“Day before yesterday.”
Brancepeth sighed.
“And she didn’t leave ’ny money, and she didn’t leave ’ny orders for us, and the servants went away, and there was nothin’ to eat, and the scullery-maid she came upstairs, and said: ‘You duckies, I’ll buy you chops if I go without a new hat,’ and nurse said she was an imperent jade, and we didn’t get ’ny chops, and somebody sent to uncle Ronnie, and he came and gived money, and I told him of the scullery-maid, and he gived her half a sovereign, and said, ‘You’re a good girl,’ and that I heard, and we and the dogs and horses go down this afternoon.”
Jack drew a long breath after his eloquence, and added, “Harriet is gone down into Essex to see her mother, who’s dyin’, or she’d have bought the chops.”
There were very few persons on the north side of the Park, and they went on across the grass until they had got out of sight of the groom, and came up to an elm-tree with a circular bench round its roots.
“Let’s sit down a moment, Jack,” said Harry. “It will be a long time perhaps before I see you again.”
“Why?” said Jack, in alarm. “Are you going to Ems?”
“No, dear—I am not going to Ems,” said Brancepeth sadly, looking down at the boy’s face, with the golden nimbus of its ruffled hair and the black circle of the sailor hat framing the hair as in an ebon frame. There was no one near.
The great elm trunk was behind them like a wall, and its branches above them like a roof.
How far away they seemed, those pleasant summers when, as the London season ended, he and she had planned their meetings at this bath or at the other, and Cocky, pliant, philosophic Cocky, had said always opportunely: “You’ll come too, won’t you, Harry? Filthy feeding and beastly waters, but they set one on one’s legs again somehow or other.”