[p27]
But the flamboyant head drooped wretchedly just at present.
He pulled up at the gate, seeing Miss Bibby was not on guard, and poured out a graphic account of the ride between himself and Howie. Browning’s “Ghent to Aix” was nothing to it, and “How we beat the Favourite” was colourless narrative to the early part of Larkin’s recital. But then the tragedy happened. Larkin’s horse got a pebble in its foot, and went dead lame. Howie shot ahead and caught the lady of the house just as she was reluctantly sallying forth to find one of his trade and leave her order.
“An’ she’s got a baby—patent foods and biscuits,” said Larkin in a choked voice, “and I saw quite four boys,—oatmeal, tins of jam, bacon, butter,—I wouldn’t have lost her for anything. An’ only for giving you kids a ride this morning I’d have heard sooner, an’ got the start of Howie.”
The children felt quite crushed to think they were the cause of Larkin’s great loss. For a loss it was indeed; both boys received commissions on the accounts of the new customers they obtained, and a lady with a baby and four hungry boys, not to mention a maid or two, and possible visitors, was not to be picked up every day.
Then Pauline had a brilliant thought.
“We know of another new one,” she cried.
[p28]
“‘Tenby’ is taken; a man’s coming up by to-night’s train. Howie doesn’t know, no one knows but ourselves,—that will make up to you, Larkin. Men eat more than babies.”
Larkin was greatly excited. He made rapid plans: he would slip his cards under the door to-night; he would present himself at the house the moment it was unlocked in the morning. He would take butter, eggs, sugar, with him, so that breakfast at least would be comfortable, and the wife or housekeeper, or maiden sister, whichever the “man” brought with him, would bless his thoughtfulness, and promptly promise her custom.
Then his jaw dropped with a sudden recollection.
To-morrow was his holiday—the only whole week-day holiday he received in six months. He had arranged to go home, as he always did, catching the 11 o’clock train that night, and travelling through the midnight to the highest point of the mountains, and into the early dawn down, down the Great Zigzag on the other side, till he came out on the plain to a little siding, where he scrambled out with his bundle, and shouldered it briskly, and trudged along eight miles, perhaps, to a wretched selection where his father, for his mother and six or seven children younger than Larkin, fought the losing fight of the Man on the Land. A few hours here, slipping [p29] his wages into his mother’s reluctant hand, escorted by his father round the place to see the latest devices for trapping rabbits and other pests, telling his brothers stirring tales of the struggles between himself and Howie, then the long tramp to the station, and the travelling through the night again, snatching his only chance of sleep sitting upright in his crowded carriage, he fitted his holidays naturally into the Railway Commissioners’ Cheap Excursion seasons. And then the fight again in the new-born day with Howie.