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Winter</title> -<link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> -<style type="text/css"> - - P { margin-top: .75em; - margin-bottom: .75em; - } - P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} - P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } - .GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; } - H1, H2 { - text-align: center; - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 2em; - } - H3, H4, H5 { - text-align: center; - margin-top: 1em; - margin-bottom: 1em; - } - BODY{margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; - } - table { border-collapse: collapse; } -table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} - td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} - td p { margin: 0.2em; } - .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ - - .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} - - .pagenum {position: absolute; - left: 92%; - font-size: small; - text-align: right; - font-weight: normal; - color: gray; - } - img { border: none; } - img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } - p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; } - p.gutlist { margin-top: 0.1em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-left: 2em; text-indent: -1em} - div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } - div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;} - div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; - border-top: 1px solid; } - div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; - border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} - div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; - margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; - border-bottom: 1px solid; } - div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; - margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; - border-bottom: 1px solid;} - div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; - border-top: 1px solid; } - .citation {vertical-align: super; - font-size: .5em; - text-decoration: none;} - span.red { color: red; } - body {background-color: #ffffc0; } - img.floatleft { float: left; - margin-right: 1em; - margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } - img.floatright { float: right; - margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; - margin-bottom: 0.5em; } - img.clearcenter {display: block; - margin-left: auto; - margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; - margin-bottom: 0.5em} - div.figure {display: inline;} - div.figurecaption { text-align: center; - font-weight: bold; - margin-top: 0.5em; - margin-bottom: 1em} - - </style> - -</head> -<body> - -<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold;'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Mignon, by J. S. Winter</div> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Mignon<br /> -or, Bootles’ Baby</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: J. S. Winter</div> -<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Release Date: February 21, 2021 [eBook #64603]</div> -<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> -<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Les Bowler</div> -<div style='margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MIGNON ***</div> - -<h1>MIGNON<br /> -<span class="GutSmall">OR, BOOTLES’ BABY</span></h1> -<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">A -Novelette</span></p> -<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">By</span> J. S. -Winter</p> -<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">AUTHOR OF -“CAVALRY LIFE” AND “REGIMENTAL -LEGENDS”</span></p> - -<div class="gapspace"> </div> -<p style="text-align: center"><span -class="GutSmall">ILLUSTRATED</span></p> - -<div class="gapdoubleline"> </div> -<blockquote><p style="text-align: center"><i>Books you may hold -readily in your hand are the most useful</i>, <i>after -all</i></p> -<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Dr. -Johnson</span></p> -</blockquote> - -<div class="gapspace"> </div> -<p style="text-align: center">NEW YORK</p> -<p style="text-align: center">HARPER & BROTHERS, -PUBLISHERS</p> -<p style="text-align: center">1885</p> -<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> -<table> -<tr> -<td><p>“Let’s go and have a look at it.”</p> -</td> -<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a -href="#page17">17</a></span></p> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td><p>Bootles, proud of his new accomplishment, lifted the child -awkwardly in his arms.</p> -</td> -<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a -href="#page21">21</a></span></p> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td><p>“I can’t condemn that helpless thing to the -workhouse.”</p> -</td> -<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a -href="#page33">33</a></span></p> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td><p>Mignon’s own–illustration.</p> -</td> -<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a -href="#page37">37</a></span></p> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td><p>Mrs. Gray rose and went close to him, laying her hand upon -his arm.</p> -</td> -<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a -href="#page43">43</a></span></p> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td><p>But Lacy was already on the ground, and caught Miss Mignon -out of harm’s way.</p> -</td> -<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a -href="#page55">55</a></span></p> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td><p>“What a lot of medals you’ve got!”</p> -</td> -<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a -href="#page59">59</a></span></p> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td><p>In another moment they had drawn up at the great gothic -doorway.</p> -</td> -<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a -href="#page73">73</a></span></p> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td><p>Lacy was occupied in making desperate love to the Russian -lady.</p> -</td> -<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a -href="#page83">83</a></span></p> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td><p>Then with one imploring backward look she went away and -left him alone.</p> -</td> -<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a -href="#page89">89</a></span></p> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td><p>He dropped into a chair and took her in his arms.</p> -</td> -<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a -href="#page93">93</a></span></p> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td><p>The swarming crowd round the other was watching a more -exciting race than that which they had just witnessed.</p> -</td> -<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a -href="#page103">103</a></span></p> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td><p>A race between life and death.</p> -</td> -<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a -href="#page107">107</a></span></p> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td><p>Bootles watched them—the two things he loved best on -earth.</p> -</td> -<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a -href="#page117">117</a></span></p> -</td> -</tr> -</table> -<h2><a name="page3"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 3</span>CHAPTER -I.</h2> -<p><span class="smcap">It</span> was considerably after midnight -when one of three officers seated at a whist-table in the -mess-room of the Cavalry Barracks at Idleminster, where the -Scarlet Lancers were quartered, called out, “Bootles, come -and take a hand—there’s a good chap.”</p> -<p>Captain Algernon Ferrers, more commonly known as -“Bootles,” looked up.</p> -<p>“I don’t mind if I do,” he said, rising and -moving towards them. “What do you want me to -do? Who’s my partner?”</p> -<p>The three other men stared at one another in surprise, for -Bootles was one of the best whist-players in the regiment, and in -an ordinary way would as soon have thought of counting honors as -of settling the questions of partners other than by cutting, -except in the case of a revenge.</p> -<p><a name="page4"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -4</span>“Why, take a card, of course, my friend,” -laughed Lacy, in a ridiculously soft voice. Lacy was a -recent importation from the White Dragoons, and had taken -possession of the place left vacant in Bootles’s every-day -life by Scott Laurie’s marriage.</p> -<p>“Ah, yes; to be sure—cut, of course. I -believe,” said Bootles, looking at the three faces before -him in an uncertain way—“I believe I’ve got a -headache.”</p> -<p>“Oh, nothing like whist for a headache,” answered -Hartog, turning up the last card. “Ace of -diamonds.” However, after stumbling through one -game—after twice trumping his partner’s trick, a -revoke, and several such like blunders—he rose to his -feet.</p> -<p>“It’s no use, you fellows; I’m no good -to-night—I can’t even see the cards. Get some -one to take my place and make a fresh start.”</p> -<p>“Why, you’re ill, Bootles,” cried -Preston. “What is it?”</p> -<p>“It’s a devil of a headache,” answered -Bootles, promptly. “Here’s Miles—the very -man. Goodnight.”</p> -<p>“Good-night,” called the fellows after him. -Then they settled down to their game, and Preston dealt.</p> -<p><a name="page5"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -5</span>“Never saw Bootles seedy before,” said -Lacy.</p> -<p>“Oh yes; he gets these headaches sometimes,” -answered Hartog. “Not often, though. Miles, -your lead.”</p> -<p>Meantime Bootles went wearily away, almost feeling his road -under the veranda of the mess-rooms, along the broad -<i>pavé</i> in front of the officers’ quarters, and -up the wide flight of stone steps to his rooms facing the green -of the barrack square. Being the senior captain, with only -one bachelor field-officer in the regiment, he had two large and -pleasant rooms, not very grandly furnished, for, though a rich -man, he was not an extravagant one, and saw no fun in having -costly goods and chattels to be at the tender mercies of soldier -servants; but they were neat, clean, and comfortable, with a -sufficiency of great easy travelling-chairs, plenty of fur rugs, -and lots of pretty little pictures and knickknacks.</p> -<p>The fire in his sitting-room was fast dying out, but a bright -and cheerful blaze illumined his sleeping-room, shining on the -brass knobs of his cot, on the silver ornamentations at the -corners of his dressing-case, on three or four scent bottles on -the tall cretonne-petticoated toilette table, and on the tired -but resplendent figure of Bootles himself.</p> -<p><a name="page6"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 6</span>He -dragged the big chair pretty near to the fire, and dropped into -it with a sigh of relief, absolutely too sick and weary to think -about getting into bed just then. As Hartog had said, -sometimes these headaches seized him, but it did not happen -often; in fact, he had not had one for more than a -year—quite often enough, he said.</p> -<p>Well, he had been lying in the big and easy chair, his eyes -shut and his hands hanging idly over the broad straps which -served for arms, for perhaps half an hour, when to his surprise -he heard a soft rustling movement behind him. His first and -not unnatural thought was that the fellows had come to draw him, -so, without moving, he called out, “Oh! confound it all, -don’t come boring a poor devil with a headache. By -Jove, it’s cruelty to animals, neither more nor -less.”</p> -<p>The soft rustling ceased, and Bootles closed his eyes again, -with a devout prayer that they would, in response to this appeal, -take themselves off. But presently it began again, -accompanied by a sound which made his heart jump almost into his -mouth, and beat so furiously as to be simply suffocating. -It stopped—was -repeated—“<i>The</i>—DEVIL,” muttered -Bootles.</p> -<p>But it was not the devil at all—more like a <a -name="page7"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 7</span>little angel, -in truth; for after a moment’s irresolution he sprang from -his chair and faced the horror behind him. It really was a -horror to him, for there, sitting up among the pillows of the -cot, with the clothes pushed back, was a baby, a baby whose short -golden curls shone in the fire-light—a little child dressed -in white, with a pair of wide-open, wondering eyes, as bright as -stars and as blue as sapphires.</p> -<p>Bootles stood in dismay staring at it.</p> -<p>“Where, in the name of all that’s wonderful, did -<i>you</i> come from?” he asked aloud, keeping at a safe -distance lest it should suddenly start howling.</p> -<p>But the little stranger did not howl; on the contrary, as its -bewildered eyes fell upon Bootles’s resplendent figure, his -gold-laced scarlet jacket and gold-embroidered waistcoat of white -velvet, his gold-laced overalls and jingling spurs, it stretched -out its little arms and cried, “Boo, boo, -boo—!”</p> -<p>Bootles took a step back in his surprise, and his headache -vanished as if by magic.</p> -<p>“By—Jove!” he exclaimed.</p> -<p>“Boo—boo—boo!” crowed the usurper of -the cot, cheerily.</p> -<p>Bootles went a step nearer. “Why, you’re a -<a name="page8"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 8</span>queer little -beggar,” he remarked. “Where did you come from, -eh?”</p> -<p>The “queer little beggar” suddenly changed its -tone, and started another system of crowing more triumphant and -cheery than the first.</p> -<p>“Chucka—chucka—chucka—chuck!” it -went.</p> -<p>Bootles began to laugh. “Can’t talk, -hey? Well, what do you want?” as it struggled -fiercely to rise, and stretched out its small arms more -impatiently than before. “Want to be lifted up, -hey? Oh, but dash it,” scratching his head -perplexedly, “I can’t lift you up, you know; -it’s out of the question—impossible. By Jove, I -might let you drop and smash you!”</p> -<p>“Chucka—chucka—chucka! -Boo—oo—oo!” gobbled the baby, as if it were the -best joke in the world.</p> -<p>Bootles positively roared.</p> -<p>“You don’t mind? Well, come along, -then,” approaching very gingerly, and wondering where he -should begin to get hold of it, so to speak.</p> -<p>The baby soon settled that question, holding out its arms -towards his neck. Then somehow he gathered it up and -carried it in doubt and trepidation to the big chair by the fire, -where the creature sat contentedly upon his knee, the curly -golden <a name="page9"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 9</span>head -resting against his scarlet jacket, the soft fingers of one baby -hand tight twined round one of his, the other picking and -wandering aimlessly about the scrolls and curves of the gold -embroidery on his waistcoat.