One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
‘People of distinction indeed! That little man—is your upper
lip underrateing him? … When a lady’s lip is erratically
disdainful, it suggests a misuse of a copious treasury, deserving
to be mulcted, punished—how?—who can say?—that
little man, now that little man, with a lift of his little finger,
could convulse the Bacon Market!’
Mrs. Blathenoy shook. Hearing Colonel Corfe exclaim:
‘Bacon Market!’ she let fly a peal. Then she turned to a
fresh satellite, a round and a ruddy, ‘at her service ever,’ Mr.
Beaves Urmsing, and repeated Fenellan’s words. He, in unfeigned
wonderment at such unsuspected powers, cried: ‘Dear
me!’ and stared at the little man, making the pretty lady’s
face a twinkling dew.
He had missed the Concert. Was it first-rate? Ecstasy answered
in the female voice.
‘Hem’d fool I am to keep appointments!’ he muttered.
She reproved him: ‘Fie, Mr. Urmsing; it’s the making of
them, not the keeping!’
‘Ah, my dear ma’am, if I’d had Blathenoy’s luck when he
made a certain appointment. And he was not so much older
than me? The old ones get the prizes!’
Mr. Beaves Urmsing prompted Colonel Corfe to laugh in
triumph. The colonel’s eyebrows were up in fixity over sleepy
lids. He brightened to propose the conducting of the pretty
woman to the banquet.
‘We shall see them going in,’ said she. ‘Mr. Radnor has a
French cook, who does wonders. But I heard him asking for
Mr. Beaves Urmsing. I’m sure he expected The Marigolds at
his Concert.’
‘Anything to oblige the company,’ said the rustic ready chorister,
clearing his throat.
The lady’s feet were bent in the direction of a grassy knoll,
where sunflowers, tulips, dahlias, peonies, of the sex eclipsed
at a distance its roses and lilies. Fenellan saw Dartrey, still a
centre of the merchantmen, strolling thither.
‘And do you know, your brother is good enough to dine
with us next week, Thursday, down here,’ she murmured. ‘I
could venture to command?—if you are not induced.’
‘Whichever word applies to a faithful subject.’
‘I do so wish your brother had not left the army!’
‘You have one son of Mars.’
Her eyes took the colonel up to cast him down: he was not
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