"Do not be unhappy," he said. "This will put things right, we will hope; and set your brother on his feet again. You must not look so sad."
At the words—he had been wrong to speak so kindly—the clear hazel of her eyes was suffused with tears. The eyes were doubly beautiful so.
"'I'll not believe but Desdemona's honest'" he found himself replying to that annoying little voice which kept whispering, "Have they put her on to me?"
Deleah kept her wet eyes strained upon him, lest in lowering them the tears should overflow. "I don't know what you can think of me," she said falteringly. "I don't know how I had courage to come. I only had Bernard's letter this morning; he said—it—must be done to-day. My mother must not know: there is no one else: I had no one to ask. You had been so good to me once—I thought of you."
"I quite understand. Quite. Quite."
"I was a child then," she laboured on, forcing herself to try to express what she felt ought to be said; "and although I had no right to trouble you, to a child things may be forgiven. But now—but now—!"
"But now," he repeated, and smiled his faint smile again. To him she was but a child still, and his tone conveyed that message.
"I am very much ashamed," she said. "And so—so grateful."
She folded the cheque, put it in her cheap, little-used purse, and stood up. So humiliated she felt, she hesitated to put out her hand, lest he should think it presumptuous on her part to expect him to shake hands with her.
"Where is this brother of yours? What is he doing?" he asked.
"He is at Ingleby. Mr. George Boult put him into one of his shops in the country."
"Oh! George Boult?"
Something in tone depreciatory of the man caused Deleah to say quickly, "He has been very good to us. He helped mama about the grocer's shop; and advises her."
"So I have heard." He was thinking to himself if the unsatisfactory brother had to look for mercy for any misdoings to George Boult he would be in a sorry case.
"He is very young—my poor brother," Deleah put in. "And I suppose he has made bad friends. He never has a holiday. He can never come home to mama and us—"
"Ah, that is bad. And can't you go over to him? I am sure that you could do him good." For the thought came to him, as he looked down upon the sorrowful girl in her neat, cheap frock, standing so shyly before him, that he had never seen goodness written so legibly on the face of any human being as on that of this daughter of a thief and sister of a never-do-well.
"Railway travelling is expensive, and we are obliged to live very carefully," Deleah said. "Poor mama has made one or two bad debts lately. And so many people, who pay in the end, are so very slow to do so." Deleah shook her head slowly and sorrowfully over these sluggards. "Also, I am occupied, of course, all day long."
"May I know in what way?"
"I teach," Deleah said, and lifted her head with a kind of pride in the avowal which was very pretty. "I am second English governess at Miss Chaplin's school for young ladies. I earn enough there to buy my own clothes and Franky's."
Her courage was coming back to her; instead of the difficulty she had experienced in dragging out the words necessary to explain and condone her errand, she now had the impulse to tell him things, to make him confidences.
"And who is Franky?"
"He is my little brother. Very much younger than the rest, and the pet with all of us. Mama says, but for Franky, she thinks she could never have survived the troubles she has had. I think we all felt that. We could not be always crying and melancholy in the company of a little boy who does not understand, and who wants so much to enjoy himself. For Franky's sake we have to be cheerful. He is only nine. Only seven when—all that—happened to papa."
"Franky must not go into one of George Boult's shops," Sir Francis said. "When Franky is old enough to leave school—to begin to earn his living—come and tell me, will you?"
Her face lit, till it was lovely as a sun-kissed flower. "Oh, I will! Oh, thank you," she said; and then she did put out her hand, and for an instant her fingers closed with all their soft strength round the hand he gave her. "Oh, thank you!" she said again.
Then he opened the door for her, and she went.
Deleah, when she had sent off the cheque, whose receipt must have surprised him exceedingly, to her brother, felt herself to be almost bursting with the desire to confide in some one the history of her visit to the rich brewer. She longed to descant on his looks, to repeat his words, above all to tell of the heavenly promise contained in that last divine sentence concerning Franky. No one must be told; but Deleah was over young to be burdened with a secret; it made her restless. She could not sit with Bessie, to hear her discuss the pattern of the sleeve she was cutting out for a new Sunday frock. She ran down to the shop, for the relief of being near her mother.
Mrs. Day glanced at her with welcoming eyes and turned at once again attentively upon her customer, a good lady difficult to please in the matter of candles.
"A tallow candle will do very well for the servants to gutter down, in the kitchen," she was irritably declaring. "But neither my daughter nor me can abide the smell of tallow; and your wax ones are a cruel price. Cruel, Mrs. Day! I suppose you could not make a reduction by my taking two packets?"
Mrs. Day shook a patient head. "We really get almost nothing out of them, as it is," she sadly protested. "These candles—called composite—ladies are beginning to buy them for servants' use as well as their own. I sell more composites now than either wax or tallow."
"You couldn't oblige me with one or two to try?—Oh, good afternoon, Miss Day. So you are not above coming into the shop sometimes, to bear your mama company?"
"Above it!" said Deleah; and because she had to be as sweet as sugar to her mother's customers, she smiled upon Mrs. Potter, who turned from the counter to engage her in talk.
"What for you, my dear?" Mrs. Day's next customer was a very shabby, very small boy, his grimy, eager face appearing just above the counter.
"A ha'p'r' o' acids, like th' last." He held up the coin in his fist to assure her of the good faith of the transaction.
"You give me more 'n that, last time, for a ha'p'ny. You ha'n't weighed 'em," the customer grumbled.
"Lucky for you I have not! Here! Take your ha'penny and be off."
Many customers of that unremunerative order had the widow. When the ragged little ones happened to be about the age of Franky they were sure of bouncing weight, and of getting their money returned. She smiled upon the scaramouch now, who was watched from the door by half a dozen confederates. The ha'penny was common property apparently, for each was presently clamouring for his share.
These screws of sweets and quarter pounds of broken biscuits given to the children of the very poor afforded her the only pleasure Mrs. Day got out of her long hours behind the grocery counter. For, in spite of the greed and selfishness of human nature, perhaps the most keenly felt deprivations of the one who has been rich and now is poor is the inability to put the hand lightly in the pocket, and with no thought if it can be afforded or no, to give to those who ask.
While Mrs. Day had been attending to her own customers with one ear, she had been hearing with the other a discussion going on at the opposite corner as to the price and the quality of the butter.
"Ours is from the best dairy," young—very young!—Mr. Pretty was assuring the poor, respectable woman who was hanging back from putting his assertion to the test. "Fresh in, every day, mum. Like to put a bit on your tongue to try it?"
