Perdita by Joan Smith Page A

never paid the least heed to her. Didn’t realize she was so rich, till Tony tipped me the clue.”
    “We can borrow a carriage and team from John, and go to Brighton by ourselves,” I said to placate my charge. “John can lend us a footman for safety’s sake. The trip can be made in less than a day.”
    “Brighton, did you say?” John shouted. “Bromley Hall, Grifford’s place, is only ten miles from Brighton. I could pop you two off, on down the coast and double back. Mean to say, if Prinney made it in four and a half hours, I can do it in less. Mind we must leave at the crack of dawn, for the extra twenty miles, I shan’t arrive till all hours. Daresay old Mrs. Grifford won’t care for it, but she’ll be tucked between her sheets long before I get there. I can let on I pulled in shortly after dinner."
    "I am sorry to put you to so much trouble,” I said, while Perdita overrode my gratitude with a pert, "Good, then it is all settled. Is the Prince Regent at his Brighton Pavilion?”
    “How the deuce should I know where the old whale is?” was John’s reply. “I don’t swim with his school. Got a piece of excellent news for you, Perdie.”
    “What is it?” she asked, interested.
    “Got taken up by the FHC.”
    “What is the FHC?”
    “What is the FHC?” he asked, then repeated it a few times, in ever rising tones of incredulity, till I was very curious to hear what magnificent honor was his. “Why it is the Four Horse Club. Top of the trees. Dandy outfit, dotted tie, striped waistcoat. You will notice I am driving a team of bays. Had to change my grays in on ‘em. Papa, dashed skint, would not buy me another pair, and of course you cannot be driving anything but bays to Salt Hill.”
    “This looks like a nifty pair of prads,” Perdie congratulated him.
    As Alton drove us through the lively section of town, Perdita turned a wistful face to me. “Do you think we might stay with Mrs. Alton, instead of going to Brighton, Moira?” she asked.
    “No,” John answered bluntly, while I jollied her along with tales of the vastly superior company she would enjoy at the seaside resort town.
    “We must stay long enough to have some gowns made up, in any case,” she pointed out, not without some reason. The gowns in which we sat were closer to rags, well soiled rags at that. “And you must lend me some money, John, for we are flat busted.”
    “Where did you pick up such an expression?” he asked suspiciously. The language he spoke himself was only nominally the King’s English, but he expected better of ladies. Truth to tell, I found myself cropping out into Theater English more often than was prudent. Their jargon was lively and descriptive; it stuck too easily in the memory, to pop out at injudicious moments to betray our recent past.
    “Perdita spends too much time in the stables,” I said, to fob him off, till I decided how much he must be told.
     

Chapter Seven
     
    Despite her wicked dose of the flu, Mrs. Alton was not in bed. She sat in her yellow saloon, lounging on a chaise longue, with a pile of white cards by her side, trying to determine the likely duration of her illness, and what cards she could accept. She awaited our arrival, as John had told her he was picking us up. The odd manner of his doing so might have raised a query in a normal mother’s breast. Not in Mrs. Alton’s. It was her main object in life to attach Perdita and her fortune for her only son. She overlooked every flaw in her darling neighbor; even when the flaw escalated into a huge fault, she was quick to lay the blame in another’s dish.
    “What a delightful surprise!” she chirped, adjusting the ribbons of an overly ornate cap that held her gray curls in place. She was in her late forties, a plain countrywoman who aped city manners for two months a year, when her squire brought her to London for the Season. “You catch me all at sixes and sevens, my dear. Old Mr. Flu has got hold of me, but I shan’t give in.