A Son of the State

by W. Pett Ridge

CHAPTER XI.

Into a long broad ward with scarlet counterpaned cots, headed against the wall on either side, and a shining floor between, Bobbie Lancaster, after being with ever so much tenderness bathed and combed in a small room, was conveyed, and there he relinquished for a few weeks his identity and became Number Twenty. The young doctor whom he saw when first brought into the hospital had whistled softly, and had murmured the words “compound fracture”; the damaged boy felt glad that the injury was of some importance and likely to attract attention. He woke the morning following his arrival on tea being brought round at five o’clock, to find that his arm, accurately bound up with two small boards, gave him less pain than be had expected. There was an acceptable scent of cleanliness in the ward, helped sternly by the universal scent of carbolic, receiving more joyful volunteer assistance from the bowl of heliotrope on the Sister’s table at the centre. Turning his head, Bobbie saw a comfortable fire blazing away not far from him; a fire that made all polished things reflect its flames; saw, too, that some of his neighbours were unable to rise, and had to be fed by the white-aproned nurses going softly to each cot. One or two of the numbers had arched protectors under the bedclothes to keep the sheets from touching their small bodies; Number Twenty-one had a head so fully bandaged that there was not much of his face to be seen but the eyes and the tip of a nose; wherefore he was called by the others “Fifth of November.” Bobbie’s other immediate neighbour, Number Nineteen, a white-faced boy, lost no time in bragging to the new-comer that he possessed hips about as bad as hips could manage to be.

“Well, Twenty,” said the nurse to Bobbie cheerfully. “You going to stay at our hotel for a few weeks?” The nurse was a pleasing round-faced young woman, who signalled the approach of an ironical remark by winking; in the absence of this intimation the ward understood Nurse Crowther to be serious. “All the nobility come here,” said Nurse Crowther, deflecting her eyelid, “seem to have given up Homburg and Wiesbaden and places, and to have made up their mind to come to Margaret Ward. Here’s Lord Bailey, otherwise known as Nineteen, for instance.” The white-faced boy laughed at this personal allusion. “He’s given up everything,” declared Nurse Crowther. “Dances, receptions, partridge shooting, and I don’t know what all, just in order that he should come and spend a few months here with us. Isn’t that right, Nineteen?”

“Gawspel!” affirmed little Nineteen, in a whisper.

“It must affect some of the other fashionable resorts,” said Nurse Crowther, pursuing the facetious vein. “I’m told that there’s nobody at Trouville this year, and as for Switzerland—”

“All the time you’re trying to be funny,” complained Master Lancaster, “you’re letting my milk get cold. Why don’t you attend to bisness first?”

“Hope you’re not going to be a tiresome boy,” said the nurse.

“Wait and see.”

“I must bring the Sister to see you presently. You’ve got a nice open face.”

“If I’ve got an open face I can keep me mouth shut,” said Twenty, drinking his milk. “That’s more than some of you can.”

“Arm pretty comfortable this morning?” asked the nurse, good-temperedly, as she smoothed the scarlet counterpane. “Had a good night’s rest? Weren’t disturbed by the noise of the traffic, were you? What—”

“One at a time, one at a time,” said Twenty crossly. “I can’t answer forty thousand blooming questions at once.”

“Sit back now, there’s a dear, and keep as quiet as you can till the doctors come round.”

“What time do they put in an appearance?”

“That, dear duke,” said the nurse winking, “entirely depends upon you. You have but to say the word.”

“If there’s one thing I can’t stand more’n another,” said the boy, settling himself down cautiously, “it is gels trying to be comic.”

The young doctor with three or four men still younger, and all of them endeavouring to look an incalculable age, paid their visit to Margaret Ward in due course, and Bobbie felt indignant because whereas they stayed at the end of his bed but a couple of minutes writing some casual marks on the blue form pinned on the board above his head, at the next bed they ordered a screen to be placed, and behind this they remained in consultation over the white-faced little Nineteen for quite a long time. When they had gone, Bobbie salved his jealousy by telling Nineteen at once that Nineteen need not think himself everybody, giving a long list of imaginary complaints that he (Bobbie) had in the past suffered from, ranging in character from a wart on the knuckles to complete paralysis of the right side. This seemed to restrain any idea that Nineteen might have had of exhibiting conceit, and that little chap contented himself by offering to bet two to one in halfpennies that he would he the next in the Margaret Ward to go. Bobbie forced the odds to three to one, and then closed with the wager.

“I shan’t be sorry,” said white-faced Nineteen, “’pon me word I shan’t. It can’t be much worse than this.”

“You be careful how you talk,” advised Bobbie. “A man that’s getting near to kicking the bucket can’t be too cautious of what he says.”

“Likely as not,” said Nineteen, “it’ll he a jolly sight better than this.”

“How can you tell?”

“Anyway,” said Nineteen, “it’ll he a rare old lark to watch and see what ’appens. I ’eard a man arguin’ once in Victoria Park that those what put up with a lot in this world, got it all their own way in the next, and vicer verser.”

“How did he get to know?”

“Of course,” admitted Nineteen, “it’s all speculation.” Little Nineteen yawned. “I feel bit tired.”

“You take jolly good care what you’re about, old man,” recommended Bobbie. “You’ll look jolly silly if you find yourself all at once in ’ell.”

“Even that’d be interesting.”

“And hot,” said Bobbie.

“I shouldn’t mind chancing it a bit,” said Nineteen, “only there’s the old woman. She worries about me a good deal, she does.”

“Your mother?”

“She’d he upset if she thought I hadn’t gone to ’Eaven.” Nineteen gave the skeleton of a laugh. “You know what Primitive Methodists are,” he added excusingly.

“Tell you what,” said Bobbie. “If anything ’appens to you and you pop off the hooks, I’ll tell her that you were going there all right, and I’ll make up something about angels, and say they was your last words. See!”

“I shall take it very kind of you,” said little Nineteen thankfully.

“You leave it me. And touchin’ that bet. Just occurs to me. If you lose you mayn’t be able to pay.”

“If I win I shan’t be able to dror it off of you.”

“Never mind,” said Bobbie, “we’ll see what ’appens.”

“I’ve never stole nothin’,” urged Nineteen, after a pause.

“You’re all right.” With some awkwardness.

“I’ve never had a copper even speak to me.”

“You’re as right as ninepence. There’s lots of cheps worse than you.”

“I’ve got to ’ave port wine and jellies,” remarked Nineteen after a pause.

“Some of you get all the luck,” said Bobbie. At which Nineteen dozed off contentedly.

When, later in the morning, the tall young Sister came up to Bobbie’s cot and introduced herself, he permitted her to talk for some time, and watched her quiet, attractive face. Dressed in her plain gown, she looked, the boy thought, perfect, and he touched the white hand that rested on the coverlet of his bed with shy respect. Sister Margaret talked of his accident; chatted about the other numbers of the ward. Leaving him for a moment to give white-faced Nineteen a kiss, she was called back by Bobbie.

“I say, Miss.”

“Well, Twenty.”

“Something to ask you. Bend down.”

As the tall young woman obeyed, Bobbie put one hand to his mouth in order that his confidential inquiry might not be heard by the other boys. “How’s your young man?” he whispered.

Sister Margaret flushed and stood upright.

“What do you mean, Twenty?” she answered, severely. “You must understand that here we don’t allow boys to be impudent.”

“It’s all right, Miss,” whispered Bobbie. “Don’t fly all to pieces. I’m not chaffing of you. I mean Mr. West—Mr. Myddleton West.”

“You know Mr. West?” she said, bending down again.

“Rather!” said the boy. “Saw your photograph in his place yesterday. Only one in the room.”

She sat down beside the bed, her eyes taking a light of interest. Bobbie looking round the ward to see that this special honour was being noted, and observed that the numbers on the opposite side scowled jealously at him.

“I’ve known him off and on,” said Bobbie, “these two or three years. Good sort, he is.”

“Mr. West is indeed a very good fellow,” said the Sister earnestly. “But you—you are wrong, Twenty, in assuming that we are engaged. Nothing, in point of fact, is further from the truth. We are very good friends, and that is all.”

“You don’t kid me,” said the boy knowingly.

“Twenty! I shall be extremely annoyed if, whilst you are in the ward, you couple my name with Mr. West’s.”

“Shouldn’t think of doing so, Sister,” he said seriously. “If there’s one thing I can do better than another it is keeping a secret. Once I make up my mind to shut my mouth, wild ’orses wouldn’t open it.”

“I like him,” she went on (it appeared that the Sister was not averse to speaking of Myddleton West), “I like him very much, but it is possible to like a person, Twenty, without going so far as to become engaged.”

“Depends!”

“There are several courses open nowadays to women,” she said half to herself, and with something of enthusiasm. “It is no longer marriage or nothing for them. There are certain duties in the world—public duties—that a woman can take upon herself, and marriage would only interfere with their performance. The old idea of woman’s place in the world was, to my mind, not quite decent. We are getting away from all that, and we are coming to see that the possibilities—”

“Don’t he mind your taking up with this nonsense?” asked Bobbie. The boy’s interruption stopped the argumentative young woman. She laughed brightly at finding herself lecturing to Twenty on this subject, and, smoothing his pillow before she went, asked him with a smile whether he did not agree with her.

“I call it a silly ass of an idea,” he said frankly.

This was not the last talk that he had with the tall young Sister of the ward, and for some days in that week the ward inclined to mutiny on account of the disproportionate time that she gave to Twenty and to little Nineteen. It almost seemed that Nineteen showed signs of improvement under the combined influence of her visits and the companionship of Bobbie his neighbour; Bobbie’s predecessor had been a gloomy boy, with his own views in regard to details of eternal torments, and Bobbie’s optimism cheered the white-faced boy so much that when his tearful mother came to see him, being by special permission admitted at any time, she found herself debating with him on his walk in life when he should grow up, and discussing the relative advantages of the position of engine-driver as compared with that of policeman. Nineteen introducing his neighbour, Nineteen’s mother gave Bobbie two oranges and an illuminated card bearing minatory texts. Bobbie enjoyed the oranges.

“I think he’s better, nurse,” said Nineteen’s mother respectfully. “Seems to have got more colour, and—”

“It’s my belief,” answered Nurse Crowther at the foot of the bed, “that there’s nothing whatever the matter with his lordship. I believe it’s all his nonsense. I tell him that he’ll have to take me to the theatre some evening, soon as ever he gives up playing this game of lying in bed.”

Little Nineteen smiled faintly. The good-humoured nurse went and placed her cool hand on his forehead.

“I don’t hold with theatres, nurse,” said Nineteen’s mother precisely. “To my mind chapel is a great deal better than all these devil’s playhouses.”

“Dam sight duller,” remarked Bobbie.

“Twenty! I’m surprised.”

“Well, nurse,” said Bobbie excusingly, “she said ‘devil.’”

“Anyway,” remarked Nurse Crowther, “we’re going to dodge off somewhere, the very first day he gets well, aren’t we, Nineteen?”

Happy nod of acquiescence from the tired boy.

“And we shan’t say anything to anybody else about it, shall we, Nineteen?”

Not a word, signalled poor Nineteen.

“And, goodness! how people will stare when they see us on the steamer together off to Rosherville.”

“I’ll come with you,” interposed Bobbie from the next bed.

“Not likely,” declared Nurse Crowther, with another wink. “Two’s company, three’s a crowd. Aye, Nineteen?”

“Most decidedly,” intimated the delighted boy.

“And now it’s time for your little pick-me-up. Say good-bye to your mother.”

Nineteen’s mother, having said good-bye, drew the nurse aside, whispering a question, and Bobbie heard the answer, “No hope!” This startled Bobbie, and made him think; presently he worked so hard in the endeavour to cheer little Nineteen that Sister Margaret had to command silence, because Nineteen required rest. That night, when the ward was silent, Bobbie watched him as he lay with eyes closed, his breathing short and irregular, and for almost the first time in his life, Bobbie thought seriously of the desirability—taking everything into consideration—of becoming religious.

He could see the red fire, and watching it he considered this entirely new suggestion. He lifted the bed-clothes to shield himself from the sight of the distant fireplace, for he was becoming heated. It required much determination to put gloomy thoughts from him; when he had partly succeeded in doing this he looked again at the fire, and then he knew that there were tears in his eyes, because the light of the fire became starry and confused in appearance. He sniffed and rubbed his eyes. It seemed that he could see another fire, a small one, near to the grate, and this he assumed to be an optical delusion until it crept along a black rug and commenced to blaze, whereupon he slipped cautiously out of bed; his bandaged arm paining, despite his care, and called for the nurse. An answer did not come immediately, and the boy hurried bare-footed, in his scarlet gown only, across the floor to the burning rug. Afterwards, he remembered rolling it up awkwardly with one hand and stamping upon it; the night nurse hurrying up with a scream, forty heads up in forty cots—it was then for the first and last time in his life that Bobbie fainted.

“We shall have to send you to a home, Twenty.” Sister Margaret looked on a day or two later, whilst Nurse Crowther re-bound the lint and wool. “A convalescent home down by the sea-side, upon a hill, where you can watch the shipping, and—”

“That’ll suit me down to the ground, Sister.”

“I believe he got burnt purposely, Sister,” declared Nurse Crowther, “so that he should have a nice long holiday. Wish to goodness I was half as artful as Twenty is.”

“I’m sure,” said Sister Margaret sedately, “that Twenty is a very brave boy. If it hadn’t been for his courage there might have been quite a serious fire.”

Twenty blushed.

“Twenty has qualities,” went on the tall Sister, “that if properly directed—I should bring it twice over the knee, nurse, I think—will make him a fine young fellow, and a credit to his country.” Sister Margaret had raised her voice in order that her words might be heard. The ward listened alertly; little Nineteen, whose eyelids were now very tired, moving his head in order to hear. “Wrongly directed,” she said, lowering her voice, “they will only make him dangerous.”

“I should rather like to grow up and—and be brave,” said little Nineteen from the next bed.

“So you shall,” declared Nurse Crowther, cheerily, “so you shall, Nineteen. If you don’t get the Victoria Cross some day, Nineteen, never believe me again.” Little Nineteen consoled, closed his eyes wearily. “As for you, Marquis,” went on Nurse Crowther, pinning the end of the roll with which Bobbie’s limb had been enveloped, “I believe that what Sister says is perfectly true. If you can only keep on the main line you’ll make a capital journey. Only don’t get branching off.”

“If I don’t get along in the world,” said Bobbie, with a touch of his old impudence, “it won’t he for the want of telling.”

“You ought to be grateful, my Lord Bishop,” said Nurse Crowther, adjusting the bed-clothes carefully, “that you’ve got so many friends.”

“Me!” echoed the boy. “Why, I ain’t got a friend in the world.”

“Twenty!” said Sister Margaret reprovingly. “And Mr. West is coming all the way down here next visiting day specially to see you.”

“To see me?”

“Yes,” said Sister Margaret, a little unsteadily, “to see you.”

“Reckon,” said the boy, looking up, “he’s going to kill two birds with one stone. What he’s really coming for is to see—”

“Twenty,” she commanded, “silence!”

