"And do you love her?"
"Oh, yes!" said Faith.
"Anyone else--any other people?" he asked.
"Two little sisters," said Faith, and her voice was eager. She loved to speak of her sisters. "They"re just the dearest little mites," she urged. "They"re twins, just turned six."
The man nodded. "In fact, when you"re at home, you"re happy, eh?" he asked.
"Oh, yes," said Faith again, earnestly. "If only we"d got a little more money, we"d all be quite, quite happy," she added wistfully.
The man said: "Then it"s _you_ who are to be envied, not me!"
She coloured a little. "I don"t understand," she said in a whisper.
He laughed. "Do you know the story of King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid?" he asked.
She shook her head. "No, I don"t think so."
"Well, anybody will tell you--I"m no good at explaining things. Ask your mother when you get home, and then remember that I said that you were Queen Cophetua, and I the Beggar Man."
She echoed his last word incredulously. "Beggar Man! How can you be, with all--this?"
"All this--" he answered dryly--"is all I have, and there is no man so poor as he who has only money. Now do you understand?"
The car had turned a corner and was slowing down. "I think this must be your home," he said, and Faith gave a sigh. It had been such a heavenly drive; why did all beautiful things end so soon?
He opened the door of the car and gave her his hand. "Good-bye, Queen Cophetua," he said. His grey eyes rested on her serious little face. "Or perhaps we won"t say good-bye, as I hope we shall meet again."
The colour surged to her cheeks; a little ripple of laughter flickered into her brown eyes.
"Oh, good-bye, Beggar Man," she answered, and then caught her breath at her own daring. But the man only laughed, and presently the big car was gliding slowly away down the road.
Faith watched it go before she turned indoors. She felt very much as Cinderella must have done when she got back to the kitchen from the Prince"s ball.
Her mother, who had seen the car drive away, met her in the narrow hall; she was a sweet-looking woman with tired eyes and a perpetual cough.
"Well, little girl?" she said, and there was a world of anxiety in her voice.
Faith kissed her, and explained: "I fainted--it was so hot--and he brought me home in his car." Her eyes fell for some reason which she could not understand. "He was very kind," she added.
"And you don"t know who he is?" her mother asked anxiously.
Faith shook her head. "He didn"t tell me, but ... mother--who was King Cophetua?"
They were in the little sitting-room now, where tea was laid ready, and the twins sitting up to table.
Mrs. Ledley was busying herself with the teapot. She answered absently that King Cophetua was only a man in a story, a king who married a beggar maid.
"But it was only a story, Faith," she added earnestly. "One of those stories which couldn"t end happily even if it came true."
Perhaps those tired eyes of hers had seen more than one would have imagined; perhaps she guessed the trend of her daughter"s thoughts.
Faith went on with her tea, but above the noise and chatter of the twins she seemed to hear the soft purr of the wonderful car that had brought her home, and the voice of its owner who had called himself "the Beggar Man."
He was not very young, he was not very good-looking, but his voice and his eyes had been kind, and he had given Faith her first glimpse of the romance for which her youth had been unconsciously hungering.
CHAPTER II
When she met Peg in the morning Faith told her what had happened.
Peg listened sceptically; she seemed more impressed with Faith"s fainting than with its sequence. "I said you ought to give up and have a holiday," she said bluntly.
Faith was vaguely disappointed. She had been so sure that Peg would see the romance of her adventure. She worked badly that day; her fingers seemed all thumbs.
Twice the forewoman spoke to her sharply, and once Peg said with a faint smile: "You"re thinking about that car, aren"t you, Faith?"
The girl flushed sensitively, with quick denial.
"Of course not." But she knew that she was.
She looked at herself anxiously in a tiny gla.s.s before she started home.
For the first time she realized how pale and thin she was, and how poor her clothes. Her heart swelled with a sense of the injustice of life as she trudged along the hot streets.
To-day there was no Beggar Man, no wonderful car gliding up to the kerb to pick her up and carry her the weary way home; such a thing could not happen a second time.
"But it was only a story, Faith...." That was what her mother had said, so perhaps everything wonderful in life was just a story, too--never coming true!
She quickened her steps with a feeling of shame. The day of miracles had pa.s.sed; fairy princes did not go about the East End of London disguised as big, burly men with kind eyes.
Faith turned a corner sharply and came face to face with "the Beggar Man."...
He pulled up short with a conventional apology, then all at once he smiled.
"I was thinking of you a moment ago. It was just here that we met yesterday, wasn"t it?"
"Yes." Faith had flushed like a rose. "I was just thinking of you, too,"
she said, with courage born of her delight.
He looked at her. "Have you had your tea?" he asked in his abrupt manner.
"No, I"m just going home."
"Then we"ll have some tea first; there"s a shop just along the road."