The woman did so, tasting the morsel with an anxious look. "But I can't afford to give you one-and-two the pound, if I can buy it a penny less, only a little way down the street."
"You don't get butter there like this, ma'am;" and young Mr. Pretty, who should have been Master Pretty surely, by rights, conveyed a piece of butter to his own tongue, and tasted it loudly, looking very wise.
"'Best quality, one and a penny.' I see it ticketed up as I come by Coman's." She turned round to the mistress of the shop. "I have always dealt along of you for butter, ma'am," she said. "I haven't no wish to leave you, but where I buy my butter—stand to reason I must buy the rest of my grosheries."
"If Coman is down to that; you shall have it for the same sum;" Mrs. Day promised. Her butter had already been "dropped" twice before, that day, in order to keep pace with the passion for underselling of the new grocer, who had, for the undoing of the widow and the orphan, opened a shop lower down the street. Our poor retailer was selling her sugars, too, for less than she gave for them.
"You must do so for a time," George Boult had informed her. "Coman can't go on like this for ever. He'll get tired of the game soon—if I know anything of trade and tradesmen—then you can stick it on to your goods again."
While the subject of the butter was being debated, the child Franky came in from afternoon school. He was day-boarder at a cheap academy to which other small tradesmen's sons were sent—a school very inferior to that to which Bernard had gone. Companionship with rough, common children had not improved the manners of Franky, nor his habit of speech. He dashed in, with no thought of the deference due to customers, pushed out of his way the lady just deciding to let Mrs. Day try to procure in the town a candle more to her taste, rushed round the counter to his mother.
"C'n I go in to tea with Willy Spratt? Willy Spratt's ma says I may go to tea with 'm. I wish to, very much. C'n I go?"
"No, my dear. We like you to have tea with us. We can't spare you."
"C'n I go, ma? C'n I go? Willy Spratt's waitin' outside."
Willy Spratt was the son of the cutler and his wife, across the way. Very good customers of Mrs. Day, very good people; but—
"You haven't spoken to Mrs. Potter, Franky," Deleah said to divert the child's mind. "You know Mrs. Potter, sir. Where are your manners?"
"Quite 'ell, I thank ye," said Franky without a glance in the direction of the good lady in question, who had not the intention to inquire for his health. "C'n I go, ma? Willy's waitin' outside; and c'n I go?"
"Oh go!" his poor mother said. "Go! But, Franky dear,don'tpull your cap in that hideous fashion over your eyes."
But Franky had ducked his head from beneath his mother's hand, dashed round the counter, and was away to the society of the expectant Willy.
In an interregnum of peace between the going and coming of customers Mrs. Day moaned to Deleah over the grievous subject of Franky's deterioration. "He even brushes his hair, and wears his cap, in the fashion of that dreadful Willy Spratt. Being so young he does not stand a chance. He must grow into just a common little boy."
"Never, mama!" Deleah, the unfailing comforter, declared. "Why, Franky looks like a creature of a different mould from Willy Spratt. Franky, with that dear little nose of his, is distinctly aristocratic. Don't laugh! He is indeed. You and he are, you know; and any one can see it."
"Nonsense, my dear," the mother said, but smiled and was comforted on that score. "It is inevitable, I suppose," she went on, "that we fall into the way of speech of those around us. But it vexes me. Have you noticed that even Bessie habitually speaks of Mr. Gibbon now without the 'Mr.'? 'Gibbon' said this or 'Gibbon' did that. I don't like to mention it to her, but it offends my ear."
"I wouldn't say anything," Deleah counselled. "We know that Bessie is—so very easily upset."
"Poor Bessie!" the mother said. Both of them had a vision of Bessie drumming her heels on the floor in the hysterics into which a few thwarting words would throw her. "What about Bessie's love affairs?" Mrs. Day presently asked. "I should be so thankful to see Bessie with a home of her own. She would be so happy, married. But—?"
She paused questioningly upon the "but," knowing it to be a very large one.
"I don't think Reggie means anything, mama."
"No," acquiesced Mrs. Day, sadly shaking her head. "I can't think howBessie can be so blind. Yet, if it were otherwise, what an escape out ofBridge Street it would be for her."
Deleah was silent.
"Or for you?"
Deleah laughed with her colour high: "I would not marry Reggie Forcus if he were stuffed with gold, mama."
Mrs. Day turned away to wait upon the untidy little servant girl from over the way whose family had suddenly "run out of vinegar."
Her eyes had been sharp enough to see on which of her daughters' faces it was that Reginald Forcus's gaze dwelt; she had divined the attraction which drew the pleasure-loving, much sought young man to sit patiently for hours in the evening, watching the girls at their work. She looked, drearily, the vinegar being measured and the customer gone, between the intervening biscuit tins and pickle jars into the street. She had begun to cherish a dream that if not Bessie it might be her pretty Deleah who, through Reggie, should find a way out.
"Supposing he really wanted to marry either of us you would not surely like it, would you, mama?"
And Mrs. Day was obliged to admit with a kind of shame that she would.
"That silly, irresponsible, baby of a young man; without two ideas in his head!"
But the mother knew if his head was empty, his pocket was not. He might not be clever, or have much stability of character, but oh, how many things which made life pleasant he possessed! She who had had them, and had lost them, was not one to underrate the value of worldly goods.
"I suppose the end will be Bessie must marry Mr. Gibbon," she said, with an effort at resignation and putting away from her unwillingly the golden dream. "I should not blame Bessie," she went on judicially. "He is a good and steady-going man, although so very quiet. Have you noticed, my dear, how very quiet Mr. Gibbon has become?"
"Yes, mama."
"I suppose it is love which makes him so quiet."
She supposed so, Deleah said. That he had been quieter still would have pleased her better. She could have spared his fierce "I love you," whispered behind the tablecloth when he and she had stooped simultaneously to pick up a knife which had fallen yesterday; his impassioned "Only look at me!" fiercely breathed last night over the candlestick he put into her hand. Both Bessie and her mother looked on the Honourable Charles as Bessie's property. Deleah was frightened at, and ashamed of, these irregular demonstrations.
"He is a commonplace, uninteresting looking man—but for something there in his eyes. I don't know if you have noticed what I mean, Deleah?—Yet he will make a safe husband, with no thought in his head but for Bessie; and I suppose we must make up our minds to the sacrifice."
What Is It Now?
"Any message for your son, ma'am?" Mr. Gibbon inquired one night at supper-time of the widow, and announced that business called him to Ingleby on the next morning.
