“Women are handier at picking up appearances;
‘adaptable’ ’s the word. But
the trouble with them is to find out whether they have
the real thing or not. For my part, if you want
the real thing, I believe there are more gentlemen
than gentlewomen in the world; and Batty Langton says
you may breed out the old Adam, but you’ll never
get rid of Eve. . . . But, bless my soul, Dicky,
it’s early days for you to be discussing the
sex!”
Dicky, however, was perfectly serious.
“But I do mean what you call the real
thing, papa. Couldn’t a poor girl be born
so that she had it from the start? Oh, I can’t
tell what I mean exactly—”
“On the contrary, child, you are putting it
uncommonly well; at any rate, you are making me understand
what you mean, and that’s the A and Z of it,
whether in talk or in writing. ’Is there—can
there be—such a thing as a natural born
lady?’ that’s your question, hey?”
The Collector peeled his walnut and smiled to himself.
In other company—Batty Langton’s,
for example—he would have answered cynically
that to him the phenomenon of a natural born lady would
first of all suggest a doubt of her mother’s
virtue. “Well, no,” he answered after
a while; “if you met such a person, and could
trace back her family history, ten to one you’d
discover good blood somewhere in it. Old stocks
fail, die away underground, and, as time goes on, are
forgotten; then one fine day up springs a shoot nobody
can account for. It’s the old sap taking
a fresh start. See?”
Dicky nodded. It would take him some time work
out the theory, but he liked the look of it.
His drowsed young brain—for the hour was
past bedtime—applied it idly to a picture
that stood out, sharp and vivid, from the endless train
of the day’s impressions: the picture of
a girl with quiet, troubled eyes, composed lips, and
hands that beat upon a blazing curtain, not flinching
at the pain. . . . And just then, as it were in
a dream, he beat of her hands echoed in a soft tapping,
the door behind his father opened gently, and Dicky
sat up with a start, wide awake again and staring,
for the girl herself stood in the doorway.
RUTH.
“Hey, what is it?” the Collector demanded,
slewing himself to the half-about in his chair.
The girl stepped forward into the candle-light.
Over her shoulders she wore a faded plaid, the ends
of which her left hand clutched and held together
at her bosom.
“Your Honour’s pardon for troubling,”
she said, and laying a gold coin on the table, drew
back with a slight curtsy. “But I think
you gave me this by mistake; and now is my only chance
to give it back. I am going home in a few minutes.”
The Collector glanced at the coin, and from that to
the girl’s face, on which his eyes lingered.
“Gad, I recollect!” he said. “You
were the wench that pulled off my boots?”
