'Ladies! ladies!' remonstrated Cargrim, while both combatants ruffled their plumes like two fighting c.o.c.ks, and the more timid of the spectators scuttled out of the way. How the situation would have ended it is impossible to say, as the two ladies were equally matched, but George saved it by advancing to greet Miss Which.e.l.lo. When the little woman saw him, she darted forward and shook his hand with unfeigned warmth.

'My dear Captain Pendle,' she cried, 'I am so glad to see you; and thank you for your n.o.ble conduct of last night.'

'Why, Miss Which.e.l.lo, it was nothing,' murmured the modest hero.

'Indeed, I must say it was very valiant,' said Cargrim, graciously. 'Do you know, ladies, that Miss Arden was attacked last night by a tramp and Captain Pendle knocked him down?'

'Oh, really! how very sweet!' cried Daisy, casting an admiring look on George's handsome face, which appealed to her appreciation of manly beauty.

'What was Miss Arden doing to place herself in the position of being attacked by a tramp?' asked Mrs Pansey, in a hard voice. 'This must be looked into.'

'Thank you, Mrs Pansey, I have looked into it myself,' said Miss Which.e.l.lo. 'Captain Pendle, come home with me to luncheon and tell me all about it; Mr Cargrim, you come also.'

Both gentlemen bowed and accepted, the former because he wished to see Mab, the latter because he knew that Captain Pendle did not want him to come. As Miss Which.e.l.lo moved off with her two guests, Mrs Pansey exclaimed in a loud voice,--

'Poor young men! Luncheon indeed! They will be starved. I know for a fact that she weighs out the food in scales.' Then, having had the last word, she went home in triumph.

CHAPTER XI

MISS WHICh.e.l.lO'S LUNCHEON-PARTY

The little lady trotted briskly across the square, and guided her guests to a quaint old house squeezed into one corner of it. Here she had been born some sixty odd years before; here she had lived her life of spinsterhood, save for an occasional visit to London; and here she hoped to die, although at present she kept Death at a safe distance by hygienic means and dietary treatment. The house was a queer survival of three centuries, with a pattern of black oak beams let into a white-washed front. Its roof shot up into a high gable at an acute angle, and was tiled with red clay squares, mellowed by Time to the hue of rusty iron. A long lattice with diamond panes, and geraniums in flower-pots behind them, extended across the lower storey; two little jutting windows, also of the criss-cross pattern, looked like two eyes in the second storey; and high up in the third, the cas.e.m.e.nt of the attic peered out coyly from under the eaves. At the top of a flight of immaculately white steps there was a squat little door painted green and adorned with a bra.s.s knocker burnished to the colour of fine gold. The railings of iron round the area were also coloured green, and the appearance of the whole exterior was as spotless and neat as Miss Which.e.l.lo herself. It was an ideal house for a dainty old spinster such as she was, and rested in the very shadow of the Bishop Gandolf's cathedral like the nest of a bright-eyed wren.

'Mab, my dear!' cried the wren herself, as she led the gentlemen into the drawing-room, 'I have brought Captain Pendle and Mr Cargrim to luncheon.'

Mab arose out of a deep chair and laid aside the book she was reading.

'I saw you crossing the square, Captain Pendle,' she said, shaking his hand. 'Mr Cargrim, I am glad to see you.'

'Are you not glad to see me?' whispered George, in low tones.

'Do you need me to tell you so?' was Mab's reply, with a smile, and that smile answered his question.

'Oh, my dear, such a heavenly sermon!' cried Miss Which.e.l.lo, fluttering about the room; 'it went to my very heart.'

'It could not have gone to a better place,' replied the chaplain, in the gentle voice which George particularly detested. 'I am sorry to hear you have suffered from your alarm last night, Miss Arden.'

'My nerves received rather a shock, Mr Cargrim, and I had such a bad headache that I decided to remain at home. I must receive your sermon second-hand from my aunt.'

'Why not first-hand from me?' said Cargrim, insinuatingly, whereupon Captain George pulled his moustache and looked savage.

'Oh, I won't tax your good nature so far,' rejoined Mab, laughing. 'What is it, aunty?' for the wren was still fluttering and restless.

'My dear, you must content yourself with Captain Pendle till luncheon, for I want Mr Cargrim to come into the garden and see my fig tree; real figs grow on it, Mr Cargrim,' said Miss Which.e.l.lo, solemnly, 'the very first figs that have ever ripened in Beorminster.'