“Is to-morrow visiting day?” asked the thin voice of Nineteen, sleepily.

“To-morrow,” replied Nurse Crowther. “And mind you’re nice and bright, Saucy Face, by three o’clock against your mother comes.”

In the ward the next day occurred the usual excitement that preceded an afternoon for visitors. Little Nineteen alone uninterested; it almost seemed that he had ceased to take concern in worldly matters such as the arrival of apples and other contraband, and to be content, when not asleep, with staring very hard at the ceiling. Bobbie himself, cheered by receipt of a kindly note from Collingwood Cottage, gave his best endeavours to the task of enlivening Nineteen (“Sop me goodness,” said Bobbie, reproachfully to himself, “if I ain’t getting fond of the little beggar”), but with no result. Elsewhere in the ward movement and expectation; Sister Margaret and the nurses had trouble to preserve sanity amongst the boy patients. Thirty-five declared privately his opinion that all the clocks were slow; that someone had put them back on purpose; Thirty-five added darkly that if he could find the person responsible for the deed he would make it a County Court job. Nevertheless, the hour presently struck, and two minutes afterwards came the sound of many footsteps in the passage; the swing doors opened, and the visitors marched in under the narrow inspection of every scarlet-gowned occupant of every scarlet-counterpaned bed. There were sounds of kissing in different parts of the ward. Bobbie ordered Nineteen to wake up and look sharp about it, but little Nineteen did not answer.

“If you please, Miss, is there a boy named Robert Lancaster in this ward?”

Bobbie’s head came up. Nurse Crowther pointed him out to a young girl, dressed quietly, her hair rolled up into a neat bunch, and wearing brown gloves fiercely new. She carried a small paper bag, and looked casually at her silver watch as she advanced to the bedside of Twenty.

“What ho!” said Bobbie, not unkindly. “Who sent for you?”

“Mother told me I might come,” said Miss Trixie Bell, breathlessly, “and mother sent this bunch of the best grapes she could get in Spitalfields Market, and mother said I was to give you her kind regards, and tell you to get well as soon as you could.”

“Left to meself,” said Bobbie, “I should never ’ave thought of that. They ain’t so dusty them grapes, though, are they?” he added, admiringly.

“I should rather think not,” said Trixie. “They cost money. How’s your arm? You look nice and neat in your scarlet—” Miss Bell checked herself and bit her lips. “I nearly said bed-gown,” she remarked, apologetically, taking out her watch again.

“You’ve altered,” said Bobbie, “since you came to see me last.”

“Mother says I’m going to grow up tall.”

“Take care you don’t grow up silly the same time. Where’d you get your watch from?”

“Fancy your noticing,” said Trixie Bell, delightedly. “That’s new to-day. Mother gave it me because it was my birthday, and I’d helped nicely with the shop.”

“Many ’appy returns,” he said, gruffly.

“Thank you, Bobbie.”

“Ever see anything of them Drysdale Street bounders? I mean Nose and Libbis and—”

“I never take no notice of nobody,” said the young lady, precisely. “Mother says its best to ignore them altogether. Mother says its unwise even to pass the time of day. So when they call out after me, I simply walk on as though I hadn’t ’eard.”

“That’s right,” said Bobbie, approvingly.

“Your neighbour’s asleep.”

“Little beggar’s always at it. He’ll wake up directly when his mother comes.”

A scent of flowers and a familiar deep voice. Trixie, who had been resting one elbow on the pillow, drew back, as Myddleton West came up.

“Well, young man,” said Myddleton West, cheerily, “how are we getting on? Sister Margaret has been telling me of your fire brigade exploit.”

“That was nothing.”

“It might have been, apparently, if you had not acted as you did. This a friend of yours?” Miss Bell stood up and bowed. “Why, I’ve met you two together before. On a tram going Shoreditch way on the night when—”

“Let bygones be bygones,” said Bobbie, uneasily. “That was ages ago.”

“When you were mere boy and girl?”

“Jesso!”

“Sister Margaret thinks of getting you away to a convalescent home,” said Myddleton West.

“You seem to have had a rare old chat with her,” said the boy, pointedly. “Give her them flowers, instead of leaving them here. They’ll please her.”

“Excuse me,” interrupted Trixie, “don’t you think you ought to call the nurse for this little chap in the next bed? I’ve just touched his hand, and somehow—”

Nurse Crowther and another nurse come quickly to the bed of Nineteen. Nurse Crowther flies for the screen; when this is fixed around the bed, a doctor is sent for. The doctor hurries in, goes away directly, but the screen remains. Nineteen’s mother arriving tardily with oranges for her boy, is admitted behind the screen, and there comes presently the sound of weeping.

“Ain’t he woke up, Nurse?” asks Bobbie, anxiously.

“Nearly time for visitors to go,” says Nurse Crowther. “You’ll soon have to say good-bye. Nice bright day outside, they tell me.”

“Ain’t he woke up yet, Nurse?”

“Who, your Highness?”

“Why, Nineteen.”

For once Nurse Crowther’s wink declines to respond to her summons. Her lips move, and she puts her hand up to control them.

“My chick,” she says, “Nineteen won’t wake again in this world.” The bed clothes go quickly over Bobbie’s head, and remain there for some few minutes. When Sister Margaret’s voice is heard warning visitors of the approach of half-past four, his head reappears rather shamefacedly.

“Trixie.”

“Yes, Bobbie.”

“Anybody looking?”

“Not a soul.”

“Well,” whispers Bobbie, “if you like to bend down, you can give me a kiss.”

Miss Bell takes sedate advantage of this offer, and, readjusting her hat, when she has done so, finds her bright brown gloves.

“Thank you, Bobbie,” says Miss Bell. Then she adds very softly, “Dear.”

“Not so much of the ‘dear,’” orders Bobbie.

CHAPTER XII.

The seaside institution to which Bobbie, with an attention that could not have been exceeded if he had been paying money recklessly to everybody around him, found himself conveyed, exactly fitted his desires. The cool, calm order of the place, the quiet service of serene women attendants in their dark gowns and white aprons, the well-chosen table, the pure white linen in spotless bedrooms—all these things, that might have irritated the boy had he been perfectly well, were, in his convalescent state, precisely what he required. The days had become warmer, and it was possible to spend a good deal of time on the wooden balconies of the Swiss-like building. From these balconies he could look away across the green waters, with their patches of dark purple; could watch the Channel steamer puffing its way across, presently to enter the harbour below. The harbour itself never ceased to delight him. There it was that steamers rested in a dignified manner when off duty, submitting themselves to an energetic washing of decks and rubbing of brasswork; near them, brown-sailed fishing vessels for ever going out to sea or coming back from sea, manned by limited crews, who shouted in the dialect of the Kentish coast, and whose aim in life it appeared to be not so much to do work themselves as to tell others to do it. The scent of the sea came up to the balconies, and most of the boys in varying stages of repair who inhaled it, declared their intention, once they had regained possession of that health which for the moment eluded them, of becoming admirals in her Majesty’s navy. Bobbie Lancaster on this subject said nothing, which was his way when engaged in making up his mind.

Stages marked the progress of improvement. One of the earliest came on permission being granted to walk about the green-grassed lawn around the Home, with its summer-houses, where, over the fence in the evenings, you could observe sons of mariners wooing, with economic speech, daughters of other mariners, and kissing them, under the impression that no one but a Martello tower looked on.

Here Bobbie himself fell in love.

A breezy curate attached to the church close by, for ever flying in and out of the Home with no hat, and an appearance of having another engagement of a highly urgent character for which he was a little late, hurried in one day to look round the sitting-room where the guests played dominoes, and found Bobbie well enough to go out; so well, indeed, that he had arranged to go down the long road towards the white cliffs in company with an adult patient, who, being in ordinary times a stoker on a London Bridge and Greenwich steamboat, posed as authority on all matters concerning the navy, and arbitrator in disputes concerning that branch of the service. Breezy Curate, in less than no time at all, found other work for the naval authority, gained the necessary permission from the Lady Superintendent, and was away with Bobbie, walking so fast that he had to run back now and then in the manner of a frisky terrier, in order that Bobbie should keep up with him. Ere the boy had time or breath to ask questions they arrived at the door of a round squat Martello tower (called by elderly acquaintances Billy Pitt’s Mansion), where he was lugged in and introduced to the coastguardsman who lived there; introduced also to coastguardsman’s immense niece, who appeared to Bobbie, panting on a chair, like a very large angel, only better dressed and much better looking, and who, it appeared, came in daily to make tidy her uncle’s tower. Breezy Curate, before hastening off for a fly along the cliffs, made the boy a friend of Coastguard and Coastguard’s niece, and promised to call back for him in an hour.

“Reckon you’ve been ’avin’ games, young man, ain’t you?” said Coastguard sternly. “What made you fall down and step on yerself in that manner for, eh?”

Bobbie explained. When he described the fire in Margaret Ward, the large angel, making tea and toasting bread that filled the small room with most appetizing odours, looked up.

“Bravo,” said the young woman. “Come here and I’ll give ye a kiss for that.”

Bobbie hesitated.

“Go on, lad,” counselled her uncle; “there’s them that wouldn’t want to be asked twice to do that, jigger me if they would.”

“Uncle!” said the large angel reprovingly. “Do give over.”

Bobbie considered it proof of the young woman’s angelic nature that, seeing he did not stir, she came to him, toasting-fork in hand, gave him a hug and then went back to her work at the fire. Coastguard, enormously amused at this, slapped his knee, saying that seeing kisses were cheap, jigger him if he wouldn’t have one, and a kiss he therefore took, and the three sat down to tea in great good-humour. By an effort, Bobbie determined to retain the correct behaviour that he had learnt in the Cottage Homes and at Margaret Ward; Coastguard, delighted with the boy’s respectful manner, declared that an earl could not comport himself better. From this, Coastguard passed, by easy transition, to a review of the Royal Family of his country, a review that became a glowing eulogy. The angel, too, preparing to cut cake, expressed so much affection for the younger members of the family, portraits of whom were on the walls of the little room of the Martello tower, that the boy found himself impressed, and convinced by views in regard to Royalty that were novel to him.

“Old Lady,” declared Coastguard, blowing at his tea, “will have the best. She don’t mind what she pays for her Navy, but she will ’ave it good.”

“I see what you mean,” said Bobbie.

“Do you like the outside or the inside?” asked the angel at the cake.

“Both, Miss,” said Bobbie.

“None of your ne’er-do-wells for her,” went on Coastguard. “None of your thieving—”

“You’ve dropped your knife on the floor, little boy,” said the angel. “That’s a sign you’re not careful.”

“‘None of your bad characters, none of your criminals for my Navy,’ she ses, ‘if you please.’ And jigger me,” said Coastguard explosively, “jigger me if the old Lady ain’t right.”

“You ought to call her ‘Her Majesty,’ uncle. You’d look silly if she happened to be listening.”

“Go’ bless my soul,” said Coastguard with enthusiasm, “she wouldn’t mind it from me. She knows my way of talking.”

“And,” stammered Bobbie, “is it—is it true then that you can’t get into the Navy if you’ve done anything wrong?”

“Devil a bit,” answered Coastguard. “Old Lady’d think it was a piece of impudence to try it on. Looey, my gell, whilst I’m havin’ my pipe jest give us a toon on the old harmonium.”

The large niece, seated at the harmonium, seemed, to the thoughtful Bobbie, more like an angel than ever; the music she produced helped to distract his troubled thoughts. Presently, however, the angel found a Moody and Sankey book and, having propped it on the ledge before her, picked out on the keys as with her foot she moved the pedals, a hymn that gave the boy memories. The Coastguard rolled his head to the rhythm; now and again taking his pipe from his mouth to growl a note or two and thus give his niece encouragement.

“Dare to be a Daniel,
Dare to stand alone,
Dare to—”

Bobbie sat forward in his chair, his eyes fixed on the broad bending back of the young lady at the harmonium, and thought of Ely Place. What a long way off Ely Place seemed now; Bat Miller, and Mrs. Bat Miller, and the Fright; all these were misty figures that for years had visited his memory infrequently. Bat Miller’s time would be up in a year or two. Bobbie shivered to think what he should do were Bat Miller’s face to appear suddenly at the window. For a few moments he dared not glance at the window, fearful that this impossible event might happen; when at the end of the hymn he nerved himself to look in that direction he felt almost surprised to find no face peering in.

“Gi’ us,” said the Coastguard cheerfully, “Gi’ us ‘Old the Fort.’ That’s the one I’m gone on. There’s a swing about ‘Old the Fort.’”

It seemed to the boy that already he had lived two lives; that the first had been broken off short on the day he turned out of Worship Street Police Court. He could not help feeling a vague admiration for that first boy because the first boy had been a fine young dare-devil, never trammelled by rules of behaviour; at the same time it was as well, perhaps, that the first boy had ceased to live, for he was not the kind of lad Bobbie could have introduced to the angel.

“And now,” said the Coastguard, “jigger my eyes if I mustn’t on with my jacket and find my spy-glass and see what’s going on outside. Where’s that young curate got to, I wonder?”

The Coastguard went presently, after telling Bobbie that he might call again at the Martello tower, and that if he behaved he should one day go out to the Coastguard Station and see, by aid of the telescope, the coast of France. Bobbie, alone with the angel, and allowed to seat himself at the end of the harmonium, behaved with a preciseness and a decorum that in any other lad would have been held by Bobbie as good justification for punching that boy’s head. The angel’s right hand remaining on the higher keys for a space in order to give full effect to a final chord, he bent and kissed it. The scent of brown Windsor soap ever afterwards reminded him of this first essay in affection.

“What ye up to?” demanded the angel.

“Only kissin’ your ’and,” said Bobbie confusedly.

“We don’t kiss hands down in these parts,” said the large young lady. “That ain’t Kentish fashion.”

“I like you,” remarked the boy shyly.

“My goodness!” said the angel with affectation of much concern, “this won’t do. I mustn’t be catched alone with a young man what says things like that. I’d better be seeing about taking you back to the home, I reckon.”

The curate not returning (having, as it proved, flown away to a neighbouring parish and forgotten all about the boy), this course had to be adopted, and the two walked back along the road on the edge of the white cliffs—Bobbie in a state of proud ecstasy, which reached its highest point, when a boy, in passing them, called out to him, “Why doan’ you marry the girl?” The angel herself spoke of the amount that the starting of a household cost; of the relative advantages of a house with folding doors but no bay windows, compared with a house having bay windows, but no folding doors; all in a manner that seemed to the boy, strutting by her side, highly encouraging, and, under the circumstances, as much as on such brief acquaintance a man could reasonably expect. At the home, any trouble that might have arisen by reason of the boy’s extended absence was removed by the fact that the angel had once been a highly-esteemed servant at the Institution; the Lady Superintendent met them without a frown. The large young lady found herself lugged into the kitchen by two of the white-aproned maids for a chat, and when presently she looked in to say good night, at the reading-room where Bobbie was finishing a sea story, she kissed him, to the great envy of the other convalescent young students.

“Serve us all alike, Miss,” begged a lad with crutches.

“You be quiet,” ordered Bobbie, “unless you want your head punched.”

“Give me ’alf a one,” urged the lad with crutches.

