“You must have forgotten, Mrs. Corklemore; for I heard Rosa tell you the name of the ship, and her destination.”
“Oh, very likely. Ah, now I remember. For the moment it quite escaped me. How truly, truly grieved—it has quite overcome me. Oh, please not to notice me—please not. I am so stupidly soft–hearted. Oh—ea, isha, ea!”
No woman in the world could cry more beautifully than poor Georgie. And now she cried her very best. It would have gone to the heart of the driest and bitterest sceptic that ever doubted all men and women because they would doubt him. But Rufus, whose form of self–assertion was not universal negation, in what manner then do you suppose that Rufus Hutton was liquefied? A simple sort of fellow he was (notwithstanding all his shrewdness), although, or perhaps I should say because, he thought himself so knowing; and his observation was more the result of experience than the cause of it. So away he ran to fetch Rosa, and Rosa wiped dear, sensitive Georgieʼs eyes, and coaxed her very pleasantly, and admired her more than ever.
Bull Garnet rode home at twelve oʼclock from a long morningʼs work. He never could eat any breakfast now, and his manner was to leave home at six (except when he went to Winchester), gallop fiercely from work to work, or sometimes walk his horse and think, often with glistening eyes (when any little thing touched him), and return to his cottage and rest there during the workmenʼs dinner–time. Then he had some sort of a meal himself, which Pearl began to call “dinner,” and away with a fresh horse in half an hour, spending his body if only so he might earn rest of mind. All this was telling upon him fearfully; even his muscular force was going, and his quickness of eye and hand failing him. He knew it, and was glad.
Only none should ever say, though every crime was heaped upon him, that he had neglected his masterʼs interests.
He tore the paper open in his sudden turbulent fashion, as if all paper was rags, and no more; and with one glance at each column knew all that was in the ‘tween–ways. Suddenly he came to a place at the corner of a page which made him cease from eating. He glanced at Pearl, but she was busy, peeling new potatoes for him. Bob was not come in yet.
“Darling, I must go to London. If possible I shall return to–night, if I catch the one oʼclock up express.”
Then he opened the window, and ordered a horse, his loud voice ringing and echoing round every corner of the cottage, and in five minutes he was off at full gallop, for the express would not stop at Brockenhurst.
At 3.15 he was in London, and at 3.40 in the counting–house of Messrs. Brown and Smithson, owners, or at any rate charterers, of the Taprobane, Striped–ball Chambers, Fenchurch Street. There he would learn, if he could, what their private advices were.