More than that, the dogs always protested, noses pointed heavenward. It meant noise, which was always welcome in any form.
"Will you play, Miss Erroll?" inquired Selwyn.
Miss Erroll would play.
"Why do you always call her "Miss Erroll"?" asked Billy. "Why don"t you say "Eileen"?"
Selwyn laughed. "I don"t know, Billy; ask her; perhaps she knows."
Eileen laughed, too, delicately embarra.s.sed and aware of his teasing smile. But Drina, always impressed by formality, said: "Uncle Philip isn"t Eileen"s uncle. People who are not relations say _Miss and Mrs_."
"Are faver and muvver relations?" asked Josephine timidly.
"Y-es--no!--I don"t know," admitted Drina; "_are_ they, Eileen?"
"Why, yes--that is--that is to say--" And turning to Selwyn: "What dreadful questions. _Are_ they relations, Captain Selwyn? Of course they are!"
"They were not before they were married," he said, laughing.
"If you married Eileen," began Billy, "you"d call her Eileen, I suppose."
"Certainly," said Selwyn.
"Why don"t you?"
"That is another thing you must ask her, my son."
"Well, then, Eileen--"
But Miss Erroll was already seated at the nursery piano, and his demands were drowned in a decisive chord which brought the children cl.u.s.tering around her, while their nurses ran among them untying bibs and scrubbing faces and fingers in fresh water.
They sang like seraphs, grouped around the piano, fingers linked behind their backs. First it was "The Vicar of Bray." Then--and the cat fled at the first chord--"Lochleven Castle":
"Put off, put off, And row with speed For now is the time and the hour of need."
Miss Erroll sang, too; her voice leading--a charmingly trained, but childlike voice, of no pretensions, as fresh and unspoiled as the girl herself.
There was an interval after "Castles in the Air"; Eileen sat, with her marvellously white hands resting on the keys, awaiting further suggestion.
"Sing that funny song, Uncle Philip!" pleaded Billy; "you know--the one about:
"She hit him with a shingle Which made his breeches tingle Because he pinched his little baby brother; And he ran down the lane With his pants full of pain.
Oh, a boy"s best friend is his mother!"
"_Billy!_" gasped Miss Erroll.
Selwyn, mortified, said severely: "That is a very dreadful song, Billy--"
"But _you_ taught it to me--"
Eileen swung around on the piano stool, but Selwyn had seized Billy and was promising to bolo him as soon as he wished.
And Eileen, surveying the scene from her perch, thought that Selwyn"s years seemed to depend entirely upon his occupation, for he looked very boyish down there on his knees among the children; and she had not yet forgotten the sunken pallor of his features in the Park--no, nor her own question to him, still unanswered. For she had asked him who that woman was who had been so direct in her smiling salute. And he had not yet replied; probably never would; for she did not expect to ask him again.
Meanwhile the bolo-men were rushing the outposts to the outposts"
intense satisfaction.
"Bang-bang!" repeated Winthrop; "I hit you, Uncle Philip. You are dead, you know!"
"Yes, but here comes another! Fire!" shouted Billy. "Save the flag!
Hurrah! Pound on the piano, Eileen, and pretend it"s cannon."
Chord after chord reverberated through the big sunny room, punctuated by all the cavalry music she had picked up from West Point and her friends in the squadron.
"We can"t get "em up!
We can"t get "em up!
We can"t get "em up In the morning!"
she sang, calmly watching the progress of the battle, until Selwyn disengaged himself from the _melee_ and sank breathlessly into a chair.
"All over," he said, declining further combat. "Play the "Star-spangled Banner," Miss Erroll."
"Boom!" crashed the chord for the sunset gun; then she played the anthem; Selwyn rose, and the children stood up at salute.
The party was over.
Selwyn and Miss Erroll, strolling together out of the nursery and down the stairs, fell unconsciously into the amiable exchange of badinage again; she taunting him with his undignified behaviour, he retorting in kind.
"Anyway that was a perfectly dreadful verse you taught Billy," she concluded.
"Not as dreadful as the chorus," he remarked, wincing.
"You"re exactly like a bad small boy, Captain Selwyn; you look like one now--so sheepish! I"ve seen Gerald attempt to avoid admonition in exactly that fashion."
"How about a jolly brisk walk?" he inquired blandly; "unless you"ve something on. I suppose you have."
"Yes, I have; a tea at the Fanes, a function at the Grays... . Do you know Sudbury Gray? It"s his mother."
They had strolled into the living room--a big, square, sunny place, in golden greens and browns, where a bay-window overlooked the Park.
Kneeling on the cushions of the deep window seat she flattened her delicate nose against the gla.s.s, peering out through the lace hangings.
"Everybody and his family are driving," she said over her shoulder. "The rich and great are cornering the fresh-air supply. It"s interesting, isn"t it, merely to sit here and count coteries! There is Mrs.
Vendenning and Gladys Orchil of the Black Fells set; there is that pretty Mrs. Delmour-Carnes; Newport! Here come some Cedarhurst people--the Fleetwoods. It always surprises one to see them out of the saddle. There is Evelyn Cardwell; she came out when I did; and there comes Sandon Craig with a very old lady--there, in that old-fashioned coach--oh, it is Mrs. Jan Van Elten, senior. What a very, very quaint old lady! I have been presented at court," she added, with a little laugh, "and now all the law has been fulfilled."
For a while she kneeled there, silently intent on the pa.s.sing pageant with all the unconscious curiosity of a child. Presently, without turning: "They speak of the younger set--but what is its limit? So many, so many people! The hunting crowd--the silly crowd--the wealthy sets--the dreadful yellow set--then all those others made out of metals--copper and coal and iron and--" She shrugged her youthful shoulders, still intent on the pa.s.sing show.
"Then there are the intellectuals--the artistic, the illuminated, the musical sorts. I--I wish I knew more of them. They were my father"s friends--some of them." She looked over her shoulder to see where Selwyn was, and whether he was listening; smiled at him, and turned, resting one hand on the window seat. "So many kinds of people," she said, with a shrug.