"I have talked to that poor thing upstairs, as a woman of my age is privileged to do. And she has softened wonderful, Solomon, and from what she has owned—has seen the shame and wickedness of her life clear, and longed to be delivered from it—this many and many a day, I'm sure! So if you'll kindly whistle up a four-wheeler, I'll make bold—being late for the speaking at the Judd Street Branch Hall!—to take her down to the Christian Mission Army Headquarters in the Whitechapel Road. Where I shall find not only the General, as they call Mr. Booth, but Mrs. Booth, ready and willing, please Heaven! to help the poor soul to a better life! And though Lilla has gone home to spend Sunday with her mother at Southampton Mews, I'll stop there passing and send a note in, and she'll come round and dish up dinner—and don't you, either of you, dream of waiting a minute for me! Now, I'm going back to Miss Morency—though her real name is nothing like so grand as that, poor creature!"
She turned at the door to nod and smile and say: "And her and me will carry down her box between us, so don't show yourselves to shame her poor swelled face before the cabman."
"There's a woman!" said Mr. Knewbit exultantly, a few minutes later, as the hall-door shut and the cab-door banged, and the vehicle containing the Daughter of Rahab and the Woman Above Rubies rattled away in the direction of Holborn Circus.
"I wonder you——" P. C. Breagh was beginning, when he stopped himself on the brink of an indiscretion.
"Eh?..." interrogated Mr. Knewbit. "What? ... Oh, but I did, though!"
Mr. Knewbit rubbed his chin, which needed shaving, and shook his head in a despondent way.
"I did. She was thirty-one when the Earl and Countess pensioned her—thirty-one pound a year For Life they promised.... And it's been paid regularly, going on for nineteen year now. And in the second year I came to lodge here early in January, and finding her a comfortable, cleanly, kindly creature, I stopped on—and all but asked her to marry me next time New Year came round. On the following anniversary I took the plunge! after reading a passage of Solomon's peculiarly applicable to my case. 'He that hath found a good wife hath found a good thing,' it was. Turned it up by accident, and showed it to her, and asked her. And she said No! And goes on saying it—though I ask her for the last time regularly every year. Here's the gal coming down the area-steps. Now that meat and pudding's off my conscience, I shall put on my boots for an airing before dinner. And while I'm gone—try your hand at a neat article in moderate paragraphs describing the methods of that"—Mr. Knewbit cast about for a new term—"that Man-eating Alligator in the Euston Road. What was the name of the place? 'Royal Copenhagen Hotel!' ... Why, it fairly smells of roguery! 'Royal Greenhorn' would be pretty well up to the mark."
Mr. Knewbit returned, just as the little servant pronounced dinner to be in danger of spoiling—in a cab; and thereupon ensued much jolting and bumping, suggestive of the conveyance of heavy articles up the doorsteps into the hall. Where, being summoned from the kitchen by a bellow, P. C. Breagh recognized his own trunks and book-boxes, and wrung the hand of his good genius with a grateful swelling of the heart, and an irrepressible watering of the eyes.
"It was so kind!—and suppose I never am able to pay you—or keep you waiting a devil of a time?" he protested incoherently.
"Young fellow," said Mr. Knewbit, scowling with his heavy brows and twinkling pleasantly from under them. "You are a gentleman born and bred and taught. You must have your Books to keep up your Latin and Greek and other learning—and to keep up your appearance you must have your clothes. No man is so down in the world that he can afford to go downer. This is my opinion, and also Miss Ling's!"