"But I've got to ask her. I promised. It's a 'normous responsibility. Will you please let me, Mary El-len?"
"I will not," replied Mary Ellen, firmly. "It'ud be as much as my place is worth."
I began to cry. Angel came to the rescue.
"Be a sport, Mary Ellen. Let him go. I'll stand at the gate and if I see the Dragon coming, I'll pass the tip to John, and he can cut over the garden wall and be in the room before she gets to the front door."
Mary Ellen threw up her hands. She never could resist Angel's coaxing. "God save Ireland," she groaned, and, dropping The Seraph, clattered back to the kitchen.
The Seraph stood like a rumpled robin where she had deposited him. He had confided to me once that he rather liked being nursed by Mary Ellen, though the heaving of her bosom bothered him. He was far too polite to tell her this: but now that she was gone, he hunched his shoulders, stretched his neck and breathed—
"What a welief!—"
I found Margery alone in the drawing-room. People had just been, for teacups were standing about, and a single muffin lay in a silver muffin dish. Even in the stress of my mission its isolation appealed to me.
Margery was doing something to a bowl of
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