“No fear,” said the angel cheerfully. She nodded her head to Bobbie. “He’s my young man.”

“Should have thought you’d got better taste, Miss.”

“You leave off talking to that lady,” growled Bobbie, “or I’ll spoil your features for you.” The large young lady waved her hand and disappeared through the swing doors. “If you ain’t a gentleman, do, for goodness sake, try to ’ide the fact.”

In the few weeks of Bobbie’s residence, the Coastguard became his very good friend. The boy learned the secrets of flags, listened with an interest that he had never felt at school to the accounts of British victories by sea in the past, absorbing with great appetite the Coastguard’s figures illustrating the current state of the Navy. In his young heart patriotism was born.

Permitted to see through the telescope the coast of France, he commenced to realize actualities that he had never gained from maps. In the school of the Cottage Homes the general impression amongst incredulous small boys had been that no such places as foreign countries really existed; that these were fictions invented by adults for the more complete annoyance and trouble of children. Now the line of cliffs where on bright days tiny black specks could be seen moving, brought conviction; the boy found that he had much to learn, and something to forget. One Sunday afternoon, being allowed to go down to the sleeping harbour, and over the line, and along the quay by the Customs House, he met, by happy chance, the angel, in white, with green sunshade, who, it appeared, waited for some one who would be free as soon as the baggage had been cleared; together they watched the Channel steamer bustle in and wake up the harbour, saw ropes thrown, gangways fixed, and presently heard the arriving passengers chattering in a language which the angel told him was French.

“Ignorant set, ain’t they?” asked Bobbie.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said the large young lady tolerantly.

“I ’aven’t got much opinion of foreigners,” said the boy. “For one thing, why don’t they learn a decent language like ourn?”

“I s’pose they get on all right without it.”

“Do you know any French?”

“A bit,” said the angel modestly.

“Tell us some!”

“Je vous aime,” said the angel. On Bobbie demanding a translation, the large young lady, shading her face with the green parasol, furnished this.

“Who learnt it you?” demanded Bobbie jealously.

“Ah,” said the angel acutely, “that’s tellings.”

It galled him considerably on the last occasion that the breezy young curate took him under his wing to fly away with him along the cliff and look in at the Martello tower for a picture of a ship which the Coastguard had promised to him, to find the small room almost wholly occupied by a tall bashful young Customs officer, with limbs so long that when he sat down his knees came up in a manner which Bobbie considered eminently ridiculous. The angel had not arrived, but was expected; when the curate insisted upon Bobbie coming away with him, his picture of the ship under his arm, in order that they might skirt the cliffs swallow-like once more, Bobbie complied with hesitation, being thus denied the joy of seeing the lady of his heart.

“I’d like to stay ’ere all me bloomin’ lifetime,” said Bobbie to the Lady Superintendent that night.

Nevertheless, the next day he had to listen to the voice of reasonableness, to pack up the books that had been given him by the curate, the picture that Coastguard had presented, and a marvellous four-bladed knife from the angel, for which he had paid to that young lady the sum of one halfpenny, in order that the knife might not, in its keenness, sever friendship. He said good-bye to the Lady Superintendent, remembering (just in time) to say, “Thank you,” a phrase with which he had become on intimate terms, and walked stolidly down to the station, where a train would take him back to London and the Homes. As he looked at the contents of the bookstall (he had begun in those days to feel an appetite for reading, and a strange craving when not furnished with something in the form of printed words) to him appeared:—

First, the angel! Bobbie had felt confident that the large young lady would not allow him to depart without giving him an opportunity of formally declaring his love; he had already decided on the form of his address.

Second, the curate! Curate flying in through the booking office, skimming restlessly up and down the platform, chatting with porters, chucking babies under the chin, and telling the station-master how a railway ought to be managed.

Third, Coastguard. Jiggering everything at frequent intervals; handing over to Bobbie as final gifts a parcel of huge ham sandwiches and a model clockwork steamer.

Fourth, as the train signalled from the preceding station, an entirely unnecessary person in the shape of the tall Customs officer, rather shy, but taking up, as it seemed to Bobbie, the unwarrantable attitude of being a friend of the family, and brushing from the angel’s brown cape a few specks of dust with a calmness for which Bobbie, circumstances willing, could have felled him to the platform.

“I say,” said Bobbie, leaning out of the carriage window, when he had been helped into the train, “I want to speak to you.”

“Me?” asked the Customs.

“You?” said Bobbie, with infinite scorn. “Good ’Eavens, no. I mean her.” The angel stepped forward. “I want to ask you something,” he said rather unsteadily.

“I know what it is,” declared the angel gaily. “You want me to remember to send you some of the cake.”

“What cake?”

“Oh, as if you didn’t know,” said the angel reproachfully. “Why, my weddin’ cake, of course. Don’t say you haven’t heard that me and him,” indicating the tall Customs officer, “are going to be married next month at—. Now you’re off. Good-bye, dear.”

“Be a good lad,” cried Coastguard, as the train moved.

“Be sure to get out at Cannon Street,” called the curate, flying along the platform, “and don’t forget to say your prayers at night.”

When, two hours later, the train ran into the London terminus, porters surveyed with critical eye each compartment, and having made hurried selections, staked out their claim by seizing a carriage handle as they trotted along till the train stopped. Bobbie, rather ill-tempered on the journey because his affairs of the heart had been so brutally checked, had his head out of the window as the train slowed up.

“Any luggage?” asked the porter breathlessly.

Bobbie shook his head, and the porter hurried on in search of a more encumbered traveller. Bobbie, walking down the crowded platform to the barrier, found the word luggage remaining in his mind. It recalled evenings with Bat Miller at stations on the other side of the City, followed sometimes by an interesting review of the contents of a portmanteau or a lady’s dressing-case in Ely Place. Around the guard’s van, now disgorging its contents hurriedly and confusedly, passengers stood as though at an auction, and when they saw an article of luggage in tune with their desires, held up a hand, and the article being knocked down to them, they bore it off without further question. In the centre, one of the busy porters acting as auctioneer held up a bright brown portmanteau with initials painted boldly.

“Anybody claim this?” demanded the harried porter. “Anybody claim a bag with—. A bundle of rugs, lady? I’ll look after it in ’alf a moment, if you’ll only leave off prodding me in the back with that gamp of yours.”

“I want,” said Bobbie’s voice, “a bag marked L. C. E.”

“Why,” grumbled the porter, handing it over to Bobbie, “’ere ’ave I been the last five minutes trying to find a owner for it? Want a cab?”

“No,” said Bobbie, “I’ll carry it.”

“It’s a bit lumpy,” remarked the porter warningly.

“I know,” said the boy.

He gave up his ticket at the barrier and lugged the heavy bag across to a departure platform.

It was, as the porter had said, a heavy bag, and anxious as the boy felt to get away with it, he found himself obliged to rest for a moment when he had reached the platform. Then he started on again, the heavy portmanteau bumping against his knee. Through his alert little head a scheme had already danced; a scheme necessitating an empty compartment to permit of a selection from the articles which the bag contained, and the disposal of the bag itself. This would have the advantage of deferring the awkward duty of returning to the Cottage Homes that day. A nurse walked by on the platform, with flowing cloak and white bands; Bobbie’s mind was recalled to Sister Margaret. From Sister Margaret his thoughts went to his other friends. He sat down on the portmanteau; his breath came quickly.

“They’d all look pretty straight,” he said to himself, “if they knew.” He rose slowly, and gripped the stout leather handles of the bag. “’Owever, I ain’t going to be copped. There’s plenty that do a thing like this quietly and never so much as—”

He stopped. Across the line on the wall a large portrait in an advertisement frame had—a cloud of engine smoke disappearing—come into view. Bobbie stared at it.

“The old Lady,” he muttered.

The portrait of her Majesty the Queen of England and Great Britain looked across at Bobbie with, as it seemed to him, a look of surprise, mingled with reproof. A train whistled, a ticket collector shouted, “North Kent train to Blackheath,” but the boy did not move. When the train had started, and the smoke had cleared away, Bobbie found his attention still held by the portrait on the other platform.

“The old Lady,” he quoted, under his breath, “will ’ave the best. She don’t mind what she pays for her navy, but she will ’ave it good. None of your criminals for her navy, if you please.”

He started up, his face white and perspiring. Lugging the weighty portmanteau back to the arrival barrier, he staggered determinedly through.

“Tell you what,” a young officer lad was saying fiercely. “If you porters don’t find that fearful bag of mine I’ll—”

“’Scuse me,” interrupted Bobbie, placing the portmanteau at the feet of its owner. “My mistake. Took it off in the hurry, instead of me own.”

“I’m really most fearfully obliged,” declared the officer lad effusively. “It has my dress suit, don’t you know, and I should have looked such a fearfully silly fool this evening without it.”

“You’re saved from that now, sir,” said the inspector, pointedly.

“What I mean to say is, I’m so fearfully indebted to you that really—”

“Don’t name it,” said Bobbie. “Glad I brought it back in time.”

“Good-bye, old chap,” said the officer lad, shaking hands with the boy. “I’m most fearfully glad to have met you. Can’t give you a lift, I suppose, anywhere, can I, what?”

“Thanks, fearfully,” said Bobbie. “My brougham’s waiting outside for me. Ta-ta!”

CHAPTER XIII.

Roses at Collingwood upon his return; and thorns. Thorns supplied, not by the foster-father or the foster-mother, but by the boys, who, once they had extracted full particulars of Bobbie’s adventure, made from these facts ammunition for gay badinage that, well aimed, gave them great content. In school, the game was played furtively. A slip of paper would be passed along the forms of the fourth standard class bearing the inquiry of a seeker after knowledge, “Who pinched the cornet?” this would be varied by rough sketches executed by Master Nutler of a lad running, with the words underneath, “Hold him!” When Bobbie strolled out of school at dinner time there would come an affected cry of alarm, “He’s off again!” Robert Lancaster took all of this with stolidity and in a manner differing from that which he would have exhibited a month previously. It seemed that the failure of his expedition had tamed him; certainly his stay in the hospital and at the convalescent home had given him reticence. He applied himself to his lessons. After a few weeks the other boys declined to be led any longer by Master Nutler, because there seemed little sport in rallying a man who showed no signs of annoyance, and Bobbie Lancaster presently found—excepting for an occasional reminder—that the Brenchley escapade had gone out of memory. Miss Nutler on one of the rare occasions when they met, expressed her regret at the consequences of their disagreement, hinting that, so far as she was concerned, the past could be shut out from memory.

“It was my eldest brother put me up to it,” said Miss Nutler apologetically. “You know what a one he is.”

“I do,” remarked Master Lancaster.

“I should never ’ave thought of it if it hadn’t been for him,” declared Miss Nutler. “A better hearted girl than me you wouldn’t find in a day’s march.”

“Dessay!”

“In fact,” went on the young person, waxing enthusiastic, “I’m too good-hearted for this world. I’m a fool to meself. And that’s why I gave way when he told me to pretend you’d hurt me. See?”

“I see.”

“And so long as you say there’s no ill-will and so long as you agree to forgive and forget, so to speak, why there’s no reason, as you remarked just now, why we shouldn’t be capital friends.”

“I never said no such thing,” said the boy.

“Didn’t you?” said Miss Nutler wonderingly. “Words to that effect, then.”

“No! Not words to that effect, neither.”

“You’re back in the band, aren’t you?”

“I am back in the band.”

“All the girls in our cottage rave about your cornet playing.”

“Straight?” He could not help smiling at this generous compliment.

“As if I should tell a lie,” said Miss Nutler. “Why, they’re always talking about you. How you’ve growed and how you’ve improved in your manner and—there! I tell you. I get quite jealous sometimes.”

“What call have you to be jealous?”

“Oh, dear! oh, dear!” said the young woman self-reproachfully. “Now I’ve been and let the cat out of the bag. That’s me all the world over. I never meant you to see that I was—hem—fond of you.”

“Put all ideas of that out of your red young crumpet,” he advised steadily, “as soon as ever you like.”

“Is there somebody else?” asked Miss Nutler, flushing.

“Since you ask the question—yes.”

“Does she live ’ere at the Homes?”

“She does not live ’ere at the Homes.”

“If she did,” said Miss Nutler fiercely, “I’d pay her out, the cat. And you’re a double-faced boy, you are. I wouldn’t be seen talking to you for fifty thousand pounds.”

“I guessed that was the amount.”

Miss Nutler walked off aflame with annoyance, turning as she reached the gate and making a face not pretty, in order that Bobbie might understand the true state of her feelings. That evening one of the Nutler family handed Bobbie a note on which was written, “Dear sir, referring to our meeting, I beg to inform you that all is over between us. Yours obed’tly, Louisa Nutler.—P.S. A reply by bearer will oblige.” Bobbie tore the note into many pieces, threw them over the messenger, and going indoors penned a careful note to Mrs. Bell, of Pimlico Walk. This contained an account of his progress; contained also five words, “Give my love to Trixie,” which note, reaching the Walk the next morning, made so much sunshine for the industrious young lady that she proceeded to scrub the stairs from top to basement in order to prevent herself from becoming light-headed.

There was indeed progress to report. The Fourth Standard being carried by assault, his brain had now to wrestle in the large schoolroom with dogged enemies of youth.

By the help of an assistant master, whose stock of enthusiasm had not been quite exhausted by lads of the Nutler brand, Bobbie showed excellent fight, and if it sometimes happened that he was worsted, the defeats were but temporary. Winter came, and with it football matches. An eminent three-quarter (who was also a trombone) having retired from the team during the off season in order to take up duties at Kneller Hall, Bobbie, in games with private schools, found himself selected for the position. The drill-sergeant took interest in the lad, and on the boarded-over swimming-bath, instructed him carefully at five o’clock each evening in the art of vaulting. All this helped to make a solid youth of Robert Lancaster, and he found himself wishful for manhood.

The Sister at the infirmary beyond the western gates, having to take a month’s holiday, a friend of hers came to act as substitute, and this friend proving to be Sister Margaret, Bobbie found an additional incentive for correct behaviour because Sister Margaret, when going down at any time the broad gravelled road between the cottages, always selected him for one of her cheerful bows, causing Bobbie’s cap to fly off in acknowledgment and making him flush with gratification. Sister Margaret told him that Myddleton West had gone to Ireland for one of the daily journals, and together they read his letters in that journal. It seemed clear that Sister Margaret continued to have no objection to talking about Myddleton West, for she made the boy describe several times over the morning when he had called at his rooms in Fetter Lane; at each repetition Bobbie managed to find (or to invent) some additional incident that made the young woman’s bright eyes become brighter with interest. When the regular Sister returned, Sister Margaret had to leave, and Bobbie walked with her to the station to carry her portmanteau, giving much good advice on the way with view of doing a good turn for his friend. Apparently his arguments made some impression on Sister Margaret, for when, as the train went off, he shouted, “Give my kind respects to him, Miss, when you write. And tell him he ain’t forgotten,” it looked as though the young woman’s bright eyes became suddenly wet.

