CHAPTER VIII.
An Old Friend.
Mauney found a boarding-house on Church Street, directly opposite the collegiate institute, a plain unit, in a plain brick terrace set close to the sidewalk. He engaged the down-stairs front room, which looked directly upon the thoroughfare by a wide window. He liked the room chiefly because of this window, for it afforded a generous view of the street and promised an excellent point of vantage. The landlady was a gigantic Irish woman whose husband worked in a foundry. It seemed to Mauney that their occupations ought to have been interchanged, for the husband was a puny, sickly fellow, thoroughly subdued by his wife’s temper. He had a way of moving quietly and guiltily through the house, as if expecting her to pounce on his back at any moment.
The first morning of Mauney’s occupancy, Mrs. Hudson came into his room, gowned in her collarless, blue, print dress, broom in hand. As school would not open for a day or two, Mauney was engaged in arranging his books.
“Oh! and it’s a scholar ye are, is it?” she asked.
“Teacher, Mrs. Hudson,” he explained.
“Indade, an’ sure I t’ought, all the time, ye were a commarcial trovler,” she said, surveying the volumes he was taking from his trunk. “I knew ye were a sangle mon. But I t’ought ye were a commarcial trovler. An’ which schule, might I be asking, are ye goin’ to be teaching at?”
“That one,” he said, pointing through the window at the grey stone mass across the street.
“Poor mon,” she sighed, as books still continued to come forth from the trunk. “It must keep ye busy. I’m glad ye’re a quiet mon.”
“Do I look quiet?” laughed Mauney.
“Ay, ye do thot, an’ imogine me thinkin’ ye were a commarcial trovler, now. Well, the saints rest ye, when are ye ging to rade all thim books?”