Edwin had already rushed for the perambulator, an ancient vehicle which was sometimes used in the garden for infant Benbows.
In a few moments Trafalgar Road had the spectacle of the bearded and eminent master-printer, Edwin Clayhanger, steaming up its muddy pavement behind a perambulator with a grown boy therein. And dozens of persons who had not till then distinguished the boy from other boys, inquired about his identity, and gossip was aroused. Maggie was displeased.
In obedience to the command Edwin lifted George into the train; and the feel of his little slippery body, and the feel of Edwin’s mighty arms, seemed to make them more intimate than ever. Except for dirty tear-marks on his cheeks, George’s appearance was absolutely normal.
Edwin expected to receive a letter from him, but none came, and this negligence wounded Edwin.
Volume Four--Chapter Nine.
The Arrivals.
On a Saturday in the early days of the following year, 1892, Edwin by special request had gone in to take afternoon tea with the Orgreaves. Osmond Orgreave was just convalescent after an attack of influenza, and in the opinion of Janet wanted cheering up. The task of enlivening him had been laid upon Edwin. The guest, and Janet and her father and mother sat together in a group round the fire in the drawing-room.
The drawing-room alone had grown younger with years. Money had been spent on it rather freely. During the previous decade Osmond’s family, scattering, had become very much less costly to him, but his habits of industry had not changed, nor his faculty for collecting money. Hence the needs of the drawing-room, which had been pressing for quite twenty years, had at last been satisfied; indeed Osmond was saving, through mere lack of that energetic interest in things which is necessary to spending. Possibly even the drawing-room would have remained untouched—both Janet and her elder sister Marian sentimentally preferred it as it was—had not Mrs Orgreave been ‘positively ashamed’ of it when her married children, including Marian, came to see her. They were all married now, except Janet and Charlie and Johnnie; and Alicia at any rate had a finer drawing-room than her mother. So far as the parents were concerned Charlie might as well have been married, for he had acquired a partnership in a practice at Ealing and seldom visited home. Johnnie, too, might as well have been married. Since Jimmie’s wedding he had used the house strictly as a hotel, for sleeping and eating, and not always for sleeping. He could not be retained at home. His interests were mysterious, and lay outside it. Janet alone was faithful to the changed drawing-room, with its new carpets and wall-papers and upholstery.