The Shadow of the Dead Hand by Fred M. White

Author:Fred M. White
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pronoun

CHAPTER XIV

With a definite object in front of her, Lady Eva lost no time in getting in contact with the eccentric old earl who had taken up his quarters at the Athenian Club. She knew perfectly well that he would be found most of the day in Sotheby’s rooms, on the day before the sale, and there, at about 4 o’clock the following afternoon, she encountered him, pottering from table to table, and examining the various treasures through his silver-rimmed spectacles. Outwardly at any rate, there was little of the aristocrat about the sixth Earl of Kindale. He was clad in a shabby suit of tweed and a soft felt hat which was fit for nothing better than the adorning of a scarecrow in a wheat field, and, obviously, he had not changed his collar for the best part of a week.

“And what do you want?” was his uncompromising suggestion as Lady Eva laid her hand upon his arm.

“I don’t know that I want anything particularly, Kindale,” she said. “So far as my experience of you goes, the less anybody wants from you, the more pleased you are to see them, Still, I shall be glad if you will come and dine with me to-night.”

The old gentleman grinned and nodded like an aged monkey. “Oh, all right, all right,” he piped. “Might just as well get a meal out of you as anybody else. The usual time, I suppose? But, mind you, I ain’t going to dress. Never dress if I can help it.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Lady Eva smiled. “You couldn’t do that very well without putting on a clean shirt, and adding another shilling to your weekly washing bill. I want you to come round at about 8 o’clock and meet a young friend of mine who is anxious to find a job on the land. She wanted to go into a shop, but I persuaded her off that. Then I thought of you and your poultry farm, and the difficulty you always have in keeping your girls there.”

“Quite right,” the old gentleman growled. “Set of feather-headed hussies, who are never content with a good wage and a good house over their heads, but always want to be dancing or going to theatres, or something of that sort. And mind you I pay ‘em well. Not that I want to, but because it is the only way in which I can get served. Three pounds a week, and waited on as if they were part of the household. Treated as ladies, and for the most part they are ladies. But that is not good enough for them these times. Why, only the day before yesterday two of them simply packed their boxes and went off without saying a word. And here am I, short-handed, just at the busiest time of the year. If that girl you speak of is really anxious to get her own living and ready to work, then she can step into the job to-morrow. But she won’t like it.

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