The seasons passed. The fourteenth birthday came so near that it was quite possible to reckon the interval by number of days. For some months Robert Lancaster had been a half-timer; he desired now to say good-bye definitely to school, and to go into the workshops, because this would be a conspicuous milestone marking his journey. The Coastguard and the Coastguard’s daughter, and the long Customs’ officer came to see him on one of the later days, and he showed them with pride the tailor’s shop, the bootmaker’s shop, the carpenter’s shop, and the engineer’s shop, and Coastguard and himself (whilst the tall daughter went with the representative of her Majesty’s Customs to take tea at the hotel opposite the gates) talked over questions of trades, and their various advantages. They weighed them separately; when the young couple returned, Coastguard with a look of wisdom that judges of Appeal try to assume and cannot, delivered his decision. Bobbie, interested in this, saw the long Customs’ officer snatch a kiss from Coastguard’s daughter with no feeling of jealousy, and, indeed, with diversion.

“Nothing like helping yourself,” remarked Bobbie, amused.

“Do give over, John,” said Coastguard’s daughter reprovingly. “You never know when to stop.”

“These youngsters,” said Bobbie to Coastguard paternally, “they will carry on, won’t they? Same now as it was in our young day.”

“Dang the boy’s eyes,” said Coastguard, “if he don’t notice everything.”

“It makes anyone,” said Bobbie, “when you see a couple young enough to know better a kissin’ each other.”

“You’re supposed not to notice such things at your age,” said the angel reprovingly.

“Ah,” said the boy, acutely, “supposed not.”

“Reckon you’ll be the next one we shall hear of getting engaged.”

“Many a true word spoke in jest,” said the boy. “And you think,” turning with seriousness to the Coastguard, “you think I can’t do better than go in for learning that?”

“Sure of it, my boy.”

Therefore to the engineer’s shop went Bobbie, because the Coastguard had pointed out to him that some of the knowledge to be gained there could not fail some day to be valuable. Not that he intended to become an engineer. Decision as to his first occupation on leaving the Home had already been taken, being preserved as a secret which he proposed not to disclose until the appropriate moment came. At the tables in the engineer’s shop he worked, and learned under direction, after some failures, how to use a lathe without pinching his fingers. The lads worked in extra garments of aprons and paper caps; their task made them so grimy that they felt sure no one could tell them from adults; the wash that came after a day in the workshop seemed to put them back ten years. An increased feeling of maturity came to Bobbie when, on being selected to play “The Lost Chord,” as a cornet solo at a concert in the neighbourhood which the Home’s band attended, a local paper called him by a fascinating misprint Mister Robert Lancaster, intending to say Master, but allowing the i’s to have it. He walked rigidly upright for several weeks after this and spoke to no boy under the age of thirteen.

“You fancy yourself,” remarked sarcastically the boys whom he ignored.

“I do,” he replied, frankly.

It became his keen endeavour at this period to reach at least four feet six in height. He had special reasons for this ambition, and days occurred when, in his impatience, he measured himself three times during the twenty-four hours. The last inch seemed as though it would never arrive; other lads in the engineer’s shop, to encourage him, expressed the cheerful opinion that he had stopped growing. Finding in a newspaper an advertisement specially addressed “To the Short,” he wrote privately to Trixie Bell to obtain for him the golden remedy that the advertisers promised to send on receipt of two shillings and ninepence, and when Trixie, glad of an opportunity for being useful, obeyed, sending him the result as a birthday present, “With kind regards,” Bobbie found that the remedy was but a pair of thick list soles to be worn inside the boots; he perceived hopelessly that nothing could be done to encourage Nature. The last pencil mark on the wall of his dormitory denoting his height remained as a record for months; depression enveloped him when he gazed at it. But there came a spring season when he found to his intense delight that he had, within a brief period, not only shot up to the necessary inches, but just beyond them, and the mother of Collingwood Cottage had to lengthen the arms of his jackets and the legs of his trousers. On being measured anew in the tailor’s shop, he laughed with sheer delight.

The day of all days came.

“Father wants to see you, Lancaster,” announced one of the other lads.

“What’s up?”

“Committee day,” said the other lad.

Robert Lancaster ran off to find the Collingwood father, and came up to him breathless. The Collingwood father was a serious man, made more serious by his family of other people’s children; his face took now an aspect of importance, and he laid his hand on the lad’s shoulder.

“Time’s come,” he said.

“Three cheers,” said Bobbie.

“Keep cool, my lad.”

“I am cool,” said Bobbie, trembling with eagerness.

“Don’t forget that the gentlemen, what you are going now to have an interview with, represent so to speak your benefactors what have looked after you and clothed you and fed you and generally speaking kept you flourishing.”

“I know what you mean.”

“You’ll go before the Committee,” said the father of Collingwood Cottage, solemnly, “and what I want to impress upon you, my boy, is the necessity of putting on your very best manners. A little bad behaviour on your part will go a long way.”

“I’ll watch out, father.”

“You can’t be too civil,” urged the father of Collingwood, anxiously. “I tell you that, Bobbie, because, naturally, you ain’t what I call the humblest chap going, and if you want these nobs to agree to what you want, you must show ’em any amount of what I may venture to call deference.”

“I’ll lick all the bloomin’ blackin’ off their bloomin’ boots,” promised Bobbie.

“Give your ’ands another wash,” recommended the father, “and then go up.”

The Superintendent stood at the side of the table; seated there were half-a-dozen men who looked like, and indeed were, retired tradesmen. In one of them the lad recognized the carpenter (now in white waistcoat and with other signs of prosperity) who had been on the jury which had investigated, years ago, the death of his mother. A cheery red-faced man sat in the large arm-chair.

“Robert Lancaster, gentlemen, fourteen years of age and a good lad with a fairly good record, has passed the Fourth Standard, and is one of the best of our bandsmen.”

“Now, my lad!” The jovial-looking chairman pointed the ruler at him. “What would you like to be? We’ve fed you and educated you and brought you up, and we don’t want to see all the trouble wasted.”

“Moreover,” said the carpenter, as Bobbie prepared to speak, “it’s a question on which, by rights, you ought to take our advice. We’re men of the world, and as such we know what’s good for you a jolly sight better than you do. My argument has always been that pauper children—”

The chairman coughed.

“Or whatever you like to call ’em ought not to be allowed to pick and choose. It pampers ’em,” said the carpenter, gloomily, sending his penholder, nib downwards, into the table, “I don’t care what you say; it pampers ’em.”

“I should like, sir, please,” said Bobbie, “to—”

“Choose a honest trade,” suggested the carpenter.

“Let the boy speak,” urged one of the other members.

“I should like to be a sailor,” said the lad.

“Ah!” said the carpenter, triumphantly. “What did I tell you?”

“Our band boys don’t often go into the navy,” said the Superintendent. “Most of them go in for the other branch of the service.”

“Jolly good thing,” said the gloomy carpenter, with his fingers in the pockets of his white waistcoat, “if all your armies and all your navies was done away with and abolished.”

“Talk sense!” advised his neighbour.

“What are they,” asked the carpenter, “but a tax on the respectable tradesmen of this country? What good are they? What do they do? That’s what I want to know.” He looked round at his colleagues with the confident air of one propounding a riddle of which none knew the answer. “Will someone kindly tell me what good the navy does? What benefit does it do me or any of us seated at this table? If all our ships was to disappear this very morning before twelve o’clock struck, should I be any the worse off?”

“Why, you silly old silly,” broke in the lad on the other side of the table, impetuously, “if that was to ’appen some foreign power would be down on us before you could wink, and you’d find yourself—”

“Silence!” ordered the Superintendent.

“Find yourself,” persisted Bobbie, “turned into a bloomin’ Russian very like, and sent to Siberia.”

“You have your answer,” remarked the chairman, jovially.

“Kids’ talk,” growled the carpenter.

“Why,” declared Bobbie, “it’s the only protection you’ve got to enable you to carry on your business peaceably and successfully, and without interference.”

“I never felt the want of no navy in carryin’ on my business in Shoreditch.”

“Course you didn’t,” said Bobbie. “But if there hadn’t been a navy you would.”

It was all very irregular; the Superintendent felt this, but the members of the committee showed so much gratification in seeing their colleague routed that it scarce seemed right for him to interfere. The chairman rapped gently on the table as a mild reminder that order appeared to be temporarily absent.

“Fact of it is,” said the carpenter, resentfully, “you youngsters get so pampered—”

“Come, come!” said the chairman, “let us get along. You think you’ll like the navy, my lad?”

“Sure of it, sir.”

“It’s a hard life, mind you. Especially at first.”

“Shan’t mind that, sir.”

“You’ll undergo pretty severe preparation; we shall have to find out from the doctor whether you can stand it or not. Her Majesty doesn’t want half and half sort of lads in her navy.”

“I think I shall be all right, sir. I’ve improved wonderful in the years I’ve been here.”

“Made a man of you, have we?”

“You have that, sir,” said Bobbie.

“Well, then—”

“Something was said,” interrupted the carpenter, still smarting, “about this lad having a fairly good record. I should like to be kindly informed what his record actually is. If there’s anything against him it’s only right and fair and honest and just that we should know about it now.”

The Superintendent explained, and Robert Lancaster went white at the lips as he heard the account—by no means a harsh account—of his escape from the Homes.

“Since which time,” added the Superintendent, “his conduct has been most exemplary.”

“Thank you, sir,” burst out the lad.

“And this is the lad,” argued the carpenter, “that you’re going to spend more of the ratepayers’ money on. This is the lad that’s cost us a matter of thirty pound a year for the last four years, and now we’re going to send him off to a training ship, where he’ll cost us a matter of thirty-two pound a year. Is that so, or is it not so?”

“It is so,” said the chairman.

“It’s enough,” declared the retired carpenter, gloomily, “to make a man give up public life altogether. What was he when we begun to have to do with him? Answer me, somebody.”

The Superintendent asked if the information was really necessary.

“Pardon me, sir,” said Robert Lancaster, from the other side of the table. “I can give the information what’s required. I was left without parents, I was, and I become the ’sociate of bad characters. My coming down ’ere put me on the straight, and I tell you I ain’t particular anxious to get off of it.”

“My lad!” said the jovial chairman, “we’ll see that you don’t. You’ll have a couple of years on the training ship, and when you leave there I hope you’ll make up your mind to be a credit to your parish, to your country, and your Queen.”

“Hooray!” said Robert Lancaster, softly.

“And we shall look to you to see that all this money which has been spent on you is not wasted. We shall expect you to become a good citizen, one who will help in some small way to improve the estimate in which his great country is held.”

“Bah!” said the carpenter. But the other members of the committee said, “Hear, hear.”

“Come back and see the Homes when you get an opportunity,” said the jovial chairman, a little moved by his own eloquence; “remember that we shall watch your career with interest and—God bless you!”

The chairman leaned across the table and shook hands with Robert. The lad bowed awkwardly to the other members of the committee, and would have spoken, but something in his throat prevented him. He punched at his cap, and on a signal from the Superintendent went out at the doorway.

“Pampering of ’em,” said the retired carpenter, darkly, “pampering of ’em as fast as ever you can.”

CHAPTER XIV.

The vessel to which Bobbie went had been in its gallant youth a battleship and possessed an eventful and a creditable record. Moored in the Thames off the flat coast of Essex, and painted black, it was a huge, solid, responsible three-decker, doing excellent work in the autumn of its life, and giving temporary residence to some five or six hundred boys. Mainly, the youngsters were metropolitan, but sometimes the guardians of distant towns in the North would arrange with the Board for one of their lads to be consigned to the training ship, who, being arrived, spoke a language that seemed to the London boys almost foreign. A long, low jetty ran from the shore as far as it dared into the water; where it stopped, a gig rowed by eight of the boys, under the command of an officer, took you off to the big black ship, on the starboard side of which a dozen small boats rocked and nudged each other in the ribs, and a barge dozed stolidly. (In case of alarm the whole of the boys could be cleared out of the ship and carried away by these to safety.) Away down the river a smart brigantine berthed generally in view, and this the boys who intended to join the Royal Navy gazed at hopefully, because it was the brigantine which taught them seamanship, with assistance from a master mariner and two mates; it was the brigantine, too, which now and again skimmed the cream of the Westmouth in the shape of some forty boys whom it conveyed out of the river into the open, and presently down Channel to one of the training vessels which acted as the last refining process before entrance was made into the service. To the Essex shore came, nearly every week, from various poor-law schools, boys who, after inspection, were conveyed out to the Westmouth, where the captain looked at the doctor’s report, giving their heights, chest measurements, and other particulars forming the foundation of their dossier. This over, the new boys went back to shore to be clothed in sailor uniform, and re-appeared in blue serge trousers and jacket and cap, trying to look as though the navy had for them no secrets, and the Westmouth nothing in the way of information to impart. They came in and went out of the training vessel at the rate of about three hundred year, so that the numbered white cases down on the lower deck containing kits were always in use, and every hammock on the three decks contained at night a tired-out lad.

For Robert Lancaster soon discovered that the note of the Westmouth was to keep moving. If you worked, you worked hard; if you played, you played hard. School had no great demands upon him now, for being out of the Fourth Standard, it was required of him that he should attend but two hours on the Friday of every week; a boy might have assumed that with this dispensation one could look forward to a life of ease and content. Not so on board the Westmouth. Robert Lancaster was never allowed to be lazy. The life formed an exact opposite to those old days at Hoxton (several centuries ago it seemed to him), when the delight of life was to “mouch,” which, translated, is to wander through the years aimlessly. Robert made some vague suggestions of reform to his comrades, with the result that a boy from Poplar made up his mind to state a complaint formally on the first opportunity. The Poplar boy (numbered 290) had already written a brief account, which he had shown to Robert, entitled “The Mutiny on the Westmouth,” a forecast of a somewhat bloodthirsty character, where gore flowed readily, and exclamations of a melodramatic character were used, such as “Die, you dog!” and “At last we meet face to face!” but Robert criticized this with some acidity, because in the course of it Number Two Ninety himself performed all the deeds of surpassing valour, using six Martini-Henry rifles and a field gun, at the same time doing desperate action with two cutlasses: the end of the account gave a gruesome description of the upper deck strewn with the bodies of officers, and of Number Two Ninety-being unanimously elected captain by his fellow mutineers. Robert said he thought the picture overdrawn. Opportunity, however, occurred on some of the guardians from Poplar visiting the ship; one, a sharp clergyman, demanded to know of the Poplar boys whether they had any complaint to make.

“No, sir,” sang most of the Poplar boys. The mutineer’s arm went up.

“Ah!” said the clergyman gratified. “Here’s a lad now who has something to say.”

“Step forward, Two Ninety,” ordered the old captain. “Tell this gentleman what it is you wish to complain of. Is it the food?”

“Grub’s all right, sir,” growled the Poplar boy.

“Is it the uniform?” asked the sharp clergyman.

“No fault to find with the clothes, sir.”

“Is it the ship?”

“Ship’s good enough, sir.”

Robert Lancaster, passing with a pail, half stopped to hear what the Poplar boy would say under this process of exhaustion.

“Well, well, what is the complaint you wish to make?”

Two Ninety from Poplar twisted his sailor’s cap nervously, and looked with some interest at his shoes.

