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288 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP
"Thank you. My wife is an old sailor, and has made two
voyages out and home to India." Here, you understand, the old
man is again eluding his interlocutor's artless queries.
" I should like to have some talk with you, sir, when you are
free," continues Philip, not having leisure as yet to be surprised at
the other's demeanour.
" There are other days besides Sunday for talk on business,"
says that piteous sly-boots of an old officer. Ah, conscience!
conscience! Twenty-four Sikhs, sword in hand, two dozen
Pindarrees, Mahrattas, Ghoorkas, what you please—that old man
felt that he would rather have met them than Philip's unsuspecting
blue eyes. These, however, now lighted up with rather an angry,
" Well, sir, as you don't talk business on Sunday, may I call on
you to-morrow morning ?"
And what advantage had the poor old fellow got by all this
doubling and hesitating and artfulness ?—a respite until to-morrow
morning ! Another night of horrible wakefulness and hopeless
guilt, and Philip waiting ready the next morning with his little bill,
and, " Please pay me the thirty thousand which my father spent
and you owe me. Please turn out into the streets with your wife
and family, and beg and starve. Have the goodness to hand me
out your last rupee. Be kind enough to sell your children's clothes
and your wife's jewels, and hand over the proceeds to me. I'll call
to-morrow. Bye bye."
Here there came tripping over the marble pavement of the hall
of the hotel a tall young lady in a brown silk dress and rich curling
ringlets falling upon her fair young neck—beautiful brown curling
ringlets, vous comprenez, not wisps of moistened hair, -and a broad
clear forehead, and two honest eyes shining below it, and cheeks
not pale as they Were yesterday ; and lips redder still ; and she
says, " Papa, papa, won't you come to breakfast ? The tea is __________ "
What the precise state of the tea is I don't know—none of us ever
shall—for here she says, " Oh, Mr. Firmin !" and makes a curtsey.
To which remark Philip replied, " Miss Baynes, I hope you are
very well this morning, and not the worse for yesterday's rough
weather ?"
" I am quite well, thank you," was Miss Baynes's instant reply.
The answer was not witty, to be sure ; but I don't know that under
the circumstances she could have said anything more appropriate.
Indeed, never was a pleasanter picture of health and good-humour
than the young lady presented ; a difference more pleasant to note
than Miss Charlotte's pale face from the steamboat on Saturday,
and shining, rosy, happy, and innocent, in the cloudless Sabbath
morn.