</p> -<p>“By Jove! you’re a jolly little chap,” said -Bootles, just as if it could understand him. “But the -question is, where did you come from, and what’s to be done -with you? You can’t stop here, you know.”</p> -<p>The babe’s big blue eyes raised themselves to his, and -the fingers which had been twined round his made a grab at his -watch-chain.</p> -<p>“Gar—gar—garr—rah!” it remarked, -in such evident delight that Bootles laughed again.</p> -<p>“Oh, you like it, do you? Well, you’re a -queer little beggar; no mistake about that. I wonder whom -you belong to, and where you live when you are at home? -Can’t be a barrack child—too dainty-looking and not -slobbery enough. And this dress”—taking hold of -the richly embroidered white skirt—“this must have -cost a lot; and it’s all lace too.”</p> -<p>He knew what embroidery cost by his own mess waistcoats and -his tunics. Then not only was the dress of the child of a -very costly description, but <a name="page10"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 10</span>its sleeves were tied up with -Cambridge blue ribbons that were evidently new, and its waist was -encircled by a broad sash of the same material and tint. -Altogether it was just such a child as he was occasionally called -upon to admire in the houses of his married brother officers; yet -that any lady in the regiment would lend her baby for a whole -night to a set of harum-scarum young fellows for the purpose of -playing a trick on a brother officer was manifestly absurd. -And besides that, Bootles was so good-natured and such a favorite -with the ladies of the regiment that he thought he knew all their -babies by sight, and he became afraid that this one was indeed a -little stranger in the land, welcome or unwelcome.</p> -<p>Yet if it was the fellows’ doing, where had they got -it? And if it was not the fellows’ doing, why should -any one leave a baby asleep in his cot? The whole thing was -inexplicable.</p> -<p>Just then the child, in playing with his chain, slipped a -little on the smooth cloth of his overalls, and Bootles, with a -“Whoa! whoa, my lad!” hauled it up again. In -doing so he felt a piece of paper rustle somewhere about the -embroidered skirt.</p> -<p>“A note. This grows melodramatic,” said <a -name="page11"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 11</span>Bootles, -craning his head to find it. “Oh, here we are! -Now we shall see.”</p> -<p>The note was written in a firm, large, yet thoroughly feminine -hand, and ran thus:</p> -<blockquote><p>“You will not absolve me from my oath of -secrecy respecting our marriage, though now that I have offended -you, I may starve or go to the work-house. I cannot break -my oath, though you have broken <i>all</i> yours, but I am -determined that you <i>shall</i> acknowledge your child. I -am going to leave her to-night in your rooms with her -clothes. By midnight I shall be out of the country. I -do this because I have obtained a good situation, and because -when I reach my destination I shall have spent my last -shilling. I give you fair warning, however, that if you -desert the child, or fail to acknowledge her, I will break my -oath and proclaim our marriage. If you engage a nurse she -will not be much trouble. She is a good and sweet-tempered -child, and I have called her Mary, after your dear mother. -Oh, how she would pity me if she could see me now! -Farewell.”</p> -</blockquote> -<p>From that moment Bootles absolved “the fellows” -from any share in the affair; but what to do with the child he -had not the least idea.</p> -<p><a name="page12"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -12</span>“It is the very devil,” he said aloud, -watching the busy fingers still playing with his chain.</p> -<p>He gathered it awkwardly in his arms, and rose to look for the -clothing spoken of in the letter. Yes, there it was, a -parcel of goodly size, wrapped in a stout brown paper cover, and -on the chair beside his cot lay the out-door garments of a young -child—a white coat bordered with fur, a fur-trimmed cap, -and some other things, which Bootles did not quite understand the -use of; white wool fingerless gloves (at least he did not know -what else they could be), and some longer things of the same -class, like stockings without feet.</p> -<p>Bootles shook his head bewilderingly. “Mother -means it to stop; <i>I</i> don’t know what to do,” he -said, helplessly.</p> -<p>It occurred to him then that perhaps some of the fellows might -be able to make a suggestion. He did not know what to do -with the child for the night, nor, for the matter of that, what -to do with it for the moment. He had the sense not to take -it out into the chill midnight air, and when he attempted to put -it back into the cot it rebelled, clinging to his watch-chain -with might and main.</p> -<p>“Well, have it then,” he said, slipping it -off.</p> -<p>The baby, pleased with the glittering toy, set up <a -name="page13"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 13</span>a cry of -delight, and Bootles took the opportunity of slipping out. -He entered the anteroom with a very rueful face, finding it -pretty much as he had left it. Lacy was the first to catch -sight of him.</p> -<p>“Halloo, Bootles, what’s the mat-tah?” he -asked. “Is your head worse?”</p> -<p>“My head? Oh, I forgot all about it,” -Bootles replied. “But, I say, I’m in a -mess. There’s a baby in my room.”</p> -<p>“A <span class="GutSmall">WHAT</span>?” they -cried, with one voice.</p> -<p>“A baby,” repeated Bootles, dismally.</p> -<p>“Al—ive?” asked Lacy, with his head on one -side.</p> -<p>“Alive! Oh, very, very much so, and means to stop, -for it has brought its entire wardrobe and a letter of -introduction with it,” holding the letter for any one to -take who chose. It was Lacy who did so, and he asked if he -should read it up.</p> -<p>“Yes, do,” said Bootles, dropping into a chair -with a groan. “Perhaps some one else will own to -it.”</p> -<p>So Lacy read the letter in his ridiculous drawl of a voice, -and ceased amid profound -silence—“Fa-ah-well!”</p> -<p>“Well?” said Bootles, finding no one seemed -inclined to speak. “Well?”</p> -<p><a name="page14"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -14</span>“Well,” said Preston, solemnly, “if -you want my opinion, Bootles, I think you ought to be ashamed of -yourself.”</p> -<p>A general laugh followed, but Bootles protested.</p> -<p>“Oh, don’t imagine it’s me. I’ve -nothing to do with it. I shouldn’t have come to you -fellows if I had.”</p> -<p>“No, no, of course not,” returned Miles, promptly, -but with an air which raised another shout.</p> -<p>“Then it’s a plant,” announced Preston, in a -tone of conviction.</p> -<p>“Of course it’s a plant,” cried Bootles; -“but why in the wide world should it be planted on -me?”</p> -<p>“Why, indeed?” echoed Miles, feelingly.</p> -<p>“Besides,” Bootles continued, “some of you -know my mother, and that her name was not Mary but -Margaret.”</p> -<p>Now as several of those present had known Lady Margaret -Ferrers very well, that was a strong point in favor of -Preston’s assertion that the affair was a plant. The -chief question, however, was what could be done with the little -stranger for that night. Some woman, of course, must look -after it, but who? It was then after two o’clock, and -<a name="page15"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 15</span>the lights -had been out hours ago in the married people’s -quarters. Bootles did not know what to do, and said so.</p> -<p>“Is it in your room now?” Preston asked.</p> -<p>“Yes.”</p> -<p>“Where did you find it?”</p> -<p>“In my cot.”</p> -<p>“The devil you did! I wonder you weren’t -frightened out of your very wits.”</p> -<p>“I nearly was,” Bootles admitted.</p> -<p>“Did you see it at once? Was it -howling?”</p> -<p>“Howling? Not a bit of it. Never saw a -jollier little beggar in all my life.”</p> -<p>“Oh!” ejaculated Miles, blankly. “I -say, you fellows, don’t that sound to you very much like -the proud pap—ah?”</p> -<p>“You fellows” all laughed at this, even perplexed -Bootles, and Hartog asked a question.</p> -<p>“Did you see it directly, Bootles?”</p> -<p>“Oh no; not for half an hour or more.”</p> -<p>“What on earth did you do?”</p> -<p>“Why, I looked at it of course. What would you -have done?”</p> -<p>“Did you <i>touch</i> it?”</p> -<p>Bootles laughed. “Yes, by Jove, the little beggar -came to me like a bird.”</p> -<p><a name="page16"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -16</span>“Great gods!” uttered Miles, “and you -can doubt the fatherliness of <i>that</i>!”</p> -<p>“Oh, what an ass you are!” returned Hartog; then, -as if by a bright inspiration, suggested, “I say, -let’s go and have a look at it.”</p> -<p>Thereupon the assembled officers, five of them, trooped along -the way Bootles had stumbled over alone in the blindness of his -now forgotten headache. The baby was still in the cot, -contentedly playing with the watch and chain, and at the sight of -the five resplendent figures it set up a loud -“Boo—boo—boo—ing,” followed by a -“Chucka—chucka—chucka—ing.” -Evidently it considered this was the land of Goshen.</p> -<p>“Seems to take after its mother in its love for a -scarlet jacket,” remarked Miles, sententiously. -“I’ve heard that the child is father of the -man—seems of the woman too.”</p> -<p>“Bootles,” said Lacy, gravely, “isn’t -it very pwretty?”</p> -<p>“Yes, poor little beggar.”</p> -<p>“Let’s see you nurse it,” cried Hartog.</p> -<p>So Bootles, proud of this new accomplishment, lifted the child -awkwardly in his arms, pretty much as he might have done if it -had been a sackful of eggs, and he had made a wager he -wouldn’t break one of them. He carried it to the -fire.</p> -<div><a name="page17"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 17</span><div -class='figure' style='text-align: center'> -<div class='figureimage'> - -<a href="images/p17.jpg"> -<img alt= -"Let’s go and have a look at it" -title= -"Let’s go and have a look at it" - src="images/p17.jpg" /> -</a></div> -<div class='figurecaption'> -Let’s go and have a look at it</div> -</div> -</div> -<p><a name="page19"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -19</span>“Just light the candles, one of you,” he -said.</p> -<p>“It’s the image of Bootles,” persisted -Miles.</p> -<p>“Well, it isn’t mine, except by deed of -gift,” returned Bootles, with a laugh.</p> -<p>“Bootles,” said Lacy, “look back over your -past life—” Here he made a pause.</p> -<p>“Well?” said Bootles, expectantly.</p> -<p>“Twry to think if you can twrace any likeness to some -early love, who may have marwried—or, for that matter, -<i>not</i> have marwried—some one else, -and—er—wremembering your kind heart—for you -have a dashed kind heart, Bootles, there’s no denying -it—may have found herself hard up or too much -encumbered—for—er—you know, a babay is -sometimes an awkward addition to a lady’s -belongings—and may have twrusted to -your—er—general—well, shall we say softness of -chawracter to see it well pwrovided -for—er—see?”</p> -<p>“No, I don’t. Of course I see what you mean, -but I can’t—”</p> -<p>“Well—er—” Lacy broke in, -“I—er—pewraps was not thinking so much of -<i>your</i> case as of my own. You see,” appealing to -the other three, “the advent of this—er—babay -cwreates a <a name="page20"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -20</span>precedent, and—er—if it should chance to -occur to my first love—it would be awkward—for me, -very awkward. Her name,” plunging headlong into a -story they all knew, “was Naomi, -and—er—she—er—in fact, jilted me for an -elephantine parson, whose reverend name was—er—Fligg, -Solomon Fligg. Now, if Mrs.—er—Solomon Fligg -was to take it into her head to pack up the—er—eleven -little Fliggs and send ’em to me—it would be what I -should call awkward—devilish awkward.” -Lacy’s four hearers positively roared, and the baby on -Bootles’s knee chuckled and crowed with delight.</p> -<p>“I believe it understands,” Preston laughed.</p> -<p>“No. But it seems a jolly little chap,” -answered Bootles. “Oh, I forgot, ’tis a -girl. I say, I do wish you fellows would advise me what to -do. How can I get any one to attend to it?”</p> -<p>“Oh, roll it up in the bedclothes and sleep on the -sofa. It will go to sleep when it’s tired,” -said one.</p> -<p>“With its clothes on?” said Bootles, -doubtfully. “I rather fancy they undress babies when -they put ’em to bed.”</p> -<p>“I don’t advise you to try. Oh, it -won’t hurt for to-night.”</p> -<div><a name="page21"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 21</span><div -class='figure' style='text-align: center'> -<div class='figureimage'> - -<a href="images/p21.jpg"> -<img alt= -"Bootles, proud of his new accomplishment, lifted the child -awkwardly in his arms" -title= -"Bootles, proud of his new accomplishment, lifted the child -awkwardly in his arms" - src="images/p21.jpg" /> -</a></div> -<div class='figurecaption'> -Bootles, proud of his new accomplishment, lifted the child -awkwardly in his arms</div> -</div> -</div> -<p><a name="page23"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -23</span>“There’s a cab just driven up. I -believe it’s the Grays. I saw them go out dressed -before dinner,” said Hartog. The Grays were the -adjutant and his wife, who lived in barracks. “She -would help you in a minute.”</p> -<p>“Oh, go and see; there’s a good chap,” -Bootles cried, eagerly.</p> -<p>Hartog therefore went out. He found that it was the -adjutant with his wife returning from a party, and to the lady he -addressed himself. “Oh, Mrs. Gray, Bootles is in such -trouble—” he began.</p> -<p>“In trouble?—Bootles?—Captain -Ferrers?” she said. “What is the -matter?”</p> -<p>“Well, he’s got a baby,” Hartog -answered.</p> -<p>“Got WHAT?” Mrs. Gray cried.</p> -<p>“A baby. It’s been left in his rooms, -clothes and all, and Bootles don’t know what the de—, -what in the world, I mean, to do with it.”</p> -<p>“Shall I go in and see it?” Mrs. Gray asked.</p> -<p>“I wish you would. Some of the others are -there.”</p> -<p>Well, eventually Mrs. Gray carried off the little stranger to -her own quarters, and put it to bed. As for Bootles, he too -went to bed, but during the whole of that blessed night he never -slept a wink.</p> -<h2><a name="page24"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -24</span>CHAPTER II.</h2> -<p><span class="smcap">When</span> Bootles showed his face in the -mess-room the following morning he was greeted by such a volley -of chaff as would have driven a more nervous man, or one less of -a favorite than himself, to despair. Already the story had -gone the round of the barracks, and Bootles found the greater -part of his brother officers ready and willing to take -Miles’s view of the affair, whether in chaff or downright -good earnest he could not say.