Page:The Yellow Book - 06.djvu/126

 honour bright!—in reply to her distrustful look, adding: "You'll write and tell me how he is!"

Jeanet waved her hand from the top of her bus, and Dick bared his head as to a duchess, and invented a lie on the spur of the moment in reply to the enthusiastic query of an artist friend who had seen the parting: "Who's the girl with the singular face?" Dick's lies were always entertaining, and he never made the mistake of lying about things that might be found out.

The cheque arrived, the Captain's spirits rose with his renewed health, and Jeanet came into his room one evening with an air of triumph. Her thin checks were flushed with eagerness, and she held something carefully wrapped up in tissue paper. The old man laid down his pipe and his well-thumbed Sterne with a sigh, and watched her with an amused twinkle in his faded old eyes. Jeanet undid it carefully, and displayed a gorgeous scarlet-bound book with gilt-edged leaves.

"See, Captain," handing it to him with a little air of solemnity, as if she were investing him with some strange order, "here it is!"

He, falling into her mood, took it solemnly, turned to the back—no title, just a square of gilt lines; opened it—clean unwritten pages.

Jeanet had been watching his face, and a delighted smile broke over hers at his look of wondering question.

"An album, Jeanette? I must do you a little sketch in it!"

"No, Captain, it is not for me; it is for you. It's for the book. I got it on purpose, my own self, from Sophy's young man—he's a bookbinder; and now you must really and truly begin. I m sorry it's not purple and gold, with those lovely clasps, you said; but afterwards, when it's written, you can have one like that." And, sliding up to his chair, and flicking a speck of dust off his shabby coat,