an absentee at Norfolk Island--a convict. That old chap she married--old Alibone--- he's the great authority on horseflesh.

Tim found it out when they came to Chorlton to stay at the very old lady's--what's her name?"

"Mrs. Marrable." Here Mrs. Pellew suddenly became luminous about the facts, owing to a connecting link. "Of course! Mrs. Marrable was the twin sister."

"A--oh yes!--the twin sister.... I remember ... at least, I don't. Not sure that I do, anyhow!"

"Foolish man! Can't you remember the lovely old lady at Clo Dalrymple's?..."

"She _was_ the one I carried upstairs. I should rather think I did recollect her. She weighed nothing."

"Oh yes--_you_ remember all about it. Mrs. Marrable's twin sister from Australia."

"Of course! Of course! Only I'd forgotten for the moment what it was I didn't remember. Cut along!"

"I was not saying anything."

"No--but you were just going to."

"Well--I was. It was _her_ grave in Chorlton Churchyard."

"That what?"

"That Gwen and our girl went to put the flowers on, three weeks ago."

"By-the-by, when are the honeymooners coming back?"

"The Crespignys? Very soon now, I should think. They were still at Siena when Gwen heard from Dorothy last, and it was unbearably hot, even there."