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388 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP
day, arrives early; he hopes, perhaps, for a walk with Miss
Charlotte, or a coze in Madame Smolensk's little private room.
He finds the two boys in the forecourt ; and they have Mrs. Hely's
cards in their hands; and they narrate to him the advent and
departure of the lady in the swell carriage, the mother of the
young swell with the flower in his button-hole, who came the other
day on such a jolly horse. "Yes. And he was at church last
Sunday, Philip, and he gave Charlotte a hymn-book. And he
sang: he sang like the piper who played before Moses, pa said.
And ma said it was wicked, but it wasn't: only pa's fun, you know.
And ma said you never came to church. Why don't you ?"
Philip had no taint of jealousy in his magnanimous composition,
and would as soon have accused Charlotte of flirting with other men
as of stealing Madame's silver spoons. " So you have had some
fine visitors," he says, as the fly drives up. "I remember that
rich Mrs. Hely, a patient of my father's. My poor mother used to
drive to her house."
" Oh, we have seen a great deal of Mr. Hely, Philip !" cries
Miss Charlotte, not heeding the scowls of her mother, who is
nodding and beckoning angrily to the girl.
"You never once mentioned him. He is one of the greatest
dandies about Paris: quite a lion," remarks Philip.
"Is he? What a funny little lion! I never thought about
him," says Miss Charlotte, quite simply. Oh ingratitude ! ingratitude!
And we have told how Mr. Walsingham was crying his
eyes out for her.
"She never thought about him," cries Mrs. Baynes, quite
eagerly.
"The piper, is it, you're talking about?" asks papa. "I
called him piper, you see, because he piped so sweetly at ch ________
Well, my love?"
Mrs. Baynes was nudging her General at this moment. She
did not wish that the piper should form the subject of conversation,
I suppose.
"The piper's mother is very rich, and the piper will inherit
after her. She has a fine house in London. She gives very fine
parties. She drives in a great carriage, and she has come to call
upon you, and ask you to her balls, I suppose."
Mrs. Baynes was delighted at this call. And when she said,
" I'm sure I don't value fine people, or their fine parties, or their
fine carriages, but I wish that my dear child should see the world,"
—I don't believe a word which Mrs. Baynes said. She was much
more pleased than Charlotte at the idea of visiting this fine lady ;
or else, why should she have coaxed, and wheedled, and been so