Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley. C. N. Williamson

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ he said. "Now I come to think of it, I do know some people in Chicago named Trowbridge."

      "Oh, well," said I, "if you must throw me out of anything, do it out of your monoplane. It would be so much more distinguished than out of a mere taxi. And at least, I should have flown first! For you would have to take me up before you could dash me down. And so my dream would have come true."

      "Is it your dream to fly?" he asked, interested.

      "Waking and sleeping," said I. "Ever since I was a tiny child, my very best dream has been that I was flying. Even to dream it asleep is perfectly wonderful and thrilling, worth being born for, just to feel. What must it be when you're actually awake?"

      "You are an enthusiast," said Captain March. "You've got it in your blood. What a pity you're not a boy. You could be a 'flying man' yourself."

      "Well, it's something to know one," said I. "Why, I'd give my hand—the left one—or anyhow, a finger of it—for just an hour in the air. A toe would be too cheap."

      "I'd take you up like a shot, if your people would let you go," said he.

      I gasped with joy. "Oh, would you?" I exclaimed. "Really and truly, I didn't mean to hint! But it would be heaven to go!"

      "Not in my Golden Eagle," he laughed, "for I'd guarantee to bring you safe and sound back to earth again, this side of heaven. I can take up one passenger, though I haven't yet, since I came out here. I haven't met anybody, till now, I particularly cared to ask, and who would particularly have cared to go."

      "And you would care to take me? How kind of you!"

      "Kind to myself. I told you I hadn't any pals in England. You seem to be the stuff they're made of. You'd be a 'mascot,' I'm sure. But your people——"

      "People? I haven't any. At least, a governess I once had said you couldn't call two, 'people.' They must be spoken of as 'persons.' I have only persons who belong to me—just Father and a grown-up sister—a half-sister. They like each other so much that they haven't room to care about me. If the Golden Eagle tipped me out, and smashed me as flat as a paper doll, they wouldn't shed a tear."

      "Poor little child! But maybe you're mistaken. Maybe you are not conceited!"

      "Yes, I am! That's why I notice when I'm not loved. Oh, do take me up. Take me up to-day! I'm all alone in the world. My 'persons' have gone to the Derby, and are staying all night at Epsom with a fat, rich family. I'm left to the mercy of the landlady in our lodgings. I'll even give up the dress at Selfridge's to go with you. That's more than sacrificing a toe!"

      But he had stopped laughing. Instead he had turned quite grave. "I couldn't possibly do it," he said. "I'm awfully sorry to refuse. If you were older, you'd understand that it wouldn't be the right thing for a strange man and a 'foreigner,' to kidnap a little girl and fly off with her into space. Supposing I had an accident? I'm sure I shouldn't—but just supposing. I should never be able to forgive myself. Don't despair though. If you can manage to introduce me as a respectable sort of chap to your father, and he gives his permission——"

      "But how did I get to know you?" I groaned. "I shall have to fib."

      "No, you won't," he said quickly. "I refuse to be fibbed about. You must think of some other way."

      "I'm afraid," I said dolefully, "you agree with that hateful curiosity man about me!"

      "Agree with him? I don't understand."

      "That I'm a pert minx or something. That's what he called me—or a pert piece. It's all the same thing. And I am it. I don't mind telling fibs. I've told lots."

      "You poor little thing!" exclaimed Captain March in a pitying tone, but with the kind of pity the proudest person wouldn't resent, because it really came from his heart. "You seem to have had to fight your own battles. Maybe your mother died when you were very young?"

      "When I was a week young," I said, and suddenly I felt myself choked up.

      "That explains the telling of fibs, you see, and saying you don't mind—though I'm sure you do, when you stop to think of it; because the sort of girl who can be a good pal to a man just can't tell fibs, any more than the man can—if he's worth being a pal to."

      Two boiling hot tears ran down my face, one on each cheek. I couldn't answer. I only looked up at him, feeling all eyes.

      "What a beast I am!" he exclaimed. "I've made you cry!"

      "It's I who am the beast," I managed to gasp out, because I saw he was badly distressed about me, and what he had done. "I'm crying because I'm a little beast. But I'd like not to be."

      "You're not. You're a little soldier. Will you forgive me? I didn't mean to preach."

      "You didn't preach. I expect you'd talk like that to a real soldier—one of those you're captain of. Well, I'll pretend I'm one of those soldiers, and that you're my captain."

      As I spoke, the taxi was drawing up in front of his hotel; but I went straight on with my play, and gave him a military salute. "Thank you, Captain," said I, "for taking an interest. I shan't forget. No more fibs! I'll work for my corporal's stripe!"

      "Good child!" he beamed on me, looking young and happy again. "I'll get you the stripe. I have it ready for you upstairs. I'll bring it down when I bring the money for the lace scarf. Would you rather wait in the taxi, or will you come into the ladies' parlour in the hotel?"

      I thought "parlour" a lovely word, and very French, though I supposed it might be American, too. It was quite an adventure going into an hotel.

      My captain (already I'd begun to think of him as that, since he'd called me a soldier) paid the chauffeur and led me to a big drawing-room where several women sat, so prettily dressed and so trim that they made me feel shabby in my brown holland frock and my blown-about hair. I wondered what he had meant by saying he would bring me a "corporal's stripe," and whether he had meant anything at all, except a passing joke. Somehow, I felt that he had had a definite idea, but I didn't dream it would be anything half so fascinating as it turned out.

      He was not gone more than five or six minutes, and when he appeared again he drew up a chair in front of me, deliberately turning his back to the other occupants of the room, so that they could not see what was going on. Then he made me hold out my hands (I was ashamed of my untidy gloves) and receive in them ten golden sovereigns, which he counted as they dropped into my open palms.

      "I hope you'll never regret bartering away your great-great-grandmother's beautiful lace for this pittance," said he. "And now for the corporal's stripe, if you're going to enlist in my regiment."

      "I am," I cried. "I've enlisted in it already."

      "Here, then," and he took from his coat pocket a little crumpled-up ball of something black and gold, evidently thrust in with haste. "This is one of the chevrons I wore on my sleeve when I was made corporal of cadets at West Point, eleven years ago this very month. You'll laugh, I guess, when I tell you why I brought the thing with me over here. I kept it, out of a sort of—of sentiment, or sentimentality maybe, because I was so dashed proud when I got it. I thought it marked an epoch in my life; that it was a token of success. Well, when I was coming over to your side of the water, to try out the Golden Eagle among all the English flyers, I was silly enough to think if she did any good, I'd stick this poor old stripe СКАЧАТЬ