Beggar’s Choice

“You’re not upset, dear Aunt? Now you are not to let it keep you awake. I’m sure I tried to prevent his coming in, but you mustn’t let it excite you.”

The old lady bit her head off.

“Don’t be a fool, Fa

I just caught a glimpse of Fa

“I don’t like leaving you.”

“And why not?” said the old lady very short and sharp.

“You won’t be nervous? You’re sure? I don’t think I ought to leave you.”

“Am I to make my arrowroot myself?” said the old lady in an ominous voice. “I didn’t ask you to think.”

Fa

The old lady wasn’t looking at me. She had gone back to her cross-word.

“Seven,” she said-“it must be seven letters. Now, what’s a word with seven letters which means fine-drawn?”

“What about tenuous?” I said.

“Good!” she said. “Good-good-good! Yes-seven letters! That’s broken the back of it! I shouldn’t have slept a wink if I hadn’t got the better of the thing.”

She put down her pencil and beckoned to me.

“Come over here and tell me what you’ve been up to. Fa

“I really haven’t done anything,” I said.

“Nobody ever has. What do they say you’ve done?”

“I’m not quite sure.”

“Then why did you run away?”

“Because it was the best thing to do.” I thought this sounded rather bad, so I went on in a hurry: “I really haven’t done anything, but I mightn’t be able to clear myself.”

“Because of some one else?” she said.

I nodded.

“A woman, I suppose? And you’re in love with her? Is that it?”

I felt myself getting red; but it was because I was angry, not because I was embarrassed.

“No, it’s not,” I said.

“Then why don’t you clear yourself?”

I didn’t answer that, and she saw I wasn’t going to. She took up her pencil again and tapped with it on the writing-block.

“Well, well-what are you going to do next?”

I didn’t know. There would probably still be a man in the street, and I didn’t suppose they’d finished searching the roofs yet.

“Your best way is to wait till Fa

“I say-you’re most frightfully good!” I said.

“I hope the Recording Angel thinks so,” she said. Then she put out her hand and beckoned to me.

I came close up to the bed.

“What’s your name?” she asked, looking up at me under her queer thick eyebrows.

“Carthew Fairfax.”

“Do they call you all that?”

“No-Car.”

“Is your mother alive?”

“No.”

“Grandmother? Aunts?”

“No.”

“I thought not. Have you got a sweetheart?”

The thought of Isobel came over me like the sun shining suddenly on a dark day.

I said, “Yes.”

“Will you tell me her name?”

“Isobel.”

She laughed in a queer sort of way.

“Mine is Ginevra Cambodia Stubbs. That’s fu

I said, “I’d like to.” I tried to thank her, but she stopped me.

“I live entirely surrounded by old women. My doctor’s the worst of them-what Ellen calls ‘a proper old maid.’ She’s one herself, so she ought to know. So is Fa

She shook hands with me, and I did my best to thank her, but I don’t think I made a very good job of it. I liked her most awfully, and I hope she knew how grateful I was.

XXXVII

I took the matches and went down to the next landing, which had two doors at right angles to one another just like the one above; they both opened into the drawing-room. I’d hardly got safely in before I heard Fa

As soon as I heard the old lady’s door shut, I came out of the drawing-room and went down the stairs. There was no light below the bedroom landing, but I didn’t want to strike a match unless I was obliged to. The house was on the same plan as Mrs. Bell’s, so I thought I could manage.

I crawled down the basement stairs, because of course I realized that Ellen would most likely not have gone to sleep again yet. I wasn’t quite clear about the kitchen, and the scullery, and her room; but Fa

The scullery had an outer door with heavy bolts, the sort that were simply bound to make a row if I tried to shoot them back. I decided that it would be much safer to get out of the kitchen window.

Well, I slid back the catch, pushed up the window, and was half-way out, when I heard a sort of flapping sound. I recognized it at once, because I’d noticed when she went upstairs that Fa

“Miss Fa

She screamed again and let the candle fall with a clatter. I think some of the hot wax must have got her on the instep, because her third scream was much louder.

“For the Lord’s sake-” I said, but before I could say any more, the light went on in the passage and an amazing fat old thing in yards and yards of white night-gown rushed up to Fa

“Where is he, the nasty toad?” she cried, and began to let off screams like a steam siren.

I got out on the sill, banged down the window, and dropped.

The yard was one of the sort that has given up pretending to be a garden. I ran into a dust-bin and a clothes-line before I got to the wall at the bottom. I shi