The Derring-Do Club and the Year of the Chrononauts Read Free Page A

undoubtedly, but Earnestine had caught Georgina not exactly complaining, but sighing and gazing longingly into the distance and generally carrying on. All this sympathy for Georgina was one thing, but in truth she was jolly lucky to have had a husband at all. Earnestine suspected Georgina was deliberately being sick every morning to engender the appearance of romantically suffering. It came from reading Shelley.
    The so–called Russian returned to the stalls and told a man on the third row that he would come into a fortune because of a red crow.
    “Running in the two thirty,” shouted some wit.
    The crowd laughed and the magician made his farewell with a bow.
    Earnestine felt guilty: she was being unfair, deplorably so. Her worries were spilling over into meanness and she resolved to stop thinking ill of people and to be kinder.
    “Would you like a sweetmeat?” Earnestine asked Georgina.
    “Thank you,” Georgina replied. She took two: she was eating like a horse these days.
    A hand and a military sleeve with frayed cuffs appeared from behind with a handkerchief for Georgina.
    One should be more understanding, Earnestine thought. Yes, a little more consideration and a softer voice would be the right tonic for her sister.
    “What’s the matter with you?” Georgina asked.
    “Nothing at all,” Earnestine snapped.
    Next was a comedy routine about the French Foreign Legion, which was distinctly bloodthirsty. Obviously Charlotte loved that, and jounced up and down braying in a vulgar manner.
    This was followed by an equally uncouth turn: a singsong by a cockney lady, whose sharp voice was thankfully drowned out by the massed choir of the stalls.
    Another magician showed genuine shimmering ghosts in a large room constructed on stage for the purpose, but their position in the box meant they couldn’t see properly. However, they did see an actual apparition clearly present, floating by the magician, which was extraordinary. He finished his act with sword swallowing and Charlotte named all the weapons used.
    The crescendo of the cavalcade of coruscation – the Master of Ceremonies didn’t approach alliteration alphabetically – was a brass band and another singsong before a collection for Our Boys Across The Sea fighting the wicked Boer.
    Eventually, thankfully, the interminable parade of nonsense came to an end.
    Captain Caruthers held the door open as everyone made their way out. Earnestine was the last to reach it. Caruthers shifted, blocking her way.
    “That magician: conjuring up the dead like that,” he said.
    “If one believes in that sort of thing,” Earnestine said.
    “Good old Merry, eh? Talking like that, in front of all those people and without a hint of a stutter.”
    Earnestine remembered Captain Merryweather’s stutter with a smile: “And foretelling the future, but not in a way we can check.”
    “The future, yes… Miss Deering–Dolittle?”
    “Captain?”
    He checked they weren’t being overheard: “I was wondering… that is to say. Two things. You’ve done a great service to the Empire over that Austro–Hungarian business. You were jolly brave, admirable in every way, so I thought that… there are other services… duties and wotnot… that is to say, what I mean is…”
    “Captain?”
    “I understand your situation. A young lady, who has yet to come of age, and therefore not eligible for her trust, is somewhat beholden to other men, so perhaps other men could…” he faltered, and then rallied: “You understand?”
    “What are you trying to say?”
    If Caruthers was actually bumbling towards a proposal – and it would take all evening at this rate – then everything would follow his suit like cards in Bridge. Georgina would come back into play naturally and Charlotte could be hidden up a sleeve until she was more sensible. This was a truly excellent turn of events.
    But shouldn’t one feel all aflutter, Earnestine thought, as they did in those books Georgina read?
    “I have