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She was interested, pressed for details.
‘I am sure you paint awfully well.’ He shook his head. ‘No, I’ve begun several things lately and chucked them up in despair. I always thought that, when I had the time, it would be plain sailing. I have been storing up that idea for years, but now, like everything else, I suppose, I’ve left it too late.’
‘Nothing’s too late – ever,’ said the little lady, with the vehement earnestness of the very young.
He smiled down on her. ‘You think not, child? It’s too late for some things for me.’
And the little lady laughed at him and nick-named him Methuselah.
They were beginning to feel curiously at home in the British Museum. The solid and sympathetic policeman who patrolled the galleries was a man of tact, and on the appearance of the couple he usually found that his onerous duties of guardianship were urgently needed in the adjoining Assyrian room.
One day the man took a bold step. He invited her out to tea!
At first she demurred.
‘I have no time. I am not free. I can come some mornings because the children have French lessons.’
‘Nonsense,’ said the man. ‘You could manage one day. Kill off an aunt or a second cousin or something, but come. We’ll go to a little ABC shop near here, and have buns for tea! I know you must love buns!’
‘Yes, the penny kind with currants!’
‘And a lovely glaze on top –’
‘They are such plump, dear things –’
‘There is something,’ Frank Oliver said solemnly, ‘infinitely comforting about a bun!’
So it was arranged, and the little governess came, wearing quite an expensive hothouse rose in her belt in honour of the occasion.
He had noticed that, of late, she had a strained, worried look, and it was more apparent than ever this afternoon as she poured out the tea at the little marble-topped table.
‘Children been bothering you?’ he asked solicitously.
She shook her head. She had seemed curiously disinclined to talk about the children lately.
‘They’re all right. I never mind them.’
‘Don’t you?’
His sympathetic tone seemed to distress her unwarrantably. ‘Oh, no. It was never that. But – but, indeed, I was lonely. I was indeed!’ Her tone was almost pleading.
He said quickly, touched: ‘Yes, yes, child, I know – I know.’
After a minute’s pause he remarked in a cheerful tone: ‘Do you know, you haven’t even asked my name yet?’
She held up a protesting hand.
‘Please, I don’t want to know it. And don’t ask mine. Let us be just two lonely people who’ve come together and made friends. It makes it so much more wonderful – and – and different.’
He said slowly and thoughtfully: ‘Very well. In an otherwise lonely world we’ll be two people who have just each other.’
It was a little different from her way of putting it, and she seemed to find it difficult to go on with the conversation. Instead, she bent lower and lower over her plate, till only the crown of her hat was visible.
‘That’s rather a nice hat,’ he said by way of restoring her equanimity.
‘I trimmed it myself,’ she informed him proudly. ‘I thought so the moment I saw it,’ he answered, saying the wrong thing with cheerful ignorance.
‘I’m afraid it is not as fashionable as I meant it to be!’
‘I think it’s a perfectly lovely hat,’ he said loyally.
Again constraint settled down upon them. Frank Oliver broke the silence bravely.
‘Little Lady, I didn’t mean to tell you yet, but I can’t help it. I love you. I want you. I loved you from the first moment I saw you standing there in your little black suit. Dearest, if two lonely people were together – why – there would be no more loneliness. And I’d work, oh! how I’d work! I’d paint you. I could, I know I could. Oh! my little girl, I can’t live without you. I can’t indeed –’
His little lady was looking at him very steadily. But what she said was quite the last thing he expected her to say. Very quietly and distinctly she said: ‘You bought that handkerchief!’
He was amazed at this proof of feminine perspicacity, and still more amazed at her remembering it against him now. Surely, after this lapse of time, it might have been forgiven him.
‘Yes, I did,’ he acknowledged humbly. ‘I wanted an excuse to speak to you. Are you very angry?’ He waited meekly for her words of condemnation.
‘I think it was sweet of you!’ cried the little lady with vehemence. ‘Just sweet of you!’ Her voice ended uncertainly.
Frank Oliver went on in his gruff tone:
‘Tell me, child, is it impossible? I know I’m an ugly, rough old fellow . . .’
The Lonely Lady interrupted him.
‘No, you’re not! I wouldn’t have you different, not in any way. I love you just as you are, do you understand? Not because I’m sorry for you, not because I’m alone in the world and want someone to be fond of me and take care of me – but because you’re just – you. Now do you understand?’
‘Is it true?’ he asked half in a whisper.
And she answered steadily: ‘Yes, it’s true –’ The wonder of it overpowered them.
At last he said whimsically: ‘So we’ve fallen upon heaven, dearest!’
‘In an ABC shop,’ she answered in a voice that held tears and laughter.
But terrestrial heavens are short-lived. The little lady started up with an exclamation.
‘I’d no idea how late it was! I must go at once.’
‘I’ll see you home.’
‘No, no, no!’
He was forced to yield to her insistence, and merely accompanied her as far as the Tube station.
‘Goodbye, dearest.’ She clung to his hand with an intensity that he remembered afterwards.
‘Only goodbye till tomorrow,’ he answered cheerfully. ‘Ten o’clock as usual, and we’ll tell each other our names and our histories, and be frightfully practical and prosaic.’
‘Goodbye to – heaven, though,’ she whispered.
