ed Pat. The tears
had been put neatly back where they belonged, without one dropping out,
and she looked pitifully brave--ready for anything, no matter what. She
didn't know enough about the world to resent anything Caspian had said.
On the contrary, she was probably thinking he meant to be kind--showing
himself a good friend of Larry's and all that. Of course I realized from
the first that the instant he saw Pat the man simply snapped at her. If
indeed he had the intention of helping Larry it had been born in his
mind within the last fifteen minutes, and whatever he might do would be
for value received. Not that it was quite fair to blame him for that.
With another type of man I might have thought it thrillingly romantic
that he should fall in love at first sight and resolve to save the
girl's father. But with Ed Caspian it was different--somehow. You see,
he used to pose as a saint, a sort of third-rate St. George, with
Society for the Dragon: he was all for the poor and oppressed. I
remember reading speeches of his, in rather prim language. He was
supposed to live like an anchorite. Now, here was St. George turned into
his own Dragon. What an unnatural transformation! He, who had said
luxury was hurrying the civilized world to destruction, wore a pearl in
his scarf-pin worth thousands of dollars if it was worth a cent. He had
all the latest slang of a Bond Street Nut. (By the way, over here when
one talks of a "nut" it doesn't mean a swell, but a youth who is what
they'd call "dotty" or "bunny on the 'umph" in a London music hall.) And
though his eyebrows still had that heavenly arch which must have made
his early reputation, the rest of him didn't look heavenly at all.

If I'd been a sensible matchmaker, I ought to have said to myself,
perhaps, "Never mind, my dear Molly, beggars mustn't be choosers. Pat
is, it seems, a beggar maid. You shouldn't look a gift Cophetua in the
mouth. Here he is, to be had for the taking. Encourage her to take him."

But I just _couldn't_! I wanted her by and by to marry some one tall and
handsome and altogether splendid. In fact, a _Man_. And if a man were a
Man, it didn't matter whether he were a Cophetua or not. So I listened
quite disgustedly as Mr. Ed Caspian answered Pat's piteous question
about the newspapers, and criticised his affected accent. I think he
fancied it English.

"Oh, it happens to lots of the best men," he set out to console her, "to
be in the papers that way. Th