The squire does not go about so much, but he gives liberally to charities, never lets a poor man on his estate want when times are hard, and has the reputation of being a kindly Christian gentleman, rather grave and studious, and not fond of too much society. He goes out occasionally though to the best houses, gives a dinner party or two, and now and then there is a ball at the hall. He is a justice of the peace, goes to the parish church and idolizes the ground his wife treads upon.
The firm of Grigg and Limpett flourishes, though it has lost the services of Mr. Jabez Duck. The firm receives from time to time letters from its absent client, Mr. Gurth Egerton, who seems inclined to settle in America, and whose house is now occupied by Dr. Oliver Birnie, whose brass plate is very large, and whose practice has increased wonderfully with a West-End address.
There is no Mrs. Turvey. She has become Mrs. Duck, and she and Jabez have a lodging-house, and take in and do for single gentlemen.
Miss Georgina, having raised a little capital through the kindness of her friend, Miss Jackson, has taken the house exactly opposite to them, and started an opposition establishment. Miss Duck’s lodgers and Mrs. Duck’s lodgers each support the lady under whose banner they pay their rent, and the amenities exchanged across the street are frequently highly edifying to the neighbourhood. Jabez has been disappointed. Having married his lady in the firm belief that he was marrying a snug thousand pounds, he was bitterly disillusioned a few days after the fatal knot had been tied. The money he has never discovered, and Mrs. Turvey stoutly denies that it was hers.
This is at once the mystery and the misfortune of Mr. Duck’s married life. He has other mysteries and misfortunes to attend to, for he has left the law and entered the service of a private inquiry agent. His taste he determined to gratify: if he couldn’t be a principal, he would be an employé. He likes it better than the law, and he is getting quite clever at poking his nose into other people’s business. His talents always lay in that direction.
Mr. Preene still flourishes and pursues the even tenor of his way, but Mr. Brooks has paid the debt of nature, dying respectably in his bed, and leaving his widow a nice little competency. She was shortly afterwards united to a middle-aged and very hard-up Scripture-reader, who fell in love with her while reading the prayers for the sick by the bedside of her first husband at Mrs. Brooks’s special request. Perhaps the people who assisted to make Mrs. Brooks independent would have been resigned to their loss had they known it would ultimately benefit so devout a man.
So time works its changes, alters the scene, redresses the characters, and clears the stage during the five years entr’acte that elapses ere our curtain rises again.
CHAPTER LII.
AN ESCAPED CONVICT.
HULLOH!’ said Mr. Jarvis; ‘did you hear that gun? There’s another of them there conwicks escaped.’
‘Poor fellow!’ ejaculated Mr. Jarvis’s better half; ‘and I hope as he’ll get away.’