第14章

No answer to that telegram; no arriving daughter.Yet nobody showed any uneasiness or seemed surprised; that is, nobody but Washington.After three days of waiting, he asked Lady Rossmore what she supposed the trouble was.She answered, tranquilly:

"Oh, it's some notion of hers, you never can tell.She's a Sellers, all through--at least in some of her ways; and a Sellers can't tell you beforehand what he's going to do, because he don't know himself till he's done it.She's all right; no occasion to worry about her.When she's ready she'll come or she'll write, and you can't tell which, till it's happened."It turned out to be a letter.It was handed in at that moment, and was received by the mother without trembling hands or feverish eagerness, or any other of the manifestations common in the case of long delayed answers to imperative telegrams.She polished her glasses with tranquility and thoroughness, pleasantly gossiping along, the while, then opened the letter and began to read aloud:

KENILWORTH KEEP, REDGAUNTLET HALL, ROWENA-IVANHOE COLLEGE, THURSDAY.

DEAR PRECIOUS MAMMA ROSSMORE:

Oh, the joy of it!--you can't think.They had always turned up their noses at our pretentions, you know; and I had fought back as well as I could by turning up mine at theirs.They always said it might be something great and fine to be rightful Shadow of an earldom, but to merely be shadow of a shadow, and two or three times removed at that-pooh-pooh! And I always retorted that not to be able to show four generations of American-Colonial-Dutch Peddler-and-Salt-Cod-McAllister-Nobility might be endurable, but to have to confess such an origin--pfew-few! Well, the telegram, it was just a cyclone! The messenger came right into the great Rob Roy Hall of Audience, as excited as he could be, singing out, "Dispatch for Lady Gwendolen Sellers!" and you ought to have seen that simpering chattering assemblage of pinchbeck aristocrats, turn to stone!

I as off in the corner, of course, by myself--it's where Cinderella belongs.I took the telegram and read it, and tried to faint--and Icould have done it if I had had any preparation, but it was all so sudden, you know--but no matter, I did the next best thing: I put my handkerchief to my eyes and fled sobbing to my room, dropping the telegram as I started.I released one corner of my eye a moment--just enough to see the herd swarm for the telegram--and then continued my broken-hearted flight just as happy as a bird.

Then the visits of condolence began, and I had to accept the loan of Miss Augusta-Templeton-Ashmore Hamilton's quarters because the press was so great and there isn't room for three and a cat in mine.And I've been holding a Lodge of Sorrow ever since and defending myself against people's attempts to claim kin.And do you know, the very first girl to fetch her tears and sympathy to my market was that foolish Skimperton girl who has always snubbed me so shamefully and claimed lordship and precedence of the whole college because some ancestor of hers, some time or other, was a McAllister.Why it was like the bottom bird in the menagerie putting on airs because its head ancestor was a pterodactyl.

But the ger-reatest triumph of all was-guess.But you'll never.

This is it.That little fool and two others have always been fussing and fretting over which was entitled to precedence--by rank, you know.They've nearly starved themselves at it; for each claimed the right to take precedence of all the college in leaving the table, and so neither of them ever finished her dinner, but broke off in the middle and tried to get out ahead of the others.Well, after my first day's grief and seclusion--I was fixing up a mourning dress you see--I appeared at the public table again, and then--what do you think? Those three fluffy goslings sat there contentedly, and squared up the long famine--lapped and lapped, munched and munched, ate and ate, till the gravy appeared in their eyes--humbly waiting for the Lady Gwendolen to take precedence and move out first, you see!

Oh, yes, I've been having a darling good time.And do you know, not one of these collegians has had the cruelty to ask me how I came by my new name.With some, this is due to charity, but with the others it isn't.They refrain, not from native kindness but from educated discretion.I educated them.

Well, as soon as I shall have settled up what's left of the old scores and snuffed up a few more of those pleasantly intoxicating clouds of incense.I shall pack and depart homeward.Tell papa Iam as fond of him as I am of my new name.I couldn't put it stronger than that.What an inspiration it was! But inspirations come easy to him.

These, from your loving daughter, GWENDOLEN.

Hawkins reached for the letter and glanced over it.

"Good hand," he said, "and full of confidence and animation, and goes racing right along.She's bright--that's plain.""Oh, they're all bright--the Sellerses.Anyway, they would be, if there were any.Even those poor Latherses would have been bright if they had been Sellerses; I mean full blood.Of course they had a Sellers strain in them--a big strain of it, too--but being a Bland dollar don't make it a dollar just the same."The seventh day after the date of the telegram Washington came dreaming down to breakfast and was set wide awake by an electrical spasm of pleasure.

Here was the most beautiful young creature he had ever seen in his life.