A Rock in the Baltic. Robert Barr
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this: I shall see you the night of the 14th, at the ball we are giving on the ‘Consternation’?”
“It is very likely,” laughed the girl, “unless you overlook me in the throng. There will be a great mob. I hear you have issued many invitations.”
“We hope all our friends will come. It’s going to be a great function. Your Secretary of the Navy has promised to look in on us, and our Ambassador from Washington will be there. I assure you we are doing our best, with festooned electric lights, hanging draperies, and all that, for we want to make the occasion at least remotely worthy of the hospitality we have received. Of course you have your card, but I wish you hadn’t, so that I might have the privilege of sending you one or more invitations.”
“That would be quite unnecessary,” said the girl, again with a slight laugh and heightened color.
“If any of your friends need cards of invitation, won’t you let me know, so that I may send them to you?”
“I’m sure I shan’t need any, but if I do, I promise to remember your kindness, and apply.”
“It will be a pleasure for me to serve you. With whom shall you come? I should like to know the name, in case I should miss you in the crowd.”
“I expect to be with Captain Kempt, of the United States Navy.”
“Ah,” said the Lieutenant, with a note of disappointment in his voice which he had not the diplomacy to conceal. His hold of her hand relaxed, and she took the opportunity to withdraw it.
“What sort of a man is Captain Kempt? I shall be on the lookout for him, you know.”
“I think he is the handsomest man I have ever seen, and I know he is the kindest and most courteous.”
“Really? A young man, I take it?”
“There speaks the conceit of youth,” said Dorothy, smiling. “Captain Kempt, U.S.N., retired. His youngest daughter is just two years older than myself.”
“Oh, yes, Captain Kempt. I—I remember him now. He was at the dinner last night, and sat beside our captain. What a splendid story-teller he is!” cried the Lieutenant with honest enthusiasm.
“I shall tell him that, and ask him how he liked your song. Good-by,” and before the young man could collect his thoughts to make any reply, she was gone.
Skimming lightly over the ground at first, she gradually slackened her pace, and slowed down to a very sober walk until she came to a three-storied so-called “cottage” overlooking the Bay, then with a sigh she opened the gate, and went into the house by the servant’s entrance.
CHAPTER II—IN THE SEWING-ROOM
THREE women occupied the sewing-room with the splendid outlook: a mother and her two daughters. The mother sat in a low rocking-chair, a picture of mournful helplessness, her hands listlessly resting on her lap, while tears had left their traces on her time-worn face. The elder daughter paced up and down the room as striking an example of energy and impatience as was the mother of despondency. Her comely brow was marred by an angry frown. The younger daughter stood by the long window, her forehead resting against the pane, while her fingers drummed idly on the window sill. Her gaze was fixed on the blue Bay, where rested the huge British warship “Consternation,” surrounded by a section of the United States squadron seated like white swans in the water. Sails of snow glistened here and there on the bosom of the Bay, while motor-boats and what-not darted this way and that impudently among the stately ships of the fleet.
In one corner of the room stood a sewing-machine, and on the long table were piles of mimsy stuff out of which feminine creations are constructed. There was no carpet on the floor, and no ceiling overhead; merely the bare rafters and the boards that bore the pine shingles of the outer roof; yet this attic was notable for the glorious view to be seen from its window. It was an ideal workshop.
The elder girl, as she walked to and fro, spoke with nervous irritation in her voice.
“There is absolutely no excuse, mamma, and it’s weakness in you to pretend that there may be. The woman has been gone for hours. There’s her lunch on the table which has never been tasted, and the servant brought it up at twelve.”
She pointed to a tray on which were dishes whose cold contents bore out the truth of her remark.
“Perhaps she’s gone on strike,” said the younger daughter, without removing her eyes from H.M.S. “Consternation.” “I shouldn’t wonder if we went downstairs again we’d find the house picketed to keep away blacklegs.”
“Oh, you can always be depended on to talk frivolous nonsense,” said her elder sister scornfully. “It’s the silly sentimental fashion in which both you and father treat work-people that makes them so difficult to deal with. If the working classes were taught their place—”
“Working classes! How you talk! Dorothy is as much a lady as we are, and sometimes I think rather more of a lady than either of us. She is the daughter of a clergyman.”
“So she says,” sniffed the elder girl.
“Well, she ought to know,” replied the younger indifferently.
“It’s people like you who spoil dependents in her position, with your Dorothy this and Dorothy that. Her name is Amhurst.”
“Christened Dorothy, as witness godfather and godmother,” murmured the younger without turning her head.
“I think,” protested their mother meekly, as if to suggest a compromise, and throw oil on the troubled waters, “that she is entitled to be called Miss Amhurst, and treated with kindness but with reserve.”
“Tush!” exclaimed the elder indignantly, indicating her rejection of the compromise.
“I don’t see,” murmured the younger, “why you should storm, Sabina. You nagged and nagged at her until she’d finished your ball-dress. It is mamma and I that have a right to complain. Our dresses are almost untouched, while you can sail grandly along the decks of the ‘Consternation’ like a fully rigged yacht. There, I’m mixing my similes again, as papa always says. A yacht doesn’t sail along the deck of a battleship, does it?”
“It’s a cruiser,” weakly corrected the mother, who knew something of naval affairs.
“Well, cruiser, then. Sabina is afraid that papa won’t go unless we all have grand new dresses, but mother can put on her old black silk, and I am going if I have to wear a cotton gown.”
“To think of that person accepting our money, and absenting herself in this disgraceful way!”
“Accepting our money! That shows what it is to have an imagination. Why, I don’t suppose Dorothy has had a penny for three months, and you know the dress material was bought on credit.”
“You must remember,” chided the mother mildly, “that your father is not rich.”
“Oh, I am only pleading for a little humanity. The girl for some reason has gone out. She hasn’t had a bite to eat since breakfast time, and I know there’s not a silver piece in her pocket to buy a bun in a milk-shop.”
“She has no business to be absent without leave,” said Sabina.
“How you talk! As if she were a sailor on a battleship—I mean a cruiser.”
“Where can the girl have gone?” wailed the mother, almost wringing her hands, partially overcome by the crisis. “Did she say anything about going out to you, Katherine? She sometimes makes a confidant of you, doesn’t she?”
“Confidant!” exclaimed Sabina wrathfully.
“I