OF BOXING DAY MORNING AT KRAKATOA VILLA, AND WHAT OBSERVANT CREATURES FOSSILSARE

The "dear old fossil" referred to by Miss Sally was one of those occurrences—auxiliaries or encumbrances, as may be—whom one is liable to meet with in almost any family, who are so forcibly taken for granted by all its members that the infection of their acceptance catches on, and no new-comer ever asks that they should be explained. If they were relatives, they would be easy of explanation; but the only direct information you ever get about them is that they are not. This seems to block all avenues of investigation, and presently you find yourself taking them as a matter of course, like the Lion and Unicorn, or the image on a stamp.

Fenwick accepted "the Major," as the old fossil was called, so frankly and completely under that name that he was still uncertain about his real designation at the current moment of the story. Nobody ever called him anything but "the Major," and he would as soon have asked "Major what?" as called in question the title of the King of Hearts instead of playing him on the Queen, and taking the trick. So far as he could conjecture, the Major had accepted him in the same way. When the railway adventure was detailed to him, the fossil said many times, "How perfectly extraordinary!" "God bless my soul!" "You don't mean that!" and so on; but his astonishment always knocked his double eyeglass off, and, when he couldn't find it, it had to be recovered before he could say, "Eh—eh—what was that?" and get in line again; so he made a disjointed listener.

But these fossils see more than they hear sometimes; and this old Major, for all he was so silent, must have noticed many little things that Christmas evening to cause him to say what he did next day to Sally. For, of course, the Major couldn't go back to his lodgings in Ball Street in weather like this; so he stayed the night in the spare room, where Mr.Fenwick had been put up tempory, cook said—a room which was, in fact, usually spoken of as "the Major's room."

Of course, Sally was the sort of girl who would never see anything of that sort—you'll see what sort directly—though she was as sharp as a razor in a general way. What made her blind in this case was that, in certain things, aspects, relations of life, she had ruled mother out of court as an intrinsically grown-up person—one to whom some speculations would not apply. So she saw nothing in the fact that when Mr.Fenwick's knock came at the door, her mother said, "There he is," and went out to meet him; nor even in her stopping with him outside on the landing, chatting confidentially and laughing. Why shouldn't she?

She saw nothing—nothing whatever—in Mr.Fenwick's bringing her mother a beautiful sealskin jacket as a Christmas present. Why shouldn't he? The only thing that puzzled Sally was, where on earth did he get the money to buy it? But then, of course, he was "in the City," and the City is a sort of Tom Tiddler's ground. Sally found that enough, on reflection.

She saw nothing, either, in her mother's carrying her present away upstairs, and saying nothing about it till afterwards. Nor did she notice any abnormal satisfaction on Mr.Fenwick's countenance as he came into the drawing-room by himself, such as one might discern in a hen—if hens had countenances—after a special egg. Nor did she attach any particular meaning to an expression on the elderly face of the doctor's mother that any student of Lavater would at once have seen to mean that we saw what was going on, but were going to be maternally discreet about it, and only mention it to every one we met in the very strictest confidence. This lady, who had rather reluctantly joined the party—for she was a martyr to ailments—was somewhat grudgingly admitted by Sally to be a comfortable sort of old thing enough, if only she didn't "goozle" over you so. She had no locus standi for goozling, whatever it was; for had not Sally as good as told her son that she didn't want to marry him or anybody else? If you ask us what would be the connecting link between Sally's attitude towards the doctor and the goozlings of a third party, we have no answer ready.

