Miss Kay Derrick, Daughter of Col. Eustace Derrick, of Midways Hall, Wilts.
Miss Kay Derrick, Daughter of Col. Eustace Derrick, of Midways Hall, Wilts.
And if he had happened to be in Piccadilly Circus on a certain afternoon some three weeks after his conversation with Hash Todhunter, he might have observed Miss Derrick in person. For she was standing on the island there waiting for a Number Three omnibus.
His first impression, had he so beheld her, would certainly have been that the photograph, attractive though it was, did not do her justice. Four years had passed since it had been taken, and between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two many girls gain appreciably in looks. Kay Derrick was one of them. He would then have observed that his views on her appearance had been sound. Her eyes, as he had predicted, were blue—a very dark, warm blue like the sky{25} on a summer night—and her hair, such of it as was visible beneath a becoming little hat, was of a soft golden brown. The third thing he would have noticed about her was that she looked tired. And, indeed, she was. It was her daily task to present herself at the house of a certain Mrs. Winnington-Bates in Thurloe Square, South Kensington, to read to that lady and to attend to her voluminous correspondence. And nobody who knew Mrs. Winnington-Bates at all intimately would have disputed the right of any girl who did this to look as tired as she pleased.
{25}
The omnibus arrived and Kay climbed the steps to the roof. The conductor presented himself, punch in hand.
“Fez, pliz.”
“Valley Fields,” said Kay.
“Q,” said the conductor.
He displayed no excitement as he handed her the ticket, none of that anxious concern exhibited by those who met the young man with the banner marked Excelsior; for the days are long past when it was considered rather a dashing adventure to journey to Valley Fields. Two hundred years ago, when highwaymen roved West Kensington and snipe were shot in Regent Street, this pleasant suburb in the Postal Division S. E. 21 was a remote spot to which jaded bucks and beaux would ride when they wanted to get really close to Nature. But now that vast lake of brick and asphalt which is London has flooded its banks and engulfed it.
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