</p> -<p>“Halloo! Bootles, my man,” shouted one when he -entered, “what’s this story we hear? Is it -possible that Bootles—our immaculate and philanthropical -Bootles— Oh, Bootles! Bootles! how are the mighty -fallen!”</p> -<p>“Hey?” inquired Bootles, sweetly.</p> -<p>“I wouldn’t have believed it of you, Bootles; I -wouldn’t indeed. Any other fellow in the -regiment—that soft-headed Lacy grinning over there, for -instance—but <i>our Bootles</i>—” He -broke off as if words could not express the volumes he <a -name="page25"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 25</span>thought, but -found his tongue and went on again before Bootles could open his -mouth. “Our Bootles with an unacknowledged wife sworn -not to disclose her marriage—our Bootles with a -baby—our Bootles a papa! Oh lor!”</p> -<p>“Why didn’t you manage better, Bootles?” -cried another. “You might have sent her an odd fiver -now and then. You have plenty.”</p> -<p>“Is she pretty, Bootles?” asked a third.</p> -<p>“Was there by any chance a flaw in the marriage?” -inquired a fourth.</p> -<p>“Do you think I’m a fool?” asked Bootles, -pleasantly. “I tell you it’s a plant. I -know nothing about the creature.”</p> -<p>“Just my view,” struck in Miles. “Just -what I said last night. It’s absurd, you know, to -expect him to own it. No fellow would. Besides, does -Bootles look like the father of a fine bouncing baby that goes -‘Chucka, chucka, chuck?’ It’s absurd, you -know.”</p> -<p>Even Bootles joined in the laugh which followed, and Miles -continued:</p> -<p>“The only thing is—and it really is awkward for -Bootles—the extraordinary likeness. Blue eyes, golden -hair, fair complexion. I should say -myself”—looking at his comrade critically, -“that <a name="page26"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -26</span>at the same age Bootles was just such a baby as that -which turned up so mysteriously last night.”</p> -<p>“That’s as may be. Any way, the youngster is -not mine,” said Bootles, emphatically; “and what to -do with the little beggar <i>I</i> don’t know.”</p> -<p>“Send it back to its mother,” suggested -Dawson.</p> -<p>“But I don’t know who the mother is,” -Bootles answered, impatiently.</p> -<p>“Oh no; so you say. Well, then, the brat must have -growed, like Topsy. If I were you I should send it to the -police-station.”</p> -<p>“The police-station? Oh no; hang it all, the poor -little beggar has done nothing to start the world in that -way,” Bootles answered.</p> -<p>“Did any of you,” asked Miles of the general -company, “ever hear of a chap called Solomon?”</p> -<p>“I—er—did,” answered Lacy, -promptly. “His other name -was—er—Fligg. The Reverend Solomon -Fligg.”</p> -<p>“Oh, we’ve all heard of <i>him</i>! but I meant a -rather more celebrated person. There is a story about -him—I rather think it’s in -Proverbs”—eliciting a yell of laughter. -“Not Proverbs? Well, perhaps it’s in the Song -of Solomon. It’s about two mothers, who each had a -baby, and one of <a name="page27"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -27</span>them managed to smother hers in the night, and finding -it dead when she woke up in the morning, claimed the other -baby. Of course the other woman kicked up a row, a regular -shindy, and they came before Solomon to get the matter -settled. ‘Both claim it,’ said he. -‘Oh, chop it in half, and let each have a -share—’ But you all know the rest. How -the real mother gave up her claim sooner than see the child -halved. Now in this case, you see, Bootles hasn’t the -heart to send the child off to the police-station, as he would -if—”</p> -<p>“Here’s the colonel,” said some one at this -point, and in less than two seconds he appeared.</p> -<p>“Why, Ferrers,” he said, “I’ve been -hearing a queer tale about you.”</p> -<p>“Yes, sir,” said Bootles, dismally; “and -where it will end <i>I</i> don’t know! Here am I -saddled—”</p> -<p>“Well, of course you know whether the child has any -claim upon you—” the colonel began.</p> -<p>“Upon my honor it has not, colonel,” said Bootles, -earnestly.</p> -<p>“Then that, of course, settles the question,” -replied the colonel, with a frown at the grinning faces along the -table. “I should send the child to the workhouse -immediately.”</p> -<p><a name="page28"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -28</span>“The workhouse?” repeated Bootles, -reflectively.</p> -<p>“I’ll bet any one a fiver he don’t,” -murmured Miles to his neighbors.</p> -<p>“Not he. Madame la Mère knew what she was -doing when she picked out Bootles. He’ll get one of -the sergeants’ wives to look after it; see if he -don’t.”</p> -<p>After the chief had left the room, Bootles continued his -breakfast in silence, considering the two suggestions for the -disposal of the child. Now, if the truth be told, Bootles -had a horror of workhouses. He had gone deeply into the -“Casual” question, and pitied a tramp from the very -inmost recesses of his kind heart. It fairly made him sick -to think of that bonny golden head growing up among the shorn and -unlovely locks of a pauper brood—to think of the little -soft fingers that had twined themselves so confidently about his -own, and had picked at the embroideries of his mess waistcoat, -being slapped by the matron, or set as soon as they should be -strong enough to do coarse and hard work, to develop into the -unnaturally widened and unkempt hand of a -“Marchioness”—to think of that little dainty -thing being nourished on skilly, or on whatever hard fare <a -name="page29"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 29</span>pauper -children are fed—to think of that little aristocrat being -brought up among the children of thieves and vagabonds!</p> -<p>“Oh, confound it all,” he broke out, “I -<i>can’t</i>.”</p> -<p>“I never expected you could,” retorted -Miles. “It wouldn’t be natural if you -did.”</p> -<p>This time Bootles did not laugh; on the contrary, he looked up -and regarded Miles with a grave and searching gaze, rather -disconcerting to that quizzical young gentleman.</p> -<p>“Are you judging me out of your own bushel?” he -asked.</p> -<p>“How? What do you mean?” Miles -stammered.</p> -<p>“Do <i>you</i> happen to know anything of the -matter?” Bootles persisted.</p> -<p>“I? Oh no. On my honor I -don’t.”</p> -<p>“Ah! As the colonel said just now, that settles -the question. You’re a very witty fellow, Miles, -very. I shouldn’t wonder, after a while, if you -ain’t quite the sharp man of the regiment. Only your -jokes are like the clown’s jokes at the circus—one -gets to know them. They’re in this kind of way:</p> -<p>“‘Ever been in Paris, Mr. Lando?’</p> -<p>“‘Yes, of course, Bell.’</p> -<p>“‘Ever been in Vienna, Mr. Lando?’</p> -<p><a name="page30"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -30</span>“‘To be sure, Bell.’</p> -<p>“‘Ever been in Geneva, Mr. Lando?’</p> -<p>“‘Of course I have, Bell.’</p> -<p>“‘Ever been in jail, Mr. Lando?’</p> -<p>“Of course I have, Bell—at -least—that’s to say—I mean—no, of course -I haven’t.’</p> -<p>“‘Why, Mr. Lando, I <i>saw</i> you -there.’</p> -<p>“‘You saw me in jail, Bell? And what were -you doing to see me?’</p> -<p>“Oh!’ grandly, ‘I was staying with the -governor for the good of my ’ealth.’</p> -<p>“‘And hadn’t stealing a cow something to do -with it, eh, Bell?’</p> -<p>“‘Yah. Who stole a watch?’</p> -<p>“‘A Jersey cow, eh, Bell?’</p> -<p>“Yah. What time is it, Mr. Lando?’</p> -<p>“‘Just about milking time, Bell, my -friend.’</p> -<p>“It’s all very funny once, you know, Miles,” -Bootles ended, disdainfully. “But when you’ve -been to the circus half a dozen times you don’t see -anything to laugh at, somehow.”</p> -<p>For grace’s sake Miles was obliged to laugh, for every -one else roared, except Bootles, who went on speaking very -gravely:</p> -<p>“I know it’s very amusing to make a joke of the -affair, to say I know more about it than I will <a -name="page31"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -31</span>confess. I have told the colonel <i>on my -honor</i> that the child is not mine, nor do I know whose it -is. If it were mine I should not have made the story public -property—it’s not in reason that I should. My -difficulty is what to do with it. The colonel suggests the -workhouse, Dawson the police-station—one simply means the -other, and I can’t bring me to do it. It is an awful -thing for the child of a tramp or a thief to be reared in a -workhouse—and this is no common person’s child. -For anything I know it may belong to one of you.”</p> -<p>“That’s true enough,” observed a man who had -not yet taken part in the discussion, except to laugh now and -then. “But remember, Bootles, if you saddle yourself -with the child you will have to go on with it. It will -stick to you like a burr, and though we are all ready to accept -your word of honor, the world may not be so. If you put the -brat out to nurse in the regiment, the story may crop up years -hence, just when you least desire or expect it; and, you know, a -story—mixed and confused by time and repetition—about -a deserted wife may come to have a very ugly sound about -it. Now if, as the colonel suggests, you send the child to -the workhouse, you wash your hands of the <a -name="page32"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 32</span>whole -business. Then, again, if the brat is brought up in the -regiment, with the <i>disadvantage</i> of your protection, what -will she be in twenty years’ time? Neither fish, -flesh, nor good red herring. Far better the oblivion of -pauperism than the distinction among the men of being Captain -Ferrers’s—shall we say -<i>protégée</i>?”</p> -<p>“Yes, there’s a great deal in that,” Bootles -admitted. He had at all times a great respect for Harkness, -and profound faith in the soundness of his judgment. He saw -at once that any plan of bringing the child up among the married -people of the regiment would not do, and yet—<i>the -workhouse</i>.</p> -<p>He rose from the table and settled his forage cap upon his -head. “I dare say you fellows will laugh at -me,” he said, almost desperately, as he pulled the -chin-strap over his mustache, “but I can’t condemn -that helpless thing to the workhouse—I <i>can’t</i>, -and that’s all about it. It seems to me,” he -went on, rubbing the end of his whip on the back of a chair, and -looking at no one—“it seems to me that the -child’s future in this world and the next depends upon the -course I take now. And you may laugh at me—I dare say -you will,” he said, quite nervously for -him—“but I shall get a proper nurse to take charge of -it, and I shall keep it myself until some one turns up to claim -it—or—or for good.”</p> -<div><a name="page33"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 33</span><div -class='figure' style='text-align: center'> -<div class='figureimage'> - -<a href="images/p32.jpg"> -<img alt= -"“I can’t condemn that helpless thing to the -workhouse”" -title= -"“I can’t condemn that helpless thing to the -workhouse”" - src="images/p32.jpg" /> -</a></div> -<div class='figurecaption'> -“I can’t condemn that helpless thing to the -workhouse”</div> -</div> -</div> -<p><a name="page35"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 35</span>Just -then officers’-call sounded, and Bootles made a clean bolt -of it, leaving his brother officers staring amazedly at one -another. The first of them to make a move was -Lacy—the first, too, to speak.</p> -<p>“Upon my soul,” said he, “Bootles is a -devilish fine fellow; and, d— it all,” he added, -getting very red, and scarcely drawling, in his intense rage of -admiration, “if there were a few more fellows in the world -like him, it would be a vewry diffewrent place to what it -is.”</p> -<h2><a name="page36"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -36</span>CHAPTER III.</h2> -<p><span class="smcap">As</span> soon as Bootles had a spare -moment he made his way to the adjutant’s quarters, where he -found Mrs. Gray playing with the mysterious baby.</p> -<p>“Oh, is that you, Captain Ferrers?” she -exclaimed. “Come and see your waif. She is the -dearest little thing. Why, I do believe she knows -you.”</p> -<p>Bootles whistled to the child, which promptly made a grab at -his chain, and when he sat down on the sofa on which it was -sprawling, tried very hard to get at the gold badge on his -collar. Shoulder badges had not then come in.</p> -<p>“Mrs. Gray,” Bootles said, “she’s very -well dressed, is she not?”</p> -<p>“Oh, very,” Mrs. Gray answered, smoothing out the -child’s skirt so as to display the fine and deep -embroidery. “Unusually so. All its clothes are -of the finest and most expensive description.”</p> -<p>“I thought so; it doesn’t look like a common -child, eh?”</p> -<p>“Not at all,” replied the lady, promptly.</p> -<div><a name="page37"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 37</span><div -class='figure' style='text-align: center'> -<div class='figureimage'> - -<a href="images/p37b.jpg"> -<img alt= -"Mignon’s Own–Illustration" -title= -"Mignon’s Own–Illustration" - src="images/p37s.jpg" /> -</a></div> -<div class='figurecaption'> -Mignon’s Own–Illustration</div> -</div> -</div> -<p><a name="page39"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -39</span>“Well,” Bootles told her, “I’ve -been most unmercifully chaffed, which was only to be expected; -but the colonel takes my word about it, and of course the others -don’t matter. I can’t think, though, why the -mother has chosen me.”</p> -<p>“All, well, you see, Captain Ferrers,” said the -adjutant’s wife, with a smile, “it is rather -inconvenient sometimes to have a character for great kindness of -heart. I should say you are the greatest favorite in the -regiment, and, naturally enough, the officers speak of it -sometimes in society. ‘Oh, Bootles is this, and -Bootles is that;’ ‘Bootles wouldn’t turn a dog -from his door;’ ‘Bootles would share his last -sixpence with a poor chap who was down,’ and so on. -<i>I</i> have heard, Captain Ferrers, of your emptying your -pockets to divide among three poor tramps who had begged no more -than a pipe of tobacco. <i>I</i> have heard of your -standing up for”—with a deeper smile—“the -poor devils of casuals; and if I hear it, why not others? why not -the mother of this child?”</p> -<p>“True. But I think you all overrate my -character,” Bootles replied, modestly. “You -know I don’t go in for being saintly at all.”</p> -<p>“That is just it. If you did you would have no <a -name="page40"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 40</span>more -influence than Major Allardyce, whom every one laughs at. -But you don’t; you are one of themselves, and yet you will -always help a man who is down; you will do any unfortunate -creature a good turn. Oh, I hear a good deal, though you -choose to make light of it. And you know, Captain Ferrers, -we are not told that the good Samaritan made a great spluttering -about what he did; but the professional saints, the priest and -the Levite, passed by on the other side.”