He did not add that he went with special instructions to inquire into complaints again made of Bernard Day by the manager of the branch shop, and to bring back a report on which George Boult could act.
"The boy will have to be removed from Ingleby," the draper said. "I want to know if I am justified in discharging him on the spot, or whether I may risk giving him another chance."
Mr. Boult had stayed his hand from dealing summarily with the young man, as it had been his instinct to do. After all, he was William Day's son; the son of the one friend whom, in all his life, he had made. The son of the widow of Bridge Street, also; and he, George Boult, had been the arbiter of her destiny, of the destiny of her children, and was proud of the fact. The result had not been altogether satisfactory. No amount of teaching or of bullying would ever make a business woman of the mother; but then he knew that he had enjoyed the teaching and bullying. He felt a glow of satisfaction, when he read her name in the small white letters on a black ground above the shop door, "Lydia Day, licensed to sell tobacco and snuff," and remembered it was he who had caused that legend to be written there. It pleased him to recall the handsome woman in her silks and laces, who had extended a patronising hand to him, now and again, on those Sunday afternoons he had spent with her husband—the haughty-looking, dark-skinned, dark-eyed beauty, as he conjured her to his mind's eye—and then to enter the gloomy little shop, and to see this same woman—was it in truth the same?—her black gown covered by a large white, bibbed apron, white sleeves to her elbows, standing behind the counter, to weigh treacle into a customer's jar, or to descant on the merits of various scrubbing soaps.
"My doing," George Boult said to himself, and was pleased.
His mother had many messages for Bernard, of course. A parcel of a couple of shirts for him too, which she and the girls had made for him, stitching busily together after the day's work was done. He was to write oftener. He was to send her his socks to mend. To take long walks into the country; and not by any means to be tempted to spend his evenings at the horrid hotel which Mr. Boult had complained to his mother he frequented.
In the morning a little parcel was put into the boarder's hand, with the request that he would give it to Bernard. It contained a sovereign the poor woman, who had not a penny to spare, had taken from a sum due to meet a certain account, that day. The boy's salary was so very, very small; the wholesale house must wait for payment.
When Deleah arrived home from her school on the afternoon of that day, she found the shop in charge of Mr. Pretty alone, a state of things never permitted except at meal-times. Deleah went into the house and ran upstairs with a foreboding mind. Reaching the dark landing upon which the sitting-room opened, her heart sank within her at the sound of loud weeping proceeding from that room. Her mother was dying, or dead, bemoaned by Bessie, she decided, her thoughts leaping to the worst that could befall.
It was a relief to her, therefore, to see Mrs. Day seated in her accustomed chair, grey and stricken of face, but alive, and as she maintained an upright position, presumably well. The mother was looking straight before her with blindly staring eyes, paying no heed to Bessie, stretched upon the sofa, uttering howl upon howl.
"What is it now?" Deleah asked, standing in the doorway as if struck there. "Tell me quickly what it is." Her mind flew afield in search of awful possibilities. "Is Bernard dead?" she asked.
"Oh, I wish he were! I wish he were!" Bessie cried, and flung herself into a sitting position. "I wish he were. Bernard is worse, far worse than dead. Bernard has enlisted for a soldier!"
Deleah shut the door and came forward into the room. "Is that all?" she asked. Her poor little face was white, her eyes wild with fear. That Bernard was in prison had been what she dreaded to hear. "Oh, mama, if that is all, it is not so terrible."
Then there came a knock at the door and Charles Gibbon came in. Deleah turned upon him: "You should not have told them; you should have told me," she reproached him.
"I don't think so," he said bluntly. "Why should you bear the brunt of everything?"
Mrs. Day was incapable of speech, her poor lips shaking, the hands twitching which lay helpless on her lap.
Bessie looked at her. "Poor mama! Poor mama!" she moaned. "This will kill mama! The disgrace will kill her!"
"Hush!" said the Honourable Charles, and turned upon her, shocking her into silence. "You should have more control over yourself, Miss Bessie. Hysterics never helped any one in the world, yet."
"Hysterics!" repeated Bessie, but was so astonished that she ceased to moan.
"Mrs. Day," the boarder went on, "I told you the news about your son a little abruptly perhaps, but I did not consider I was telling you bad news. Many"—he was going to say "better men" but changed it into—"many better off than he have done the same thing, and it has been the making of them. I tell you straight, under all the circumstances, I think he has done the best thing he could."
"I must buy him off, of course," Mrs. Day said, paying no heed. "Do you know how to set about it, Mr. Gibbon; and what it costs?"
If Mr. Gibbon knew he did not say.
"To think of Bernard being a common soldier—a private!" Bessie began again, and shook once more with sobs. "If he comes here, Deleah, do you think he will expect us to walk out with him? We can never be seen with Bernard again—never! Never! Never!"
She had quarrelled continually with Bernard, but she had been fond of him, and proud of his good looks. Poor Bessie's grief was selfishly shown, but it was genuine grief all the same.
"Discipline will be the best thing in the world for him," the boarder promised. "A friend of mine who also went to the b—— who also enlisted, for certain reasons, is an officer now."
"Bernard will have no luck," Bessie declared. "No luck ever comes our way."
"There's no good waiting for luck, Miss Bessie—"
"Will Mr. Boult buy him off?" the widow interrupted. No argument weighed with her. She listened to no attempt at comfort. "I must go to Mr. Boult at once, and ask him to do it."
"If you take my advice, you won't, ma'am. If you ask him ever so, he won't."
"I will beg him, on my knees," the poor lady said.
Deleah followed Gibbon to the landing. "Is there anything you are keeping back?" she whispered to him. "You can tell me. I am not Bessie."
"The boy's been a fool—but there's nothing that can't be hushed up."
Her eyes full of fear clung to his face; she was determined to hear the worst. "You must tell me," she persisted.
"A couple of bills were paid over the counter; only for small amounts.Your brother did not—did not—"
"You mean he took the money for himself?"
How white her face was! The sound of Bessie's sighs and moans came from the sitting-room. Deleah opened another door on the landing. It was that of her mother's bedroom, but she cared nothing for that. With a hand on the boarder's arm she led him in there, and shut the door.
"Bernard stole the money?" she whispered. She had no thought of herself, or of who it was she held by the arm, had forgotten that he loved her. To know the worst, and to know it at once, so that in some way her mother might be spared the knowledge, was what she wanted.
She had no pity on herself, but he had pity for her—abounding, overwhelming pity; the brave little white-faced girl, who did not moan, nor fling herself about, nor talk nonsense; who had courage, who faced things.
