The first half-year’s cheque of Jack’s scholarship had come, and had been proudly deposited in the bank, as a nucleus of a fund in which father, son, and daughter were some day to participate.
And now the long-looked-for time had arrived when Jack and his father were to pay their promised visit to Packworth. I had seen them both half rejoicing in, half dreading the prospect; and now that I saw them actually start, I scarcely knew whether most to pity or envy them.
It was a lonely evening for me, the evening after I had seem them off. They had promised to write and tell me how they fared; but meanwhile I felt very desolate. Even Billy’s company failed altogether to raise my spirits.
However, as it happened, that youth had some news to give me which at any rate tended to divert my mind for a time from my bereaved condition.
“I seen that Mashing agin,” he said, abruptly.
“Did you? Where?”
“Down Trade Street. I was on a pal’s beat there, for a change, and he comes and wants his boots blacked. I knows the animal, but he don’t twig me, bein’ off my beat. I would a-liked to give the beauty a topper, so I would; but, bless you, where’s the use!”
“So you blacked his boots for him?”
“I did so. An’ ’e got a pal along of him, and they was a-jawin’ about a parson’s son as owed Mashing fifteen pound, and saying as they’d crack him up if he didn’t pay up. And then they was a-jawin’ about the shine up here that night, and the pal was a-chaffin’ Mashing cos of the wipin’ my bloke give ’im, and Mashing he says he reckons he’s quits with the prig—meaning the governor—by this time, he says. And t’other one say ‘’Ow?’ And Mashing says as the governor’s a conwex son, and he knows who Mr Conwex is, he says, and he are writ a letter to Miss Conwex, he says, down in the country, that’ll open ’er goggle eyes, he says.”
“What!” I exclaimed, starting from my seat, “he’s written to Mary, the brute!”