</p> -<p>“You are very complimentary,” Bootles said, -blushing a little; “much more than I deserve, I’m -sure. The fellows”—laughing at the -remembrance—“were much less merciful. Then -about the child. Dawson suggests sending it to the -police-station, the colonel to the workhouse; and one means the -other, of course.”</p> -<p>Mrs. Gray caught the child to her breast with a cry of dismay, -and Bootles went on:</p> -<p>“Yes, I feel as you do about it. I can’t do -it, and that’s all about it. It would be on my -conscience all my life. Besides, some day the mother might -come back for it, and though of course, as the colonel says, -there is no claim upon me, yet, if for the sake of a few pounds I -had turned the poor little beggar adrift, ruined its -life—why I simply <a name="page41"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 41</span>couldn’t face her, and -that’s all about it. And besides that, Mrs. Gray, I -have a lurking suspicion that the letter is genuine, and that it -was not written to or intended for me. It reads to me like -the letter of a woman who was desperate.”</p> -<p>“Yes, a woman must have been desperate indeed to -willingly part with such a child as that,” said Mrs. Gray, -smoothing the gold baby curls.</p> -<p>“So I think, for nature is nature all the world -over,” Bootles answered. “And besides, to tell -you the honest truth, there is a resemblance in the child to some -one I knew once—”</p> -<p>“Yes?” eagerly.</p> -<p>“Oh no, not that! She is dead. She was -engaged to a fellow I knew, desperately fond of him, and -he—jilted her.”</p> -<p>“Mr. Kerr?”</p> -<p>Bootles stared. “Who told you?”</p> -<p>“He told me himself, I think to ease his mind,” -she answered, quietly.</p> -<p>“Ah! Well, it killed her. She died -heart-broken. I saw her,” he said, rising and going -to the window, whence he stood staring out over the square, -“a few hours after she died. That child’s -mother may look like that now, and I can’t and won’t -turn it <a name="page42"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -42</span>adrift, whatever the fellows or any one else chooses to -think or say, and that’s all about it.”</p> -<p>Two bright tears gathered in Mrs. Gray’s eyes, and -falling, fell upon the baby’s curls of gold, two priceless -diamonds from the unfathomable and exhaustless mines of -pity. For a moment or two there was silence, broken at last -by the child’s laugh, as a ray of sickly winter sunshine -fell upon the glittering chain in its little hands. The -sound recovered Bootles, who turned from the window.</p> -<p>“And so, Mrs. Gray,” he said, carefully avoiding -the gaze of her wet eyes, “I have determined to keep the -little beggar; but Harkness, who’s no fool, you know, has -convinced me that it won’t do to trust to any of the -barrack women to look after her. Therefore, if you -won’t mind undertaking it for a few days, I will advertise -for a respectable elderly nurse to take entire charge of the -creature. I dare say I can arrange with Smithers for an -extra room, and you’ll let me come to you for advice now -and then, won’t you?”</p> -<p>Mrs. Gray rose and went close to him, laying her hand upon his -arm. “Captain Ferrers,” she said, earnestly, -“you will have your reward. God will bless you for -this.”</p> -<div><a name="page43"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 43</span><div -class='figure' style='text-align: center'> -<div class='figureimage'> - -<a href="images/p43.jpg"> -<img alt= -"Mrs. Gray rose and went close to him, laying her hand upon his -arm" -title= -"Mrs. Gray rose and went close to him, laying her hand upon his -arm" - src="images/p43.jpg" /> -</a></div> -<div class='figurecaption'> -Mrs. Gray rose and went close to him, laying her hand upon his -arm</div> -</div> -</div> -<p><a name="page45"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -45</span>“Oh, please don’t, Mrs. Gray,” Bootles -stammered. “Really I’d rather you’d chaff -me.”</p> -<p>Mrs. Gray laughed outright. “Well, you know what -my sentiments are, so for the future I will chaff you -unmercifully.—Come in,” she added, in a louder tone, -as a “tap-tap” sounded on the door.</p> -<p>The permission was followed by the entrance of Lacy, who came -in with a pleasant “Good—er—morning,” and -a soft laugh at the sight of the baby on the sofa.</p> -<p>“I—er—thought old Bootles would be -here,” he explained. “And -besides—I—er—wanted to see the babay. -Seems to me, Bootles,” he added, staring with an absurd air -of reflective wisdom at the infant, “as if the face is -somehow familiar to me. Oh, I don’t mean you. -It isn’t a bit like you. But there is a likeness, -though I don’t know where to plant it.”</p> -<p>“Perhaps it will grow,” suggested Bootles.</p> -<p>“Ah! pewraps it will, and pewraps it won’t. -The worst of the affair is that it is cwreating a -pwrecedent”—not for worlds would he have admitted to -his friend that he thought him the fine fellow he had declared -him in the mess-room that morning—“and if we are -<i>all</i> inundated with <a name="page46"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 46</span>babays I wreally don’t -know” (plaintively) “what the wregiment will come -to.”</p> -<p>“Gar—ah—gar—ah!” chuckled the -subject of this speech over the gold knob at the top of -Lacy’s whip. -“Cluck—cluck—cluck!”</p> -<p>“Little beggah seems to find it a good joke, any -way,” Lacy cried. “I’m a gwreat hand at -nursing. Our adjutant’s wife in the White Dwragoons -had thwree—all at once. I say, Mrs. Gwray, stick -something on it, and I’ll take it out and show it -wround.”</p> -<p>“Dare you?” she asked.</p> -<p>“Dawre I? Just twry. By-the-bye, it’s -cold this morning—vewry cold.”</p> -<p>Mrs. Gray therefore fetched the child’s white coat and -cap and those other white woollen articles, which Bootles now -discovered to be leggings, and quickly transformed the little -woman into a sort of snowball. The two men watched the -operation with intense interest.</p> -<p>“<i>La figlia del wreggimento</i>,” laughed -Lacy. “I declare, Bootles, she’s quite a credit -to us. I never saw such a <i>petite -mademoiselle</i>.”</p> -<p>Bootles started. It reminded him who had been jilted by -his friend and died for love. He had always called her -Mademoiselle Mignon.</p> -<p><a name="page47"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -47</span>“Mademoiselle Mignon,” he said, carelessly; -“not a bad name for her.”</p> -<p>“Vewry good,” returned Lacy, preparing to present -arms.</p> -<p>He proved himself a much better nurse than Bootles. He -gathered the child on his left arm and marched off to the -anteroom, in front of which the officers were standing about, -waiting for church. They set up a shout at the sight of -him, and crowded round to inspect the new importation. -Mademoiselle Mignon bore the inspection calmly, conscious -perhaps—as she was such a knowing little person—of -the effect of her big, blue, star-like eyes under the white fur -of her cap.</p> -<p>“What a pity she ain’t twenty years older!” -was the first comment, and it was said in such a tone of genuine -regret that all the fellows laughed again. Miss Mignon -gobbled with satisfaction.</p> -<p>“Seems a jolly little beggar,” said another.</p> -<p>“Chut—chut—chut!” remarked Miss -Mignon.</p> -<p>“Never saw such a jolly little beggar in all my -life,” asserted another voice.</p> -<p>“Pretty work she’ll make in the regiment sixteen -or seventeen years hence,” grumbled old Garnet.</p> -<p>“Ah, well, nevah mind, Garnet—nevah you <a -name="page48"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 48</span>mind, Major -Garnet, sir,” cried Hartog, “we shall all be dead by -then;” but this being an exceedingly old and threadbare -regimental joke was instantly snubbed in the face of the new and -substantial one.</p> -<p>“Has it any teeth?” demanded Miles, the orderly -officer for the day.</p> -<p>“Don’t know. Open your mouth, little -one,” said Lacy, gravely.</p> -<p>At this point Miss Mignon made a delighted lunge in the -direction of the belt across Miles’s breast. Lacy -shouted, “Whoa, whoa,” and Miles immediately backed -out of reach. Miss Mignon’s mouth went dismally down, -until Lacy remembered the knob of his whip, and held it up for -delectation.</p> -<p>“Boo—boo!” she crowed.</p> -<p>“By Jove! She can half say Bootles already,” -ejaculated Hartog. “And here he comes.”</p> -<p>“Now, then,” Bootles called out, “have any -of you fellows made up your mind to own this little -baggage?”</p> -<p>“No; none of us,” they laughed; but one man, -Gilchrist by name, said, with a sneer, he should rather think -not, and added two unnecessary words—“<i>workhouse -brat</i>!”</p> -<p><a name="page49"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 49</span>Bootles -turned, and looked down upon him in profoundest contempt.</p> -<p>“My dear chap,” he said, coolly, “to charge -<i>you</i> with being the father of <i>that</i> child,” -pointing with his whip to the picture in Lacy’s arms, -“would be a compliment on your personal appearance which I -should never, under any circumstances, have dreamed of paying -you.”</p> -<p>“I’ll tell you what it is,” said Hartog -afterwards to Lacy, “Bootles is a dashed good -fellow—one of the best fellows in the world. I -don’t know that there’s another I’d trust as -far or as thoroughly; but all the same, Bootles is sometimes best -left alone, and, for my part, I think Gilchrist and every one -else had best leave him alone about this youngster.”</p> -<p>“Ya—as,” returned Lacy; then began to -laugh. “Oh! but it was fine, though, about -‘personal appearance.’” And then he -added, “Ugly little beast!”</p> -<h2><a name="page50"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -50</span>CHAPTER IV.</h2> -<p><span class="smcap">It</span> was not to be expected, and -Bootles did not expect it, that the story of the mysterious -little stranger could be confined to barracks. In fact, in -the course of a few hours it had flown all over the town, gaining -additions and alterations by the frequency of its repetition, -until at last Bootles himself could hardly recognize it. A -baby had been found in Captain Ferrers’s rooms; no one knew -where it had come from nor to whom it belonged. -Then—Captain Ferrers had rescued a young baby from a brutal -father who was going to dash its brains out against the -door-post. Then—Captain Ferrers had picked up a -new-born infant while hunting with the duke’s hounds. -Then—Captain Ferrers was suffering from mental aberration, -or, to speak plainly, was getting a bit cracked, and had adopted -a child a year old out of Idleminster workhouse. -Then—It was really most romantic, but Captain Ferrers had -been engaged to and jilted by a young lady long <a -name="page51"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -51</span>ago—which, of course, accounted for his being -impervious to the fascinations of the Idleminster girls—who -had married, been deserted by her husband, and now -died—some versions of the story said “committed -suicide”—leaving him the charge of a baby, etc.</p> -<p>Some people told one version of the story and some people told -another, but nobody blamed Bootles very much. It might be -because he was so rich and so handsome and pleasant; it might be -because Idleminster society was free from that leaven of -censoriousness which causes most people to look at most things -from the worst possible view.</p> -<p>But Bootles went on his serene way, telling the true state of -the case to every one who mentioned the affair to him, and always -ending, “And hang it, you know, it’s a pretty little -beggar, and I <i>couldn’t</i> send it to the -workhouse.”</p> -<p>He made no secret about it at all, and on the Saturday -following the advent of the child an advertisement appeared in -the Idleminster <i>Chronicle</i> which made Idleminster tongues -clack for a week:</p> -<blockquote><p>“<i>Wanted</i>, <i>immediately</i>, <i>a -highly respectable and thoroughly experienced nurse of middle -age</i>, <i>to </i><a name="page52"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -52</span><i>take the entire charge of a child about a year -old</i>. <i>Good wages to a suitable person</i>. -<i>Apply to Captain Ferrers</i>, <i>Scarlet -Lancers</i>.”</p> -</blockquote> -<p>In due time this advertisement produced the right sort of -person, and a staid and respectable widow of about fifty was soon -installed in a room next to Mr. Gray’s quarters, in charge -of Miss Mignon, as the child had already come to be called by -everybody.</p> -<p>It was a charming child—strong and healthy, seemed to -have no trouble with temper or teeth, hardly ever cried, and -might be seen morning and afternoon being wheeled by its nurse in -a baby-carriage about the barrack square or along the road -outside the Broad Arrow boundaries. And so, as the weeks -rolled by and wore into months, it began to toddle about, and -could say “Bootles” as plain as a pike-staff.</p> -<p>In April the Scarlet Lancers were moved from Idleminster to -Blankhampton, where Bootles had to undergo a new experience, for -every one there took him for a widower on account of the -child.</p> -<p>Bootles would explain. “Take her about with -me? Yes; she likes it. Always wants to go when she -sees the trap. A bother? Not a bit of it; the -jolliest little woman in creation, and <a name="page53"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 53</span>as good as gold. What am I -going to do with her when she grows up? Well, Lacy says he -is going to marry her. If he don’t, somebody else -will—no fear.”</p> -<p>Taking it all round, Miss Mignon had a remarkably good time of -it, and seemed thoroughly to appreciate the pleasant places in -which her lines had fallen. It was wonderful, too, what an -immense favorite she was with “the fellows.” At -first she had been “Bootles’s brat,” but very -soon that was dropped, and by the time she could toddle, which -she did in very good time, no one thought of mentioning her or of -speaking to her except as “Miss Mignon.” -Scarcely any of the officers dreamed for a moment of returning -after a few days’ leave without “taking along,” -as the Americans say, a box of sweets or a bundle of toys for -Miss Mignon. Indeed the young lady came to have such a -collection that after a while Mrs. Nurse’s patient soul -arose, and with Captain Ferrers’s permission all the -discarded ones were distributed among the less fortunate children -of the regiment.