“Well, sir,” he burst out, “it’s like this. They always keep on making you keep on.”

Robert Lancaster, finding after a few weeks that his disinclination to continuous work and exercise had vanished, detached himself therefore from the small set on the Westmouth, called “The Born-Tireds.” After the fifth week privileges came to him; he was allowed to go ashore with the other boys on Sunday afternoon; he joined in the drill, and this he liked so much that he concealed from the officers the fact that the cornet and he were close acquaintances, fearing that membership of the band, which practised far away down in the hold, would interfere. He found books in the library with a sea flavour, and read Stevenson and Henty, and Clark Russell. He liked Clark Russell’s books, because they had always one admirable young lady in a distressful predicament, and this young lady he always thought of as being Trixie Bell—Trixie who had sent him her photograph, taken by an eminent artist of Hackney Road, and presenting her as in a snowstorm, with no hat, a basket of choice roses on her arm. At prayers one night, Robert found himself, somewhat to his surprise, introducing a special silent reference to Trixie, and, pleased with his daring originality, he continued it, feeling in a shy, half-ashamed way, that he had now assumed a responsible position in regard to the young lady. For the rest, there was not much time on the Westmouth to think of outside affairs.

He found his average day made up in this manner. At six o’clock in the morning, the lower deck, where he and some three hundred other boys slept, became suddenly filled with the blaring of a bugle; on the instant Robert slipped out of his hammock. The chief petty officers (important lads of about fifteen or sixteen) issued orders, the boys dressed swiftly, hammocks were rolled up and stowed away at the sides, and then the busy working day began. Robert Lancaster, despatched with other gallant sailors of his division, scrubbed the upper deck (protected by a canvas awning in summer, and an awning and curtains in winter), the while two divisions saw to the main deck. Then the upper deck had to be swabbed, under the superintendence of the ship’s officers, and, this done, breakfast-time had arrived. Robert Lancaster always felt the better for his breakfast, being, indeed, of the growing age when appetite is nearly ever acute and demanding to be satisfied. The watch on the mess deck cleared away, and at half-past eight one bell sounded. At nine o’clock two bells sounded, with the singers’ call for prayers and also for punishments, at which hour a few boys with correction looming close to them, wished that they had chosen the life of a landsman. The excellent old captain’s theory was that you should either pat a boy on the back or cane him on the back, and this system worked out very well in practice; the most severe punishment consisted of a few hours’ solitude in the dark cell at the foc’sle end of the ship—an extreme remedy resorted to but once or twice a year. Prayers and punishment being over, there occurred work again. Sail-making, painting the sides of the Westmouth, seamanship instruction; in the tailors’ shop, manufacture of flags, repairing of oilskins and sou’westers, lengthening of trousers for their growing owners, making of seamanship stripes, re-covering of life-belts; the biggest boys in the Rigger’s class called upon to strip and serve afresh the lower rigging of the ship. Relaxation came to Robert when sent out with others in one of the small boats which clustered at the side of the Westmouth, on which occasions he learnt the arts of boat-pulling and boat-sailing, under the guidance of a giant-voiced officer, who roared advice and frank criticism. Signalling had to be learnt, and this demanded of Robert that his intelligence should be livened; the lad being on his mettle, and having made up his mind to extort the secrets from this cryptic procedure, earned commendation. There were classes in gunnery, too, where knowledge was gained in using the rifle and cutlass, as well as the management of field guns; the rifles full-sized, and, indeed, a little out of proportion to the height of the smaller boys, so that it sometimes seemed that it would have been easier for the Martini-Henry to manage the boy than for the boy to manage the Martini-Henry. And about mid-day, after half an hour’s rest, when Robert bowled boys out on the upper deck, or being at the wickets set in a wooden socket, sent the ball flying away to the Essex shore, came dinner. Now dinner on the Westmouth, mind you, was dinner.

A bugle call brought the boys scurrying down the broad hatchway on to the mess deck, where a harmonium had been placed in position, and, as they hurried down, adjusting their red handkerchiefs bib-fashion, the cook’s assistants dragged young lorries around by the long wooden tables, one waggon loaded with roast beef, another waggon carrying potatoes, another bearing vegetables and another bread. The boys on sharp days when appetite had become keen found it difficult to sing the grace to which the harmonium played a prelude, because their mouths watered. The scent from the roast beef was to them the most entrancing perfume, and ranged in companies they could not prevent their eyes from wandering to their table where portions were being served out in the deep tin plates. A bugle call—everything on board the Westmouth was done by bugle calls; and none was so effective as the call for silence—and grace.

“Be present at our table, Lord,
Be ’ere and everywhere adored;
These creatures bless, and grant that we
May feast in Paradise with Thee.”

On ordinary days, work re-commenced in the afternoon with occasional brief rests for play, and after tea if there still remained work to do it had to be done. Strict orders had to be observed in the way of behaviour, and Robert slipped into these with greater ease because of his experience in the Cottage Homes. He learnt that an order being given, obedience had to follow instantly and without question; the saluting of the officers was, he knew, but a respectful sign of his willingness to comply with this rule. In this way Robert Lancaster learnt discipline.

“It’s easy enough,” argued Robert to the Poplar boy when he had been on the ship for nearly a year and was looking forward to the position of Chief Petty Officer with three stripes on his arm and a salary of penny a week, “once you get into the swing of it. If you do have to put up with a bit of rough, you’ve always got your Wednesdays to look forward to.”

Wednesday, indeed, represented the golden day of the week for the Westmouth. Friends came then on permission of the Captain, and when one evening a letter from Trixie Bell was brought over to the ship by the post boy, a letter which asked her dear Robert to obtain a permit for two, the lad procured this and sent it off with bashful anticipation of seeing the young lady and her large mother. The afternoon came, and he watched each arrival of the gig from the shore for the first sight of Trixie; wondering amusedly how Mrs. Bell would endure the brief passage and how she would be hauled out of the boat. But Trixie did not arrive nor did her mother come to endanger the safety of the gig; instead Number Three Thirty-Three (who was Robert) found himself called to receive a mite of a woman in a sailor hat bearing the inscription H.M.S. Magnificent in large gold letters, who having come up the ladder at the side of the ship one step at a time, now stood with a net full of oranges and cakes beside her; her hands at her waist as though doubtful whether she ought not to dance a hornpipe, and looking up at Robert with her bead-like eyes full of astonishment.

“Why,” cried little Miss Threepenny, “if he hasn’t grown up to be a reg’lar what’s a name.”

“I was expecting two others,” remarked Robert, bending shyly to shake hands.

“They couldn’t come and they sent me instead,” said the little woman, mopping her forehead with her handkerchief. “Poor Mrs. Bell is as bad as bad, and Trixie—bless her ’eart—wouldn’t think of leaving her. So I says, ‘Sposin’ I go?’ And Trixie says, ‘You, Miss Threepenny?’ and I says, ‘Yes, me. It’s my annual ’oliday from Tabernacle Street Wednesday next, and—’”

“And here you are.”

“‘Why,’ says Trixie,” went on the small woman, declining to anticipate the end of her story, “‘you’ll go and get lost.’ And I says, ‘Stuff and nonsense; if a grown-up woman of forty can’t take care of herself, who can? Besides,’ I says, ‘I want to see the dear boy.’ And Trixie says, ‘So did I.’”

“Oh, she said that, did she?” remarked Robert gratified. Other boys crowded round, preparing to invent humorous badinage.

“Ah!” said Miss Threepenny acutely, “and what’s more, she meant it.”

It required some courage for a boy of Robert’s age to escort the amazing little woman over the ship; urgent whispers from the other lads to be introduced to the new missis did not assist him. The Chief Officer nodded approvingly, and this gave encouragement.

“Booking clerk at Fenchurch Street,” chattered on the little woman, “gave me ’alf a ticket, and I gave him a bit of my mind. People think because I ain’t so tall as I might be that I ’aren’t got a tongue in me ’ead. They find out their mistake.”

“Is Mrs. Bell very ill?”

“She ain’t much longer for this world,” answered Miss Threepenny. “She may linger on for a year or two, but that good young gel of hers will be left all alone in the world before she’s very much older. Fortunately she’s got a wise ’ead on young shoulders and—What low ceilings they are ’ere.” The little woman bent her small body from an entirely unfounded fear of touching the roof with her sailor hat. “What’s this part of the ship called, Bobbie?”

“This,” explained the lad, “is called the foc’sle.”

“Why?”

“Ah!” said Robert, “‘why’ is the one word you mustn’t use on board ship.”

Little Miss Threepenny trotted round, breathless with the endeavour to keep up with the lad’s stride, presently thanking her stars in earnest terms when, the hour being two, she was allowed to sit on the foc’sle steps of the upper deck in company with a few mothers and sisters to watch the afternoon’s entertainment.

“I shall ’ave to take notice of everything,” she chirruped, “and go through it all when I get back to Pimlico Walk. Trixie will want to ’ear about it.”

“Don’t you go and get frightened,” urged Robert.

“Me frightened?”

“There’ll be some desperate deeds performed during the next hour,” said Robert importantly.

“So long as there’s no firing of guns,” said the little woman, adjusting her skirts precisely, “I shan’t so much as wink. Once they begin to bang away—”

Two of the women visitors who had been looking curiously at the small creature, hastened to remark with the knowledge born of experience that there would be firing, one adding that for her part she always shut her eyes and put her hands over her ears when it came to that part; an ingenious plan which happy Miss Threepenny promised to adopt. Robert ran off and disappeared.

The alarming clang, clang, clang of a bell! Upon the instant, a swift rushing to and fro; a throwing open of the door leading to the captain’s room; boys with buckets of water hurrying up and forming in line; more boys dragging long boa constrictors of leathern hose up to the doorway; still more boys ready with brass nozzles to fix on; more boys again in a tremendous state of excitement bearing scarlet extincteurs on their backs; a white-capped, white-aproned cook up from below and assisting; sharp commands from the officers; the old captain watching all with his watch open. “Good,” says the captain of the Westmouth presently, “very good indeed. Who was the first bucket up, Mr. Waltham?” “Number Three Fifty-Two, sir,” says the chief officer. “Three Fifty-Two,” thereupon says the captain, “catch this sixpence.”

Band now at a corner of the upper deck, with a stout drum placed upon trestles, to be whacked presently as though it had committed some gross breach of discipline. Music-stands up; brass instruments tested; the bandmaster taps his wooden stand sharply. Three hundred boys in detachments on either side of the deck; first officer, with a voice accustomed to open-air speaking, with the captain on the poop. A brief drill, and then,—

“Form divisions!”

“Right about face!”

“March!”

The band plays; the two broad, close, moving detachments go steadily around. A roar from the chief officer, and at once the broad masses become a number of thin strands with a serpentine movement to a new and more cheerful march from the band, and doing it with absolute accuracy for several minutes. “Halt!” Music stops.

“Boys,” shouts the old captain from the poop, “very fair, very fair indeed! Eh, Mr. Waltham?”

“Very fair indeed, sir.”

A selection made from the crowd; the rest jump up on the sides of the ship, and become an audience. The selected boys stiffly in line, jackets off, accept from a chief petty officer with a sack, pairs of wooden dumb-bells. Order given, they face round, watching the instructor narrowly and with seriousness. A signal from him and band having started a gentle waltz, the two hundred sailor boys go through a movement of thrusting the arms forward, withdrawing them sharply, keeping time ever to the music. A change of air on the part of the band, and each pair of arms swings from side to side. Another, and with clockwork preciseness the bells are up high, return to touch breast, go down to toes. A whole dozen of these changes, and amongst the later ones, movements with definite stamp of the right foot on the deck to the music of a Scotch reel. Pantomime rally from the band; a bugle call, and the deck is clear.

“If I hadn’t seen it,” says astounded little Miss Threepenny to her two neighbours, and standing now on the topmost stair of the foc’sle steps, “I should never ’ave believed it true!”

“That’s nothing,” remarks one of the women, lightly. “You watch out now, Miss. My Jimmy’s in the next.”

To a march from the obliging band, enter forty serious boys, brown-legginged, belted, and bearing rifles. At the words of command, these go through a number of offensive and defensive movements, forming squares, performing cutlass drill, making lunges with their bayonetted rifles at a supposititious enemy; killing this supposititious enemy and withdrawing the bayonet neatly from his lifeless body. A good quarter of an hour of hard drill this, for which they are more than repaid by applause from the younger boys seated on the sides of the vessel, and a word of approval from the captain:

“’Ere comes Bobbie,” cries Miss Threepenny, excitedly. “Oh, dear! oh, dear! what will they be up to next?”

Mothers seated on the steps may well start and clutch each other’s arms, for field guns are being dragged on now by straw-hatted detachments, and, to a brisk air from the band, tugged by long ropes around and around the deck.

“There he is,” cries Miss Threepenny, excitedly. “There he is again. And there he is once more.”

No time for Robert to take notice of the little woman’s shrill comments, even if the bustle allowed him to hear, for field guns are things that demand attention jealously. An order pulls them up short; Robert with eight other lads stopping their gun on the starboard side. Every boy panting; every boy with his flushed face directed towards the chief officer on the poop. A shrill whistle.

“Dismount!” shouts the chief officer.

Fierce attack on the guns, wheels off, axles unpinned, guns lifted, remainder of carriage pulled to pieces, all down flat on the deck, boy seated on them and looking up at the poop for comment.

“Fifteen seconds, Mr. Waltham.”

“Fifteen, sir,” says the chief officer respectfully; “fifteen as near as a toucher.”

“They did it in less time last week, Mr. Waltham.”

“They did it in less time last week, sir,” replies the chief officer.

The old captain shakes his head first at the scarlet-faced lads seated on the portions of their gun carriages and then at his watch, as though inclined to blame the watch as much as the boys. The instructor goes from one set of lads to another growling a word of advice.

“Re-mount!”

Every boy to his feet; the parts of the carriage seized; wheels held in place and fixed; the heavy gun lifted and slung, carriage pushed forward to catch it in position. Robert’s detachment, to their great annoyance and confusion, find all their quick efforts retarded by the clumsiness of Number Eight, who, having mistaken his duties, has come into collision with another boy, and seems inclined to argue the matter out and prove himself thoroughly in the wrong before anything further is done. At least six seconds lost by this action on the part of Number Eight in Robert Lancaster’s gun, so that the other five guns are all perfect and their boys standing cool and serene, whilst the final struggle is being concluded on the starboard side.

“I rather want that movement concluded to-day,” says the old captain, leaning over and speaking ironically.

“What’s your number?” asks the instructor of the offending boy.

“Eight, sir.”

“Ah,” remarks the instructor, “it might as well be nought. Isn’t your place there? Very well, then.”

“Try that again, boys,” cries the chief officer. “Do it sharper this time. Think what you’re about.”

Thought and celerity and earnestness are all brought to bear on the next dismounting, and Number Eight of Robert’s set, reserving justification for his previous conduct, proves himself as able a seaman as the rest. The remounting is performed with similar swiftness, and the old captain lets the case of his watch close with a snap and says, leaning over the rails again and addressing the boys on deck, “Very good, very good indeed. Eh, Mr. Waltham?” “Very good indeed, sir,” agrees the chief officer.