"Your brother gave the receipts all right," he said slowly, "but he omitted to enter the accounts as paid in the ledger."
"And the money? What did he do with the money?"
"The money is all right. The firm loses nothing."
"How do you mean? Tell me."
"The money was found in his room."
"Who found it?"
"I found it. It was only for a small amount."
"And paid it in? So that they lose nothing? So that they all know thatBernard had only been careless? That he was not a thief?"
"It's all right," he assured her. "There's nothing for you to worry about—now."
"You are sure you are keeping nothing back? You would not deceive me?There is nothing more?"
Gibbon hesitated; he was not a man who told lies; and there was something more. "It seems he made debts—debts that out of his salary it was impossible for your brother to pay."
"Yes?"
"But he did pay them."
"He did? Then—?"
"You see, Miss Deleah, they're wishful to know where he got the money from to pay with."
She looked at him with knit brows anxiously for a minute, then her face cleared and a glad light was in her eyes. "Why, I can tell them!" she said, "I sent him the money to pay the debts."
"It was fifty pounds—about.Yousent it?"
"Oh, the money was not mine. It was Sir Francis Forcus's money. I asked him for it. You can tell them I sent it, Mr. Gibbon; but tell them no more. Sir Francis wished it to be a secret between him and me."
"Oh!" Gibbon said, and roughly shook her hand from his arm.
"You don't believe me?"
"I believe you fast enough; oh, yes."
"Then why are you angry?"
"You might have come to me. Why didn't you come to me?"
"Oh, I don't know," Deleah said. The several reasons she could have given it seemed kinder to withhold.
He pounced upon her, his eyes blazing. "I don't like these 'secrets' between a man and a girl."
Deleah drew back with a little offence. "If you knew at all what SirFrancis is like you would not say such a thing as that, Mr. Gibbon."
"What is he like?"
"Infinitely—infinitely above everything that is not kind and generous—and noble."
"He is just like any other man, except that he has more money."
Deleah put on her little air of dignity. "I thank you for telling me everything about my brother," she said. "I am so relieved that there was nothing worse to hear."
He watched her as she walked across the gloomy little square of landing and entered the other room. When she held her small head so poised on its long graceful throat, when the corners of her lips were ever so little turned down, the small rounded chin turned up, and the wonderful black eyelashes swept her cheeks he was afraid of her, little bit of a girl of less than half his age as she was; a girl who had been a child but two years ago, when he had come to the house. A girl whose lips as far as he had ever heard had never spoken one ungentle word; a girl who had pity on drowning flies, and carefully turned away her foot from the abject worm. But then he was always trembling before her, either with love or fear.
The impulse to tell her that the purse-proud brewer was not the only man who had done the wretched brother a service for her sake possessed him. The few pounds he had put, in order that he might find them there, in Bernard's room, had been infinitely more to him than the fifty pounds to Sir Francis Forcus. And he was one who saved his money anxiously for the end he had in view. Would she call him "kind and generous and noble" if he told her? He more than doubted it.
"We can't possibly walk about with Bernard in the dress of a private soldier," Bessie was saying when Deleah returned to the sitting-room. "We have come down, mama, I know, but we have not come down so low as that; and Bernard can't expect it of us."
"I shall buy him off, if I have to sell the clothes off my back," Mrs. Day said, oblivious of the fact that her wardrobe in the market might perhaps have fetched the sum of thirty shillings.
"I would not be in too great a hurry, mama."
"You think nothing about the sufferings of your poor brother, Deleah. My darling son."
"I do think of him. I think he will be very angry if this is done at once.You must wait until he has had time to get sick of it."
"As soon as the shop is closed I shall go to Mr. Boult and beg of him to help me to buy him off," Mrs. Day persisted.
She rose up stiffly from her chair and stood beside it, her hand grasping its back, waiting for the strength to come to her to take up the burthen of business again. Ah, if only she had leisure for grieving, if she might lie on the sofa and cry, as Bessie was doing, what a luxury it would have been!
The assistant had been left to "get up" an order for her most important customer in her absence. He had put the wrong sugars into parcels, and the wrong tea. In reaching the tin of "foy grass" from the top shelf, he had knocked down and broken a bottle of piccalilli, catching its contents in the crystallised sugar drawer. Mrs. Day was very gentle with him, who was younger even than poor Bernard.
The Dangerous Scrooge
Mrs. Day was spared the errand to Mr. George Boult on which she had been bent, for that gentleman, before the time for putting up shutters was reached, having had an interview with his Manchester man, sought the widow in her shop.
Since having been made a magistrate, it was to be observed that certain changes had taken place in the appearance and the attire of the successful draper. He affected now the light-coloured tweed suit of the country gentlemen, rather than the black decorous garments of trade. A deerstalker replaced the tall hat to which his head was accustomed, and he wore it, as was the fashion among the younger generation at that period, ever so little on one side. His short beard was trimmed to a point, his moustache turned upwards at the ends, on his hands were gloves of tawny-coloured leather. Altogether he now presented a figure which, in spite of the undue protuberance of stomach, and the shortness and thickness of neck, he had the satisfaction of knowing to be strangely rejuvenated and quite up-to-date.
"Business not very lively to-day, ma'am?" he said in his quick, hard way, looking round upon the empty shop.
It was about everybody's tea-time. A slack hour, Mrs. Day reminded him.
"Coman's was full, as I came by," he told her. "He's got a sugar in his window at three-ha'pence; one great placard quoting primest butter at elevenpence; another setting forth that a quarter pound of tea would be given away with every half-crown spent in the shop."
Mrs. Day sighed despondently. "We can't cope with him," she said. "There is no good in trying."
"What do you intend to do then? Do you suppose families will buy their groshery" (he was always pronouncing it "groshery") "of you when they can buy it cheaper, a few shops farther down? Why should they, ma'am, come to think of it?"
"They won't, of course," Mrs. Day acquiesced, "but we may as well be ruined through lack of custom as through selling our goods for less than we give for them."
"I'll tell you what will ruin you," he said brusquely. "And that is lack of spunk." He derived a pleasure from the belief, apparently; he announced it with so much gusto. "In business you must not be a coward, ma'am. You must go for the man that's 'underselling' you, stand up to him, pay him out of his own coin."
Poor Mrs. Day heard him with a fainting spirit, dreary-eyed. What did she care for paying out Coman, down the street! Her heart was full of Bernard.