</p> -<p>But Miss Mignon’s favorite plaything was Bootles -himself—after Bootles, Lacy. People said it was -wonderful, the depth of the affection between <a -name="page54"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 54</span>the big -soldier of thirty-five and the little dot of a child, scarcely -two. Bootles she adored, and where Bootles was she would -be, if by hook or by crook she could convey her small person into -his presence. Once she spied him turn in at the gates on -the right hand of the colonel, when the regiment was returning -from a field-day, and escaping from her nurse’s hand, set -off as hard as she could run in the direction of the band, which -immediately preceded the commanding officer. Mrs. Nurse -gave chase, but alas! Mrs. Nurse was stout, and had the ill luck, -moreover, to come a cropper over a drain tile lying conveniently -in her way, while the child, unconscious of danger, ran straight -for Bootles. Neither Bootles nor Lacy, who was on the -colonel’s left, perceived her until she was close upon -them, waving her small hands, and shouting, in her shrill and -joyous child’s voice, “Bootles! -Bootles!”</p> -<p>It seemed to Bootles, as be looked past the colonel, that the -child was almost under the hoofs of Lacy’s charger. -“Lacy!” he called out—“Lacy!” -But Lacy was already on the ground, and caught Miss Mignon out of -harm’s way; but when he turned round he saw that his -friend’s face was as white as chalk.</p> -<div><a name="page55"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 55</span><div -class='figure' style='text-align: center'> -<div class='figureimage'> - -<a href="images/p55.jpg"> -<img alt= -"But Lacy was already on the ground, and caught Miss Mignon out -of harm’s way" -title= -"But Lacy was already on the ground, and caught Miss Mignon out -of harm’s way" - src="images/p55.jpg" /> -</a></div> -<div class='figurecaption'> -But Lacy was already on the ground, and caught Miss Mignon out of -harm’s way</div> -</div> -</div> -<p><a name="page57"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 57</span>As for -the colonel, when he saw Mrs. Nurse gathering herself up with -rueful looks at the drain tile, he simply roared, and Miss Mignon -chimed in as if it were the finest joke in the world.</p> -<p>“That was a smash,” she remarked, from her proud -position on Lacy’s shoulder, “just like Humpty -Dumpty”—a comment which gave that estimable person -the name of Mrs. Humpty Dumpty as long as she remained with the -regiment.</p> -<p>A few weeks after this the annual inspection came off, and -Miss Mignon, resenting the lengthened absence of her Bootles, -again managed to escape from her nurse, and pattered boldly, as -fast as her small feet would carry her, right into the mess-room, -where Bootles was sitting, just opposite the general, at the late -lunch. Miss Mignon not seeing him at first, wandered coolly -behind the row of scarlet-clad backs, until she spied him at the -other side of the table. Then, having no awe whatever of -inspecting officers, she wedged herself in between his chair and -the colonel’s with a triumphant and joyous laugh.</p> -<p>The general gave a great start, and the colonel laughed. -Bootles, in dismay, jumped up, and came quickly round the table -to take her away.</p> -<p><a name="page58"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -58</span>“Well, you little rogue,” said the colonel, -reaching a nectarine for her. “What do you -want?”</p> -<p>“I wanted Bootles, sir,” said Miss Mignon, -confidentially. “And nurse falled asleep, so I tooked -French leave.” Almost the only peculiarity in her -speech was the habit of making all verbs regular.</p> -<p>“And who are you, my little maid?” the general -asked, in extreme amusement.</p> -<p>“Oh, I’m Miss Mignon,” with dignity.</p> -<p>The old general fairly chuckled with delight, and as he had -put his arm round the child, Bootles, who was standing behind, -could not very well take her away.</p> -<p>“Oh, Miss Mignon—hey? And whom do you belong -to?”</p> -<p>“Why, to Bootles,” in surprise at his -ignorance.</p> -<p>“To Bootles? And who is Bootles?”</p> -<p>“Bootles is Bootles, and I love him,” Miss Mignon -replied, as if that settled everything.</p> -<p>“Happy Bootles!” cried the old soldier.</p> -<p>“What a lot of medals you’ve got!” cried -Miss Mignon, pressing closer.</p> -<p>“I’m afraid, sir, she is troubling you,” -Bootles interposed at this point, but secretly delighted with the -turn affairs had taken.</p> -<div><a name="page59"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 59</span><div -class='figure' style='text-align: center'> -<div class='figureimage'> - -<a href="images/p59.jpg"> -<img alt= -"“What a lot of medals you’ve got!”" -title= -"“What a lot of medals you’ve got!”" - src="images/p59.jpg" /> -</a></div> -<div class='figurecaption'> -“What a lot of medals you’ve got!”</div> -</div> -</div> -<p><a name="page61"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -61</span>“No, no; let her see my medals,” replied the -general, who was as proud of his medals as Bootles of Miss -Mignon.</p> -<p>“Are you a ‘sir’ too?” Miss Mignon -asked, gazing at the handsome old man with more respect.</p> -<p>“What does she mean?” he cried.</p> -<p>Bootles laughed.</p> -<p>“Well, sir, she hears us speak to the colonel so, that -is all.”</p> -<p>“Dear me! What a remarkably intelligent and -attractive child!” exclaimed the general, quietly. -“How old is she?”</p> -<p>“About two, sir.”</p> -<p>Now it happened that the old general had a craze for absolute -accuracy, and he caught Bootles up with pleasant sharpness.</p> -<p>“Oh! Does that mean more or less?”</p> -<p>“I can’t say, sir. She is about two. I -do not know the date of her birth.”</p> -<p>“Then she is not yours?”</p> -<p>“I am not her father, sir, but at present she belongs to -me,” Bootles said, smiling. “I’m -afraid—”</p> -<p>“Not at all, but perhaps she had better go. What a -charming child!” This last was perhaps <a -name="page62"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 62</span>because Miss -Mignon, finding her time had come—and she never made a fuss -on such occasions—put two soft arms round his neck, and -gave him such a genuine hug of friendship that the old -man’s heart was quite taken by storm.</p> -<p>So Miss Mignon was carried off, looking back to the last over -Bootles’s shoulder, and waving her adieu to the handsome -old man, who had such a fascinating array of clasps and -medals.</p> -<p>“I didn’t quite understand—what relation is -the child to him?” he asked of the colonel.</p> -<p>“None whatever. Ferrers found her late one night -in his bed, with her wardrobe, and a letter from the mother, -written as if Ferrers was the father. He, however, gave me -his word of honor that he knew nothing about it, and some of us -think the whole affair was simply a plant, as he is known to be a -very kind-hearted fellow. Others, however, Ferrers among -them, think that note and child were intended for one of the -others. Nobody, however, would own to it, and Ferrers has -kept the child ever since—I don’t suppose he would -part with her now for anything. I wanted him to send her to -the workhouse, but ’tis a jolly bright little soul, and I -am glad he did not.”</p> -<p>“Then he is not married?”</p> -<p><a name="page63"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -63</span>“Oh dear no. He pays a woman fifty pounds a -year to look after her, and all her meals go from the mess. -In fact, he is bringing her up as if she were his own; and the -child adores him—simply adores him.”</p> -<p>“I respect that man,” said the general, -warmly. “It is an awful thing for a child to be -reared in a workhouse—awful.”</p> -<p>“Yes; Bootles feels very strongly on the subject,” -replied the colonel, absently.</p> -<p>By the time Bootles returned, the officers had risen from the -table, and he met the guests and the seniors just entering the -anteroom.</p> -<p>“I’ll shake hands with you, Captain Ferrers, if -you please,” said the general, cordially. “I -agree with you that it is an awful thing for a child to be -brought up in a workhouse. It is a subject upon which I -feel very strongly—very strongly. A child reared as a -pauper does not start the world with a fair chance. I have -met so often, in the course of my military experience, with -recruits bred in the Unions—I never knew one do well. -No; pauperism is ground into them, and they are never able to -shake it off.”</p> -<p>“Well, sir, that is my opinion,” said Bootles, -modestly. “I hope, though, you won’t think my -<a name="page64"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 64</span>little -maid is often so obtrusive as to-day. She is really always -very good.”</p> -<p>“A charming little child,” replied the general, as -if he meant it too, and then he shook hands with Bootles -again.</p> -<h2><a name="page65"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -65</span>CHAPTER V.</h2> -<p><span class="smcap">There</span> was only one blot in the -sweetness and light of Miss Mignon’s baby character, so far -as the officers of the Scarlet Lancers were concerned. -Among them all there was only one whom she did not like. -She had degrees of love—Bootles ranked first, then Lacy, -then two or three groups of friends whom she liked best, better, -and well; but she had no degrees of dislike where she did not -love. She hated, hated fiercely and furiously, hated with -all her baby heart and soul. There were several persons in -her small world whom she detested thus, absolutely declining to -hold communication or to accept overtures from them, however -sweetly made; but there was only one of the officers who came -under this head, and he was Gilchrist, the man who had dubbed her -at first <i>workhouse brat</i>. Miss Mignon could not -endure him. When old enough to understand that a certain -box of sweeties had come from Mr. Gilchrist, she would drop it as -if it burned her fingers, draw <a name="page66"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 66</span>down the corners of her mouth, and -remark, “Miss Mignon is very much obliged;” an -observation which invariably sent Bootles and Lacy off into fits -of laughter, at which the little maid would fly open-armed to -him, and cry, “But Mignon <i>loves</i> -Bootles.” But the fact remained the same, that Miss -Mignon detested Gilchrist, who, indeed, was not a favorite in the -regiment. Nor, indeed, did Gilchrist seem to like Miss -Mignon any better, though he now and then brought his offerings -of toys and bonbons like the rest. In the face of -Bootles’s severe snub about the two odious words he had -applied to her, he was hardly such a simpleton as to further -rouse or annoy the most popular man in the regiment; yet if he -could possibly cast a slur on Bootles or on the child he did -it. Never from his lips came the pet name “Miss -Mignon,” never did his black eyes rest on her without a -sneer or a jibe; if he could by any chance twist Bootles’s -words into an admission that the child was really his, he took -care never to lose the opportunity.</p> -<p>“Oh, come, now,” Preston cried one day, when he -had been sneering at Bootles and Lacy, who had just driven away -with the child between them, “Bootles is a right good -sort—no mistake on that <a name="page67"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 67</span>point. No sneaking hypocrisy -about him. It would be well for you and me if we were half -as fine chaps; but we are not, Gilchrist, and, what is more, we -never shall be.”</p> -<p>“Oh no; but where is the mother of that brat?”</p> -<p>“How should I know? or Bootles? I shouldn’t -mind laying my life that Bootles never did and never will cause -her or any other woman to write such a letter as came with the -child that night. Jolly good thing for this one if she was -Bootles’s wife, instead of being tied up to the hound who -bound her to secrecy and deserted her. Perhaps she’s -dead, poor soul! Who knows?”</p> -<p>“Perhaps she isn’t,” Gilchrist -sneered. “Some people never die.”</p> -<p>Good-natured and not very wise Preston stared at him, and -Hartog looked from behind his newspaper, aghast at the bitterness -of his tone.</p> -<p>“Good heavens, Gilchrist!” Preston cried, -“are you <i>wanting</i> somebody to die?”</p> -<p>Gilchrist tried to laugh, and succeeded very badly. He -rose from his chair, knocking a few scattered cigar ashes -carefully off his braided cuff.</p> -<p>“Well, I confess I should not be sorry to see that -prating brat of Bootles’s out of the road. We should -perhaps get at the truth then.” And <a -name="page68"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 68</span>having -delivered himself of this feeling speech, he went out, banging -the door after him.</p> -<p>“Well, upon my soul!” exclaimed Preston.</p> -<p>“Oh, the man’s got a tile loose in his upper -story,” said Hartog, decidedly. “No man in his -senses would talk such miserable rot as that. Always -thought Gilchrist a crazy fool myself, but I’m sure of it -now.”</p> -<p>“And how he sticks to it Miss Mignon is Bootles’s -own child—as if it could be any good for him to say she -isn’t if she is.”</p> -<p>“No. I shall tell Bootles to keep an eye on -Gilchrist. I say, what a comfort it would be if he would -only exchange! I suppose we can’t manage to dazzle -him with the delights of India, eh?”</p> -<p>“Not very well. Besides, he lost ever so much -seniority by coming to us.”</p> -<p>“No such luck. It’s queer, though, he should -be so persistent about Bootles and Miss Mignon. I suppose -he wants to daub Bootles with some of his own mud. Thinks -if he only throws enough, some of it’s sure to stick; and -so it would with most men. Happily, however, it don’t -in the least matter what a little cad like Gilchrist chooses to -say about a man like Bootles—a jealous little -beast.”</p> -<p><a name="page69"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 69</span>Neither -of them said any more about the matter, but Hartog took the -earliest opportunity of repeating to Bootles what “that ass -Gilchrist” had said about seeing that prating brat of -Bootles’s out of the road, and in consequence a kind of -watch was set upon the child. Not that Bootles, though he -had a very poor opinion of Gilchrist and Gilchrist’s -brains, was afraid for a moment that he would give Miss Mignon -poisoned bonbons, or run off with her and drop her in the river; -yet he did think it not improbable that he might encourage an -already dangerous spirit of adventure, and of course be -absolutely blameless if she could get trampled by a horse’s -cruel hoofs, or crushed by one of the many traps going in and out -of barracks.</p> -<p>When Bootles had taken his first long leave after Miss -Mignon’s coming, he had left her at Idleminster in charge -of her nurse; but when long leave came round again, and she must -have been about two and a half, he decided to take her with -him. One reason for this was certainly a fear of any pranks -Gilchrist might choose to play, another that Lacy was taking his -leave at the same time, and Bootles was afraid, in the absence of -both, Miss Mignon might fret herself into a fever. And, <a -name="page70"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 70</span>besides, he -had missed the child during a fortnight’s deer-stalking in -Scotland that autumn more than he would have liked to own.