Fierce business coming now! The white-headed mops go down the nozzles of the guns, come out again, the gunners stand clear, one lad jerks a string, and—bang! White mop down again head first and withdrawn, gun sighted, and again—bang! It being unusual for an attacking force to do this dangerous work without casualty, half a dozen boys affect to receive the fire of the unseen enemy and fall on deck screaming with great anguish, “Oh, oh, oh!” and “’Elp, ’elp, ’elp!” to the great consternation of one mother up near the foc’sle, who is with difficulty restrained from rushing down the steps. Ambulance corps hurries forward; one wounded boy has his trousers pulled up, his bared leg set between two pieces of wood and tied up, a stretcher brought, and he is taken, now giving agonizing groans, which have a fine suggestion of pathos, to the port side deck. Other boys who have fallen victims to the non-existent enemy have their arms placed in slings or their heads bandaged, and are led away by sympathetic ambulance men.

“Sound for the march past, bugler.”

Band, which has been interested in this scene of carnage, snatches up its instruments and starts a cheerful, brisk, trotting air; the boys take the ropes and tug the guns on the field carriages once around the deck, the wounded following in the rear and still giving realistic groans at every other step, all disappearing at last through the large doors of the foc’sle to the applause of boys seated on the sides and fluttering of handkerchiefs from the foc’sle steps.

“Bray’vo, Bobbie,” cries little Miss Threepenny. She turns and whispers apprehensively to the two women. “They’re none of ’em reelly ’urt, are they?”

“’Urt?” echoes one of the two women. “They know better than go and get ’urt, bless you.”

“All the same,” says the little woman, “I wouldn’t join in it for forty thousand million pound.”

The rifle lads again, faces set determinedly, marching up the deck with steady and definite stride. Four movements, and they are down on one knee preparing to receive the enemy. This time the enemy is no fictitious enemy, for the doors of the foc’sle being thrown open, out rush shrieking noisy warriors who from their language and the fact that they are carrying long poles instead of firearms are clearly negro aborigines of the district, and these shout “Alla-bulla-wulla” in a very desperate way, throwing themselves on their opponents under the foolish impression that something can be done to a solid square of British sailors. A bugle call and the square rises, moves, and taking the offensive, presses the mistaken aborigines back, but these still cry “Alla-bulla-walla” (being apparently of a race with limited conversational powers), and break up the detachment, so that a hand-to-hand struggle ensues where every man carries his life in peril, and every man remembers the country that gave him birth. The British are pulled together again; they form by command into two lines, these two lines stretching well across the field of operations press the enemy slowly but determinedly back. Changing its tactics the enemy now shout, “Wulla-bulla-alla,” but even this reversal of the original battle cry proves useless, and the final struggle is stopped (because in point of fact, one or two sets are beginning to fight in real earnest) by the bugle call to retreat. Victory gained, the British sailors re-form, and singing exultant music to—

“A life on the ocean wave,
A life on the stormy deep,
Where the billowy waters wave,
And the stars their vigil keep,”

they march round and pass the saluting point.

“Not at all bad,” says the captain. “Eh, Mr. Waltham? Considering.”

“Not at all bad, sir,” replies the chief officer, “considering.”

Robert escorted his little visitor down to tea, a few of his intimate chums forming a circle around her in order to prevent the incursion of mere curiosity. Miss Threepenny, finding herself the object and centre of all this consideration, chattered away over her tea and bread and butter, telling the circle a few of her best repartees, with many a “Oh, I says,” and “What! she says”; each recital finishing triumphantly with the sentence, “And that’s all they get for trying to score off me.” The small woman being swung down to the lower deck, professed herself much shocked at seeing the slung-up hammocks, declaring that eviction from her model dwellings would ensue if this were known, and covering her face with her tiny hands in a way that amused the lads very much. Before leaving she ascertained the whereabouts of Robert’s locker, and finding the white box with Robert’s number painted atop, slipped inside an envelope containing a silver coin of enormous proportions. On the upper deck again, Robert Lancaster feeling it politic to do everything possible in order to give Miss Threepenny subject-matter for conversation on her return to Trixie, went up to the foc’sle rigging to the foretop and was down again before she had time to beg of him to be careful, following this up by acts of a similarly perilous nature.

“How in the world I shall find breath enough to tell ’em all about you,” she said distractedly, “goodness only knows.”

“Don’t forget to mention,” said Robert, “that I’m going to be made a chief petty officer next week.”

“And how long did you say it’d be before you left?”

“I shan’t stay long,” he said importantly. “They want chaps in the Royal Navy, and I’m five foot one already.”

“They ’ave made a man of you, Bobbie,” declared the little woman, looking up at him admiringly. “Nobody’d think to look at you now that it was only a few years ago you was nothing more or less than—”

“Just put your ’and on my arm,” interrupted Robert rather hastily. “Above the elbow, I mean. Now then!” He drew his arm up slowly, and the muscles stood out hard and rigid.

“You’re nothing more nor less,” said Miss Threepenny, “than what they call in books a Herkools. And—and you’ve quite made up your mind to be a sailor, Bobbie.”

“Of Her Majesty’s Navy,” said Bobbie proudly. “There’s the signal for you to be off.”

The little woman having found her fishing net, now empty but for the current number of “The Upper Ten Novelette,” went carefully. Her sailor hat was slightly awry, and detecting this by a casual glance at some polished brass, she adjusted it, and pulled her cape straight. The circle of defending boys conducted her to the side of the ship; saw her safely down the slippery gangway ladder to the gig.

“I shan’t kiss you, me dear,” she whispered to Robert, “because they’d only guy you about it afterwards.”

“Give my love to ’em in Pimlico Walk,” said Robert shyly, as he lifted her into the boat.

“I shall keep some of it for meself,” said the little woman archly. She spoke to the officer at the stern of the boat. “Which side of the boat shall I sit, mister?” The officer replied that it could not possibly matter. “Oh, well,” she said resignedly, “if it overbalances don’t blame me. Goo’ bye, Bobbie.”

“Goo’ bye,” cried Bobbie.

“Be a good boy,” called out the little woman in the rocking gig.

“A good what?”

“A good man, I mean,” she shouted apologetically.

“That’s better.”

“Don’t forget,” cried the little woman, putting one hand to the side of her mouth—“oh, dear! how this boat does bob about—don’t forget that we mean to be proud of you.”

“I shan’t forget,” he promised.

And, indeed, Robert Lancaster kept this in his memory.

CHAPTER XV.

Life on the Westmouth being too exacting to permit one to count the hours, Robert Lancaster came to the end of his training there with a sudden jerk that almost astonished him. Fifty lads were taken off the books, of whom he found himself to be one; some of them deciding for the merchant service, were despatched to the Home at Limehouse for that purpose; others, qualified in regard to measurement and desires, only waited for the brigantine to arrive for their names to be taken off the Watch Bill, and to resign their numbers to other lads. The old captain, meeting Robert on the upper deck, honoured him with five minutes’ conversation, giving him a word of counsel, and directing him to give the old ship a call whenever the chance to do so offered.

“Don’t forget, my lad, that now your opportunity is coming to show us all that the trouble and money you have cost have been well laid out.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Keep yourself straight; be obedient to your officers, remember that the Navy has a fine, a glorious reputation, which you must help to keep up.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Above all, be a credit to the Westmouth, and see that we have good news of you. That will do.”

“Pardon, sir. Any objection to my having a day in London ’fore I join the—”

“To visit friends?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If you please,” said the old captain with his sharp air of courtesy.

See Robert Lancaster clearing his locker down on the lower deck and distributing souvenirs to his colleagues; a part of the inside of a watch to one; a copy of “Kidnapped” to another; several pieces of rare old string to the boy from Poplar, now, under the stress of Westmouth discipline, a contented, optimistic lad. See Robert Lancaster going off in the gig with six shillings tied in his handkerchief, being part of the prize for swimming gained by him at the last competition, and taking train at the small station for Fenchurch Street. See him arriving near the old neighbourhood and walking with a fine, sailor-like roll in his wide trousers and open-necked jacket towards Pimlico Walk, in which thoroughfare, now it seemed to him more preposterously narrow than ever, children stopped the playing of tipcat to stare at him open-mouthed, and women going into miniature shops arrested themselves in order to ascertain, from feelings of vague curiosity, his destination.

“No one about?” he asked in the doorway of Mrs. Bell’s millinery establishment. The small window was still set out with magnificent feathered hats, but there appeared to be a suggestion of good taste in the arrangement that had in the old days been absent.

“Yes,” said a little girl sitting on a high chair behind the counter, “there’s me.”

“No one else?”

“Who else d’you want?” asked the girl cautiously.

“Isn’t Mrs. Bell about?”

“She’s been bedridden for the last six months, if that’s what you call being about.”

“And Trixie?”

“You mean Miss Bell?”

“Miss Bell, then.”

The girl stepped from the stool, and went to the foot of the stairs.

“Shawp!” she cried. She returned at once to the counter with a manner slightly less defensive. “She sits upstairs and reads to the old gel in the middle of the day, and I’m in charge down ’ere. When she comes down I go up, see? It don’t do to leave the place without someone.”

There was a rustle on the lower stairs.

“Bobbie!” A delighted exclamation.

“’Ullo, Trix,” he said nervously. “How’s the world using you?”

“’Aven’t you grown?”

“You’ve been at that game, too. I s’pose I was about the last person that was in your mind.”

“Yes,” said Trixie Bell, “the very last. Me and mother were just then talking about you upstairs. Isn’t your face brown, too?”

“Yours isn’t brown,” said Robert, with a clumsy attempt at compliment, “but it’s got every other good quality.”

“’Tilderann,” commanded Trixie Bell, insistently, “go upstairs and sit with mother at once, and tell her that Mr. Lancaster has called.” The little girl slid from the high stool again and disappeared reluctantly. “Up the stairs, I said,” remarked Trixie, looking round the corner after her, “I didn’t ask you to wait on the second step listening.”

Miss Bell returned demurely to the inner side of the counter.

“Girls,” she said, with an air of maturity, “want a lot of looking after.”

“Who looks after you?” asked Bobbie, leaning over the counter.

“Oh, I can take care of myself.”

“For one day, at any rate, I’m going to take care of you. Give me a kiss.”

“Bobbie! People can see through the shop window.”

“You won’t give me a kiss?”

“There’s a time,” said the pleasant-faced young woman, with great preciseness, “and a place for everything, and this is neither the time nor—”

One advantage of being trained as a British sailor is that you can vault over a counter and jump back again before anyone has time to protest.

“You’ll make me cross,” said Trixie, with great confusion and delight.

“Give it back to me, then,” suggested Robert.

“I fancy I see myself doing that,” said Trixie, ironically.

“I’ve fancied it a lot of times,” remarked Robert. “Now it seems to me we’ve arrived at what you may call reality.”

“Of course,” said Trixie, leaning on the counter and keeping one eye on the window, “it isn’t exactly as though we were strangers, is it? What I mean to say is, we’ve known each other, Bobbie, for a long time, and you’ll be seventeen next birthday—”

“Don’t argue,” said Robert. “Do what I ask you.”

“It’ll ’ave to be a very little one,” said Miss Bell, seriously. And leaned forward.

“Thanks,” said Robert. “That’s what I’ve been looking forward to.”

“Now, you must give up all this nonsense,” declared Trixie, with a sage air, and glancing at herself in the panel looking-glass, “and behave. Will you come upstairs and see mother?”

“I thought p’raps you and me might go out this afternoon for a bit of a outing. I’ve got to rejoin my ship this evening, and I shan’t have many chances of seeing you when I’m down at Plymouth.”

“There’s something in that,” admitted Trixie. “I’ll see if I can get a lady friend of mine from Pitfield Street to look in for a few hours.” She raised her voice and called at the foot of the stairs. “’Tilderann! Come down this minute.”

The girl obeyed, remarking in a grumbling undertone that the place was a perfect treadmill, and that for her part she envied the folk in Pentonville; she went to the doorway and reproved two infants outside for breathing on the glass, in good, well-chosen, and effective terms.

“Don’t put your arm round my waist, Bobbie,” whispered Trixie as they went up the dim, narrow staircase. “Besides, there’s a buckle on my belt. Mother, ’ere’s a gentleman come to call on you.”

Mrs. Bell, raising her head from the white pillow, gave a chuckle of recognition. Robert, with his cap off, made his way round the bedstead, which seemed nearly to fill the room, but not quite, and shook hands with the large invalid.

“My poor old ’ead,” she remarked, jovially, “gets in such a fluster, sometimes, that I can’t remember nothing, and when the gel said Mr. Lancaster was in the shop it took me minutes to think who she meant. D’you think Trixie’s growed?”

“Growed up and growed ’andsome,” said Robert. Mrs. Bell gave a sigh of content, closing her eyes for a moment. “And how are you, ma’am? On the mend, I ’ope.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Bell, opening her eyes and speaking loudly, “I’ve got nothing to complain of.” She lowered her voice, and added confidentially, so that Trixie should not hear, “May pop off at any moment.”

Trixie having explained the proposal that Robert had made, suggested that she should go round now to engage the services of the millinery friend in Pitfield Street. Her mother agreed cheerfully.

“Of course,” said the old lady in a very loud tone, “I’ve been used to a active life, and naturally enough it goes somewhat against the grain for me to be kep’ in one room for monce and monce. Otherwise I feel as well—” Trixie went out of the room, closing the door, and Mrs. Bell stopped and winked solemnly. “It’d never do to let her know the truth,” she whispered. “I always like to pretend before her I’m getting better. It’s a rare game sometimes the dodges I ’ave to get up to so that she shouldn’t know how bad I am.”

“Trixie isn’t a bad sort,” remarked Robert.

“She’s my daughter,” said Mrs. Bell.

Before that excellent young lady returned poor Mrs. Bell and Robert had a long, confidential talk. The cheerful old lady regretted that her time had arrived before Trixie had become a grown woman, but this regret was tempered by confidence in her daughter, and by a promise which had been given by Miss Threepenny to come and live with Trixie when all was over. There breathed pride in the statement that her doctor from New North Road could find no English name for her illness, and had been compelled to fall back on the Latin tongue to give it title; Mrs. Bell’s old head trembled with gratification as she told Robert of this.

“D’you mind ’olding my ’and, Bobbie?” she asked, interrupting herself. “I feel so much more contented somehow when someone’s ’olding me ’and. Thanks! As I was telling you—”

The doctor had some time since recommended that she should be taken away to the seaside, a procedure which might prolong her life for a few months, but the old lady congratulated herself upon having had the shrewdness to reply that Hoxton was as good a place to die in as any other, and that she had not been saving money all her life in order to spend it foolishly on herself at the end. The good soul seemed quite happy; everybody, she said, was very kind to her, and Trixie, who in former days had been somewhat masterful towards her, now waited on her “hand and foot.” Mrs. Bell declared that she only wished everybody could be looked after at the end of all as effectively. Trixie, returning with her substitute, came upstairs in a hat which Robert, on being appealed to for an opinion, declared looked like ten thousand a year, and they said good-bye to Mrs. Bell, Trixie promising to send up ’Tilderann and to return herself at the earliest possible hour.

