"I hadn't thought of it. Do you think I should?"
Quite unexpectedly Mr. Travers patted her shoulder.
"My dear child," he said, "now and then I find somebody who helps to
revive my faith in human nature. Thank you."
Sara Lee did not understand. The touch on the shoulder had made her
think suddenly of Uncle James, and her chin quivered.
"I'm just a little frightened," she said in a small voice.
"Twenty pounds!" repeated Mr. Travers to himself. "Twenty pounds!"
And aloud: "Of course you speak French?"
"Very little. I've had six lessons, and I can count--some."
The sense of unreality which the twenty pounds had roused in Mr. Travers'
cautious British mind grew. No money, no French, no objective, just a
great human desire to be useful in her own small way--this was a new type
to him. What a sporting chance this frail bit of a girl was taking! And
he noticed now something that had escaped him before--a dauntlessness,
a courage of the spirit rather than of the body, that was in the very
poise of her head.
"I'm not afraid about the language," she was saying. "I have a phrase
book. And a hungry man, maybe sick or wounded, can understand a bowl of
soup in any language, I should think. And I can cook!"
It was a perplexed and thoughtful Mr. Travers who sipped his
Scotch-and-soda in the smoking room before retiring, he took the problem
to bed with him and woke up in the night saying: "Twenty pounds!
Good God!"
In the morning they left the ship. He found Sara Lee among the K's,
waiting to have her passport examined, and asked her where she was
stopping in London. She had read somewhere of Claridge's--in a novel
probably.
"I shouldn't advise Claridge's," he said, reflecting rather grimly on
the charges of that very exclusive hotel. "Suppose you let me make a
suggestion."
So he wrote out the name of a fine old English house on Trafalgar
Square, where she could stay until she went to France. There would be
the matter of a passport to cross the Channel. It might take a day or
two. Perhaps he could help her. He would give himself the pleasure of
calling on her very soon.
Sara Lee got on the train and rode up to London. She said to herself
over and over: "This is England. I am really in England." But it did
not remove the sense of unreality. Even the English grass, bright green
in midwinter, only added to the sense of unreality.