</p> -<p>From Blankhampton, therefore, they went to his place, Ferrers -Court, where he was to entertain a rather large party for -Christmas, with a sister of his mother’s, and his only near -relative, to do the honors for him, and among his guests a Mrs. -Smith, a widow, and sister to that dead girl to whom he fancied a -resemblance in Miss Mignon. However, at the last moment, -Mrs. Smith wrote to excuse herself.</p> -<p>“I am very, very sorry,” she said, “but a -very dear friend of mine, with whom I spent two winters in Italy, -has suddenly appeared, with a travelling companion and two maids, -to pay me a long-promised visit of at least two months. She -is a Russian countess—a widow like myself, and wishes, I -fancy, to improve her English, which she already speaks very -well. Of course I am dreadfully disappointed, but cannot -help it.”</p> -<p>Now it happened that Bootles had a very deep and great respect -and liking for Mrs. Smith, and not for all the widowed countesses -in Russia was he willing to upset his plans; therefore he wrote -off at once to Mrs. Smith, after a five minutes’ <a -name="page71"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 71</span>consultation -with Lady Marion, to beg her to carry out her original -intentions, and bring Madame and her retinue -“along.” Would she telegraph her reply?</p> -<p>Mrs. Smith did so, the reply being, Yes. Moreover, she -supplemented the telegram by a letter, in which she mentioned -among other things that Madame Gourbolska’s travelling -companion must be treated in all ways as an ordinary guest.</p> -<p>So, at the time originally appointed for Mrs. Smith’s -coming, the party of six—three ladies and three -maids—arrived. Bootles himself went to the station to -meet them. He found that Madame Gourbolska was young, not -more than thirty, of the plump and fair Russian type, quite fair -enough to hold her own beside Mrs. Smith, whom he regarded as the -most beautiful woman of his acquaintance. The third lady, -Miss Grace, was fair also, perhaps not so positively beautiful as -either the English or the Russian lady, but fair-haired, -fair-skinned, with soft blue-gray eyes, intensely blue in some -lights, as Bootles noticed directly. Graceful she was to a -degree, and as he watched her move across the little station he -thought how wonderfully her name suited her.</p> -<p>Mrs. Smith smiled at him as he helped her to <a -name="page72"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 72</span>mount to the -top of the omnibus. “Is not the likeness -wonderful?” she said, with one of those quick sighs with -which we speak of our dead; and then she said, “Poor -Rosy.”</p> -<p>Bootles turned and looked at Miss Grace again, his mind going -back to those dark days, past and gone now, when he and his best -friend had been estranged for honor’s sake; when he and -this imperially beautiful woman had stood side by side watching a -young life die out; had together seen the sacrifice of a heart, -the martyr of love to man.</p> -<p>“Yes, it is very great,” he said, briefly.</p> -<p>That dead sister of Mrs. Smith had always been and would -always be a not-to-be-broken bond of union between them, for the -widow knew how gladly “that grand Bootles,” as she -always called him, would have tried to make up for the love she -had lost, while to Bootles Mrs. Smith stood out from the rest of -womankind as the sister of the only woman he had ever wished or -asked to marry him.</p> -<p>He helped Miss Grace up to the seat beside Mrs. Smith, and -took his own place beside the Russian lady, who entertained him -very well during the three miles’ drive between Eagles -Station and Ferrers Court.</p> -<div><a name="page73"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 73</span><div -class='figure' style='text-align: center'> -<div class='figureimage'> - -<a href="images/p73.jpg"> -<img alt= -"In another moment they had drawn up at the great gothic -door-way" -title= -"In another moment they had drawn up at the great gothic -door-way" - src="images/p73.jpg" /> -</a></div> -<div class='figurecaption'> -In another moment they had drawn up at the great gothic -door-way</div> -</div> -</div> -<p><a name="page75"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -75</span>“Oh, but what a paradise!” she cried, as the -carriage turned into the court-yard.</p> -<p>“I am delighted that it pleases you,” he answered, -glancing round to see what effect his ancestral home had upon -Miss Grace.</p> -<p>“Lovely!” she murmured to Mrs. Smith.</p> -<p>In another moment they had drawn up at the great Gothic -door-way, and immediately the figure of a little child dressed in -white appeared on the top of the broad steps, kissing her small -hands in token of welcome.</p> -<p>“Go in directly; you’ll get cold. Go in, I -say,” Bootles called out. It was, indeed, bitterly -cold, and a few flakes of snow were falling. But Miss -Mignon had a budget of news for her Bootles, and was not to be -done out of telling it.</p> -<p>“Lal has had a letter from home,” she piped out in -her shrill voice. Lal was her name for Lacy, and home meant -Blankhampton Barracks. “And the St. Bernard has -gotted two puppies—beauties—and I’m to have -one. Lal says so. And Terry has broked his -leg.” Terry was one of Bootles’s grooms. -“And Major Ally’s going to be married.”</p> -<p>Bootles was so surprised that he forgot the cold and his order -that Miss Mignon should go in.</p> -<p><a name="page76"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -76</span>“<i>What</i>!” he exclaimed, -incredulously.</p> -<p>Just then Lacy himself came to the top of the steps with open -arms, so to speak, and carried off Mrs. Smith into the -house. Miss Mignon took advantage of the opportunity to run -down the steps just as Bootles helped Madame Gourbolska to the -ground.</p> -<p>“I welcome you with much pleasure,” he said, -cordially—“Miss Grace also,” as he gave her his -hand to jump the last step. “I am afraid you are -tired. You are very white.”</p> -<p>“I am tired,” she said, in a low voice, not -looking at him, but at the child.</p> -<p>“It is so bitterly cold. Don’t stand a -moment. Mignon, <i>will</i> you go in?”</p> -<p>Miss Mignon skipped up the steps, and the Russian lady caught -her in her arms.</p> -<p>“Oh, you little angel! and what is your name?”</p> -<p>“I’m Miss Mignon. You’re a very pretty -lady,” returned Mignon, critically. “I wanted -to go to the station, but Bootles said it was too cold, and -Lal—”</p> -<p>“Madame does not know what Bootles and Lal mean,” -interrupted Bootles.</p> -<p>“This is Bootles, and that’s Lal,” Miss -Mignon informed her. “I’m Miss Mignon, and I -belong to Bootles.”</p> -<p><a name="page77"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -77</span>“Oh, you belong to Bootles. I am sure he -must be very proud of you,” Madame answered.</p> -<p>“I believe I’m a great bother to him,” Miss -Mignon announced, in a matter-of-fact tone.</p> -<p>Bootles laughed. “Come to the fire, Madame,” -he said. Then turning to Miss Grace, “I’m sure -you are very cold—you are as white as a ghost. -I’m sure,” addressing Lady Marion, “Aunt -Marion, wine would be much better than this tea.”</p> -<p>“No, no; tea,” they cried—at least the two -elder ladies, for Miss Grace seemed to have no ears for any one -but the child.</p> -<p>“Won’t you speak to me?” she asked, -presently, as Miss Mignon gravely regarded her with her big blue -eyes.</p> -<p>Miss Mignon went close to her immediately. “Did -Bootles let you drive?” she asked, with interest.</p> -<p>Miss Grace shook her head, and lifted Miss Mignon onto her -knee. “I did not ask him,” she said.</p> -<p>“Oh!” Then, after a pause, “I -al—ways do.”</p> -<p>“But not a pair?” in surprise.</p> -<p>Miss Mignon nodded. “When they’re not too -fresh. Bootles would have letted you, if you’d asked -him.”</p> -<p><a name="page78"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -78</span>“I will another time.”</p> -<p>“Lacy,” said Bootles, suddenly, “is it true -about Allardyce?”</p> -<p>“Hartog says so. They say -she—er—dwrinks like a duck.”</p> -<p>“Pooh!” But Bootles laughed as if it was a -great joke, and Mrs. Smith begged to be enlightened.</p> -<p>“Oh! don’t you remember Allardyce? -He’s the great military teetotal light.”</p> -<p>“And—er—he wreally is an <span -class="GutSmall">AWFUL</span> duf-fah,” remarked Miss -Mignon, in so exact and so unconscious an imitation of -Lacy’s drawl that her hearers went off into fits of -laughter, and Miss Grace, clasping her close to her breast, bent, -and kissed the luxuriant golden curls.</p> -<p>“You’re crying,” said Miss Mignon, promptly, -scanning Miss Grace’s face with her big eyes.</p> -<p>“No; but you made me laugh,” she said, -hastily.</p> -<p>“Some people do cry when they laugh,” Miss Mignon -informed her. “Our colonel does. Now Major -Garnet always chokes, and then Bootles thumps him. I -don’t know what he’ll do,” she added, in a tone -of deep concern, “if he chokes while we are -away.”</p> -<p>“I never saw such an original little piece of <a -name="page79"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 79</span>mischief in -my life,” cried Mrs. Smith. “And how charmingly -dressed—is she not, Madame? So sensible of you to -cover her up with that warm serge up to her throat and down to -her wrists. Who put you up to it?”</p> -<p>“I fancy we evolved the idea among us. You see she -runs in and out of my rooms, her own, and Mrs. Gray’s, the -adjutant’s wife, that is,” Bootles answered. -“And barrack corridors are not exactly hot-houses. -Besides, our doctor keeps his eye on her, and he blames the -wrapping-up for her never having a day’s -illness.”</p> -<p>“I believe in it,” asserted Mrs. Smith.</p> -<p>“And I—oh! our married ladies tell me I am quite -an authority on the subject. I can tell you we get -fearfully chaffed about her, Lacy and I.”</p> -<p>“Why?” Miss Grace asked.</p> -<p>“Well, because she goes about with us a good deal, and -people seem to find the situation difficult to -understand.” He took it for granted that she knew all -about Miss Mignon, and she did not press the question -further. But half an hour later, when Mrs. Smith was -thinking of dressing, Miss Grace tapped at her door and -entered.</p> -<p>“Could you lend me a few black pins?” she <a -name="page80"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 80</span>asked. -“Madame and I have both forgotten them.”</p> -<p>“Certainly, my dear—take the box.”</p> -<p>But Miss Grace only took a few in the pink palm of her -hand.</p> -<p>“What a pretty child that is!” she said, -carelessly. “Did the mother die when it was -born?”</p> -<p>“Oh, my dear!” cried Mrs. Smith, “she is not -Captain Ferrers’s child. No relation -whatever.”</p> -<p>“No? Whose, then?”</p> -<p>“Ah! That is a question.” Then she -briefly told Miss Mignon’s history, ending: “But he -will never part with her now. He is so fond of her, and she -adores him.”</p> -<p>“He is a fine fellow,” said Miss Grace, toying -with the pins in her hand.</p> -<p>“A fine fellow! He is a splendid character,” -Mrs. Smith cried, warmly. “I assure you I have -studied that man—and I have known him for years—and I -<i>cannot</i> find a fault in him. Years ago, when we were -in great trouble, my mother and I, at the time my sister died, -oh, he <i>was</i> so good, so—well,” with a quick -sigh, “I cannot explain it all, but he was such a comfort -to us, and she died, poor darling, under very painful -circumstances, especially for me. Oh, there are very few in -the <a name="page81"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 81</span>world -like him—not one in ten thousand. Take his action as -regarded that dear little child, for instance. His brother -officers wanted him to send her to the workhouse, but as he wrote -to me, ‘Some day I may meet the mother, and how should I -face her?’”</p> -<p>“Ah!” murmured Miss Grace, and Mrs. Smith went -on.</p> -<p>“It was no small undertaking for a man in his position, -for he has not left her to the entire care of servants—she -is continually with him and Mr. Lacy, who is also very fond of -her. Do you know, he pays her nurse fifty pounds a -year. In fact, she is just as if she were really his own -child. But it is just like him.”</p> -<p>“And they would have sent her to the -workhouse?”</p> -<p>“One or two of them—not Mr. Lacy, of -course.”</p> -<p>Miss Grace was silent for a few moments. Then she roused -herself as from a brown-study.</p> -<p>“Well, I am detaining you, Mrs. Smith, and shall be late -myself. Thank you very much.” Then she went -away, passing softly down the corridor, and entered her room, -locking the door behind her. But once in that safe shelter -she flung the pins on the table and dropped upon her knees, -burying her <a name="page82"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -82</span>face in her hands, while the scalding tears forced their -way between her fingers, and the great sobs shook her -frame. “‘Some day he might meet the -mother,’ she sobbed, ‘and how should he face -her?’ Oh, my child, my little child, how shall I face -him? How shall I bear it? How shall I live in the -same house with him without falling on my knees and blessing him -for saving my little child from—God knows what?”</p> -<div><a name="page83"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 83</span><div -class='figure' style='text-align: center'> -<div class='figureimage'> - -<a href="images/p83.jpg"> -<img alt= -"Lacy was occupied in making desperate love to the Russian lady" -title= -"Lacy was occupied in making desperate love to the Russian lady" - src="images/p83.jpg" /> -</a></div> -<div class='figurecaption'> -Lacy was occupied in making desperate love to the Russian -lady</div> -</div> -</div> -<h2><a name="page85"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -85</span>CHAPTER VI.</h2> -<p>A <span class="smcap">month</span> had passed, and the three -ladies still remained at Ferrers Court, though other visitors had -come and gone, lots of them. Lacy was still there also, and -occupied in making desperate love to the Russian lady, utterly -ignoring two important facts—one that she only laughed at -him, the other that she was three years his senior.</p> -<p>But while all this was going on, Bootles had fallen in love at -last, as men and women only fall once in their lives, and of -course the lady was Madame Gourbolska’s friend, Miss -Grace—had he but known it, the mother of Mignon.</p> -<p>But Bootles never suspected that for a moment. True, -there was a likeness so strong as to proclaim the truth, and many -a time Miss Grace wondered, when she caught sight of the -child’s face and her own in a glass, that all these people -did not see it. Yet neither Bootles nor any one else did -see it, and the game of love was played on with desperate -earnestness on his side, and with equally desperate desire to -prevent it on hers.