Page:E Nesbit - The Literary Sense.djvu/83

Rh pile': it was in pork, and I always wish he'd made it of something else, even canned fruit would be better, but that doesn't matter— We didn't know anyone here, of course, and directly we got here, he was wired for—business—and he had to go home again."

"But surely he didn't leave you without money."

Her little foot tapped the gravel impatiently. "I'm coming to that," she said. "Of course he didn't. He told me to stay on at the hotel, and I did—and then one night when I was at the theatre my maid—a horrid French thing we got in Paris—packed up all my trunks and took all my money, and paid the bill, and went. The hotel folks let her go—I can't think how people can be so silly. But they wouldn't let me stay, and I wired to papa—and there was no answer, and I don't know whatever's the matter with him. I know it all sounds as if I was making it up as I go along—"

She stopped short, and looked at him through the dusk. He did not speak, but whatever she saw in his face it satisfied her. She said again: "You are kind."