‘I’ll try to make you and the gentleman comfortable, mum,’ she said, eagerly; ‘the gentleman don’t look strong, now do he? We must try to feed ‘im up and keep ‘im cheerful. And we’ve got plenty of flowers to make the room bright, you see: I’m very fond of flowers myself, mum: seems to me as if they was sort of company to one, like, and when you water ‘em and tend ‘em always, I feel as if they was alive, and got to know one again, I do, and that makes one love ‘em, now don’t it, mum? To see ‘em brighten up after you’ve watered ‘em, like that there maiden-’air fern there, why it’s enough to make one love ‘em the same as if they was Christians, mum.’ There was a melting tenderness in her voice when she talked about the flowers that half won over Edie’s heart, even in spite of her hard features.
‘I’m glad you’re so fond of flowers, Mrs.——. Oh, you haven’t told us your name yet,’ Edie said, beginning vaguely to suspect that perhaps the hard-faced landlady wasn’t quite as bad as she looked to a casual observer.
‘Alliss, mum,’ the landlady answered, filling up Edie’s interrogatory blank. ‘My name is ‘Alliss.’
‘Alice what?’ Edie asked again.
‘Oh, no, mum, you don’t rightly understand me,’ the landlady replied, getting very red, and muddling up her aspirates more decidedly than ever, as people with her failing always do when they want to be specially deliberate and emphatic: ‘not Halice, but ‘Alliss; haitch, hay, hell, hell, hi, double hess—‘Alliss: my full name’s Martha ‘Alliss, mum; my ‘usband’s John ‘Alliss. When would you like to come in?’
‘At once,’ Edie answered. ‘We’ve left our luggage at the cloak-room at Waterloo, and my husband will go back and fetch it, while I stop here with the baby.’
‘Not that, he shan’t, indeed, mum,’ cried the hard-faced landlady, hastily; ‘beggin’ your pardon for sayin’ so. Our John shall go—that’s my ‘usband, mum; and you shall give ‘im the ticket. I wouldn’t let your good gentleman there go, and ‘im so tired, too, not for the world, I wouldn’t. Just you give me the ticket, mum, and John shall go this very minnit and fetch it.’
‘But perhaps your husband’s busy,’ said Ernest, reflecting upon the probable cost of cab hire; ‘and he’ll want a cab to fetch it in.’
‘Bless your ‘eart, sir,’ said the landlady, busily arranging things all round the room meanwhile for the better accommodation of the baby, ‘’e ain’t noways busy ‘e ain’t. ‘E’s a lazy man, nowadays, John is: retired from business, ‘e says, sir, and ain’t got nothink to do but clean the knives, and lay the fires, and split the firewood, and such like. John were a coachman, sir, in a gentleman’s family for most of ‘is life, man and boy, these forty year, come Christmas; and we’ve saved a bit o’ money between us, so as we don’t need for nothink: and ‘e don’t want the cab, puttin’ you to expense, sir, onnecessary, to bring the luggage round in. ‘E’ll just borrer the hand-barrer from the livery in the mews, sir, and wheel it round ‘isself, in ‘arf an hour, and make nothink of it. Just you give me the ticket, and set you right down there, and I’ll make you and the lady a cup of tea at once, and John’ll bring round the luggage by the time you’ve got your things off.’
Ernest looked at Edie, and Edie looked at Ernest. Could they have judged too hastily once more, after their determination to be lenient in first judgments for the future? So Ernest gave Mrs. Halliss the cloak-room ticket, and Mrs. Halliss ran downstairs with it immediately. ‘John,’ the cried again, ‘—drat that man, where’s ‘e gone to? Oh, there you are, dearie! Just you put on your coat an’ ‘at as fast as ever you can, and borrer Tom Wood’s barrer, and run down to Waterloo, and fetch up them two portmanteaus, will you? And you drop in on the way at the Waterfield dairy—not Jenkins’s: Jenkins’s milk ain’t good enough for them—and tell ‘em to send round two penn’orth of fresh this very minnit, do y’ear, John, this very minnit, as it’s extremely pertickler. And a good thing I didn’t give you them two eggs for your dinner, as is fresh-laid by our own ‘ens this mornin’, and no others like ‘em to be ‘ad in London for love or money; and they shall ‘ave ‘em boiled light for their tea this very evenin’. And you look sharp, John,—drat the man, ‘ow long ‘e is—for I tell yon, these is reel gentlefolk, and them pore too, which makes it all the ‘arder; and they’ve got to be treated the same in every respect as if they was paying a ‘ole suvverin, bless their ‘earts, the pore creechurs.’