</p> -<p><a name="page86"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 86</span>But -Bootles admired shy game, and Miss Grace’s evident shyness -made him only the more earnest; and not being troubled with that -faint heart which never won fair lady, he had no intention of -allowing Madame Gourbolska to depart from beneath his roof -without asking Miss Grace to return to it as its mistress. -Therefore one afternoon, when he returned from hunting in much -bespattered pink, and went into the fire-lit library, where he -found Miss Grace half dreaming by the fire, he shut the door with -the intention of getting it over at once. Miss Grace rose -with some signs of confusion.</p> -<p>“Don’t go for a minute,” said Bootles; -“I want to speak to you. It seems to me that you have -grown very fond of my little Mignon. Is it not -so?”</p> -<p>Miss Grace caught at the carvings of the oaken chimney-shelf -to steady herself, and her heart began to beat hard and fast.</p> -<p>“Yes, I am very fond of her,” she stammered.</p> -<p>“I wish you would take her for your own,” Bootles -said, very gently.</p> -<p>“For—my own?” sharply. “What do -you mean?”</p> -<p>For a moment she thought he knew all, but his next words -undeceived her.</p> -<p><a name="page87"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -87</span>“If she had such a mother as you, poor little -motherless waif, and if <i>I</i> had such a wife, and if Ferrers -Court had such a mistress! Oh! don’t you understand -what I mean?” taking her hand.</p> -<p>Miss Grace snatched the hand away. “Oh, -don’t, <i>don’t</i>, <span -class="GutSmall">DON’T</span>!” she said, turning -away.</p> -<p>But Bootles possessed himself of it again. “Must I -tell you more? Oh, my darling, how from the very first day -I ever saw you I loved you with all my heart and soul? How, -when I bade you welcome to my house, I could, and would if I had -dared, have taken you up to my heart and kissed you before every -one? How—”</p> -<p>“Oh, tell me nothing—nothing!” she cried, -with feverish haste. “Don’t you understand it -cannot be? It is impossible—quite -impossible.”</p> -<p>“Impossible!” he echoed, blankly. “Why -is it impossible? Not because you don’t care, that -I’ll swear.”</p> -<p>She said nothing.</p> -<p>“Or, if that is so, look at me and say I don’t -love you.”</p> -<p>But Miss Grace did not speak, nor yet did she look.</p> -<p>“Or will you tell me that there is some one <a -name="page88"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 88</span>else whom you -like better?” he asked, regaining hope.</p> -<p>No, Miss Grace did not seem inclined to vouchsafe that -information either.</p> -<p>“Or that the care of the child would be an -objection?”</p> -<p>“<i>No</i>!” she burst out, in an agonized -tone.</p> -<p>“Then what do you mean by impossible?” he -asked. “It seems to me very possible -indeed.”</p> -<p>She looked at him—that proud, handsome, erect man, with -a smile of expectant happiness on his good face—and tried -to take her hands away.</p> -<p>“Oh!” she sobbed out, “don’t you think -I would if I could? I have not been so happy that I would -throw away such happiness as you could give me. Some day -you may know what it costs me to tell you that it is quite -impossible.”</p> -<p>“You give me no hope?” he asked, in a dull voice, -and she saw that he had grown white to his very lips.</p> -<p>“None,” she returned; then added, bitterly, -“Oh, hope and I have had nothing to say to one another this -long, long while.”</p> -<p>Bootles dropped her hand listlessly. “Then it is -no use my boring you,” he said, turning away.</p> -<div><a name="page89"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 89</span><div -class='figure' style='text-align: center'> -<div class='figureimage'> - -<a href="images/p89.jpg"> -<img alt= -"Then with one imploring backward look she went away and left him -alone" -title= -"Then with one imploring backward look she went away and left him -alone" - src="images/p89.jpg" /> -</a></div> -<div class='figurecaption'> -Then with one imploring backward look she went away and left him -alone</div> -</div> -</div> -<p><a name="page91"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 91</span>A -fierce denial rose to the girl’s lips, but she choked it -down and suffered his words in silence. Then meekly, and -with one imploring backward look at his tall figure as he stood, -his head well up in spite of his defeat, looking into the fire, -she went away and left him alone.</p> -<h2><a name="page92"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -92</span>CHAPTER VII.</h2> -<p><span class="smcap">So</span> it was all over. This was -the end of all his hopes and dreams and wishes! This was -the end! None of his bright hopes would ever be—none -of his golden dreams would come to pass. His wishes had no -weight with the woman he loved. He had looked -forward—like a fool, he thought, bitterly—and had -pictured her in a dozen different ways: at the head of his table, -in the hunting-field, in the middle age, and in the decline of -life, as Mignon’s mother, as his wife. But it was all -over now. When Madame’s visit was over, she would go -from under his roof, never to come back to it any more, -forever.</p> -<p>He was still standing there when the door opened with some -difficulty, and Miss Mignon appeared on the threshold.</p> -<p>“Bootles?” she said, inquiringly.</p> -<p>Bootles turned round to her. “Well?” he -answered.</p> -<p>Miss Mignon heard the misery in his voice and ran to -him. “Bootles got a headache?” she asked.</p> -<div><a name="page93"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 93</span><div -class='figure' style='text-align: center'> -<div class='figureimage'> - -<a href="images/p93.jpg"> -<img alt= -"He dropped into a chair and took her in his arms" -title= -"He dropped into a chair and took her in his arms" - src="images/p93.jpg" /> -</a></div> -<div class='figurecaption'> -He dropped into a chair and took her in his arms</div> -</div> -</div> -<p><a name="page95"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 95</span>He -dropped into a chair and took her in his arms. “Such -a headache, Mignon.”</p> -<p>Miss Mignon knew what Bootles’s headaches were, and drew -his head down upon her small shoulder with an air of protecting -and comforting dignity, equally pretty and absurd in one so -young.</p> -<p>“Mignon <i>loves</i> Bootles,” she whispered.</p> -<p>“Will Mignon always love Bootles?” he asked.</p> -<p>“Always,” was the confident reply. -“Mignon will <i>always</i> love Bootles.”</p> -<p>And so in and because of his trouble the little child crept -closer and closer into his heart, and drove out the greatest -bitterness of his disappointment, and the clasp of her soft arms -about his neck seemed to take away the sharpest sting of -defeat. The touch of her baby lips upon his aching -forehead—and it <i>did</i> ache—brought him a larger -measure of comfort than any living thing had power to do at that -moment.</p> -<p>If only he had known that Mignon was <i>her</i> child!</p> -<p>But Bootles was not the man to sulk with fate; if Miss Grace -would not have him, no more was to be said, and no one but Mrs. -Smith saw anything unusual between them. But trust Mrs. <a -name="page96"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 96</span>Smith. -She walked into Miss Grace’s room and taxed her with -it—taxed her in so friendly a way that the girl began to -cry miserably. Mrs. Smith fumed.</p> -<p>“It is absurd,” she cried, “to refuse such a -man—such a position—such—such— Oh! -it’s absurd. I have no patience with you. You -will never have such a chance again—never.”</p> -<p>“Oh, never,” she sobbed.</p> -<p>“Why, then, throw it away? Let me go and -tell—”</p> -<p>“No; tell him nothing. I have already told him it -is impossible. Oh, Mrs. Smith!” she cried, -passionately, “do you think any woman in her senses would -refuse him if she could help it? Not I, I assure -you.”</p> -<p>“It is inexplicable,” said Mrs. Smith, but she -protested no further.</p> -<p>So the next day they left Ferrers Court, Bootles driving them -to the station. But it was all very different -now—very different, too, from the last time he had driven -them anywhere. There was no laughter, no joking, no promise -to come again. He was not outwardly angry, not harsh nor -hard in any way, but he was very polite; and politeness from him -was heart-breaking.</p> -<p><a name="page97"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 97</span>It was -soon over when they reached the station—a few minutes of -that kind of conversation which people make when they are waiting -for a carriage or a train, as they said the passengers of the -<i>London</i> made while walking up and down quietly waiting for -the end. There was a handshaking all round, the lifting of -Bootles’s and Lacy’s hats, a fuss over Miss Mignon, -and that was all. Miss Grace, on looking out of the -carriage window with tear-dimmed eyes, saw that they were -together, the child’s hand in his. Miss -Mignon’s last words were yet ringing in her ears: -“Bootles has gotted such a headache.”</p> -<p>“Then Mignon must be very kind to him,” Miss Grace -whispered.</p> -<p>Ay, Miss Mignon had need to be kind, for Bootles had -“gotted” such a heartache too!</p> -<h2><a name="page98"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -98</span>CHAPTER VIII.</h2> -<p>A <span class="smcap">crowd</span> of roughs, a lesser crowd -of third-rate spectators, and a lesser gathering of fashionable -ones were assembled on the Blankhampton racecourse, for it was -the day of the Scarlet Lancer Steeple-chases.</p> -<p>On the Grand Stand were to be seen most of the rank and -fashion of the neighborhood, and a goodly show of that class of -people who are always to be found about towns which are also -military stations—the class of people who have daughters to -marry, and not much money to marry them with.</p> -<p>There were all the Scarlet Lancer ladies in full force, from -the colonel’s wife in blue velvet and sables, to the -quartermaster’s lady in a hard felt hat, with long diamond -and pearl ear-rings. There were officers in cords and -boots, their silken finery hidden by Newmarket coats. And -there was the bride, Mrs. Allardyce, in pink and gray, the -major’s racing colors—oh lor! as the fellows said -when <a name="page99"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 99</span>they -saw her. And there was Miss Mignon, a little three-year-old -belle, got up in Bootles’s colors—scarlet, purple, -and gold—adapted in her small case to a warm frock of -purple velvet, braided with scarlet and gold, and on her golden -curls a jockey-cap to match it. Utterly absurd, most people -said, but Bootles didn’t seem to see it. Nor, for the -matter of that, did Miss Mignon herself. Held by Bootles, -or, when Bootles was riding, by Lacy, she sat on the broad ledge -of the balcony and surveyed the world, like a queen in -miniature.</p> -<p>It was a fine place for seeing; yes, and a fine place for -hearing too, as Lacy testified afterwards in his own peculiar -style of delivery.</p> -<p>“Er—I and Miss Mignon were waiting for Bootles to -come down the lawn, when—er—a laday next to -us—er—a little unpwrepossessing person—I found -out afterwards that her name is Berwry—with a nose like a -teapot-spout, and a mouth of the bull-dog ordah—little -daughter, by-the-bye, pretty much of the same type, but just a -shade less hideous—suddenly electwrified us by pulling out -a huge pair of gold eye-glasses, and holding the wrace-card at -arm’s-length.</p> -<p>“‘Ow!’ said she, in a mincing voice, when -Miles <a name="page100"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -100</span>came down the lane looking like a sack of flour in a -purple satin jacket—‘Ow, <span -class="smcap">Cap</span>-tain Ferwrahs! Ow, Dorothy, my -deah, <span class="smcap">Cap</span>-tain Ferwrahs! -<i>Vewry</i> handsome—and how <i>beau</i>-tifully he -wrides! Ow, I’m shaw he’ll win, and what a -<i>lovely</i> horse! <span class="smcap">Cap</span>-tain -Ferwrahs! He’s vewry handsome.’</p> -<p>“Well—er—I gave Miss Mignon a gwreat squeeze -to hold her tongue—and she did. This -Mrs.—er—Berwry went on expatiating on Miles’s -great beauty of person, and on the absolute certainty of his -winning. ‘And his pet name is Bootles,’ she -informed us. His <i>pet</i> name! Well, pwresently -Bootles came sailing down the lawn in all his glowry, and Miss -Mignon quite forgot the old girl, and shouted out to him. -‘Bootles,’ she -called—‘Bootles.’</p> -<p>“Bootles glanced up, and waved his hand, -and—er—the old party called Berwry turned wound and -eyed her sharply, saw the scarlet, purple, and gold of her -dwress, looked at her card, and said, witheringly, ‘Ow, I -don’t know <i>him</i>,’ as if there were a dozen -Captain Ferwers knocking about, and this was one of the eleven -she didn’t know.</p> -<p>“Well, when the wrace was over—er—who should -come up but Miles.</p> -<p>“‘Ah, Miles,’ said I, -‘I—er—heard a laday <a name="page101"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 101</span>expatiating just now on your -extrwreme beauty and gwrace and elegance of person—was shaw -you’d win. What a pity you didn’t!’</p> -<p>“‘Bless my soul!’ said Miles; ‘was she -pretty?”</p> -<p>“‘Oh, don’t be flattered; she took you for -Bootles,’ said I, ignoring the question.</p> -<p>“‘Bootles’s money again!’ cwried -Miles, with a gwreat wroar of laughter.</p> -<p>“Well, in two twos up comes Bootles. ‘See me -win, Mignon?’” said he.</p> -<p>“So I—er—told him the stowry too, and -Bootles laughed that absurd ‘Ha! ha!’ of his. -‘Come along and have some lunch, Mignon, my -sweetheart,’ said he, ‘<i>and let’s be out of -this</i>.’”</p> -<p>But it was after this incident that the most important event -of that bright May day occurred—one of those fearful -struggles to win, when half a dozen horses show well for the -post, and all the field finds tongue and shouts its hardest.</p> -<p>“Ferrers wins! Blue and fawn—yellow and -black! Miles wins—Miles wins! No, no; Ferrers -in front—fawn and blue! -Hartog—Hartog—Hartog wins! Miles in -front! Ah, he’s down! -Ferrers—Miles—blue and fawn—Gilchrist -gains—Miles—Gilchrist—Ferrers -wins—Ferrers wins! All up with the others! -Ferrers <span class="GutSmall">WINS</span>!”</p> -<p><a name="page102"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 102</span>And -then the company, good, bad, and indifferent, had time to -remember that a man was down—no, not one man, but -two. To find out that Hartog was bruised and stunned, but -able with help to get to the dressing-room and recover himself, -to learn that the swarming crowd around the other was watching a -more exciting race than that which they had just witnessed with -shouts and applause, that they were watching with awe and in -silence a race between life and death—for Gilchrist, the -“odd” man of the regiment, the man who had been -nobody’s friend, nobody’s chum, was lying in the -midst of them with his back broken, waiting for a hurdle.