swords with, and Hero curbed her impatience and concealed both her anger and her alarm. And was chafed by the necessity for doing so.
Her lacerated hands, as Captain Frost had predicted, had healed remarkably quickly, and her bruised eye and jaw soon regained then: normal proportions, though they and numerous other contusions (the majority mercifully concealed) remained shockingly discoloured. But her hair had proved a major disaster, for, impeded by stiff and exceedingly painful fingers, she had found it impossible to drag a comb through that heavy, matted mass, and losing all patience with it, she had thrust the shears into Mr Potter’s reluctant hands and commanded him to cut it off. The result of this impetuous action had been unhappy to say the least of it, for she had emerged from the operation looking, as Captain Frost had been ungallant enough to remark, “like a cross between a deck-swab and a sea urchin’.
“Why didn’t you get me to do it?” he enquired, surveying the wreckage with considerable amusement. “Uncle Batty may be an admirable lady’s maid, but he’s no barber.”
“Is Mr Potter your uncle?” asked Hero, momentarily diverted from the ruin of those magnificent chestnut tresses.
“Only by adoption. We’ve been together for a long time. I made his acquaintance a good many years ago when he was a very well known character in certain parts of London. Here, give me those shears—”
He had actually succeeded in trimming the ragged crop into some sort of order, and had told her that she would be well advised to keep it that way during her stay in the East, for although it might make her look like a cabin-boy in skirts, she would find it a deal cooler and more comfortable than a chignon. An observation that did nothing to console her for the sight of herself in the looking-glass.
Hero had always despised tears, but gazing at her reflection she had come perilously near to shedding them. What was Clayton going to think of her altered looks? Would he even recognize her? She could only hope that he would not, and she turned her back on the glass and thereafter avoided looking at herself, even though Mr Potter made her a black velvet patch to wear over her discoloured eye and assured her earnestly that she ‘didn’t look ‘arf bad.’
Mr Potter was a friendly soul, and it was not long before Hero found herself being regaled with the saga of his by no means blameless past.
His name, it appeared, was neither Batty nor Potter. But having been born out of wedlock in an attic above a pottery shop in Battersea (a borough, Hero gathered, of the City of London), and in his prime earned the proud sobriquet of ‘The Battersea Cat’ owing to a talent for breaking and entering through top-storey windows, he had adopted both. It was during this period of his fame that he had acquired the first of his two legal wives, and all might have gone well with the marriage had he not contracted a second and bigamous one with a widow in Houndsditch, and the rightful Mrs Potter discovered the fact Inflamed by equal parts of gin and jealousy she had “squeaked beef on Batty to the “Peelers’. With the result that three nights later he had been caught red-handed, sliding down a drainpipe with his pockets full of stolen property, and spent the next five years at Her Britannic Majesty’s expense.
“It was when I come out,” confided Batty, recalling those distant days in a tone of nostalgic affection, “that I marries me second—me first ‘aving snuffed it while I was doin’ time, and the widder ‘aving taken up with a bruiser. But Aggie she turns out to be a proper shrew; which just shows ‘ow you can be took in by a petticoat.”
Advancing years and several more spells in Her Majesty’s prisons had impaired his agility but done nothing, it seemed, to improve his morals, for he had apparently been engaged in burgling Captain Frost’s bedroom when the Captain had awakened and caught him at it:
“To
Her lacerated hands, as Captain Frost had predicted, had healed remarkably quickly, and her bruised eye and jaw soon regained then: normal proportions, though they and numerous other contusions (the majority mercifully concealed) remained shockingly discoloured. But her hair had proved a major disaster, for, impeded by stiff and exceedingly painful fingers, she had found it impossible to drag a comb through that heavy, matted mass, and losing all patience with it, she had thrust the shears into Mr Potter’s reluctant hands and commanded him to cut it off. The result of this impetuous action had been unhappy to say the least of it, for she had emerged from the operation looking, as Captain Frost had been ungallant enough to remark, “like a cross between a deck-swab and a sea urchin’.
“Why didn’t you get me to do it?” he enquired, surveying the wreckage with considerable amusement. “Uncle Batty may be an admirable lady’s maid, but he’s no barber.”
“Is Mr Potter your uncle?” asked Hero, momentarily diverted from the ruin of those magnificent chestnut tresses.
“Only by adoption. We’ve been together for a long time. I made his acquaintance a good many years ago when he was a very well known character in certain parts of London. Here, give me those shears—”
He had actually succeeded in trimming the ragged crop into some sort of order, and had told her that she would be well advised to keep it that way during her stay in the East, for although it might make her look like a cabin-boy in skirts, she would find it a deal cooler and more comfortable than a chignon. An observation that did nothing to console her for the sight of herself in the looking-glass.
Hero had always despised tears, but gazing at her reflection she had come perilously near to shedding them. What was Clayton going to think of her altered looks? Would he even recognize her? She could only hope that he would not, and she turned her back on the glass and thereafter avoided looking at herself, even though Mr Potter made her a black velvet patch to wear over her discoloured eye and assured her earnestly that she ‘didn’t look ‘arf bad.’
Mr Potter was a friendly soul, and it was not long before Hero found herself being regaled with the saga of his by no means blameless past.
His name, it appeared, was neither Batty nor Potter. But having been born out of wedlock in an attic above a pottery shop in Battersea (a borough, Hero gathered, of the City of London), and in his prime earned the proud sobriquet of ‘The Battersea Cat’ owing to a talent for breaking and entering through top-storey windows, he had adopted both. It was during this period of his fame that he had acquired the first of his two legal wives, and all might have gone well with the marriage had he not contracted a second and bigamous one with a widow in Houndsditch, and the rightful Mrs Potter discovered the fact Inflamed by equal parts of gin and jealousy she had “squeaked beef on Batty to the “Peelers’. With the result that three nights later he had been caught red-handed, sliding down a drainpipe with his pockets full of stolen property, and spent the next five years at Her Britannic Majesty’s expense.
“It was when I come out,” confided Batty, recalling those distant days in a tone of nostalgic affection, “that I marries me second—me first ‘aving snuffed it while I was doin’ time, and the widder ‘aving taken up with a bruiser. But Aggie she turns out to be a proper shrew; which just shows ‘ow you can be took in by a petticoat.”
Advancing years and several more spells in Her Majesty’s prisons had impaired his agility but done nothing, it seemed, to improve his morals, for he had apparently been engaged in burgling Captain Frost’s bedroom when the Captain had awakened and caught him at it:
“To
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