"I think we are all forgetting our different positions in this world," he said.
"I ain't," said the showman, "not taking no advantage through the gentleman's noble ways. He's a lord, he is, I don't make no doubt. And we're paid. Take the good of it, Guv'nor, and welcome; all them as is here is welcome. My mate and I are too well paid. A gentleman like that good gentleman, as is sweet upon a pretty young lady, and an open 'eart a-cause of her, I just wish we could find one at every station; don't you, Joe?"
Joe assented, in the person of Mr. Punch, with a horrible squeak from within the tent.
The sensations of Elinor during this episode were peculiar and full of mingled emotion. It is impossible to deny that she was proud of the effect produced by her lover. The sovereign chucked into the showman's hand was a cheap way of purchasing a little success, and yet it dazzled Elinor, and made her eyelids droop and her cheek light up with the glow of pleasure. Amid all the people who would search for pennies, or perhaps painfully and not without reluctance produce a sixpence to reward the humble artists, there was something in the careless familiarity and indifference which tossed a gold coin at them which was calculated to charm the youthful observer. Elinor felt the same mixture of pleasure and envy which had moved Alick Hudson; yet it was not envy, for was not he her own who did this thing which she would have liked to have done herself, overwhelming the poor tramps with delight? Elinor knew, as Alick also did, that it would never have occurred to her to do it. She would have been glad to be kind to the poor men, to give them a good meal, to speak to Basset at the Bull's Head in their favour that they might be taken in for the night and made comfortable, but to open her purse and take a real sovereign from it, a whole potential pound, would not have come into her head. Had such a thing been done, for instance, by the united subscriptions of the party, in case of some peculiarly touching situation, the illness of a wife, the loss of a child, it would have been done solemnly, the Rector calling the men up, making a little speech to them, telling them how all the ladies and gentlemen had united to make up this, and how they must be careful not to spend it unworthily. Elinor thought she could see the little scene, and the Rector improving the occasion. Whereas Phil spun the money through the air into the man's ready hand as if it had been a joke, a trick of agility. Elinor saw that everybody was much impressed with the incident, and her heart went forth upon a flood of satisfaction and content. And it was no premeditated triumph. It was so noble, so accidental, so entirely out of his good heart!
When he hurried her home at the end of the performance, that Mrs. Dennistoun might not be kept waiting, the previous events of the afternoon, and all that happened in the copse and garden, had faded out of Elinor's mind. She forgot Stanfield and the 6th and everything about it. Her embarrassment and trouble were gone. She went in gayly and told her mother all about this wonderful incident. "The Rector was trying for a sixpence. But, mamma, Phil must not be so ready with his sovereigns, must he? We shall have nothing to live upon if he goes chucking sovereigns at every Punch and Judy he may meet."
CHAPTER XIII.
Phil Compton went off next morning by an early train, having in the meanwhile improved the impression of him left upon the family in general, and specially upon Mrs. Dennistoun, to whom he had talked with enthusiasm about Elinor, expressed indeed in terms unusual to her ears, but perhaps only more piquant on that account, which greatly conciliated the mother. "Don't you think," said the Honourable Phil, "because I speak a little free and am not one for tall talk, that I don't know what she is. I've got no poetry in me, but for the freest goer and the highest spirit, without a bit of vice in her, there never was one like Nell. The girls of my set, they're not worthy to tie her shoes—thing I most regret is taking her among a lot that are not half good enough for her. But you can't help your relations, can you? and you have to stick to them for dozens of reasons. There's the Jew, when you know her she's not such a bad sort—not generous, as you may see from what she's given Nell, the old screw: but yet in her own way she stands by a fellow, and we'll need it, not having just the Bank of England behind us. Her husband, old Prestwich, isn't bad for a man that has made his own money, and they've got a jolly house, always something going on."
"But I hope," said Mrs. Dennistoun, "that as soon as these autumn visits are over you will have a house of your own."
"Oh, that!" said Compton, with a wave of his hand, which left it in some doubt whether he was simply throwing off the suggestion, or treating it as a foregone conclusion of which there could be no doubt. "Nell," he went on, "gets on with the Jew like a house on fire—you see they don't clash. Nell ain't one of the mannish sort, and she doesn't flirt—at least not as far as I've seen——"