“Je vous aime,” said the angel. On Bobbie demanding a translation, the large young lady, shading her face with the green parasol, furnished this.
“Who learnt it you?” demanded Bobbie jealously.
“Ah,” said the angel acutely, “that’s tellings.”
It galled him considerably on the last occasion that the breezy young curate took him under his wing to fly away with him along the cliff and look in at the Martello tower for a picture of a ship which the Coastguard had promised to him, to find the small room almost wholly occupied by a tall bashful young Customs officer, with limbs so long that when he sat down his knees came up in a manner which Bobbie considered eminently ridiculous. The angel had not arrived, but was expected; when the curate insisted upon Bobbie coming away with him, his picture of the ship under his arm, in order that they might skirt the cliffs swallow-like once more, Bobbie complied with hesitation, being thus denied the joy of seeing the lady of his heart.
“I’d like to stay ’ere all me bloomin’ lifetime,” said Bobbie to the Lady Superintendent that night.
Nevertheless, the next day he had to listen to the voice of reasonableness, to pack up the books that had been given him by the curate, the picture that Coastguard had presented, and a marvellous four-bladed knife from the angel, for which he had paid to that young lady the sum of one halfpenny, in order that the knife might not, in its keenness, sever friendship. He said good-bye to the Lady Superintendent, remembering (just in time) to say, “Thank you,” a phrase with which he had become on intimate terms, and walked stolidly down to the station, where a train would take him back to London and the Homes. As he looked at the contents of the bookstall (he had begun in those days to feel an appetite for reading, and a strange craving when not furnished with something in the form of printed words) to him appeared:—
First, the angel! Bobbie had felt confident that the large young lady would not allow him to depart without giving him an opportunity of formally declaring his love; he had already decided on the form of his address.
Second, the curate! Curate flying in through the booking office, skimming restlessly up and down the platform, chatting with porters, chucking babies under the chin, and telling the station-master how a railway ought to be managed.
Third, Coastguard. Jiggering everything at frequent intervals; handing over to Bobbie as final gifts a parcel of huge ham sandwiches and a model clockwork steamer.
Fourth, as the train signalled from the preceding station, an entirely unnecessary person in the shape of the tall Customs officer, rather shy, but taking up, as it seemed to Bobbie, the unwarrantable attitude of being a friend of the family, and brushing from the angel’s brown cape a few specks of dust with a calmness for which Bobbie, circumstances willing, could have felled him to the platform.