"Think better of it, sir," urged Mrs. Philpott. "You are a gentleman and I am only a common woman, but I am old enough to be your mother, and I don't think you ought to treat me so--so"--exactly the right word did not occur to her, so she added--"suddenly. Here you are, sir, all alone, if you'll excuse me for saying so, and here we are with more rooms in the house than we know what to do with. Why, sir, if you'll stay it will be obliging us."
All her kindly efforts were unavailing. She asked him to make the notice a month instead of a week, and then she came down to a fortnight, and made some reference to clouds with silver linings; but Basil was not to be prevailed upon, and she left the room in a despondent state.
"We'll keep an eye on him if we can," her husband said to her when she gave him an account of the interview. "I may find out something yet that will be of use to him. It is a strange case, old woman, and I don't mind confessing that I can't see the bottom of it."
[CHAPTER XXIX.]
Sternly resolved to carry out his determination not to occupy rooms for which he could not pay, Basil left Mrs. Philpott's house on the appointed day. It was his wish to quit without being observed, but Mrs. Philpott was on the look-out and lay in wait for him. Before he reached the street door she barred his way in the landing.
"You're not going away, sir," she said reproachfully, "without wishing the children good-bye."
In honest and affectionate friendship there is frequently displayed a pleasant quality of cunning which it does no harm to meet with, and in her exercise of it Mrs. Philpott pressed her children into the service. Basil had no alternative but to accompany her into the parlour, where the four little fellows were sitting at the table waiting for dinner.
"You'll excuse me a minute, sir," said the good woman; "if I don't fill their plates before they're five minutes older they'll set up a howl."
Out she bustled, and quickly returned with a mighty dish of Irish stew.
"Philpott says," said Mrs. Philpott as she placed the steaming dish on the table, "that no one in the world can make an Irish stew like mine; and what father says is law, isn't it, children? I always have dinner with them, sir; perhaps you'll join us. I really should like to know if you're of my husband's opinion. Now this looks home-like"--as Basil, who had independence of spirit, but no false pride, took his seat at the table where a chair and a plate had already been set for him--"almost as if father was with us, or as if the children had a great big brother who had been abroad ever so many years, and had popped in quite sudden to surprise us."