No; Sally went to bed as wise as ever—so she afterwards told the fossil Major—at the end of the evening. She had enjoyed herself immensely, though the simple material for rapture was only foursquare Halma played by the four acuter intelligences of the six, and draughts for the goozler and the fossil. But then Sally had a rare faculty for enjoying herself, and she was perfectly contented with only one admirer to torment, though he was only old Prosy, as she called him, but not to his face. She was jolly glad mother had put on her maroon-coloured watered silk with velvet facings, because you couldn't deny that she looked lovely in it. And as for Mr. Fenwick, he looked just like Hercules and Sir Walter Raleigh, after being out skating all day long in the cold. And Sally's wisdom had not been in the least increased by what was, after all, only a scientific experiment on poor Mr.Fenwick's mental torpor when her mother, the goozler and old Prosy having departed, got out her music to sing that very old song of hers to him that he had thought the other day seemed to bring back a sort of memory of something. Was it not possible that if he heard it often enough his past might revive slowly? You never could tell!

So when, on Boxing Day morning, Sally's mother, who had got down early and hurried her breakfast to make a dash for early prayer at St.Satisfax, looked in at her backward daughter and reproached her, and said there was the Major coming down, and no one to get him his chocolate, she spoke to a young lady who was serenely unprepared for any revelations of a startling nature, or, indeed, any revelations at all. Nor did getting the Major his chocolate excite any suspicions.

So Sally was truly taken aback when the old gentleman, having drunk his chocolate, broke a silence which had lasted since a brief and fossil-like good-morning, with, "Well, missy, and what do you say to the idea of a stepfather?" But not immediately, for at first she didn't understand him, and answered placidly: "It depends on who."

"Mr.Fenwick, for instance!"

"Yes, but who for? And stepfather to step-what? Stepdaughter or stepson?"

"Yourself, little goose! You would be the stepdaughter."

Sally was then so taken aback that she could make nothing of it, but stood in a cloud of mystification. The major had to help her. "How would you like your mother to marry Mr.Fenwick?" He was one of those useful people who never finesse, who let you know point-blank where you are, and to whom you feel so grateful for being unfeeling. While others there be who keep you dancing about in suspense, while they break things gently, and all the while are scoring up a little account against you for considerateness.

Sally's bewilderment, however, recognised one thing distinctly—that the Major's inquiry was not to get, but to give, information. He didn't the least want to know what she thought; he was only working to give her a useful tip. So she would take her time about answering. She took it, looking as grave as a little downy owl-tot. Meanwhile, to show there was no bad feeling, she went and sat candidly on the fossil's knee, and attended to his old whiskers and moustache.

"Major dear!" said she presently.

"What, my child?"

"Wouldn't they make an awfully handsome couple?" The Major replied, "Handsome is as handsome does," and seemed to suggest that questions of this sort belonged to a pre-fossilised condition of existence.

"Now, Major dear, why not admit it when you know it's true? You know quite well they would make a lovely couple. Just fancy them going up the aisle at St.Satisfax! It would be like mediÆval Kings and Queens." For Sally was still in that happy phase of girlhood in which a marriage is a wedding, et prÆterea aliquid, but not much. "But," she continued, "I couldn't give up any of mamma—no, not so much as that—if she was to marry twenty Mr.Fenwicks." As the quantity indicated was the smallest little finger-end that could be checked off with a thumb-nail, the twenty husbands would have come in for a very poor allowance of matrimony. The Major didn't seem to think the method of estimation supplied a safe ground for discussion, and allowed it to lapse.

"I may be quite wrong, you know, my dear," said he. "I dare say I'm only an old fool. So we won't say anything to mamma, will us, little woman?"

"I don't know, Major dear. I'll promise not to say anything to her because of what you've said to me. But if I suspect it myself on my account later on, of course I shall."

"What shall you say to her?"

"Ask her if it's true! Why not? But what was it made you think so?" Whereon the Major gave in detail his impressions of the little incidents recorded above, which Sally had seen nothing in. He laid a good deal of stress on the fact that her mother had suppressed the Christmas present until after Dr.Vereker and his mother had departed. She wouldn't have minded the doctor, he said, but she would naturally want to keep the old bird out of the swim. Besides, there was Fenwick himself—one could see what he thought of it! She could perfectly well stop him if she chose, and she didn't choose.