'I am glad it is not a barren fig tree,' said Cargrim, introducing a scriptural allusion in his most clerical manner.

'Barren indeed! it has five figs on it. Really, sitting under its shade one would fancy one was in Palestine. Do come, Mr Cargrim,' and Miss Which.e.l.lo fluttered through the door like an escaping bird.

'With pleasure; the more so, as I know we shall not be missed.'

'd.a.m.n!' muttered Captain Pendle, when the door closed on Cargrim's smile and insinuating looks.

'Captain Pendle!' exclaimed Miss Arden, becomingly shocked.

'Captain Pendle indeed!' said the young man, slipping his arm round Mab; 'and why not George?'

'I thought Mr Cargrim might hear.'

'He ought to; like the a.s.s, his ears are long enough.'

'Still, he is anything but an a.s.s--George.'

'If he isn't an a.s.s he's a beast,' rejoined Pendle, promptly, 'and it comes to much the same thing.'

'Well, you need not swear at him.'

'If I didn't swear I'd kick him, Mab; and think of the scandal to the Church. Cargrim's a sneaking, time-serving sycophant. I wonder my father can endure him; I can't!'

'I don't like him myself,' confessed Mab, as they seated themselves in the window-seat.

'I should--think--not!' cried Captain George, in so deliberate and disgusted a tone that Mab laughed. Whereat he kissed her and was reproved, so that both betook themselves to argument as to the righteousness or unrighteousness of kissing on a Sunday.

George Pendle was a tall, slim, and very good-looking young man in every sense of the word. He was as fair as Mab was dark, with bright blue eyes and a bronzed skin, against which his smartly-pointed moustache appeared by contrast almost white. With his upright figure, his alert military air, and merry smile, he looked an extremely handsome and desirable lover; and so Mab thought, although she reproved him with orthodox modesty for s.n.a.t.c.hing a kiss unasked. But if men had to request favours of this sort, there would not be much kissing in the world. Moreover, stolen kisses, like stolen fruit, have a piquant flavour of their own.

The quaint old drawing-room, with its low ceiling and twilight atmosphere, was certainly an ideal place for love-making. It was furnished with chairs, and tables, and couches, which had done duty in the days of Miss Which.e.l.lo's grandparents; and if the carpet was old, so much the better, for its once brilliant tints had faded into soft hues more restful to the eye. In one corner stood the grandfather of all pianos, with a front of drawn green silk fluted to a central b.u.t.ton; beside it a prim canterbury, filled with primly-bound books of yellow-paged music, containing, 'The Battle of the Prague,' 'The Maiden's Prayer,' 'Cherry Ripe,' and 'The Canary Bird's Quadrilles.'

Such tinkling melodies had been the delight of Miss Which.e.l.lo's youth, and--as she had a fine finger for the piano (her own observation)--she sometimes tinkled them now on the jingling old piano when old friends came to see her. Also there were Chippendale cupboards with gla.s.s doors, filled with a most wonderful collection of old china--older even than their owner; Chinese jars heaped up with dried rose leaves spreading around a perfume of dead summers; bright silken screens from far j.a.pan; foot-stools and fender-stools worked in worsted which tripped up the unwary; and a number of oil-paintings valuable rather for age than beauty. None of your modern flimsy drawing-rooms was Miss Which.e.l.lo's, but a dear, delightful, cosy room full of faded splendours and relics of the dead and gone so dearly beloved. From the yellow silk fire-screen swinging on a rosewood pole, to the drowsy old canary chirping feebly in his bra.s.s cage at the window, all was old-world and marvellously proper and genteel. Withal, a quiet, perfumed room, delightful to make love in, to the most beautiful woman in the world, as Captain George Pendle knew very well.

'Though it really isn't proper for you to kiss me,' observed Mab, folding her slender hands on her white gown. 'You know we are not engaged.'

'I know nothing of the sort, my dearest prude. You are the only woman I ever intend to marry. Have you any objections? If so, I should like to hear them.'

'I am two years older than you, George.'

'A man is as old as he looks, a woman as she feels. I am quite convinced, Miss Arden, that you feel nineteen years of age, so the disparity rests rather on my shoulders than on yours.'

'You don't look old,' laughed Mab, letting her hand lie in that of her lover's.

'But I feel old--old enough to marry you, my dear. What is your next objection?'

'Your father does not know that you love me.'

'My mother does; Lucy does; and with two women to persuade him, my dear, kind old father will gladly consent to the match.'

'I have no money.'