“How did you find out, papa?” Bram heard himself saying from an infinitely remote distance. He was shivering lest he should hear that Jack Fleming had betrayed him.
“Because, thank the dear Lord, I have one son who knows his duty as a Christian,” his father was saying.
Of course! Caleb had had a taste of tintack last night. No! No! No! He could not give that little sneak the pleasure of gloating over his punishment. No! The pictures of Blundell’s Diorama rolled across his memory. Cobalt seas and marble halls, pagodas, palms ... twenty-five shillings in his pocket and the world before him if he could only make up his mind.
“Did you hear me tell you to go up to your bedroom, my boy?”
“Grandmamma, grandmamma, let me kiss you good-bye,” Bram cried by the door.
The old lady drew near.
“Grandmamma,” he whispered as she folded him to her withered breast, “I’m going to run away. Can you keep him in?”
Bram heard the key turn in the lock and a loud chuckle beyond the closed door. Then he heard the sound of his father’s voice raised in anger. Bram paused. Surely he would not strike grandmamma. He listened a moment at the keyhole, smiled at what he heard his father being called, and, blowing back a kiss to reach through the closed door the old lady’s heart, hurried up to his room. But not to wait there for his father to come with the blackthorn. No, just to throw a few clothes into an old carpet-bag and a minute or two later to go swinging out of Lebanon House for ever. On his way down the drive he remembered that he had not licked Caleb for peaching. It was a pity to let the little brute escape like that. He hesitated, decided that it was not worth while to run the risk of being caught merely in order to lick Caleb, and swung on down the drive. He had no plans, but he had twenty-five shillings in his pocket, and there was a train to Liverpool in half-an-hour. As a dissipation he had sometimes watched its departure on the Sunday afternoons when he managed to escape from Lebanon House and Bible readings, which was not often. Of course, there would be plenty of people to tell his father where he had gone. But Liverpool was a larger place than Brigham, and, if he could not get taken on by the captain of an outward-bounder, he would be a stowaway. Something would turn up. Bram hurried on. It was a good mile from Lebanon House to the railway station. The booking-clerk stared through his pigeon-hole when Bram asked for a single to Liverpool. The idlers on the platform stared when they saw Bram Fuller, the grandson of the great Caleb, shoulder his carpet-bag and enter the Liverpool train. But Bram himself stared hardest of all when he found himself in a compartment with Mr. Blundell of Blundell’s Diorama and the Sisters Garibaldi.
CHAPTER VI
THE DIORAMA