IV
For the next few days Alison collected advice about the spending of her money from every one she knew. All her friends were asked to give their opinions, and thus gradually she decided upon the best way to spend the five hundred threepenny bits which were for others.
Her first thought was naturally for her mother, who was an invalid. Mrs. Muirhead was very fond of flowers, and so Alison went at once to see the old flower-woman who sits outside Kensington High Street Station, and who was so cross with the Suffragettes in self-denial week for interfering with her “pitch,” as she called it; and Alison arranged with her for a threepenny bunch of whatever was in season to be taken to her mother twice every week, on Saturdays and Wednesdays, for a year, and, to the old woman’s intense astonishment, she gave her one hundred and four of her threepenny bits.
Her uncle Mordaunt advised her to take in a weekly illustrated paper—say the Sphere—and, after she had looked at it herself, to send it to one of the lighthouses, where the men are very lonely and unentertained. Alison thought this was a very good idea. The Sphere cost two threepences a week, and postage a halfpenny, or one hundred and twelve threepences—altogether one pound eight shillings.
Alison had now spent two hundred and sixteen threepenny bits, and, having arranged these two things, she decided to wait till Christmas came nearer (it was now July) before she spent any more large sums, always, however, keeping a few threepenny bits handy in her purse in case of meeting any particularly hard case, such as a very blind man, or a begging mother with a dreadfully cold little baby, or a Punch and Judy man with a really nice face, or a little boy who had fallen down and hurt himself badly, or an old woman who ought to be riding in a ’bus. In this way she got rid of fifty of her little coins before Christmas came near enough for her once more to think of little else but threepenny plans.
It was then that she found Tommy Cathcart so useful. Tommy Cathcart was one of her father’s articled pupils, and it was he who reminded Alison of the claims of sandwichmen. Sandwichmen have an awfully bad time, Tommy explained to her. It is almost the last thing men do. No one carries sandwich-boards until he has failed in every other way.
THESE TOMMY CATHCART AND SHE SLIPPED INTO THE HANDS OF THE SANDWICH-MEN.
After talking it over very seriously, they went together to a tobacconist near the Strand, who undertook to make up thirty little packets for threepence each, containing a clay pipe and tobacco, and these Tommy Cathcart and she slipped into the hands of the sandwichmen as they drifted by in Regent Street, in the Strand, and in Oxford Street, while the rest were given to a little group of the men who were resting, with their sandwich-boards leaned against the wall, in a court near Shaftesbury Avenue.
“Don’t you think,” Alison said, “that those who carry a notice over the head as well ought to have more?”
But Tommy Cathcart thought not.
That exhausted seven-and-sixpence.
Another thing that Alison and Tommy Cathcart did was to knock at the door of the cabmen’s shelter opposite De Vere Gardens, and ask if she might present a few puddings for Christmas Day. The man said she might, and that used up seven-and-sixpence—three puddings at half a crown, thirty threepences.
The other people to whom Alison sent Christmas presents with Mr. Thomson’s money were the children of the boatmen who had taken out her and her father and her cousins, Harry and Francis Frend, in the Isle of Wight last year. These boatmen were two brothers named Fagg—Jack and Willy Fagg—and their boat was the Seamew. Jack had four children and Willy six, and Alison used to go and see them now and then. After much consideration she sent four threepenny bits to each of these children, a shilling pipe, with real silver on it, to Jack and Willy, and a pound of two-shilling tea to Mrs. Jack and Mrs. Willy. That made sixteen shillings, or sixty-four threepenny bits.
Just then Alison had an unexpected piece of luck, for as she was passing a shop in Westbourne Grove she saw a window full of mittens at threepence a pair, sale price. Now, mittens are just the thing for cabmen in winter—cabmen and crossing-sweepers and errand-boys. So Alison bought thirty pairs, or seven-and-sixpence worth, and she gave a pair to each of the boys that called regularly—the butcher’s boy, and the baker’s boy, and the grocer’s boy, and a pair to the milkman, and a pair to the crossing-sweeper, and the rest were put in the hall for cabmen who brought her father home or took him out.
And then, just as they were getting rather in despair, one afternoon Tommy Cathcart came home with a brilliant idea.
“Smith,” he said, “is the commonest name in England. In every workhouse in England,” he said, “there must be one Smith at least. Why not,” he said, “get, say, sixty picture postcards and send them addressed to Mrs. Smith or Mr. Smith, or plain Smith, to sixty workhouses? We can get,” he said, “the names from ‘Bradshaw.’ A person in a workhouse will be awfully excited to get a Christmas card, and if,” he said, “there happens to be no Smith, some one else will have it.”
Alison liked the idea very much, and so they went off to a shop in the Strand absolutely full of picture postcards and bought sixty at a penny each. They had some little difficulty in choosing, because Tommy Cathcart wanted a certain number to be photographs of Pauline Chase and other pretty people, but Alison said that views of London would be better, since most persons knew London, and the card would remind them of old times. As it was, so to speak, her money, Alison got her own way. Then they bought sixty halfpenny stamps, and returned home to find the towns in “Bradshaw” and send them off. That all came to seven-and-six, or thirty threepenny bits.
Then Alison had a very brilliant inspiration—to give Jimmie a beautiful silver collar all for himself, with the words “In memory of James Thomson” on it, as a Christmas present. Dogs have so few presents, and Jimmie really was very good, except when he lost his head in the Gardens, which indeed, to be truthful, he always did. So he had his collar on Christmas morning, and it cost exactly twelve-and-six altogether, or fifty threepenny bits.
So much for the first five hundred.