“Oh, but that’s just what you mustn’t do!” cried Barney, with great eagerness. “Have pity, if not on my loneliness, at least on my hopeless ignorance, don’t you know, in a matter that I, of all others, ought to be interested—vitally interested—in. You see there may be no insurance, and perhaps I’m a beggar—may have to sell my tandem, don’t you know; sacrifice my pictures, and all that sort of thing. I must hear about the fire, and all about it. It’s of more importance even than the condition of the workingman, to me at least, dear as that subject is and—all—interwoven—as I may say, with my very—ah—being,—the workingman, don’t you know.”
“But,” protested his anxious listener, “I know nothing about the insurance,—nothing whatever. You should go at once to London, by the very first train. There has been an inquest, and I expect to find a report of it in this paper. You can buy a paper at the station, and then you will learn everything that is to be known until you reach London.”
“I say, Miss Sartwell,” said Barney, in an injured tone, “you surely can’t expect me to understand what’s in the paper! I never could, don’t you know. They seem to me to print such rubbish. Now you can explain it all to me in a very short time—you always make everything so clear. If you will just step into this cart of mine, I’ll drive out of town and around behind the school; then no one will see us, and you can reach there much more quickly than if you walked, don’t you know.”
The girl frowned, and Barney saw with surprise that she perhaps had, after all, some of her father’s impatience. He felt he was not progressing quite as favourably as he could wish; but a few words would put that right, if he could get her to go with him for a drive.
“Mr. Hope,” she said, severely, “you will pardon me if I say that, under the circumstances, you should be busy in London rather than idling at Eastbourne. An unexpected calamity has happened; the business is deranged, and men are out of work just now when they need it most; yet here you stand idly talking of tandems and driving!”
Barney opened his eyes wide with astonishment. Here actually was censure, plain and undisguised. He had never encountered it before from any lady, except perhaps from his mother—and she did not count; for, as he knew, she would be the first to resent blame placed upon him by any one else.
“But—but what can I do?” stammered the unfortunate young man, with strong emphasis on the personal pronoun.
“I, of course, don’t know; but that is what I should find out, if I were in your place.”
“Nobody pays the least attention to what I say: they never did, and it’s not likely they’re going to begin now. Your father didn’t even take the trouble to telegraph, although he knows I’m here.”
“He knows you are here?”