“Don’t ’urry,” said the old lady. “And, Bobbie! Come back one moment. Trixie, you go down.” Robert obeyed. “I shan’t be seeing you again,” said the old lady brightly. “If so be as I should meet your poor mother, I shall tell her what a fine lad you’ve growed to.” Robert bent and kissed the large white face. “Be good, won’t you,” she whispered brokenly, “to her?”

“You can make yourself quite sure about that, ma’am,” said Robert.

Before going west on this sunny afternoon, the young lady insisted that Robert should accompany her for a short tour through certain streets in Hoxton, where her lady acquaintances resided, which same young women told each other afterwards that they had not realized what the word pride really meant until seeing Trixie with her young man. They looked at Ely Place from the dwarf posts at the Kingsland Road end, where towzled-hair, half-dressed, grubby babies played games with mud and swore at one another, but the two agreed that they had no desire to go through the Place. One more girl acquaintance in a Hoxton street shop in whose sight Robert had to be paraded, and then the two young people, walking down into Old Street, took a tram for Bloomsbury.

“You pay for yourself,” said Trixie Bell definitely, “I’ll pay for myself.”

“No fear,” protested Robert, “I pay for both to-day. This is my beanfeast.”

“Then I go no further,” declared the young woman. “Agree to that, Bobbie, or down the steps I go.”

“You are obstinate,” said Robert. “I never saw such a one for ’aving her own way.”

“Not much use having anybody else’s way,” she said. “Bloomsbury, one,” she said to the conductor.

The principle thus definitely laid down being adhered to during the afternoon, Robert found himself unable in consequence to assume the air of condescension and patronage that he had promised to wear; indeed, Miss Bell took the entire management of the afternoon into her own hands, with a quaint air of decision which surprised Robert and interested him, so that when at the end of the tram line she said, “Regent’s Park,” it was to Regent’s Park they went; on Robert in his reckless way suggesting a ’bus, she said, “Walk, it’s no distance,” and that was the mode of transport adopted. In Regent’s Park they sat on chairs near to sweet-smelling oval bouquets of flowers, watching the white-sashed nursemaids and the children, and whilst Robert (to Trixie’s content) smoked a large, important cigar, she chattered away about her plans for the future. Trixie revived the old ambition of a milliner’s establishment, with French words in white letters on the window, in some position not too far distant from Pimlico Walk, so that old customers should be preserved, whilst new ones were being caught; Robert watched her admiringly as she sketched this magnificent project, noting the decision of her chin and the flush of interest on her attractive face. The cigar finished, or nearly finished (for Robert was not yet a confirmed smoker), they walked arm-in-arm through the gates to the upper portion of the park, where there were sheep to be looked at, and near to the fountain, small debating societies, that seemed to grow on the grass in the style of mushrooms, and were made up of grubby men, arguing, as it seemed, on every topic of which they were ignorant, with here a reference to John Stuart Mill, and there satire at the expense of Apostles. Near to one of these groups Robert and Trixie stopped.

“As for your so-galled Queen, my goot Anglish friends,” a foreign gentleman with no collar shouted in the centre of the mushroom, “it don’t dake me long times to gif you my obinion about her and all her plooming Gofernment.”

“Now you’re beggin’ the question,” said his opponent. “Let’s keep to the point at issue. If you’ve ever read Plito, you would have been aware that—”

“I’m not dalkin’ about Blato,” said the foreigner, with excited gesture. “I’m dalkin’ about the bresent day and the stupid, foolish idea that you Anglish are a free nation. My obinion of your Queen, my fellow, is simply these. She’s—”

Not quite clear what the foreign gentleman wanted to say, and impossible to hear what he did say, for at that moment a sailor lad edged his way through the crowd, two brown hands seized the neck of his collarless shirt, and at once the two—Robert and the foreign critic—were running away pell-mell to Gloucester Gate, the foreigner forced to go at a good pace despite his struggles, and being thrown eventually well into the roadway outside the park. Robert returned to Trixie a little heated with the run; Trixie’s blue dotted blouse danced with delight and admiration.

“That’ll learn him,” said Robert, darkly.

In the Zoological Gardens they walked through the long house where lions and tigers lodge, and Robert kissed Trixie in full sight of a very sulky old lion, who had a bed-sitting room near to the end, making the lion use an exclamation of annoyance and envy that cannot well be printed. Then they went out into the gardens to see long, thin, ridiculous legs with birds perched riskily atop, and had a long conversation with one of the highly-coloured parrots, who were all talking at once, and seemed, like the debaters outside, to be denouncing somebody, and in similarly raucous voices.

“At tea, Bobbie,” said Trixie, with a touch of her decisive manner, “I want to talk to you.”

“You’ve been doing that the last hour or two,” he said, good temperedly.

“Ah, but I mean seriously,” she said.

At tea on the gravelled space near to the sleepy owls Robert encountered friends whose presence deferred the weighty talk, friends in the person of the angel from Folkestone, now clearly Mrs. Customs Officer, her husband and a large-eyed astonished baby in a white beef-eater hat. The angel came over from her table on recognizing Robert and declared that the news of this meeting would do poor uncle more good than all the embrocation in the world.

“Allow me,” said Robert with importance, “to introduce my”—he coughed—“fiancée.”

Trixie on this introduction assumed a distant manner, and sat alone with a reticent air, while Robert went over to speak to long Mr. Customs, and to dance the amazed infant high into the air. The angel had grown very matronly; the Customs seemed to be well under her control, insomuch that he never commenced a sentence without finding himself instantly arrested and brushed aside by his wife. On Robert rallying the angel on this, the angel laughed good-humouredly, declaring that it was well for one or the other to be master, and prophesying that some day Robert would find this out for himself, whereupon Robert insisted that women must not be too tyrannical, and endeavoured to enlist the Customs on his side in the argument, but the Customs shook his head vaguely (being it seemed with no grievance to complain of), and begged not to be dragged into the discussion.

“What name was it you called me just now?” demanded Trixie, when he had returned to her. Robert explained, and Trixie’s young forehead cleared. “That reminds me,” she said, resting one small shoe on the bar of Robert’s chair, “I want to talk sense now.”

“Why?”

“I want you,” she said slowly and carefully, “to promise me—”

“I’ll promise anything you like.”

“To promise me that you’ll give up all idea of being a sailor, and take up some occupation on land.”

Robert shifted his chair and Trixie’s foot slipped to the gravel. He re-tied his lanyard with great particularity, humming a tune. Trixie, fearful of the reply, drew a heart with the ferrule of her parasol on the gravel.

“Not me!” he said decidedly.

The heart on the gravel found itself rubbed out sharply and rendered illegible.

“You think it over, dear,” said Trixie Bell.

“I shan’t think it over,” replied Robert Lancaster sturdily. “It’d be a mean trick to do after all they’ve spent on my training.”

“I don’t see how it would affect them.”

“I’m not going to do it, Trixie.”

“So long as you earn a honest living—”

“Look ’ere,” burst out Robert impetuously, “I can’t argue with girls. My mind’s quite made up, and I’m not going to alter it.”

“That means, then,” said Miss Bell, swallowing something, “that you don’t care for me.”

“It don’t mean anything of the kind,” protested Robert. “It’s a question of duty.”

“You’d easily get a good berth on shore,” she argued, “and earn good money, and then we could see each other pretty of’en. As it is, I may not see you from one year’s end to the other.”

“Absence makes the ’eart grow fonder.”

“Yes,” said the young woman pointedly, “in books.”

“Well,” remarked Robert, after a pause, “now that we’ve cleared up this argument, ’ave some more tea.”

“No, thank you,” said Trixie with reserve. “I think I must be getting along ’ome. Looks as though we shall ’ave a shower presently, I think.”

“Trixie,” he said, trying to take her hand, “don’t be a young silly.”

“After that complimentary remark,” she said rising, “it’s most certainly time for me to be off. To be told in the Zoo above all places in the world that I’m a silly—”

“I didn’t say you was a silly,” urged Robert with great perturbation, “I asked you not to go and be one. Do stop, and let’s be good friends the same like—”

He was following the indignant young woman when the waiter interposed, offering a delicate hint to the effect that his services were usually deemed worthy of reward; by the time Robert had found threepence Trixie had disappeared in the direction of the camels. Other visitors watched the hurried distracted efforts of the scarlet-faced sailor lad on his erratic voyage of discovery with as much interest as though he had been an escaped resident of the Gardens.

A gloomy young man strode down Great Portland Street an hour later, and, losing his way more than once, because he was too much annoyed to speak to policemen, found himself at last in Holborn and eventually in Fetter Lane. On the two middle-aged ladies in the shop saying that Mr. Myddleton West was not in, and had indeed removed, Robert, muttering that this was just like his luck, turned away with a decision to return to Grays some two hours earlier than he had intended. On board the Westmouth one was at any rate free from illogical young women; free also from the irritating risk of taking wrong turnings. A swift hysterical shower of rain started.

“Beg pardon, sir,” he said gruffly.

“My fault,” remarked the man with whom he had come in collision. “I ought not to hold my open umbrella in front of me.”

“Mr. West, I believe, sir.”

“Young Hoxton!”

“That’s me, sir.”

“You look quite a man,” said Myddleton West genially. “Come back to my office, and talk.”

“You look ten years younger, sir, than when I see you last.”

“I am ten years younger,” said West. “On second thoughts we might eat. Do you feel like a good square meal?”

“I’m off me feed just for the present. Had rather a whack in the eye this afternoon.”

“That’s only a prelude to good luck,” said Myddleton West, with new optimism. He seemed to be taking cheerful views of the world; appeared brighter than in the old days, and the lad felt inclined to resent it. “Providence is very fair in a general way.”

Turning into a dim, insignificant passage off Fleet Street, they found a doorway, as if by accident, which led them (also, as it seemed, by a series of misadventures) to a square old-fashioned dining-room of the early Victorian type. Several men were seated at the wooden tables eating; two or three Americans with note-books were being supplied by one of the old waiters with a quantity of new and incorrect information about the old eating-house, enlivened by rare anecdotes of celebrities. In five minutes there was set before West and Robert Lancaster a small mountain made up of admirable strata of pigeons, of oysters, and of steak. Robert began by gazing absently at the dish before him, and thinking about Trixie; the smell of appetizing food changed his thoughts, and he presently set to with admirable appetite.

“My great news can easily be told,” said Myddleton West across the table. “I was married last week.”

“Good business!” remarked Robert. “Who is the lady, sir?”

“There is but one.”

“But I thought she’d decided—”

“They never do that,” remarked West.

“She used to like talking about you, sir, to me when I was in the hospital. I always thought it would ’appen some day.”

“I’m ordered out to some God-forsaken place in Siberia,” said Myddleton West. “They are making a new railway, and there’s a lot of excitement, I believe. Miss Margaret was good enough to insist upon marrying me, before I went. When I come back my wife will give up her nursing business and we are going to settle down and enjoy life.”

“Good deal to be said for the old fashions,” said Robert wisely. “Independence is all very well, but I don’t like to see it carried too far. Not with the ladies at any rate,” he added.

“Tell me all about yourself,” urged Myddleton West. “My wife will be anxious to hear. My wife,” West seemed proud to repeat these two words, “was always interested in you.”

Robert felt distinctly better when he had come out into Fleet Street and had said a respectful good-bye to Myddleton West; this partly because of the excellent meal and partly because of the friendly chat. The shower had finished and he walked East. Not until he had nearly reached Fenchurch Street, with only five minutes to wait for his train, did he remember that he had a high important grievance which careful attention would, as he knew, nurture into lasting remorse. He went slowly up the stairs of the station, and thinking with a desolate sigh of women in general and of Miss Beatrice Bell in particular. At the top of the staircase he caught sight (his look being downcast) of Miss Threepenny.

“Well, you’re a nice young gentleman,” said the little woman, satirically, “I don’t think. Fancy coming to London and not waiting to see me. This,” added the mite, with a twinkle in her bright bead-like eyes, “is what you call constancy, I s’pose.”

“There’s no such thing as constancy,” growled Robert. “Not in this world, at any rate.”

“Shows what you know about it,” declared the little woman. “Come over ’ere; I’ve a friend I want to interduce you to.”

“I’ve only got five minutes before my train goes.”

“Five minutes is ample. Come along.”

To the side of the bookstall Miss Threepenny convoyed Robert; once in harbour there bade him on no account to stir, and puffing off like a busy little tug to the waiting-room, returned immediately with that trim yacht Trixie Bell in tow, whom she also brought to anchor at the side of the bookstall.

“I’ll go and see what platform your train starts from,” then cried the little tug.

“Bobbie,” said the well-appointed yacht, penitently, to the man-of-war, “I’m—I’m so sorry if I went and made myself look like a stupid this afternoon.”

“Trixie,” said the man-of-war, coming dangerously close to the side of the neat craft, “if anybody’s to blame, it’s me. Only—”

“We shall quarrel again, dear,” said Trixie Bell, sedately, “if you talk like that. You’re quite right in what you’ve made up your mind to do, and I respect you all the more for it, and if you’re away ten seconds, or if you’re away ten years, I shall always be the same and—”

The man-of-war saluted with so much promptitude that a newspaper boy in the bookstall, safe in ambush behind an illustrated journal, made ventriloquial comment. Miss Threepenny hurried up.

“Now run, Bobbie,” said the tiny woman, breathlessly. “You’ll just catch it, and—good luck to you!”

He caught the train as it moved out of the station and jumped into a third-class compartment. When he had regained his breath he leaned his bare head delightedly out of the window to enjoy the cool air that had come after the shower.

“Upon my word,” he said, to Stepney Station, with some astonishment, “I begin to think that I don’t half understand women.”

From this remark it will be seen that Robert Lancaster, formerly child of the State, and shortly to enter the service of his great parent, was now no longer very young. Wherefore it is here that one may prepare to take leave of him.

CHAPTER XVI.

The new shop which bore the name of Miss Beatrice Bell stood so far up the Kingsland Road, beyond the canal, that you might have said it was in Dalston, and none would have dared offer contradiction. A happy situation, in that the shop found itself able to at once keep touch with the superior classes of Hoxton and with the middle classes of Dalston; a distinction being made in the two windows, so that Hoxton lady clients on entering turned instinctively to the left counter, whilst those from Dalston turned to the right. Beatrice Bell, grown to a tall, self-possessed young woman, still in slight mourning for her mother, had the nightly companionship of little Miss Threepenny, and assistance by day from the perky ’Tilderann, whose enthusiasm for the business was equalled by her intolerance of anything likely to interfere with achievement of these ends; her mistress’s habit of buying evening newspapers whenever the placards shouted anything about the Delar expedition, of making customers wait while she read the telegraphic accounts nervously, constituted a weakness that made ’Tilderann groan. But for these occasional lapses Beatrice Bell had become a shrewd, business-like woman, not only reaching the high standard set by her assistant, but sometimes exceeding it, and extorting from that young woman gracious compliment. It was indeed worth watching to see and hear Miss Bell deal with some lady of Hoxton who having ideas of her own in regard to a new hat, insisted upon explaining them in detail. The young proprietress of the establishment would listen with perfect calm whilst the client described the kind of hat which represented her heart’s desire; when she had finished, Miss Bell would say icily, “I quite understand what you mean, but,” here a slight shrug of the shoulders, “they are no longer worn.” Upon which the lady customer could only ejaculate a confused and abashed “Ho!” and request that something that was being worn should be taken from the window and exhibited to her.

