“You are a good boy, Evan,” Stephen Walker said, “and I will do my best, and ten shillings will go a good way. That sort of book is always to be picked up very cheap. I can get an algebra, Euclid, and trigonometry, anyhow, and perhaps a book on conic sections, and it will take your brother some time to master them. But, Evan, does your father know what you are spending your money upon?”
“Oh yes, he knows,” the boy said; “besides, he told me that the money was mine, and I could spend it upon what I liked. And please, Mr. Walker, father told me to give his respects, and would you go in and smoke a pipe with him this evening?”
“Will you tell your father from me,” Stephen Walker said, “that he may rely upon my coming. And where are you going now, Evan?”
“I am going down to the Serpentine; I hear they are skating there this morning, and I have got a new tray, and such a lot of bull’s eyes and peppermints, rather. Will you have some, miss,” and the boy took out a handful and put them down by Carry’s plate.
“Thank you, Evan, I will take two or three, not more; I could not eat them—that will do, thank you; I hope you will do a good day’s work.”
“No fear of that, miss; I just shall do this week if the frost goes on. Good bye, miss. Good bye, sir, and thank you; please don’t forget the books,” and Evan Holl was gone.
“Do you know, father, I think it’s lowering yourself going into John Holl’s, he is a very good sort of a man, but he is only a dustman. I think you ought to look higher than that, if only for my sake.”
“John Holl is a very decent man, my dear,” her father said mildly, “and he always treats me with proper respect. There are not many places I do go to; but I esteem John Holl to be a very respectable man in his sphere of life, and I do not think it can do me any harm.”
Carry pouted a little, but made no further remark. She had very little knowledge of her father’s past life. She could remember vaguely that as a child she had lived in a much better house, but that was all. Stephen Walker had never spoken of earlier times, beyond telling her that he had formerly kept a much larger shop, which had been his father’s before him; but that he had been unfortunate, and had therefore settled down into a place more suited to his means. More than this he had never told her, for he thought it better for the girl’s happiness that she should remain in ignorance of what the past had been. He thought that if she had known in what a different station she might have moved, it might tend to make her discontented with her state. For himself, he accepted his lot cheerfully, and was on the whole far happier than he had ever been before, and he judged her by himself.
Stephen Walker really liked these little evenings with his humble friends. When he went in there to smoke a pipe he was always treated with a certain deference which gratified any lingering feelings of personal pride he might have, and made him flatter himself with the idea that in so doing he was really conferring a favour instead of accepting one.