I have trained her, thinking of you, to bear herself with the utmost decorum. She has her own knife and fork, and her own little bed, and she is not only completely tidy, but also very helpful about the house.”

“Then she had better be sold to perform on the halls,” said Amy Flint.

At this the poor chimp started violently, and turned her eyes imploringly on Mr. Fatigay. She had a violent prejudice against the stage.

“But, darling,” said he, “that wouldn’t do at all. I really couldn’t bear the thought of parting with Emily to anyone except you. Why, once she saved my life. I thought that might make you look favorably on her, and take her as a novel sort of maid, and if you could only bring yourself to do so, I’m sure you would soon grow to love her for her own sake. My dearest hope,” he added, “apart from yourself, has been that you two might come to understand one another, and be friends.”

Now, as he said these words, a look of grateful adoration shone from the eyes of the chimp, and Amy, in a flash of feminine intuition, had realized that the humble creature had lost her heart to Mr. Fatigay. And, while well-founded jealousy bears no proportion at all to the love on which it feeds, but only to the possessive element in it, there is a certain fanciful and ill-founded variety which thrives inversely in relation to the strength of what affection may lie beneath it, just as some mountain weeds bloom most flaringly where the soil is thinnest. Of this kind is that sort which is often to be noted in cold and sterile natures, that sort which is most inflamed not by their partner’s loving elsewhere, but by their being loved, regardless of whether they return it or not. And if this unrequited gift of affection should glow so warmly as to put their own emotional impotence to shame, as it does the more unmistakably the colder and more sterile they are, then their vindictiveness is sharpened to a surer point than has ever been known among our hot-blooded señoritas or ukulele ladies.

A feeling of this description now arose in the bosom of Amy, and, born with all its teeth, it soon fastened on the best method of chastising the impertinence which ventured to love with a strength of which she was incapable.

“Very well,” said Amy, “I’ll keep the creature, and if it has any intelligence at all I’ll train it to wait on me. Otherwise it must be sent away. I suppose it’s my only chance of having a maid of my own.”

Chapter 7

. . . when, sick for home,

She stood in tears amid the alien corn,

the chimp’s sad heart was charmed by no nightingale, for the bird had not yet returned to Stotfield, and what corn was showing was but a scanty acid green, ragged among the flints of those chilly fields. It was the blackthorn winter, and Emily, who had been sent out to gather primroses, found the thin stuff dress she now wore, designed by Amy to resemble the drabbest of charity child’s garments, to be but a miserable covering against the cruel east wind. A thin and lonely song trembled among the telegraph wires, where the road ran up between the tilted plowlands. It was a disillusioned scene, embittered by the default of spring; yet the primroses seemed loath to leave it. Their crowded sickly faces peered up anxiously at Emily as she knelt shivering beside them and tried to loosen their stems from the tough grasses to which they seemed desperately to cling. A variety of small brown birds, blowing about like dead leaves, uttered cold and colorless notes, much like the whetting together of flint stones.

“Cum, Somer, cum, the suete sesoun and sonne!”

thought Emily, wondering how long it must be before the warm and scented weather came to save her. Perhaps her wistful plea was taken as an impertinent complaint, for the sky darkened forbiddingly, an icy gust made the blackthorn branches rattle against one another, and a sudden rain lashed through her fluttering, shoddy dress. Her fingers were too numb to pick any more, and, as it was, many of the stems were broken off too short, so she crept through the hedge and took the field path towards home, for she felt incapable, in her present dispirited condition, of bearing up under the curious glances of the village people.

The path ran out desperately to the shoulder of the hill, then bent and scurried down to where two or three red-brick houses formed a modern and genteel suburb to the village. Nearest of these was ‘The Woodlands’, where Miss Amy Flint, when she was not in town, lived with her mother. This handsome villa of prewar construction formed a delightful residence with gabled elevations, detached, on two floors, affording seven bed and dressing, two servants’, two bath, three reception rooms, sun loggia, cloakroom, bright domestic offices, detached garage, surrounded by choice well laid-out grounds of just over one acre, including shrubbery and tennis courts.

Poor Emily stumbled down the path and slipped into the cold house through the back door, as she had been bidden, and, hurrying past the kitchen, whence emanated the rude titters of the cook and parlor maid, she knocked timidly on the door of the drawing room, and, entering, found Amy and Mr. Fatigay at tea.

“Hullo, Emily,” said Mr. Fatigay pleasantly.

“Here it is at last,” said Amy, and, addressing the sensitive creature briskly rather than unkindly, she said:

“Well, where are the primroses? Show me.”

Emily shrinkingly proffered the meager bunch.

“What? Is that all?” said Amy. “And see what miserable little stems you’ve got to them.” And privately she gave the chimp an angry look.

Further than this, however, she did not choose to go, for, though her relationship to the poor chimp was founded, almost entirely, on the feeling that she deserved a good sharp slap, Amy was never brutal to animals, nor was she inclined to appear severe before Mr. Fatigay, who might have been provoked to a defense of Emily, which would have puffed up the chimp undesirably, as well as wasting a quarrel.