"Fine chance! But don't you worry. Your mother's a sensible woman.
She'll get back to the hotel, if she isn't there already."
"I wish she had not gone. Father will be tearing his hair and twigging
the whole Savoy force by the ears."
Crawford smiled. Readily enough he could conjure up the picture of Mr.
Killigrew, short, thick-set, energetic, raging back and forth in the
lobby, offering to buy taxicabs outright, the hotel, and finally the
city of London itself; typically money-mad American that he was.
Crawford wanted to laugh, but he compromised by saying: "He must be
very careful of that hair of his; he hasn't much left."
"And he pulls out a good deal of it on my account. Poor dad! Why in
the world should I marry a title?"
"Why, indeed!"
"Mrs. Crawford was beautiful tonight. There wasn't a beauty at the
opera to compare with her. Royalties are frumps, aren't they? And
that ruby! I don't see how she dares wear it!"
"I am not particularly fond of it; but it's a fad of hers. She likes
to wear it on state occasions. I have often wondered if it is really
the Nana Sahib's ruby, as her uncle claimed. Driver, the Savoy, and
remember it carefully; the Savoy."
"Yes, sir; I understand, sir. But we'll all be some time, sir.
Collision forward is what holds us, sir."
Alone again, Kitty Killigrew leaned back, thinking of the man who had
just left her and of his beautiful wife. If only she might some day
have a romance like theirs! Presently she peered out of the
off-window. A brood of Siegfried-dragons prowled about, now going
forward a little, now swerving, now pausing; lurid eyes and threatening
growls.
Once upon a time, in her pigtail days, when her father was going to be
rich and was only half-way between the beginning and the end of his
ambition, Kitty had gone to a tent-circus. Among other things she had
looked wonderingly into the dim, blurry glass-tank of the "human fish,"
who was at that moment busy selling photographs of himself. To-night,
in searching for comparisons, this old forgotten picture recurred to
her mind; blithely memory brought it forth and threw it upon the
screen. All London had become a glass-tank, filled with human
pollywogs.
She did not want to marry a title; she did not want to marry money; she
did not want to marry at all. Poor kindly dad, who believed that she
could be made happy only by marrying a title. As if she was not as
happy now as she was ever destined to be!