A fortnight later, as Jabez was midway up the avenue to Carr in the afternoon, he turned, hearing the blithe bugle of the coming Buxton coach, and watched its dashing progress along the road. To his astonishment it stopped at the gate. He himself reached the spot at a run.
His eyes had not played him false. Simon Clegg, in his best clothes, was there on the box seat; Tom Hulme and Bess and little Sim sat close behind him. Mr. Ashton was himself an inside passenger.
In the bustle and confusion of alighting, and dragging boxes from the boot and from the top, curiosity was kept on the stretch. It was not until the entire party were under the roof of the cottage that Jabez was enlightened. Tom Hulme was the new overlooker, Bess the new caretaker of Carr Cottage, which was henceforth their rural rent-free home: and to Simon, long disqualified by rheumatism for the wet and slush of the tannery was given the charge of the garden, with a boy under him. And of all the group old Simon and little Sim were most delighted.
Some eight months before, Sim (then about two years old) had slipped on the frosty stones in the old Long Millgate Yard and, rolling down its rugged declivity, was supposed to have injured his spine, and he had been too delicate ever since to run about freely. To the child, therefore, whose shoulders seemed unnaturally high, the change from the stifling court was something too exuberant for expression. To Simon Clegg, who, in losing his crony Matt, had felt the old haunts oppressive, the bountiful expanse of nature before him, and the comfortable fragrant home, were matters of deep thankfulness.
“Moi lad,” said he to Jabez, when the latter was about to depart with Mr. Ashton, after they were fairly inducted, “ar Bess said thah would be a Godsend to us, an’ thah has bin. This Paradise o’ posies has o’ grown eawt o’ thy cradle. God bless thee!”
“I think, my dear, the experiment will succeed. There is a matronly air of respectability about Mrs. Hulme, that will help to uphold her husband’s position amongst the workpeople, and I can trust his soldierly discipline for keeping the rebellious in order.”
Thus said Mr. Ashton to his good lady, sitting by the fire-side after supper, the night of his return home. Then, after a little pondering and trifling with his snuff-box, he added, as if reflectively—
“It is all very well, my dear, to serve the young man’s friends and ourselves at the same time, but I should like to do something for Jabez himself. It is entirely to his clear head and his tact that we owe the preservation of peace at Whaley-Bridge. I should like to give him a rise.”
“My dear William, make no more haste than good speed, and never do things in a hurry,” replied his calm proverbial philosopher. “We must not excite the envy of his fellow-clerks, or we shall surround him with enemies from the first. In removing his humble friends you have cleared one barrier to his advancement.”