The Lady Sleuths MEGAPACK TM(129)

                “Oh, dear, no,” I answered, with a glassy smile. “We are not connected in any way.”

                “But you are travelling together!”

                “Merely as you and I are travelling together—fellow-passengers on the same steamer.”

                “Still, you have met before.”

                “Yes, certainly. Miss Wade was a nurse at St. Nathaniel’s, in London, where I was one of the house doctors. When I came on board at Cape Town, after some months in South Africa, I found she was going by the same steamer to India.” Which was literally true. To have explained the rest would have been impossible, at least to anyone who did not know the whole of Hilda’s history.



                             “And what are you both going to do when you get to India?”

                “Really, Lady Meadowcroft,” I said, severely, “I have not asked Miss Wade what she is going to do. If you inquire of her point-blank, as you have inquired of me, I dare say she will tell you. For myself, I am just a globe-trotter, amusing myself. I only want to have a look round at India.”

                “Then you are not going out to take an appointment?”

                “By George, Emmie,” the burly Yorkshireman put in, with an air of annoyance, “you are cross-questioning Dr. Cumberledge; nowt less than cross-questioning him!”

                I waited a second. “No,” I answered, slowly. “I have not been practising of late. I am looking about me. I travel for enjoyment.”

                That made her think better of me. She was of the kind, indeed, who think better of a man if they believe him to be idle.

                She dawdled about all day on deck chairs, herself, seldom even reading; and she was eager now to drag Hilda into conversation. Hilda resisted; she had found a volume in the library which immensely interested her.

                “What are you reading, Miss Wade?” Lady Meadowcroft cried at last, quite savagely. It made her angry to see anybody else pleased and occupied when she herself was listless.

                “A delightful book!” Hilda answered. “The Buddhist Praying Wheel, by William Simpson.”

                Lady Meadowcroft took it from her and turned the pages over with a languid air. “Looks awfully dull!” she observed, with a faint smile, at last, returning it.

                “It’s charming,” Hilda retorted, glancing at one of the illustrations. “It explains so much. It shows one why one turns round one’s chair at cards for luck; and why, when a church is consecrated, the bishop walks three times about it sunwise.”

                “Our Bishop is a dreadfully prosy old gentleman,” Lady Meadowcroft answered, gliding off at a tangent on a personality, as is the wont of her kind; “he had, oh, such a dreadful quarrel with my father over the rules of the St. Alphege Schools at Millington.”



                             “Indeed,” Hilda answered, turning once more to her book. Lady Meadowcroft looked annoyed. It would never have occurred to her that within a few weeks she was to owe her life to that very abstruse work, and what Hilda had read in it.

                That afternoon, as we watched the flying fish from the ship’s side, Hilda said to me abruptly, “My chaperon is an extremely nervous woman.”

                “Nervous about what?”