(3) Who wore a crimson blouse, with vermilion feathers in her hat.
But it was so. Mr. Welwyn waved a hand deprecatingly.
"One has one"s position to consider, dear," he said. "Besides, these poor fellows are not overpaid, I fear, by their employers."
At this, a grim contraction flitted for a moment over Mrs. Welwyn"s florid good-tempered features, and I saw suitable retorts crowding to her lips. But that admirable and exceptional woman--as in later days she proved herself over and over again to be--said nothing. Instead, she smiled indulgently upon her extravagant husband, as upon a child of the largest possible growth, and accepted from him with nothing more than a comical little sigh two magazines which had cost sixpence each.
I now had time to inspect the other two members of the party. They were children. One was a little boy--a vulgar, overdressed, plebian, open-mouthed little boy--and I was not in the least surprised a moment later to hear his mother address him as "Percy." (It had to be either "Percy" or "Douglas.") He was dressed in a tight and rather dusty suit of velveteen, with a crumpled lace collar and a plush jockey-cap. He looked about seven years old, wore curls down to his shoulders, and extracted intermittent nourishment from a long and glutinous stick of licorice.
The other was a girl--one of the prettiest little girls I have ever seen. I was not--and am not--an expert on children"s ages, but I put her down as four years old. She was a plump and well-proportioned child, with an abundance of brown hair, solemn grey eyes, and a friendly smile. She sat curled up on the seat, leaning her head against her mother"s arm, an oasis of contentment and neatness in that dusty railway carriage; and I felt dimly conscious that in due time I should like to possess a little girl of my own like that.
At present she was engaged in industriously staring The Freak out of countenance.
The Freak, not at all embarra.s.sed, smiled back at her. Miss Welwyn broke into an unmaidenly chuckle, and her father put down "The Morning Post."
"Why this hilarity, my daughter?" he enquired.
The little girl, who was apparently accustomed to academically long words, indicated The Freak with a little nod of her head.
"I like that boy," she said frankly. "Not the other. Too big!"
"Baby _dearie_, don"t talk so!" exclaimed Mrs. Welwyn, highly scandalised.
"I apologise for my daughter"s lack of reserve--and discrimination,"
said Mr. Welwyn to me, courteously. "She will not be so sincere and unaffected in twenty years" time, I am afraid. Are you gentlemen going home for the holidays?"
I entered into conversation with him, in the course of which I learned that he was a member of the University, off on vacation. He did not tell me his College.
"Do you get long holi--vacations, sir, at Cambridge?" I asked. "When do you have to be back?"
Youth is not usually observant, but on this occasion even my untutored faculties informed me that Mr. Welwyn was looking suddenly older.
"I am not going back," he said briefly. Then he smiled, a little mechanically, and initiated a discussion on compound locomotives.
Presently his attention was caught by some occurrence at the other end of the compartment. He laughed.
"My daughter appears to be pressing her companionship upon your friend with a distressing lack of modesty," he said.
I turned. The Freak had installed his admirer in the corner-seat beside him, and, having found paper and pencil, was engaged in turning out masterpieces of art at her behest. With a flat suitcase for a desk, he was executing--so far as the Great Eastern Railway would permit him--a portrait of Miss Welwyn herself; his model, pleasantly thrilled, affectionately clasping one of his arms in both of hers and breathing heavily through her small nose, which she held about six inches from the paper.
Finally the likeness was completed and presented.
"Now draw a cow," said Miss Welwyn immediately.
The Freak meekly set to work again.
Then came the inevitable question.
"What"s her name?"
The artist considered.
"Sylvia," he said at length. Sylvia, I knew, was the name of his sister.
"Not like that name!" said the child, more prophetically than she knew.
The Freak apologised and suggested Mary Ann, which so pleased his patroness that she immediately lodged an order for twelve more cows.
The artist executed the commission with unflagging zeal and care, Miss Welwyn following every stroke of the pencil with critical interest and numbering off the animals as they were created.
About this time Master Percy Welwyn, who had fallen into a fitful slumber, woke up and loudly expressed a desire for a commodity which he described as "kike." His mother supplied his needs from a string-bag.
Refreshed and appeased, he slept anew.
Meanwhile the herd of cows had been completed, and The Freak was, immediately set to work to find names for each. The appellation Mary Ann had established a fatal precedent, for The Freak"s employer ruthlessly demanded a double t.i.tle for each of Mary Ann"s successors.
Appealed to for a personal contribution, she shook her small head firmly: to her, evidently, in common with the rest of her s.e.x, destructive criticism of male endeavour was woman"s true sphere in life.
But when the despairing Freak, after submitting Mabel-Maud, Emily-Kate, Elizabeth-Jane, and Maria-Theresa, made a second pathetic appeal for a.s.sistance, the lady so far relented as to suggest "Seener Angler"--a form of address which, though neither bovine nor feminine, seemed to me to come naturally enough from the daughter of a Don, but caused Mr. and Mrs. Welwyn to exchange glances.
At last the tale was completed,--I think the last cow was christened "Bishop"s Stortford," through which station we were pa.s.sing at the moment,--and the exhausted Freak smilingly laid down his pencil. But no one who has ever embarked upon that most comprehensive and interminable of enterprises, the entertainment of a child, will be surprised to hear that Miss Welwyn now laid a pudgy fore-finger upon the first cow, and enquired:--
"Where _that_ cow going?"
"Cambridge," answered The Freak after consideration.
"Next one?"
"London."
"Next one?"
Freak thought again.
"Grandwich," he said.
The round face puckered.
"Not like it. Anuvver place!"
"You think of one," said The Freak boldly.
The small despot promptly named a locality which sounded like "Tumpiton," and pa.s.sed on pitilessly to the next cow.
"Where _that_ one going?" she enquired.
"It is n"t going: it"s coming back," replied The Freak, rather ingeniously.
Strange to say, this answer appeared to satisfy the hitherto insatiable infant, and the game was abruptly abandoned. Picking up The Freak"s pencil, Miss Welwyn projected a seraphic smile upon its owner.
"You give this to Tilly?" she enquired, in a voice which most men know.
"Rather."