A Damsel in Distress | Page 4

these little encounters.
"Nothing of the kind!" said Lady Caroline crisply. She was still ruffled
by the lack of attention which her recent utterances had received, and
welcomed the chance of administering discipline. "Get up at once, John,
and go in and work."
"I am working," pleaded Lord Marshmoreton.
Despite his forty-eight years his sister Caroline still had the power at
times to make him feel like a small boy. She had been a great martinet
in the days of their mutual nursery.
"The Family History is more important than grubbing about in the dirt.
I cannot understand why you do not leave this sort of thing to
MacPherson. Why you should pay him liberal wages and then do his

work for him, I cannot see. You know the publishers are waiting for the
History. Go and attend to these notes at once."
"You promised you would attend to them this morning, Lord
Marshmoreton," said Alice invitingly.
Lord Marshmoreton clung to his can of whale-oil solution with the
clutch of a drowning man. None knew better than he that these
interviews, especially when Caroline was present to lend the weight of
her dominating personality, always ended in the same way.
"Yes, yes, yes!" he said. "Tonight, perhaps. After dinner, eh? Yes, after
dinner. That will be capital."
"I think you ought to attend to them this morning," said Alice, gently
persistent. It really perturbed this girl to feel that she was not doing
work enough to merit her generous salary. And on the subject of the
history of the Marshmoreton family she was an enthusiast. It had a
glamour for her.
Lord Marshmoreton's fingers relaxed their hold. Throughout the
rose-garden hundreds of spared thrips went on with their morning meal,
unwitting of doom averted.
"Oh, all right, all right, all right! Come into the library."
"Very well, Lord Marshmoreton." Miss Faraday turned to Lady
Caroline. "I have been looking up the trains, Lady Caroline. The best is
the twelve-fifteen. It has a dining-car, and stops at Belpher if
signalled."
"Are you going away, Caroline?" inquired Lord Marshmoreton
hopefully.
"I am giving a short talk to the Social Progress League at Lewisham. I
shall return tomorrow."
"Oh!" said Marshmoreton, hope fading from his voice.

"Thank you, Miss Faraday," said Lady Caroline. "The twelve-fifteen."
"The motor will be round at a quarter to twelve."
"Thank you. Oh, by the way, Miss Faraday, will you call to Reggie as
you pass, and tell him I wish to speak to him."
Maud had left Reggie by the time Alice Faraday reached him, and that
ardent youth was sitting on a stone seat, smoking a cigarette and
entertaining himself with meditations in which thoughts of Alice
competed for precedence with graver reflections connected with the
subject of the correct stance for his approach-shots. Reggie's was a
troubled spirit these days. He was in love, and he had developed a bad
slice with his mid-iron. He was practically a soul in torment.
"Lady Caroline asked me to tell you that she wishes to speak to you,
Mr. Byng."
Reggie leaped from his seat.
"Hullo-ullo-ullo! There you are! I mean to say, what?"
He was conscious, as was his custom in her presence, of a warm,
prickly sensation in the small of the back. Some kind of elephantiasis
seemed to have attacked his hands and feet, swelling them to enormous
proportions. He wished profoundly that he could get rid of his habit of
yelping with nervous laughter whenever he encountered the girl of his
dreams. It was calculated to give her a wrong impression of a
chap--make her think him a fearful chump and what not!
"Lady Caroline is leaving by the twelve-fifteen."
"That's good! What I mean to say is--oh, she is, is she? I see what you
mean." The absolute necessity of saying something at least moderately
coherent gripped him. He rallied his forces. "You wouldn't care to
come for a stroll, after I've seen the mater, or a row on the lake, or any
rot like that, would you?"

"Thank you very much, but I must go in and help Lord Marshmoreton
with his book."
"What a rotten--I mean, what a dam' shame!"
The pity of it tore at Reggie's heart strings. He burned with generous
wrath against Lord Marshmoreton, that modern Simon Legree, who
used his capitalistic power to make a slave of this girl and keep her
toiling indoors when all the world was sunshine.
"Shall I go and ask him if you can't put it off till after dinner?"
"Oh, no, thanks very much. I'm sure Lord Marshmoreton wouldn't
dream of it."
She passed on with a pleasant smile. When he had recovered from the
effect of this Reggie proceeded slowly to the upper level to meet his
step-mother.
"Hullo, mater. Pretty fit and