"Stop his whatting?" asked Sally perplexingly. But she admitted the possibility of an answer by not pressing the question home. Then she went on to say that all these things had happened exactly under her nose, and she had never seen anything in them. The only concession she was inclined to make was in respect of the impression her mother evidently made on Mr.Fenwick. But that was nothing wonderful. Anything else would have been very surprising. Only it didn't follow from that that mother wanted to marry Mr.Fenwick, or Mr.Anybody. As far as he himself went, she liked him awfully—but then he couldn't recollect who he was, poor fellow! It was most pathetic sometimes to see him trying. If only he could have remembered that he hadn't been a pirate, or a forger, or a wicked Marquis! But to know absolutely nothing at all about himself! Why, the only thing that was known now about his past life was that he once knew a Rosalind Nightingale—what he said to her in the railway-carriage. And now he had forgotten that, too, like everything else.

"I say, Major dear"—Sally has an influx of a new idea—"it ought to be possible to find out something about that Rosalind Nightingale he knew. Mamma says it's nonsense her being any relation, because she'd know."

"And suppose we did find out who she was?"

"Well, then, if we could get at her, we might get her to tell us who he was. And then we could tell him."

Perhaps it is only his fossil-like way of treating the subject, but certainly the Major shows a very slack interest, Sally thinks, in the identity of this namesake of hers. He does, however, ask absently, what sort of way did he speak of her in the train?

"Why—he said so little——"

"But he gave you some impression?"

"Oh, of course. He spoke as if she was a person—not a female you know—a person!"

"A person isn't a female—when? Eh, missy?" This requires a little consideration, and gets it. The result, when it comes, seems good in its author's eyes.

"When they sit down. When you ask them to, you know. In the parlour, I mean—not the hall. They might be a female then."

"Did he mean a lady?"

"And take milk and no sugar? And pull her gloves on to go? And leave cards turned up at the corner? Oh no—not a lady, certainly!"

As she makes these instructive distinctions, Miss Sally is kneeling on a hassock before a mature fire, which will tumble down and spoil presently. When it does it will be time to resort to that hearth-broom, and restrict combustion with collected caput-mortuum of Derby-Brights, selected, twenty-seven shillings. Till then, Sally, who deserted the Major's knee just as she asked what Mr. Fenwick was to stop in, is at liberty to roast, and does so with undisturbed gravity. The Major is becoming conscious of a smell like Joan of Arc at the beginning of the entertainment, when her mother comes in on a high moral platform, and taxes her with singeing, and dissolves the parliament, and rings to take away breakfast, and forecasts an open window the minute the Major has gone.

Sally doesn't wait for the open window, but as one recalled to the active duties of life from liquefaction in a Turkish bath, takes a cold plunge as far as the front gate without so much as a hat on—to see if the post is coming, which is absurd—and comes back braced. But though she only wonders what can have put such an idea as her mother marrying Mr.Fenwick in the Major's dear silly old head, she keeps on a steady current of speculation about who that Rosalind Nightingale he knew could possibly have been; and whether she couldn't be got at even now. It was such a pity he couldn't have a tip given about him who he was. If he were once started, he would soon run; she was sure of that. But did he want to run?—that was a point to consider. Did he really forget as much as he said he did? How came he not to have forgotten his languages he was so fluent with? And how about his book-keeping? And that curious way he had of knowing about places, and then looking puzzled when asked when he had been there. When they talked about Klondyke the other day, for instance, and he seemed to know so much about it.... But, then, see how he grasped his head, and ruffled his hair, and shut his eyes, and clenched his teeth over his efforts to recollect whether he had really been there himself, or only read it all in the "Century" or "Atlantic Monthly"! Surely he was in earnest then.

Sally's speculations lasted her all the way to No. 260, Ladbroke Grove Road, where she was going to a music-lesson, or rather music-practice, with a friend who played the violin; for Sally was learning the viola—to be useful.