I
The bank was in the High Street, a broad, leafy place of stone houses and regularly planted trees. The most of Seacombe, however, is neither broad nor leafy nor regular. Old Town—so they call it—a picturesque welter of thatched and cream-washed cottages, climbs the hills and clusters round the harbour; New Town, with its bank and High Street and electric light and things, was added when the railway came. Into this bank, one bright September morning, stepped Miss Mamie Stuart Berridge, of Lansing, in the State of Michigan. From Lansing, in the State of Michigan, to Seacombe, in the county of Somerset, is a far and distant cry, and the transition requires money for its satisfactory accomplishment. Miss Mamie had money, a diminishing wad that folded up in a neat black leather case. She stepped into the bank, unfolded her wad, and handed an American Express Company’s cheque across the counter. The young man who did duty there reminded her that she must sign it. “That’s the second time I’ve forgotten,” said Mamie, and wrote her name in the appointed space.
“All gold, or would you like a note?” inquired the young man.
Miss Mamie thought that she would like a note; and then she altered her mind and exchanged the note for gold; and then she altered her mind once more and took the note. The young man smiled amiably and blushed a little; for the transaction was fast becoming confidential, and he was told that the note would “do for Mrs. Bilson.” He knew Mrs. Bilson as a party who let lodgings.
“Are you comfortable there?” he ventured.
“As comfortable as one can be in this old England of yours.”
A laugh, a snapping of her handbag, a swish of skirt, and she was gone. Other and duller customers engaged the young man till four o’clock. Once or twice that day he thought of Mamie, and wondered whether she was ever coming back again.
The next afternoon he caught a glimpse of her, seated high on a char-à-banc, and just returned from an excursion. “She’s been to Porlock Weir,” he said, and then went off to play tennis, a game that invariably occupied his leisure hours of daylight. After the bank had closed there was little else to do in Seacombe. The next day he met her face to face, and he blushed a deep pink, for she had recognised him. She gave him a bright little bow; he stopped; she inquired whether he had anything to do; and “Nothing at all,” was his answer. The tennis club could go hang was an inward ejaculation that escaped Miss Mamie Stuart Berridge.
They bought things for her supper and her breakfast, and she also wanted a new pair of gloves, and asked the young man where she could get them. He did his best for her and carried the parcels, and explained that a florin was not the same as half a crown. She had given up Mrs. Bilson, who had overcharged her, and was now doing her own catering. “Just like you English,” she added gaily, and led the way to a shop where they sold Devonshire cream. This latter delicacy, it appeared, was “just lovely,” and not to be had at all in the United States.
“Won’t you come in?” she asked, when at last they reached her door.
The young man hesitated.
“Isn’t it proper?” inquired Miss Mamie.
The young man smiled.
“Well, I guess we’ll just be improper.”
The young man followed her into a sitting-room that overlooked the street.
Indoors, Mamie tucked up her sleeves and made a salad, and the young man sat on the sofa and watched her. “What’s your name?” she asked.
“Baker—James Baker.”
“Always been at that old bank?”
“Since I left school.”
“Like it?”
“Not very much.”
“Why do you stay there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Got put there, and here in England people stay where they’re put?”
“I suppose so.”
“Any prospects?”
“I may be a manager some day—get a branch office like this.”
“When you’re pie-faced and bald?”
Her frankness was alarming, but Jimmy Baker rather liked it. “When I’m forty or so,” he admitted.
“How old are you now?” She asked the question without looking up from her salad.
“Twenty-three.”
“I’m twenty-two,” said she. “Uncle Walter died and left me a thousand, and so I thought I’d come to England and have a good time. I’m going to be a school teacher when it’s over. I’ve been to college. When you’ve been to college you can do without a chaperon, and I’d nobody to go with me and nobody to ask. Father’s married again, and I don’t remember mother. I was a baby when she died. You got any folks?”
Baker had everything and everybody. His father farmed near Bideford; his mother and sisters looked after the dairy; his brothers were at school or in positions similar to his own.
“What do they give you at the bank?” she asked.
He named the figure of his meagre salary.
“My! you’re not going on working for that!”
“I have to,” he answered.
“Well, it’s no business of mine;” and now she rang for the landlady and introduced Mr. Baker as a guest who was staying to supper.