"Now look here, ma'am;re-dress your window. Where's your young man? Where's Pretty?" Pretty, who cordially loathed George Boult, reluctantly appeared. "Look here, young man; to-night, when you've up-shuttered, clear out half your window. Shove it full of the best sugar you've got. Put a card on it—one that'll shout at 'em as they pass. Letters that long, do you see, and black—black. 'Our three-ha'penny sugar. Comparisons invited.' Just that. See? And, look here again, ma'am, stick a ha'penny, or a penny a pound, on to your other goods, to make up. Understand?"
Mrs. Day faintly admitted that she understood.
"Oh, these things are easy enough to manage, get the hang of 'em. I don't object to this underselling on Coman's part. A little conflict in trade wakes interest, stirs us all up, customers and salesmen. We're too much inclined in Brockenham to go to sleep. We must wake up, Mrs. Day. That's our motter."
Then, with hardly a pause, and with no change of tone, he went on to the subject so near to her heart. "I have come in to speak to you, ma'am, about this boy of yours. He has conducted himself towards me with the basest ingratitude—but that we need not refer to, that don't matter, although I must say, considering what I have done for you all—"
Mrs. Day glanced towards Mr. Pretty, pricking his ears, and dismissed him to his task of grinding coffee in the cellar.
"Mr. Boult, if you would spare me!" she pleaded with a pitiful kind of dignity. "We owe you a great deal, I know; not one of us is ungrateful. But I beg you to be so considerate as to spare me complaints of my son."
"I don't forget you are his mother, ma'am. I don't forget it for a moment.Otherwise—"
"What Bernard has done is the cause of the greatest grief to me—grief I do not really know how to support. I was coming to see you, Mr. Boult. Coming to ask you—to beg of you—"
He lifted his square-looking hand, clad in the new orange-coloured glove, to silence her. "Don't ask it," he said. "I know what you want me to do. Gibbon prepared me. You wish me to buy off this ungain-doing son. Not a penny of my money shall go to do it. Not a penny!"
He brought the hand down smartly upon the counter, to emphasize the words.Mrs. Day, gazing sad-eyed at him, said nothing.
"The boy has behaved like an ill-conditioned, ignorant cub—Well! I'll spare you. We know how he's behaved. Let him pay for it. He'll get a sickener, I don't doubt. Serve him right. Serve him well right."
"But, Mr. Boult—he is my son."
"What difference does that make, my dear lady? Every ungain-doing boy is some mother's son."
"If Bernard could have one more chance!"
"He's got it. By buying him off you are trying to do away with his chance. The boy's been brought up too soft. Give him hardships; it's the best physic for him."
"Think of the forced companionship with those he must associate with!"
"When he could pick his companions he chose the worst he could find. He's amongst a rougher crew now, but a far and away better one for him."
The tears were running down Mrs. Day's cheeks. She wiped them away furtively with her hand, but he saw them. Saw, and resented them with the impatient sense of injury a woman's tears arouse in that order of man. He turned his back upon her, and began fingering the lemons displayed in a box on the other counter.
"Think over what I've said, ma'am. Words of wisdom you've heard, and every one of 'em for your good. And see that your young man carries out my suggestion for the window to-morrow, will you? Miss Bessie upstairs?"
Mrs. Day, staring into the street through her tears, said she believed her daughter was in the sitting-room.
"I'll just run up and pay my respects to Miss Bessie, then."
He had adopted the habit, of late, of going up to pay his respects in that quarter after every business interview in the shop. Bessie pretended to look upon the predilection for her society as presumption on George Boult's part.
"A man as old as my own father!" she often said to Emily, with whom she had many confidences.
"All the more reason for him to come fascinatin' round you," Emily declared.
How this ill-favoured, more than middle-aged spinster came to be an authority on affairs of the heart she would have found it difficult to explain; but she had ever an opinion to offer on such matters, and she gave it with a weightiness and a conclusiveness which rendered it final.
"It's when they gets past the time that females is likely to cast an eye to them that they're dangerous—so madly are they then overcome with love," she asserted.
"I don't think old Scrooge will ever be dangerous," Bessie regretfully demurred. She was much interested. "What do you mean by 'dangerous,' Emily?"
Emily would not descend to detail. She nodded a wise head. "You look out!" she counselled. "And remember, Miss Bessie, I'm always at hand when he's near."
The idea that the elderly draper might suddenly become riotous, gave always a zest to thetête-à -têtewhich otherwise it might have lacked. She was, truth to tell, a little disappointed to find him after each visit no more alarming than he had been before. She even tried to pique him into an exhibition of the "dangerous" symptom, treating him with the caprice and the disdain she dared not have shown but for Emily's repeated assurance she could play as she liked with him and he would never take offence. The mother, Deleah, even little Franky, had to mind their "P's and Q's" with the man who, as he himself had phrased it, "stood at the back of them." Bessie was on a different plane, she told herself, and could do as she liked.
"I've been bullying your mother about that ill-doing brother of yours," he said. "I thought I'd better say a word or two to you on the same subject."
"Thank you, Mr. Boult. You have forgotten to take off your hat."
He took it off with reluctance, because it concealed the bald top of his head, and without being asked to do so, seated himself in the chair opposite hers.
Every man carries about with him his ideal of what a woman should look like, although he probably changes it a good many times before he arrives at the age, in Emily's opinion, dangerous for a lover. At the mature age of fifty-five, George Boult's ideal happened to be realised by Bessie Day. Fair-skinned she was, and very plump. Her waist was small, exceedingly, as was in accordance with the taste of that day, but her hips and bust were large; there was a promise of a double chin to come later. The necklace of Venus showed alluringly in her full young throat, and in the knuckles of her small white hands were dimples.
"Is that how you pass your days?" George Boult asked her, pointing to the book she still held in her hands.
"Reading? A part of my day. A very good way, too, to pass it. Don't you think so?"
"I call it a sinful way. A sinful waste of time."
"Oh, Mr. Boult! But it is only stupid, uncultured people who don't read."
"I read my newspaper every day," he said, as if she had accused him. "It is all that business people have time for."
"I'm so glad I'm not a business person, then."
"You never will be! One of the idle ones of the earth, Miss Bessie. Those that toil not neither do they spin."
"A lily of the field," Bessie reminded him.
"I have told you before, a fine, healthy young woman like you has no right to be sitting over the fire in idleness."
"What do you suggest I should do?"
"Go down and wait in the shop. Why not? If you would do so your mother could get rid of Pretty."
