“Can’t you borrow some from young Caleb?”
“I owe him two and threepence halfpenny already, and he’s got my best whalebone-splice bat as a security till I pay him back.”
“Good Lord, and I’ve only got sixpence,” Jack Fleming groaned.
“Anyway, it’s no use,” Bram went on. “The governor wouldn’t let me go into Brigham on a Saturday night.”
“Can’t you find some excuse?”
Bram pondered for a few seconds.
“I might get my grandmater to help.”
“Well, buck up, Bramble. It’s a spiffing show, I hear. They’ve got two girls with Italian names who play the guitar or something. We don’t often get a chance of a decent evening in Brigham.”
“You’re right, Jack. All serene! Then I’ll have a try with the grandmater. She’s such an old fizzer that she might manage it.”
Bram went up cautiously to old Mrs. Fuller’s room. She was seventy now, but still able to hate fiercely her octogenarian husband who was for ever browsing among dusty commentaries on the Old Testament nowadays, and extracting from the tortuous fretwork of bookworms such indications of the Divine purpose as the exact date and hour of the Day of Judgment. He was usually clad in a moth-eaten velveteen dressing-gown and a smoking cap of quilted black silk with a draggled crimson tassel. The latter must have been worn as a protection to his bald and scaly head, because not a puff of tobacco smoke had ever been allowed to contend with the odour of stale food that permeated Lebanon House from cellar to garret.