“There’s the second post,” said Delia with a sigh. “More duns, I suppose.”
She went to the door just as the postman rapped his double knock, and returned immediately with two letters.
“Both for me, but – I don’t know the first at all.”
“It’s Haldane, putting you off, of course.”
“Oh, Clytie, don’t,” quickly answered Delia, to whom such an eventuality would have constituted the keenest of disappointments. “No; it’s all right,” tremulously tearing open both envelopes. “But – they’re not for me at all, they’re for you. They’re about typing, but they’re both directed ‘Miss Calmour.’”
“Let’s see.” Then reading: “‘Madam, – you have been mentioned to me by Mr Wagram Wagram – ’ Ah, that’s all right.” And she went on with the letter, which ran to the effect that the writer wanted the MS of a novel of 80,000 words typed, asking her terms, and throwing out a promise that, if such were satisfactory, he would be happy to entrust her with all his work. The name was a fairly well-known one.
“Now, what shall I ask him? If I say a shilling a thousand, there’s a four-pound job. But, then, he may answer he can get it done for tenpence, which is quite true. If he had seen me I’d ask him fifteen pence.”
“Do it anyhow. You can always come down.”
“No fear; not through the post. Well, I’ll ask him a bob, and chance it.”
“He could well afford it. He must be making pots of money, according to the newspapers.”
“M – yes – according to the newspapers. Now, then, Delia, here we are. ‘Mr Wagram Wagram’ again. It’s a she this time, and starts on tenpence. Knows her way about evidently; hints at ninepence because of the inconvenience of postage, and it’s only two short stories of 4000 apiece. Well, I’ll take her on, too, at tenpence. You can’t haggle up our own sweet sex. Well done, Wagram Wagram. It’s brickish of him; and I’d just begun to think he’d forgotten what he said, or had only said it for something to say. Four quid, and a trifle over; that’ll help stave off Wells. Just in the nick of time too.”
“Yes; isn’t it good of him?”
“Who? Wells? Oh, Wagram. Yes. Quite so. It is rather. Good job you went over to Hilversea the other day, Delia; it may have reminded him.”
“I don’t think he’d ever have forgotten. Oh, but it was lovely there – the whole thing. It was like being in another atmosphere, another world.”
Clytie, the shrewd, the practical, put her head a little to one side as she scrutinised her sister.
“Make it one then, dear; make it yours. You’ve got some sort of show at last, if you only work it right. I’m sorry, though, we let Bob into the scheme. What asses we were, or rather I was. One oughtn’t so much as to have mentioned a thing of that sort in his hearing.”
“No, indeed. But the idea is too ridiculous for anything.”
“Because he is Wagram Wagram of Hilversea. Supposing he were Wagram Wagram of nowhere? What then, Delia?”
“Ah!”
Clytie shook her pretty head slightly and smiled to herself. The quick eagerness of the exclamation, the soft look that came into her sister’s eyes, told her all there was to tell.
“You’re handicapped,” she said. “You can’t play the part. You’re handicapped by genuineness. Never mind; even that may count as an advantage.”
Chapter Ten.
At Haldane’s
Delia was a quick and graceful cyclist, and now on her beautiful new machine she seemed to fly as she skimmed the level and well-kept roads; and although she covered the eleven miles intervening between Bassingham and Haldane’s house – a pleasant country box – in a little over the hour she was neither hot nor blown. Yvonne was strolling on the lawn, and greeted her with great cordiality.
“Is that your post-card collection?” she said as she helped to unstrap three large albums from the carrier. “Why, it must be as big as mine. I am longing to see it. We’ll overhaul it after lunch down there,” indicating a spreading tree by the stream which gave forth abundant shade.
“What a lovely kitten,” cried Delia.
“Isn’t it?” said Yvonne, picking it up. “Only it isn’t a kitten; it’s full-grown. It’s a kind that never grows large – do you, Poogie?” she added lovingly, stroking the beautiful little animal, which nestled to her, purring contentedly. It was of the Angora type, with small, lynxlike ears, thick, rich fur with regular markings, and a spreading tail. “We got it in Switzerland. I wasn’t going to lose the chance. You might go all your life and never see another like it, so I made father buy it for me. It follows me like a dog. If I walk up and down it walks up and down with me. Look.”
“How sweet,” said Delia, watching the little creature as, with tail erect, it paced daintily beside them. “I do love them like that.”
“So do I, and so does father. I believe if anything happened to Poogie he’d be as sick about it as I would.”
“I don’t wonder.” And, all unconsciously, the speaker had more completely won Yvonne’s heart.
Even the shyest – and Delia was not addicted to shyness – would have felt at ease as they sat down, a party of three. Haldane had a frank, easy way with him towards those he did not dislike, calculated to make them feel at home, especially in the case of a bright, pretty, and intelligent girl, and soon all three were chatting and laughing as if they had known each other all their lives. Delia was at her best, and talked intelligently and well, as she could do when temporarily emancipated from the depressing atmosphere of Siege House.
“What a beautiful place Hilversea Court is, Mr Haldane,” she said presently.
“Yes. Too big for me. Very good as a show place; but for living in give me a box like this.”
The said “box” at that moment looked out upon a wondrously lovely bit of summer landscape – great clouds of vivid foliage against the blue sky; intervening seas of meadow, golden with spangling buttercups; and in the immediate foreground a stretch of green lawn, flower-bedded, and tuneful with the murmur of bees, blending with the plash of the stream beyond. Within, all was correspondingly bright and cheerful.
“Father says Hilversea Court exists for the sole purpose of framing old Mr Wagram,” said Yvonne. “That Grandisonian, old-world look about him wouldn’t be in keeping with anything more modern.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” assented Haldane. “But, as I said before – never to the Wagrams, though – the place is much too big to live in.”
“I suppose they are passionately attached to it?” asked Delia.
“That’s the word. If they have a weakness it is a conviction that the world revolves round Hilversea, and this conviction Wagram holds, if possible, a trifle more firmly than the old Squire.”
“Really?”
“Yes; but he acts in keeping with the idea. There isn’t a better looked after place – well, in the world, I may safely say. All the people on it simply idolise him, especially since the old Squire turned over the whole management to him.”
“How perfectly delightful,” pronounced Delia. “I can well imagine it, for a more kind and considerate man can hardly exist. Fancy, that splendid new bicycle I’m riding he insisted on sending me in place of mine that got smashed up by the gnu – an old rattle-trap of a thing that would hardly have fetched its value in old iron.”
“Yes; that’s just the sort of thing he would do,” said Yvonne.
Then Delia went on to tell about the typewriting work he had been instrumental in procuring for her sister; and they talked Wagram for some time longer, in such wise as should have