I
must ask you to behave as a gentleman should. Excuse me. I merely
mention it in case.--A. C."
Infamous Leek! Here was at any rate one explanation of a mysterious
little typewriter which the valet had always carried, but which Priam
had left at Selwood Terrace.
Priam glanced at the photograph in the pocket-book; and also, strange to
say, at the _Telegraph_.
A lady with three children burst into the drawing-room, and instantly
occupied the whole of it; the children cried "Mathaw!" "Mathah!"
"Mathaw!" in shrill tones of varied joy. As one of the gentlewomen
passed near him, he asked modestly--
"How much, please?"
She dropped a flake of paper on to his table without arresting her
course, and said warningly:
"You pay at the desk."
When he hit on the desk, which was hidden behind a screen of elm-trees,
he had to face a true aristocrat--and not in muslins, either. If the
others were the daughters of earls, this was the authentic countess in a
tea-gown.
He put down Leek's sovereign.
"Haven't you anything smaller?" snapped the countess.
"I'm sorry I haven't," he replied.
She picked up the sovereign scornfully, and turned it over.
"It's very awkward," she muttered.
Then she unlocked two drawers, and unwillingly gave him eighteen and
sixpence in silver and copper, without another word and without looking
at him.
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