Bessie turned on him a face flushed with anger: "I will never wait in the shop," she said. "I hate the shop. I hate all shops, except to spend money in."
"Ah, you'd do that, I don't doubt," he said, with a certain bitterness. He utterly condemned the fat, lazy girl. He would have liked to see her down on her knees scrubbing the boards. He would have enjoyed the chance to punish her for her frivolity, the impertinence, the nonsense, that yet in some unaccountable way attracted him. He looked angrily at her, and Bessie watched him. Perhaps he was going to show the "dangerousness" incident to his time of life at last.
"As you're all going on now, I'm afraid you won't have much money to spend," he contented himself with saying; and then he began on the other subject. "And what about this wretched boy?"
"I'll thank you not to call him a wretched boy to me, Mr. Boult."
"What else is he? He is a wretched boy."
"He is my brother."
"Yah, yah!" said Mr. Boult, unable to find articulate expression for his contempt. "More's the pity for you! Your mother's running her head at buying the young ass off. I've told her I would not give her a farthing for any such purpose."
"Did she ask you for a farthing?"
"All I ever intend to do for Master Bernard I have done. I give you all notice. If you choose to get him home here, to dangle about, eating you women out of house and home, don't look to me to help you."
"Mr. Boult, we are unfortunate, but we aren't quite friendless."
"I'm glad to hear it. It's news."
"Let me tell you that there are others—"
"Pity they didn't come forward sooner!"
In his soul he believed that no family had ever possessed such a guide, philosopher and friend as he had been to them. For much he would not have credited the suggestion that he must share the honour of having befriended them with another.
"If you've got another friend like me up your sleeve you'd best bring him forward, and let him put a little more money into the business. That's what's wanted, Miss Bessie."
He got up from his chair and advanced a step upon her: "Who are these mighty friends then? Out with them."
"Suppose I don't choose to tell you?"
"I should expect you've got your reasons. I will bid you good-afternoon,Miss Bessie." He thrust out his hand to her.
"What is that for?" Bessie inquired, looking with disdainful curiosity upon the yellow dogskin. "You shouldn't shake hands with a lady with your glove on, Mr. Boult."
At that he drew back the hand, put on his hat, and walked away.
"Good-afternoon, Mr. Boult."
"Yah! Yah!" Mr. Boult responded from the landing.
And as he went down the dark staircase and out at the private door he said to himself some words the reverse of complimentary to Miss Bessie.
When Beauty Calls
"Oh, Reggie!" Deleah said in a tone of supreme annoyance.
She regarded the young man walking to meet her—his rather dandified but sufficiently handsome figure resplendent in the latest and best cut of coat, waistcoat and hat, the newest thing in neckties about his throat, the ropiest arrangement of gold chain looped across his person—with a severe expression of disapproval on her face.
"Now, what are you doing here?" she demanded of him as he turned and walked by her side. "Isn't it too bad of you, Reggie! I told you that Miss Chaplin had heard of your 'hanging about' for me, as she called it; and that I had promised it should not occur again. I have gone a longer way home, through far less pleasant streets, to escape you—yet here you are, waylaying me again."
"Don't be angry with me, dear; I can't help it," the young man pleaded.
"Can't help it!" she repeated, softly scornful. "You'll get me dismissed from the school. That will be our next misfortune."
"I wish the old woman would dismiss you. I wish she'd turn you out, so that you hadn't a penny except what I could give you; or anywhere to go except to come to me."
"How many times have I asked you not to say that sort of thing?"
"But, hang it all, why shouldn't I? A man knows his own mind at my age, I suppose—?"
"You thought you knew it a year ago when all the town was talking of you and Harriet Hart. You thought you knew it two—or was it three years before that?—when you said you were in love with Bessie."
"Parcel of silly rot, Deleah! They tell you anything, my dear. Don't you believe it. I've never been in love—not head over ears, as I am now—in all my life before. You may believe it."
"I don't wish to believe it. Let us forget it. Do, Reggie!"
"No; let's have it out. You know what I mean. I mean I want you to marry me, dear."
"Nonsense!"
"I can tell you there's no nonsense about it. It's downright, deadly earnest. And I'll tell you another thing, Deleah, since you have dragged in Bessie: that you've no need to be jealous of her—"
"Jealous! Really, Reggie! Oh, what a conceited young man!"
"Hold on. I'll come to that presently. I'm telling you that even when I seemed sweet on Bessie, years ago, I used to think about you. I used to think you were the prettiest little girl I'd ever set eyes on. And so you were; I used to think what a beauty you'd be; and you are. There's no one among the girls I've seen to touch you. You top the lot. You needn't laugh, dear. I mean it."
"But if you do—I'm much obliged to you—but it makes no difference,Reggie."
"And as to my being conceited—you're always hinting I'm conceited—I'm no more so than any young man would be in my place, with a lot of girls trying to catch him—Ah, there you go! Don't jump on me, Deleah. You know what I mean. Lots of girls are looking out to get married, and I've got money, and I've got a name—"
"On the Brewers' carts. 'Forcus and Sons; Brewers.'"
"It's a name I ain't ashamed of, and one that's pretty well known, at any rate!"
"And my name, or my mother's name, is over a shop-doorway, 'licensed to sell tobacco and snuff'; and it's a name that we can't be proud of, Reggie."
"But I'll put up with it, Deleah. I've made up my mind, and I'll go through with it. The name wouldn't be yours any longer, dear, when you'd taken mine; and as for the grocer's shop—"
"Why, here it is!" Deleah said. "And so good-bye, Reggie."
"I was coming in with you."
"You can't unless I ask you."
"And you're not going to? You're not very polite or kind to me, Deleah, upon my word!"
"Indeed, I am very, very kind, Reggie. And that you'll say when you are wiser. And so, good-bye. Run away and get wiser, Reggie."
"Deleah, something must be done for Bernard," Mrs. Day said with desperation in her tone. She had called the girl into her bedroom to hold conference away from the excitable Bessie. "Something I must do for my poor boy, or I feel that I shall go out of my senses. You must help me to do something, Deleah. Look at this."
From her pocket she drew forth a letter received that morning from the unhappy son. Deleah read it with a painful mingling of pity and contempt.
It was indeed an afflicting letter for any mother to receive; and Mrs. Day had too long been fed on the bread of affliction.
"You see, he begs of me to do something—to buy him off."
"Yes. I think his letter is abject."
"Don't, dear! Your blaming him makes it worse for me to bear, not better.Somehow this thing must be done—somehow, if I am to know any peace, tobe able to go on. Deleah, Reggie Forcus would do anything for you. AskReggie Forcus to do this."