</p> -<p>They were all as sorry as men could be who had never been -moved by feelings of friendship. The proceedings were -stopped at once, and they went gravely back to barracks, those -who had ridden, to get into morning-clothes, and all of them to -hang about waiting for news.</p> -<p>But there was no hope, absolutely no hope whatever. With -all his faults, failings, and peculiarities, Gavor Gilchrist was -passing away from their midst by exchange, as Hartog had once -wished—the exchange, not of one regiment for another, but -of this world for the next.</p> -<div><a name="page103"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -103</span><div class='figure' style='text-align: center'> -<div class='figureimage'> - -<a href="images/p103.jpg"> -<img alt= -"The swarming crowd round the other was watching a more exciting -race than that which they had just witnessed" -title= -"The swarming crowd round the other was watching a more exciting -race than that which they had just witnessed" - src="images/p103.jpg" /> -</a></div> -<div class='figurecaption'> -The swarming crowd round the other was watching a more exciting -race than that which they had just witnessed</div> -</div> -</div> -<p><a name="page105"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 105</span>It -was about six o’clock that the senior of the two surgeons -in attendance on Gilchrist entered the anteroom, and, looking -around, beckoned for Bootles.</p> -<p>“What news?” asked several voices.</p> -<p>“He won’t last the night. Bootles, he wants -you.”</p> -<p>“I’ll come,” said Bootles, rising.</p> -<p>“Sure to want Bootles,” observed Preston.</p> -<p>“Oh yes; I should myself,” returned another.</p> -<p>“Won’t last the night,” remarked a -third. “Well, I never did like Gilchrist—never; -but, all the same, I’m deuced sorry for him now, poor -chap. For oh, by Jove! it’s a fearful thing when you -come to that.”</p> -<p>And then they fell into silence again, waiting for Bootles to -come back. Half an hour passed—three-quarters; then -Bootles did not come. An hour; then Bootles -appeared—came with a white face and a scared look in his -blue eyes, followed by the doctor who had fetched him. -Every man in the room was roused from a lounging attitude to one -of expectation and surprise.</p> -<p>“Bootles,” said Lacy, moving towards him.</p> -<p>But Bootles did not even look at him. He turned to the -doctor and uttered words the like of which <a -name="page106"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 106</span>none of his -hearers had ever heard from him before.</p> -<p>“I kept my temper, doctor—you think I did? I -know the man’s dying. Yes, I know, and I -shouldn’t like to think I lost my temper with a poor chap -who was dying, but—but—No; I won’t say a -word. I’ll go away and keep to myself until -I’ve got over it a little. If I stop here I shall say -something I shall be sorry for all the rest of my -life.”</p> -<p>“What is it, Bootles?” broke in Lacy, in his soft -voice.</p> -<p>But Bootles did not reply for a moment. He stood still, -trying hard to control himself; but Lacy, who had laid his hand -upon his sleeve, felt that he was shaking from head to foot, and -his very lips were trembling.</p> -<p>“Tell us,” said Lacy, persuasively. -“What is it?”</p> -<p>“He is Mignon’s father!” Bootles -answered. And then he broke from Lacy’s grasp and -fled.</p> -<p>“Impossible!” Lacy cried.</p> -<p>“Not at all; it is true,” the doctor -answered. “He is making his will now, leaving Bootles -sole guardian and trustee to the child.”</p> -<p>“The brute,” burst out Preston, indignantly, -remembering Gilchrist’s words—not so long ago.</p> -<div><a name="page107"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -107</span><div class='figure' style='text-align: center'> -<div class='figureimage'> - -<a href="images/p107.jpg"> -<img alt= -"A race between life and death" -title= -"A race between life and death" - src="images/p107.jpg" /> -</a></div> -<div class='figurecaption'> -A race between life and death</div> -</div> -</div> -<p><a name="page109"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -109</span>“Hush, hush! The man is dying, and death -alters everything,” the doctor cried.</p> -<p>“And Bootles kept his temper? Said -nothing?”</p> -<p>“Not one word—of reproach.”</p> -<p>“Has he seen her?”</p> -<p>“No. He would not, though Bootles asked -him.”</p> -<p>“His own child—and she Miss Mignon!”</p> -<p>“All the better. She cannot endure him.”</p> -<p>“By Jove! But what a blow for Bootles!”</p> -<p>“How will he take it? Will it make any -difference?”</p> -<p>“As wregards Miss Mignon? What wrot you -talk. As if Bootles—” But there Lacy -broke off in disgust, and the babel of surmises, questions, and -answers went on.</p> -<p>And that night Gavor Gilchrist died.</p> -<h2><a name="page110"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -110</span>CHAPTER IX.</h2> -<p><span class="smcap">Oh</span>, but it was a blow for -Bootles! To find he had been duped, tricked, made a fool of -all this time; to remember the anxiety, the trouble, the expense -to which he had been put; nay, to recall the chaff he had -endured, and then to discover that Miss Mignon was -Gilchrist’s child—the child of the man he went -perhaps nearer to hating than any one he had ever known in all -his life! Everything came back to him then—the dead -man’s jibes and sneers and taunts, his unwearied efforts to -tax him with an offence which he knew he had not committed. -And though he had failed in that, oh, what a fool Gilchrist had -made of him! That was the sting Bootles felt most of -anything.</p> -<p>For hours after he left the anteroom Bootles kept out of every -one’s way—indeed until Lacy came to tell him that -Gilchrist was dead. Then, it being close upon the hour of -eleven, he went and knocked at the door of Mignon’s -nursery. The nurse opened it a few inches, and seeing who -it was, set it open wide.</p> -<p><a name="page111"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -111</span>“Is Miss Mignon asleep?” he asked.</p> -<p>“Yes, sir; hours ago,” the woman answered.</p> -<p>He passed into the inner room, where the child was -lying. A candle burned on a table beside the cot, casting -its light on the fair baby face, now flushed in sleep, and on the -tangled golden curls. Both her arms lay outside the eider -coverlet, one hand grasping the whip with which he had ridden and -won that day, the other holding the card of the races. -Bootles bent and scanned her face closely, but not one trace -could he discern of likeness to the father—not -one—and he drew a deep breath of relief that it was so.</p> -<p>Well he remembered Lacy’s puzzled scrutiny of the -year-old baby. “There’s a likeness, but I -don’t know where to plant it.” If there had -been a likeness to Gilchrist then, it had now passed away; and as -Bootles satisfied himself that it was so, his love for her, which -during the last few hours had hung trembling in the balance, -though he would hardly have acknowledged it, even to himself, -re-asserted itself, and rose up in his heart stronger than -ever. Just then she moved uneasily in her sleep.</p> -<p>“Lal, where <i>is</i> Bootles?” she asked. -Then, after a pause, “Gotted <i>another</i> -headache?” And <a name="page112"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 112</span>an instant later, “Miss Grace -said Mignon was to be very kind to Bootles.”</p> -<p>Bootles bent down and kissed her, and she awoke.</p> -<p>“Bootles,” she said, in sleepy surprise; then, -imperatively, “Take me up.”</p> -<p>So Bootles carried her to the fire in the adjoining room, -where the nurse was sewing a fresh frill of lace on the pretty -velvet frock, with its braidings of scarlet and gold, which she -had worn that day.</p> -<p>“Lal said Mignon wasn’t to go to Bootles,” -she said, reproachfully.</p> -<p>“Bootles has been bothered, Mignon,” he -answered.</p> -<p>“Poor Bootles!” stroking his cheek with her soft -hand. “Bootles was vexed; Lal said so. But not -with Mignon. Mignon told Lal so,” confidently.</p> -<p>“Never with Mignon,” answered Bootles, resting his -cheek against the tossed golden curls, and feeling as if he had -done this faithful baby heart a moral injustice by his hours of -anger and doubt.</p> -<p>There was a moment of silence, broken by the nurse. -“Have you heard, sir, how Mr. Gilchrist is?” she -asked.</p> -<p><a name="page113"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -113</span>Bootles roused himself. “He is dead, -nurse. Died half an hour ago.”</p> -<p>“Then, if you please, sir,” she asked, -hesitatingly, “might I ask if it is true about Miss -Mignon?”</p> -<p>“Yes, it is true,” his face darkening.</p> -<p>“Because, sir, Miss Mignon should have mourning,” -she began, when Bootles cut her short.</p> -<p>“I shall not allow her to wear mourning for Mr. -Gilchrist,” he said, curtly; so the nurse dared say no -more.</p> -<p>Three days later the funeral took place; and if the facts of -the dead man’s having acknowledged Miss Mignon as his -child, and having admitted to Bootles that he had transferred her -that night from his own quarters to Bootles’s rooms, -created a sensation, it was as nothing to the intense surprise -caused by the will, which was read, by the dead man’s -desire, before all the officers of the regiment.</p> -<p>In it he left his entire property to his daughter, Mary -Gilchrist, now in the care of Captain Ferrers, and commonly known -as Mignon, on condition that Captain Ferrers consented to be her -sole guardian and trustee until she had attained the age of -twenty-one, or until her marriage, provided <a -name="page114"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 114</span>it should -be with her guardian’s sanction, and on the express -understanding that Captain Ferrers should not give up the care of -the child to her mother, even temporarily. To his wife, -Helen Gilchrist, a copy of this testament was to be sent -forthwith. Should any of the conditions be violated, the -whole property of which he died possessed should go to his -cousin, Lucian Gavor Gilchrist; but if the conditions be -faithfully observed Captain Ferrers should have the power of -applying any, or all, of the income arising from the estate for -the use and maintenance of the said Mary Gilchrist.</p> -<p>“Cwrazy!” murmured Lacy to Bootles, who listened -in contemptuous silence, and wondered in no small dismay what -kind of a life he should have if Mignon’s mother chose to -make herself objectionable.</p> -<p>But the will was not crazy at all; far from it. It was -only a very cleverly thought-out plan for keeping mother and -child apart. Bootles would take care not to endanger -Mignon’s inheritance, and Gilchrist had taken advantage of -it to carry out his animosity towards his wife to the bitter -end.</p> -<p>But of course there was one contingency he had never thought -of or provided for—<i>marriage</i>.</p> -<p><a name="page115"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 115</span>It -was less than a week after Gilchrist’s death that Bootles -received a note by hand, signed Helen Gilchrist.</p> -<p>“Already!” he groaned, impatiently.</p> -<p>“May I trouble you to send the child to see me for half -an hour during this afternoon?” she said, and that was -all.</p> -<p>But Bootles did not see sending the child to be quietly stolen -away. He forgot quite that since Gilchrist had not left his -widow a farthing she would probably be now no better able to -provide for the child than she had been when compelled to cast -her baby upon the father’s mercy. Therefore, -immediately after lunch, he drove down to the hotel from which -the note had been written. Yes; Mrs. Gilchrist was -within—this way. And then—then—Bootles, -with the child fast holding his hand, was shown into a room, and -there they found—<i>Miss Grace</i>!</p> -<p>The truth flashed into his mind instantly. She rose -hurriedly, and he saw that she was clad in black, but was not in -widow’s dress. She fell upon her knees and almost -smothered Mignon with kisses.</p> -<p>“Mignon! Mignon!” she cried.</p> -<p>“Mignon has been very kind to Bootles,” <a -name="page116"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 116</span>Mignon -explained, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.</p> -<p>“My Mignon! my baby!” the mother sobbed. -Bootles watched them—the two things he loved best on -earth.</p> -<p>“Have you nothing to say to me?” he asked at -last.</p> -<p>“What shall I say?” She had risen from her -knees, and now moved shyly away.</p> -<p>“You might say,” said Bootles, severely, -“that you are very sorry that you, a married woman, -deceived me and stole my heart away. You might say that, -for one thing.”</p> -<p>“But I am not sorry,” cried Mignon’s mother, -audaciously.</p> -<p>“Then you might take a leaf out of Mignon’s book, -and say, as she says when I have a headache, ‘Mignon -<i>loves</i> Bootles.’”</p> -<div><a name="page117"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -117</span><div class='figure' style='text-align: center'> -<div class='figureimage'> - -<a href="images/p117.jpg"> -<img alt= -"Bootles watched them—the two things he loved best on -earth" -title= -"Bootles watched them—the two things he loved best on -earth" - src="images/p117.jpg" /> -</a></div> -<div class='figurecaption'> -Bootles watched them—the two things he loved best on -earth</div> -</div> -</div> -<p><a name="page119"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -119</span>“I wreally do think,” remarked Lacy to the -fellows, when the astounding news had been told and freely -discussed, “that now we must let that poor, malicious, -cwrooked-minded chap wrest in his gwrave in peace. Seems to -me,” he continued, with his most reflective air, -“that—er—Solomon was wright, and said a vewry -wise thing, when he said, ‘Love laughs at -locksmiths.’”</p> -<p>“Solomon!” cried a voice, amid a shout of -laughter.</p> -<p>“Oh, wasn’t it Solomon?” questioned Lacy, -mildly. “It’s of no consequence; some one said -it. But only think of that poor devil spending his last -moments wraising a barwrier to keep mother and child apart, and -old Bootles fulfils all the conditions to the letter, and bwreaks -them all in the spirit by—marwriage!”</p> - -<div class="gapspace"> </div> -<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">THE -END.</span></p> - -<div style='display:block;margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MIGNON ***</div> -<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0;'>This file should be named 64603-h.htm or 64603-h.zip</div> -<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0;'>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in https://www.gutenberg.org/6/4/6/0/64603/</div> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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