And, thank goodness, the next day they all departed; but not without a good many d——s from Mr. Owen Wales over the bill. The young gentlemen looked very sheepish, as well they might, and the whole family were tamed again, and hadn’t a word to say among them. Their tamer was there, and they quailed before him. Pryce was the first to go; she went in a fly by herself with the luggage. Harry was at the door as she drove away, and he raised his hat, with mock politeness, to my lady.
She gave him a look, and turned her head, and sniffed, and said, “Good afternoon, sir; it’s the first time I’ve stayed at a pothouse, and I hope it will be the last!”
A pothouse! Oh, when I think of it even now it makes the blood rush to the roots of my hair. I do believe if I had been at the door when that creature said that I should have——
* * * * *
Miss Measom not in yet? Why, it’s past eleven!—what does she mean by such conduct? She’ll have to go. I will not have a barmaid who cannot come in at a decent and proper time. When she does come in I shall give her a piece of my mind. She’s much too flighty for her place; I thought so when you engaged her. You go to bed, Harry; I’ll sit up for her.
CHAPTER XVIII.
MR. WILKINS.
Looking over what I have written about Mr. Wilkins, who was for such a long time one of our most regular customers of an evening at the ‘Stretford Arms,’ I feel inclined now to cross some of it out; but, of course, it would be difficult to do that, because at the time I wrote of him things were different to what they are now, and I only made the remarks about him which I thought at the time he deserved. Even that which was written after he had left the neighbourhood referred to the part he took in things which happened at the time he was with us, and so of course it wouldn’t have done to anticipate.
Poor Mr. Wilkins!
He offended me very often, and at times he was rather a nuisance, poor old gentleman, because he was one who would have a finger in everybody’s pie, and was fond of giving off his opinions, whether he was asked for them or not. But that is all forgiven and forgotten now, and I only think of the old gentleman at his best. We all have our peculiarities—I dare say I have mine—and certainly Wilkins had his; but it would be a very queer world if nobody had any crotchets, and everybody was exactly alike. There wouldn’t be any novels, and there wouldn’t be any plays—at least, I suppose not—though, of course, if we had been all alike in our ways and in our dispositions, authors would have had to get over the difficulty somehow.
You remember that Mr. Wilkins had a daughter in service in London, and it was through her that he found out that I was the Mary Jane who had written her “Memoirs” when she was in service. He was very proud of his daughter, and he had every reason to be so, for she was a very good girl, and had only lived in good families. He had also a daughter who had married, and had gone out with her husband to Australia. She used to write to her father now and then, and when he had a letter he was very proud of it, and he would bring it round to our house, and read bits of it that were about the life there out loud to the company, and he used to say, “My girl writes a good letter, doesn’t she, Mrs. Beckett? She could write a good book if she liked, and it would be very interesting.”