“And how did you get out of the Union?”
“The people of the house where Mother’d been were very kind, and the story got round in the town, and her having been so young and all, and a good girl till this fellow came along, made people sorry, and a subscription was got up. So I was sent to St. Olave’s Orphanage, and brought up well. That’s where the old governor found me, him being a director, and he wanted a boy to work in the shop, and applied there, and I got sent. I always say I’m lucky,” repeated Felix.
“I think it was Uncle Alfred who was lucky, if you ask me.”
Felix blushed with gratification. “I’m sure it’s very kind of you to say so. And when I talk about going out to look for adventures, and travelling, and the like, it’s only in the way of a day-dream, like, Mrs. Aviolet, because I needn’t say I wouldn’t think of leaving the governor, without he wanted me to go. But it’s a kind of diversion, to pretend to myself that I’m off on the Long Trail, with nothing but my gun and my right arm between me and death.”
“I know, Felix, fast enough. I’ve played that sort of game myself,” Rose acknowledged.
“But everything you wanted, like that, would come true, I should think!” Felix cried, looking at her with all his naïve admiration in his face. “And you’ve seen the world and been to the East. I suppose you often ‘hear the East a-calling’?”
“Not I,” said Mrs. Aviolet with emphasis. “Or if I did, I shouldn’t listen. I’m glad I went, in a way, because it opens one’s eyes a bit, but I don’t ever want to go back. Give me old London, and the smell of the gas, every time.”
If Felix were slightly disillusioned by this candid admission, his loyalty did not betray the fact.
He and Rose exchanged their views indefatigably over the silver cleaning, and Rose frequently reflected that, for all the outrageous extravagances of fancy so innocently laid bare by Felix, he was a very much more interesting companion than her amiable, unimaginative, standard-bound sister-in-law, Diana.
“The fact is,” she told herself, with her usual unsparing determination that spades should be spades, “the fact is, this is the kind of place where I fit in. Not beautiful houses in the country, with everybody half asleep, and only waking up to drivel about the bulbs, or the horses, or who so-and-so was before she married somebody else’s first cousin’s sister’s uncle. The shop’s the place for me, right enough, only I must say, I’d like to see a few more people.”