Beatrice Bell, her hands clasped behind her, taking the air at the doorway of her shop, and bowing to acquaintances in the swift crowd of young women hurrying northward to their tea, glanced up and down the busy road with its sailing trams and jerking ’buses. The hour was seven; the sky still light with a juvenile moon that seemed, with the impatience of youth, to have come out too early. Dashing young blades of shopkeepers also taking the air at their doorways, caught sight of the white-speckled blouse, and bowed to her, and noting with pain her distant acknowledgment, declared to each other that Miss Bell would stand an infinitely better chance of getting married were she less reserved in manner, a drawback which had already cheated her of more than one invitation to Epping Forest on early-closing day. “For,” said Mr. Libbis, the tobacconist, to his friend at the second-hand shop, “she may be as ’aughty as she likes, but after all, mind you, she’s only a girl.”

Opposite, a boy pasted on the boards outside the newspaper shop a new placard: “Brave conduct at Delar.” She ran across the road to buy a copy of the newspaper; before she returned a customer came to the Hoxton side of the shop demanding something stylish at one-and-eleven. ’Tilderann fenced with her pending the return of her mistress.

“It occurred to me, looking in the glass,” said the woman confidentially, “that I wanted smartenin’ up. It may be only me fancy, but it struck me I was beginning to look old. What d’you think?”

“Depends what you call old,” replied ’Tilderann. “Sure you can’t run to more than one-and-eleven?”

“Eight year ago, or a trifle more,” said the woman, reminiscently, “I was as light-’earted a young woman as you’d ’ave found in all ’Oxton, if you’d searched for a month. I was really the rarest one for making jokes that you ever ’eard of before my ’usband, Bat Miller, had to go away.”

“Emigrated?” asked ’Tilderann, glancing between the hats and bonnets for her mistress.

“He were away,” said Mrs. Miller, evasively, “for a matter of four or five year. And when I went to meet him, believe me or not, he was as stand-offish in his manner as he could he.”

“That’s like ’em,” said ’Tilderann. “These bonnets at four-and-three are all the go just now.”

“Quite ’igh and mighty if you please,” went on Mrs. Miller aggrievedly. “And I firmly believe that if I hadn’t had on my best mantle he’d have gone off again, goodness knows where. As it was, I persuaded him to settle down, and we’ve got on as well as can be expected; only that now and again, when we have a few words, he says something very satirical about the old days in Ely Place.”

“Here she is!” said ’Tilderann. “Come on, Miss! ’Ere’s a customer been waiting for howers.”

“Sorry,” remarked Beatrice Bell, panting. Her pretty face was crimson with excitement; she hugged a pink halfpenny journal to her breast.

“Something at about one-and-eleven, Miss,” said Mrs. Miller respectfully. “Not too quiet and not too loud, and something that’ll suit my features.”

Miss Bell, trembling oddly, went up the wooden steps and brought down a box containing black hats.

“Anything special, Miss, in the evening paper?” asked Mrs. Bat Miller ingratiatingly.

“Yes,” said Beatrice, panting.

“I of’en ’ave a look at the playcards,” said Mrs. Miller; “they give me about as much information as I want. Are these the newest shape in this box?”

“Look at the corner of the box,” said Miss Bell, endeavouring to regain her usual composure. “That’ll tell you, ‘Chapeaux de Paris.’”

“Sounds all right,” agreed Mrs. Miller. “I was saying to your young lady here that I’ve been making up my mind to take more trouble about me personal appearance. Otherwise, it’s likely enough Miller’ll be getting tired of me again, and then there’ll be more trouble. How would you advise me to have this trimmed, Miss, if it isn’t troubling you too much?”

Beatrice Bell gave advice in a hurried way as though pressed with more urgent affairs, and anxious to see her customer depart. Mrs. Miller did go, after reciting some more of her personal history; when she had gone Miss Bell took the evening paper from her waistbelt and sat down behind the counter. She had scarcely done so when the bell of the door rang and a tall young woman came in, dressed in a tailor-made costume, which caused ’Tilderann to gasp with admiration.

“Will you,” she said pleasantly to that amazed girl, “give the driver this half-crown and tell him not to wait?” She turned brightly to the young proprietress. “You are Miss Bell, are you not? My name is Mrs. Myddleton West.”

“One moment,” said Miss Bell trembling, “till the girl comes back, and we’ll go into the shop parlour.”

“You have read the evening paper I see.”

“I’ve got it certainly, ma’am,” replied the agitated young woman, “but as to reading it, why my eyes get so full the moment I begin that I can’t get on with it very fast.”

“I have a letter from my dear husband,” said Mrs. Myddleton West proudly, “from my dear husband giving fuller particulars.”

“And you’ve come straight here?”

’Tilderann returning, flushed with victory because she had compounded with the cabman for two shillings and two pence, and therefore able to refund the sum of fourpence, was commanded to look after the shop, and Miss Bell conducted her visitor into the small room at the back. ’Tilderann, noting with regret that the door closed carefully, found compensation in serving across the counter imaginary bonnets to imaginary wives of society millionaires at the price of fifty guineas per bonnet.

“Is this Robert Lancaster?” asked Mrs. West in her pleasant way. She took up a photograph of a brown-faced sailor lad, clean shaven, with a humorous mouth and bare neck.

“That’s my Bobbie,” said Beatrice Bell with pride. “Won’t you take the easy chair, ma’am? It’s been quite a lovely summer, hasn’t it? I suppose we shall soon have autumn upon us if we’re not careful, and—Oh,” she cried, interrupting herself. “What is the use of me pretending to be calm when I’m all of a tremble!”

“Now you must sit down,” this with a kindly authoritativeness, “sit down here close to me, and I am going to read to you the letter from my husband, which arrived only this evening.”

“From Delar?” asked the girl, seating herself obediently on a hassock.

“From Delar.”

“How could you let your husband go away, ma’am?”

“I don’t think I can,” said Mrs. West, “again.” She found the letter and took the thin sheets carefully from the envelope. “But I felt that I ought not to be selfish all through my life.”

“Weren’t you the sister who looked after Bobbie in the hospital, ma’am?” Mrs. West nodded and smoothed out the sheets of note paper. “I wasn’t quite sure whether Mr. West wouldn’t go and marry some one else, considering—I s’pose I’ve no business to say so—but considering the way you kept putting him off.”

“I took care,” said Mrs. Myddleton West quickly, “that he should not do anything so absurd. Shall I begin the letter?”

“If you please, ma’am,” said Beatrice Bell, looking up respectfully. Mrs. Myddleton West commenced.

“My dearest, ever dearest,” she stopped. “I don’t think I need trouble you with the first page at all,” she said with some confusion.

“I know what you mean, ma’am. Start where he begins to speak of Bobbie.”

It appeared that Bobbie came in about the middle of the second sheet. The war correspondent out at Delar had intuitively written on one side of the paper only, and Trixie Bell noted this deplorable want of economy, but West’s small handwriting managed to convey a good long letter.

“You remember our young friend Bobbie Lancaster. The lad, now a sailor attached to H.M.S. Pompous, is on the launch where I am writing, and he did this afternoon an act of quiet bravery which ought, I think, to make his country feel that the trouble it took to make a man of him was not wasted. I am sending an account of the incident to my journal by the post which takes this letter to you, but you will care to have fuller particulars. How I wish that the mail were also taking me to the arms—”

“That,” said Mrs. West, “is, of course, merely by the way.”

“Skip a few lines,” suggested Trixie, her chin resting upon her hands, “but don’t leave out more than you’re obliged.”

The trail of the story was re-discovered.

“But touching Lancaster! We left H.M.S. Pompous and steamed up a broad smelly river, bordered by mangrove trees with long weeping branches, and approached the town of Delar. Delar is nothing like a town, but a mere collection of whitewashed huts around a large circular hut, where that genial person, the king of Delar, has hitherto lived. It was in this central hut that he caused to be massacred the Englishmen who, at his request, came some months since to confer with him on the subject of trade; our expedition is, as you know, intended to prove to him that such tactics are not only unbusinesslike, but positively rude. This lesson will be taught him by our marines when they land to-morrow, and I have little doubt but that they will do it effectively. I was talking to the Intelligence Officer when Lancaster came up hurriedly, and, saluting, said that the Admiral wished to see the other officer at once. The Intelligence man hurried below, and Lancaster and I had two minutes’ chat. He has grown a fine strong fellow, with honesty in both eyes, and muscular arms tattooed with the word ‘Trix.’”

“The dear boy!” burst out Miss Bell.

“We talked of the old days, and he said that he only cared to think of Hoxton now because his sweetheart lived there.”

“You might read that part again, ma’am.”

“He talked of the old days, and he said that he only cared to think of Hoxton now because his sweetheart lived there.”

The girl gasped.

“Fancy his talking about me,” she said delightedly, “all that distance off. Go on, ma’am.”

“Whilst we were talking, commotion began on shore. Men were running up and down; boats were launched, the Intelligence Officer and the Admiral, escorted by four marines and four sailors, prepared to leave. Some whistling and giving of orders; the steamer slowed and stopped. The Admiral, I may tell you, is a big-bearded fellow, daring, and very popular with the officers and the men, but on board the Pompous, just before we left, there had been general agreement that he had done a risky and almost a foolhardy thing in agreeing to a palaver with some of the king’s supporters. The officers knew that his idea was to punish the king and the king only; whereas the officers desired to punish everybody. If you had seen the mutilated body of an English gentleman bound upon what is called a crucifixion tree near the king’s hut, I think, dear, you would have agreed with the officers.

“Not being allowed to go on shore, I give most of the rest as recounted to me by my friend the Intelligence Officer. The Admiral and his escort descended into the boats and were rowed ashore by the natives; Robert Lancaster was one of the bluejackets. At the shore they were received with great courtesy by the king’s chief ministers; the king, as we knew, had scuttled off inland on receiving news of our approach. With exceeding ceremony the Admiral and his escort found themselves conducted to the king’s compound, the while on the launch our Maxim stood ready to rake the town on the least sign of treachery. At each door of the king’s house lay a woman’s dead body. This, it was explained, had been done to prevent the arrival of the English; a precaution on the part of the king that had proved singularly unsuccessful. In the palaver house, a long half-roofed building with a bronze serpent at the entrance, and inside, seats of dry red mud, the Admiral took up position, and through the interpreter addressed the chiefs; Robert Lancaster being, as I am told, one of the men stationed behind the Admiral and his officers. Standing at a rough table the Admiral said that the great White Queen was angry because of the infamous massacre of her children; as a good mother she had determined to avenge their murder. But though the great White Queen was powerful, she was also just, she wished to punish only those responsible. Wherefore the king was to be pursued and captured and dealt with severely, but those of the natives who were friendly would not be hurt, and would, indeed, be under British protection.”

“I am now,” said young Mrs. Myddleton West gravely, “coming to the very serious part of the letter.”

“May I hold your ’and, ma’am?” asked the girl. For answer she found her right hand taken instantly with a quiet matronly manner that gave her confidence.

“As the Admiral spoke and the interpreter repeated each sentence, the ministers listened with attention and with plain signs of agreement. The younger men rose from the red mud seats and pressed forward. They began to speak confusedly; the Admiral held up his hand for order. One of the younger men smashed a square of looking-glass on the floor; at the same moment Robert Lancaster flung himself suddenly on a muscular black youth who had risen from the ground close to the Admiral, unseen by others of the escort. The blade intended for the Admiral’s back caught in the fleshy part of Lancaster’s arm; a swift struggle ensued between the two before the others realized what was happening. A sharp revolver shot from one of the officers settled the murderous young black; Lancaster sucked at his own wound, spat, stepped calmly back to his place.”

“Now, now!” protested the wife of Myddleton West, breaking off tearfully, “you mustn’t cry, dear.”

“I know,” sobbed Miss Bell.

“The others shared his composure; the Admiral himself never lost self-possession for a moment. He concluded the palaver as though nothing of moment had happened; went out of the house with his escort and down to the shore and re-embarked. Arrived here on the launch, the Admiral sent for Bobbie.

“‘What is your name, my lad?’

“‘Robert Lancaster, sir, of the Pompous.’

“‘Are you hurt, much?’

“‘Nothing to brag about, sir.’

“‘Do you know that you saved my life?’

“‘Well, sir,’ said Bobbie with great respect, ‘I’m not sorry to have paid back a bit of what I owe.’

“‘Mr. West,’ remarked the Admiral, turning to me, ‘let the English people know something about this. I will look after the lad, but you, too, can do something.’

“The doctor tells me that the blade was poisoned at the tip—”

Beatrice Bell’s hand tightened her hold, and the white speckled blouse stilled for a moment.

“And that Lancaster’s smartness and resource alone saved the wound from becoming dangerous. Lancaster wants you to call on his sweetheart and tell her all about it, because for a few weeks he will not be able to write. I shall be home, my dearest, in less than a month, and when I see you—”

“That is all about Bobbie,” said Mrs. Myddleton West, stopping. “What do you think of it all, dear?”

“I could no more,” declared Miss Bell, “explain to you what I think, ma’am, than I could fly. I’m too thankful to talk much.” The girl looked wistfully at the sheets of rustling note paper. “You’d think I’d got impudence,” she said hesitatingly, “if I told you, though, what I’ve got in my mind.”

“Tell me!”

“Why, I was just thinkin’ how annoyed you’d be if I was to ask you to give me the part that concerns—that concerns my Bobbie.”

Far from showing annoyance, Mrs. West cheerfully ordered the production of scissors; ’Tilderann being called, responded so promptly that suspicious persons might have guessed she had become tired of serving imaginary customers, and had been trying to listen at the doorway. Having brought the scissors, ’Tilderann was sent back again to look after the shop. Then the two women bent their heads near to each other, and dividing the letter carefully, judiciously, and very lovingly, the shares were allotted.

“My dear,” said Mrs. West rising, “come and see me at the address on this envelope to-morrow evening, and let us talk it all over quietly. Come to dinner.”

“Me?” asked the astonished girl. “Me at dinner in Kensington?”

“I insist upon it.”

“I’m a good talker,” stammered Miss Bell, “in—in an ord’nary way, but just now—I only wish my friend Miss Threepenny was here.”

A call from ’Tilderann.

“But some day me and Bobbie will be able to tell you how much—” She bent her head to her friend’s hand impulsively. Young Mrs. West kissed her on the cheek.

“Lot of use anybody bawling ‘Shop,’” said ’Tilderann at the doorway ironically, “when no one don’t take no notice. Why, you’re crying! Whatever’s the matter, Miss?”

“Matter?” repeated Miss Beatrice Bell with indignation. “Do you think I should cry if there was anything really the matter?”

THE END.

PRINTED AT GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, LD., ST. EDEN’S HOUSE, CLERKENWELL, LONDON. E.C.