"Oh, mama! No!"
"My account is overdrawn at the Bank. I dare not ask for a further amount. What would these few pounds be to him? He spends as much on a dinner for a few men at the Royal."
"I can't ask him. Can't you see I must not?"
"I see what you mean. But oh, Deleah, we seem to have come to the bottom of things. What to us, in the very depths, are all those rules and niceties that happier people observe? You see what my boy says? He is 'in hell.' He says it in so many words. My boy! My Bernard!"
With that Mrs. Day flung her arms upon the table by which she was sitting, and her head upon her arms, and gave way to bitter weeping: "My boy! My boy! My poor dear, precious Bernard!" she sobbed despairingly.
The sight made Deleah almost desperate: "I can't do what you ask. I can't possibly ask Reggie. But—there is another person—"
She stopped there, saying to herself, "The third time The third time! I can't ask him for money the third time!"
"Bernard! My Bernard!" cried the mother, her face hidden on her arms.
"Mama, pray do not cry so dreadfully—you break my heart. I can't do what you ask, but I will do what I can," Deleah promised.
Sir Francis Makes A Call
The letter in which Deleah, in her most careful handwriting and in formal language, set forth her prayer that for her mother's sake Sir Francis Forcus, who had already shown her family such generous kindness, should buy off her brother Bernard; he, having left Mr. George Boult's shop at Ingleby, and now enlisted in such and such a regiment—was addressed to that gentleman at his private residence, The Court, Cashelthorpe.
He read the letter among others as he ate his breakfast, gave a shrug and a snort of impatience, and put it aside on a little heap of those which required answering.
Before starting for town he singled it out from the rest and read it again. Then, standing up, the letter still in his hand, he gave vent to his feelings on the subject, for the enlightenment of his sister.
"They've put that pretty child on to me again," he said. "This is from that little Day girl you fell in love with, last year, in the Assembly Rooms, Ada." He tossed the letter into her lap.
"That sweetly pretty little thing at the concert?" She read the letter."What shall you do?" she asked.
"Decline."
"Oh, Francis! Why?"
"Because the boy is a ne'er-do-well. I have heard of him before. He is safest where he is."
"She'll think it so unkind, poor child."
"It can't be helped."
"Would it cost much to buy him off?"
"It isn't the money."
"The principle?"
"No. Nor yet, altogether, the principle."
"It would be kind and good-natured to do what the poor little thing asks."
"Yes. But for the sake of seeming good-natured I'm not going to be made a tool of."
"You'll simply write back, then, that you won't do it?" She laughed a little, looking across at him as he stood up, tall and solemn and handsome, with his back to the fire. "To do that will cost you more than just enclosing the money."
"That is not the question, Ada. I shall write, or"—he paused a minute, putting his lips together as his habit was when making up his mind to a course which did not altogether please him—"I'll go and see her," he finished.
"That will be kinder," the sister said. To be kind was Ada Forcus's religion; it is possible she could not have professed a better one, or one more likely to benefit mankind.
"They live at the shop, I suppose?" he asked.
"Over the shop, poor things. I am so very sorry for that poor Mrs. Day."
"You deal with her, don't you? You do what you can?"
"I tell them to getsomethings there every week."
"And they do?"
"You know how difficult servants are. Mrs. Twiss makes a grievance of it.They won't drink the tea in the kitchen; the currants are not so good. Shealways gets the matches there, and the blacking. Everything else Mrs.Twiss finds so much better at Wolsey's—"
"And Wolsey, no doubt, gives her a percentage on her order. However—."
Sir Francis fulfilled his intention of calling to see Deleah on the subject of her letter on the afternoon of that same day.
Miss Deleah was not home from school yet, he was informed by Emily, answering the door. She would not most likelies be many minutes. Would he walk in, and wait?
The gentleman, acquiescing, was shown up the steep staircase and across the dark landing. Emily had no need to ask his name—there was not a soul in Brockenham probably who did not know by sight the rich brewer. With a feeling of proud satisfaction the old servant threw open the sitting-room door and announced on a sounding note of triumph, "Sir Francis Forcus."
Emerging from the gloom of hall, staircase and landing his eyes were almost dazzled by the unexpected brightness and pleasantness of the long room, lit at the street end by the three deep-seated windows. Everywhere were evidences of occupation by refined women. The street below was hot and squalid and dusty, but the room with its shaded wide-open windows was cool. In one of them Deleah's bird was singing, and the plants in bloom on the wide seats beneath had been pushed on one side to make room for Deleah's little pile of books. Bessie's workbox was open on the table. A picture or two of no commercial value, but saved with the solid, handsome furniture from the prosperous days of the family, hung on the panelled and painted walls.
By the side of the rosewood workbox with its over-flowing contents of muslin and ribbon to be used in the concoction of an afternoon apron which she was engaged on, Miss Day was sitting. Near by, his hands on the raised sash of Deleah's special window, leaning forward to look into the street, her companion stood. It was not until Bessie had come forward to greet the unexpected, astounding visitor, that Sir Francis, turning to look at the other occupant of the room, recognised his brother.
Whatever surprise he may have felt he did not show.
"Hullo!" Reggie said, turning round, and looking a little foolish. He raised a finger to his fair, smooth hair, in mock-respectful salutation.
"Oh, it's you!" Sir Francis said, and paid the young brother no further attention.
The very opposite in manner to the ever-popular Reggie, with his easy manners and his never-failing good temper, Sir Francis, cool, reserved, spare of speech, and in uncongenial society, truth to tell, unconquerably shy, was a difficult person with whom to make talk. He said a few constrained words to Bessie, with whose presence on the scene he had not reckoned any more than with that of his brother; and Bessie, struggling valiantly to appear at ease with him, and failing utterly, answered them according to her kind.
"Very warm, to-day."
Bessie was afraid he felt it so in this stuffy, airless street.
"But you are delightfully in the shade here."
Bessie, straightening her back and pouting her vivid lips, told how the weather made her long for a garden, a river, and waving trees, or the sea-shore.
"Or anything you can't get," Sir Francis commented to himself, looking with distaste at the plump, foolish, pink and white face of the young woman with whom he had been entrapped into intercourse. "You have some roses, I see," he said aloud.
"They are sent to me," smiled a conscious Bessie. She did not consider herself to be lying. What was sent to Deleah she continued to persuade herself was intended for her.
