“You take my advice, ’Orace,” recommended Mr. Clark. “Hostralia!”
There was a little wait while the quailing Mr. Dobb was sorrowfully regarded by his three friends, as though even now they were bidding him farewell on his departure to the Antipodes. Mr. Dobb gazed back, horror-struck, at each of his three companions in turn, and when his glance rested upon Mr. Lock, that gentleman rose and shook hands with him with a long and lingering clasp. And then Mr. Dobb shakily emptied each of the glasses on the table before him, and no one had the hardness of heart to bid him nay.
And next, Mr. Clark proceeded to narrate his interview with Miss Radling. He had found her, it transpired, in the High Street, and had at length managed to recall himself to her memory, a task which had been rendered a little protracted by the fact that Miss Radling gave but superficial attention to him at first, being more zealously employed in taking close heed of the faces of all male passers-by.
When, however, Miss Radling had recognized Mr. Clark as an old acquaintance of the “Jane Gladys” she had expressed the keenest satisfaction in meeting him, and had at once asked for the address of Mr. Horace Dobb.
Mr. Clark immediately professed ignorance of Mr. Dobb’s whereabouts, but pretended to a vague belief that the late cook of the “Jane Gladys” was now somewhere in Scotland. Miss Radling promptly controverted this, stating with complete certainty that she had herself seen Mr. Dobb in Shorehaven during that very afternoon. She had also added, with sinister vehemence, that she intended to see Mr. Dobb again and again before she had finished with him.
“But—but—but what for?” interposed the miserable Mr. Dobb.
“Just what I says to her,” responded Mr. Clark. “‘What for?’ I says. And she says as ’ow you was hengaged to ’er, and you ’adn’t wrote ’er a line for months. ‘Though,’ she says, ‘the letters ’e wrote me before that is quite enough to do the trick. I’ve kept ’em all,’ she says, ‘and I’m going to get even with ’im some’ow. Either ’e’s got to put the banns up or else I goes to the best lawyer in Shore’aven. I’ve found out, by chance, that ’Orace Dobb is living in these parts, and,’ says she—”
“Now, ’ow the dooce did she find that out?” questioned Mr. Tridge, wrathfully.
“Wasn’t the ‘Raven’ in ’arbour here a fortnight or so after you settled into your shop, ’Orace?” put forward Mr. Lock.
“It was!” bellowed Mr. Dobb. “Well, there’s a nasty, low, mean, under’and, sneaking trick to—”