Daylight brought no comforting answer to the question. Breakfast failedto manufacture an easy mind. Sally got off the train, at the GrandCentral station in a state of remorseful concern. She declined the offerof Mr. Carmyle to drive her to the boarding-house, and started to walkthere, hoping that the crisp morning air would effect a cure.
She wondered now how she could ever have looked with approval on herrash act. She wondered what demon of interference and meddling hadpossessed her, to make her blunder into people's lives, upsetting them.She wondered that she was allowed to go around loose. She was nothingmore nor less than a menace to society. Here was an estimable young man,obviously the sort of young man who would always have to be assistedthrough life by his relatives, and she had deliberately egged him onto wreck his prospects. She blushed hotly as she remembered that madwireless she had sent him from the boat.
Miserable Ginger! She pictured him, his little stock of money gone,wandering foot-sore about London, seeking in vain for work; forcinghimself to call on Uncle Donald; being thrown down the front steps byhaughty footmen; sleeping on the Embankment; gazing into the dark watersof the Thames with the stare of hopelessness; climbing to the parapetand...
"Ugh!" said Sally.
She had arrived at the door of the boarding-house, and Mrs. Meecher wasregarding her with welcoming eyes, little knowing that to all practicalintents and purposes she had slain in his prime a red-headed youngman of amiable manners and--when not ill-advised by meddling, muddlingfemales--of excellent behaviour.
Mrs. Meecher was friendly and garrulous. Variety, the journal which,next to the dog Toto, was the thing she loved best in the world, hadinformed her on the Friday morning that Mr. Foster's play had got overbig in Detroit, and that Miss Doland had made every kind of hit. It wasnot often that the old alumni of the boarding-house forced theirway after this fashion into the Hall of Fame, and, according to Mrs.Meecher, the establishment was ringing with the news. That blue ribbonround Toto's neck was worn in honour of the triumph. There was also,though you could not see it, a chicken dinner in Toto's interior, by wayof further celebration.
And was it true that Mr. Fillmore had bought the piece? A great man, wasMrs. Meecher's verdict. Mr. Faucitt had always said so...
"Oh, how is Mr. Faucitt?" Sally asked, reproaching herself for havingallowed the pressure of other matters to drive all thoughts of her latepatient from her mind.
"He's gone," said Mrs. Meecher with such relish that to Sally, in hermorbid condition, the words had only one meaning. She turned white andclutched at the banisters.
"Gone!"
"To England," added Mrs. Meecher. Sally was vastly relieved.
"Oh, I thought you meant..."
"Oh no, not that." Mrs. Meecher sighed, for she had been a littledisappointed in the old gentleman, who started out as such a promisinginvalid, only to fall away into the dullness of robust health once more."He's well enough. I never seen anybody better. You'd think," said Mrs.Meecher, bearing up with difficulty under her grievance, "you'dthink this here new Spanish influenza was a sort of a tonic orsomep'n, the way he looks now. Of course," she added, trying to findjustification for a respected lodger, "he's had good news. His brother'sdead."
"What!"
"Not, I don't mean, that that was good news, far from it, though, cometo think of it, all flesh is as grass and we all got to be prepared forsomep'n of the sort breaking loose...but it seems this here new brotherof his--I didn't know he'd a brother, and I don't suppose you knew hehad a brother. Men are secretive, ain't they!--this brother of hishas left him a parcel of money, and Mr. Faucitt he had to get on theWednesday boat quick as he could and go right over to the other side tolook after things. Wind up the estate, I believe they call it. Left in aawful hurry, he did. Sent his love to you and said he'd write. Funny himhaving a brother, now, wasn't it? Not," said Mrs. Meecher, at heart areasonable woman, "that folks don't have brothers. I got two myself, onein Portland, Oregon, and the other goodness knows where he is. But whatI'm trying to say..."
Sally disengaged herself, and went up to her room. For a brief while theexcitement which comes of hearing good news about those of whom we arefond acted as a stimulant, and she felt almost cheerful. Dear old Mr.Faucitt. She was sorry for his brother, of course, though she had neverhad the pleasure of his acquaintance and had only just heard that he hadever existed; but it was nice to think that her old friend's remainingyears would be years of affluence.
Presently, however, she found her thoughts wandering back into theirmelancholy groove. She threw herself wearily on the bed. She was tiredafter her bad night.
But she could not sleep. Remorse kept her awake. Besides, she could hearMrs. Meecher prowling disturbingly about the house, apparently in searchof someone, her progress indicated by creaking boards and the strenuousyapping of Toto.
Sally turned restlessly, and, having turned remained for a long instanttransfixed and rigid. She had seen something, and what she had seenwas enough to surprise any girl in the privacy of her bedroom. Fromunderneath the bed there peeped coyly forth an undeniably masculine shoeand six inches of a grey trouser-leg.
Sally bounded to the floor. She was a girl of courage, and she meant toprobe this matter thoroughly.
"What are you doing under my bed?"
The question was a reasonable one, and evidently seemed to the intruderto deserve an answer. There was a muffled sneeze, and he began to crawlout.
The shoe came first. Then the legs. Then a sturdy body in a dusty coat.And finally there flashed on Sally's fascinated gaze a head of so nearlythe maximum redness that it could only belong to one person in theworld.
"Ginger!"
Mr. Lancelot Kemp, on all fours, blinked up at her.
"Oh, hullo!" he said.
CHAPTER IX. GINGER BECOMES A RIGHT-HAND MAN