"I know whose money goes for that," Sir Francis inwardly ejaculated. He glanced at his brother, hanging his foolish head from the window again. "I'm glad I came, after all. I'll put a stop to this," he resolved.
"Your gardens at Cashelthorpe must be charming now, Sir Francis."
Sir Francis admitted without emotion that they were charming.
"That's why you're leaving them, and going off to Scotland next week,"Reggie supposed, drawing in his head from the window.
"It must be delightful to travel," gushed Bessie, seizing on the topic.She exacted a programme from him, punctuated by her "Delightful!Delightful!" of the places he was intending to visit.
And so for a few minutes, Bessie struggling with all her poor wits to do so, they kept up a painfully lagging conversation. And all the time the poor girl was desperately supplying improbable, and impossible reasons to account to herself for the bewildering fact of his visit; all the time Sir Francis was wondering how quickly without incivility he could get away; all the time Reggie, as he watched for the figure of Deleah coming down the street, was muttering to himself, "He's on my track again, hang him!"
At the end of the difficult ten minutes Sir Francis rose: "Coming my way?" he inquired of Reggie.
"Not just this minute, old man," said Reggie, who knew better.
"Mind you don't tumble downstairs," he called after his departing brother.
Sir Francis gazing stonily in his direction did not deign to thank him for the not all unnecessary caution. Emily awaiting him in the little hall at the bottom of the stairs, had set the outer door open to light the distinguished visitor upon his way.
"Miss Deleah should be in by now, sir," she said as he passed out. Fain would she have all Brockenham to see him issuing from that door, yet fain would she have kept him there for Deleah.
"It is of no consequence, I will write," he said, and departed with a sense of escape.
"Well!" Bessie breathed, as the door closed on the visitor. "Wasn't that extraordinary! What on earth—?"
Her feelings would not allow her to finish the sentence. She looked the rest at Reggie, eyes and mouth open, the fluster into which the visit had thrown her still visibly palpitating in all her person.
"Oh, the dear old boy came to look after me," Reggie explained, calmly indifferent. "I shall get it hot now."
"Butwhy?"
"He won't like my being at home here, like this, you know," the ingenuous youth admitted.
"But, Reggie, you're your own master, aren't you?"
Reggie said he jolly well was, and leaned his head out of the window, to look for Deleah again. He knew very well why she was so long in coming, she had gone ever so far out of her way in order to escape from his attendance on her. It was not very flattering to hisamour propre, but it piqued him, in his indolent, spoilt habit. Bessie would have run into his arms, he knew right well, not away from them, and so would three or four other pretty girls be knew. But he did not want Bessie or the others. It was Deleah he wanted. And—Bessie was right there—he was his own master.
Sir Francis as he walked away was making plans to frustrate those resolves for his own management of his affairs which Reggie was making in the window overhead. He had turned aside quite easily the young man's foolish bent in this direction, once before. It might be more difficult now, but he would spare no effort to do it effectually again. He was not favourably impressed by the young woman he had just left; her plump prettiness had not appealed to him; nor the mauve-coloured ribbons streaming down her back. As for her family history it was not only undesirable, it was disreputable.
So, walking with his usually composed mien through the streets of his native town, perhaps its best known and most imposing figure, but in a ruffled and indignant frame of mind, he forgot all about Deleah Day and his errand to her until he saw her come, hurrying along the pavement in his direction.
Of all the people in the world she least desired to meet Sir FrancisForcus until he had answered the letter it had cost her so much to write.Would he let her pass him? She redoubled her pace, and making him a shylittle bow, tried to hurry by, but with a word of apology he stopped her.
"I got your letter, Miss Day," he said; and then looking at her, at her youth, her beauty, her helplessness, the shrinking grace of her figure, the fear of him that was expressed in her down-dropped head and averted gaze, the rich man's heart failed him; he found that he could not tell her he would not grant her request. "I wanted to tell you I will do what you ask," he found himself lamely substituting for the firm refusal he had intended. "But at the same time you will forgive my saying I think you are wrong."
"You mean mama should not buy Reggie off?"
"I am sure she would be far wiser not to do so."
"Then I will tell mama what you say. Other people have told her so; but coming from you it might carry more weight." Deleah, in her innocent way was a flatterer, he perceived; but she did not gush like Bessie. He thanked his lucky stars for that.
She stood before him, plainly longing to escape, her light figure almost poised for flight. Overwhelmed she was by the consciousness of the shabbiness of her school frock and worn gloves; pitilessly the sun shone on them, bringing out the poorness of their quality, and all the defects of long use and age. It shone on him almost blindingly it seemed to her; so that to look at him, so fine, so grave, so grand, as he stood before her hurt her eyes. They had met in one of the principal streets of the town; the men who passed them looked such miserable creatures, she thought, beside his tall figure. How had she the presumption to have pestered him with her degrading troubles!
"Mama was in such sorrow about Bernard," she was impelled to excuse herself. "Mama wished me to ask your brother, who knew Bernard very well; but I thought it better not to trouble him. I thought it better, as you had helped me before, to ask you to help again."
"It is better to come to me," he said with great gravity.
"Your brother is very generous," she went on saying in her nervousness anything that came into her head. "He would have given us the money without a thought as to whether it was right or wrong. I should have felt we were taking advantage of him. It did not seem to me to be right to ask him."
He wondered as he heard her how she had come to be a Day; and then he too found himself plunging into a subject he had not, a moment before, intended to mention.
"I called to see you at your house, just now. I found my brother there.May I ask if he is a frequent visitor?"
The small face which had been so clearly pale was suddenly like a scarlet rose. "Just lately a very frequent visitor," she said; and, in spite of her shyness, she lifted her head and looked him straight in the face.
"A young man who is idle can never understand that other people are busy," he said. "I am sure that you are all too much occupied to wish to have my brother always hanging about."
Deleah looked at him in silence. She understood perfectly what he meant.What was there for her to say?
"I shall try and waken him to the perception that he is trespassing on valuable time, and making a bore of himself," he said; smiled to make his words acceptable, raised his hat to go on his way; yet delayed for a minute still.
"In the matter of your brother, you understand, I will do what you ask."
"I shall persuade mama to give up her idea of buying him off."
"What is his regiment?" She told him, and that it was at Aldershot. A couple of years ago it happened to have been quartered at Brockenham. "I know several of the officers," Sir Francis remembered. "I could write to Colonel Greene about your brother. If it did him no good it couldn't do him any harm; and there is the chance that Greene would take an interest in him."
Deleah said with an averted head that that would be very good of him; and making him a grave little bow hurried away.