He must, he would, meet Egerton some day, and then, then he would settle the account that was between them.
So time flew on, and Harry had been two years with Mr and Mrs Blewcome; and these years of "roughing it" had physically done him good. He had grown fast, and happily proportionally strong with his height; and you would not have recognised the Harry of fifteen in his common clothes, as being the same fragile boy of thirteen whom you saw that night in June weeping over his mother's grave in the moonlight.
Still, in spite of his dress, you could see he was a gentleman, every inch his father's son. For it is not to be supposed, as some might hastily and ignorantly suppose, that Alan Campbell was not a gentleman, because he was an engineer.
A chief-engineer on board one of Her Majesty's ships-of-war, and an engine-driver of a locomotive, are two very different personages. This new branch of sea-service is of course to be traced to the change in the Royal Navy from the old sailing vessels to the iron-clad steamships. And the post of chief-engineer, though not necessarily requiring a gentleman by birth, yet often attracted those who, having changed their plans in life, wished to join the service, when it was too late to join as midshipmen.
It was a bright June morning, nearly two years to the very day since Harry had fallen in with Blewcome's Royal Menagerie; and after a long journey through the greater part of the night, the cavalcade was wearily entering a seaport town in the south of England. Mr and Mrs Blewcome were both asleep, snoring in unison within their gorgeously painted caravan, and Harry was sitting astride one of the identical old piebald steeds that had drawn Mr and Mrs B. for the last ten years.
On reaching a turnpike at the outskirts of the town, the proprietor and proprietress of the Royal Menagerie arose from their slumbers. And this was a general signal for a "wake-up." The whips were plied lustily over the jaded horses, to give them a lively, not to say frisky appearance. The trumpets rose to the lips of the musicians, and the drumsticks flew into the hands of the energetic drummer, and with an elevating strain of discordant music, Blewcome's Royal Menagerie majestically entered the town.
It did the hearts good of Blewcome and his spouse to see the street-doors flung open, and the gaping faces of the suburban inhabitants; and from the ever-increasing number of dirty little boys who brought up the rear of the cavalcade, Mrs Blewcome began reckoning on an unprecedented harvest of good luck. And the trumpeters trumpeted, and the drummer drummed; but as usual the latter had a long way the best of it.
The morning was spent, as it always was on such occasions, in arranging the caravans in the wonted horse-shoe shape. At the square end of the horse-shoe, so to speak, stretched the imposing canvas screen, painted in a most elaborate style, by the hand of some artist whose name unhappily has not been preserved for the benefit of posterity. There you might see the sheep-like lion, and the pig-like bear; leopards like short-legged zebras, and monkeys most unpleasantly like human beings. Indeed, ill-natured persons had been heard to declare one picture of a very lean ancient ourang-outang bore a strong resemblance to Mr Blewcome. But, then, some people see such strange likenesses!
And there were painted on the screen sundry other impossible animals, intended to attract the outside spectators, and induce them to enter and behold the wondrous originals within that magic circle of caravans. And while all these preparations were being hurried on, the yellow chariot and the band paraded the town at various periods of the day.