Perdita by Joan Smith Page A

dashing,” while John was kind enough to inquire if I was setting up in competition with Perdie, at my age.
    I sat in some trepidation of another visit from Lord Stornaway, but he did not call. After dinner, John deserted us again for the haunts of London bachelors. I was happy our adventure was coming to a close. It would be good to get to Brighton, and turn Perdita over to her aunt. Maude Cosgrove had some influence with Brodie. She would bend his ear, make him send Perdita to her. As a widow, and the girl’s maternal aunt, she had always taken a strong interest in her. She might even give her a Season in London. In my own mind, I saw a year from the present as the proper time. Eighteen was a good age to make one’s bows, and a year in the life of such a busy womanizer as Stornaway would be long enough for him to forget April Spring. Even if he discerned a resemblance to her in Perdita, he could not be sure. To have her make her bows from such an unexceptionable home as Mrs. Cosgrove’s must convince him he was mistaken.
    I am so utterly philanthropic as to have forgotten myself in this rosy future. Miss Moira Greenwood, too, must have a roof over her head. I could hardly expect to be presented at St. James’s at my advanced years, a quarter of a century in my dish. How had I got so awfully old all of a sudden? It seemed I had gone to bed young one night, and awoken old in the morning. It was during my three-year interval of looking after Perdita that the thing had happened. Advancing age was not my only problem, either. The lack of a portion must always be an impediment to a female. In truth, it was this rather than my age that was the more serious blight on my chances. Gentlemen had been known to smile at maturity before now, when it was a golden maturity.
    My hope was to be taken into Mrs. Cosgrove’s establishment as a part-time chaperone for Perdita, and a part-time companion for Maude. When Perdita was bounced off, which would not take a week if I knew anything, I might grow into a full-time companion for my cousin. She had asked me to her when my mother died, which was the reason for my optimism in this scheme. I would have gone, too, had it not been for Perdita requiring a governess. It had not slipped my mind that the last cousin to find a berth with Mrs. Cosgrove had won a husband. He was a widower, but we poor relations are not so romantic as to require better than a second-hand male to satisfy us. A widower would do very well for me, and as Maude was active socially, it did not seem out of the question.
    “We had best turn in,” I suggested, as the hands of the clock showed a quarter of eleven. “Mrs. Alton is still recuperating, and John wants to get an early start tomorrow.”
    “So you are off to Brighton, eh, girls?” Mrs. Alton confirmed. “That’s nice. You are close enough that John can visit you from time to time. You must come and spend a week with me later on, when I am back on my legs. In fact, pray consider this house your little pied-a-terre in London.”
    “We shall make our adieux and tender our thanks now, Mrs. Alton, to prevent your getting up early with us in the morning,” I said.
    “Let Perdita go off without saying good bye? Nothing of the sort!” she insisted.
    So our adieux and our thanks were postponed indefinitely. She was not up with us in the morning. John had us called at six. Before seven, we were on the road to Brighton. Anything seems possible on a bright, spring morning. There was some delightful promise in the air, some excitement, to be hurtling along at a rapid pace, with the breeze fanning our cheeks, in the midst of heavy traffic. Even at that early hour the road was well traveled.
    "Twenty-eight stagecoaches a day,” John informed us, as proud as though he drove every one of them himself. “Busiest turnpike in the country. If you can drive this road, you can drive anything. Prinney is said to have made the trip from his Pavilion to London in four and a half