“Trixie,” said the man-of-war, coming dangerously close to the side of the neat craft, “if anybody’s to blame, it’s me. Only—”
“We shall quarrel again, dear,” said Trixie Bell, sedately, “if you talk like that. You’re quite right in what you’ve made up your mind to do, and I respect you all the more for it, and if you’re away ten seconds, or if you’re away ten years, I shall always be the same and—”
The man-of-war saluted with so much promptitude that a newspaper boy in the bookstall, safe in ambush behind an illustrated journal, made ventriloquial comment. Miss Threepenny hurried up.
“Now run, Bobbie,” said the tiny woman, breathlessly. “You’ll just catch it, and—good luck to you!”
He caught the train as it moved out of the station and jumped into a third-class compartment. When he had regained his breath he leaned his bare head delightedly out of the window to enjoy the cool air that had come after the shower.
“Upon my word,” he said, to Stepney Station, with some astonishment, “I begin to think that I don’t half understand women.”
From this remark it will be seen that Robert Lancaster, formerly child of the State, and shortly to enter the service of his great parent, was now no longer very young. Wherefore it is here that one may prepare to take leave of him.
CHAPTER XVI.
The new shop which bore the name of Miss Beatrice Bell stood so far up the Kingsland Road, beyond the canal, that you might have said it was in Dalston, and none would have dared offer contradiction. A happy situation, in that the shop found itself able to at once keep touch with the superior classes of Hoxton and with the middle classes of Dalston; a distinction being made in the two windows, so that Hoxton lady clients on entering turned instinctively to the left counter, whilst those from Dalston turned to the right. Beatrice Bell, grown to a tall, self-possessed young woman, still in slight mourning for her mother, had the nightly companionship of little Miss Threepenny, and assistance by day from the perky ’Tilderann, whose enthusiasm for the business was equalled by her intolerance of anything likely to interfere with achievement of these ends; her mistress’s habit of buying evening newspapers whenever the placards shouted anything about the Delar expedition, of making customers wait while she read the telegraphic accounts nervously, constituted a weakness that made ’Tilderann groan. But for these occasional lapses Beatrice Bell had become a shrewd, business-like woman, not only reaching the high standard set by her assistant, but sometimes exceeding it, and extorting from that young woman gracious compliment. It was indeed worth watching to see and hear Miss Bell deal with some lady of Hoxton who having ideas of her own in regard to a new hat, insisted upon explaining them in detail. The young proprietress of the establishment would listen with perfect calm whilst the client described the kind of hat which represented her heart’s desire; when she had finished, Miss Bell would say icily, “I quite understand what you mean, but,” here a slight shrug of the shoulders, “they are no longer worn.” Upon which the lady customer could only ejaculate a confused and abashed “Ho!” and request that something that was being worn should be taken from the window and exhibited to her.
Beatrice Bell, her hands clasped behind her, taking the air at the doorway of her shop, and bowing to acquaintances in the swift crowd of young women hurrying northward to their tea, glanced up and down the busy road with its sailing trams and jerking ’buses. The hour was seven; the sky still light with a juvenile moon that seemed, with the impatience of youth, to have come out too early. Dashing young blades of shopkeepers also taking the air at their doorways, caught sight of the white-speckled blouse, and bowed to her, and noting with pain her distant acknowledgment, declared to each other that Miss Bell would stand an infinitely better chance of getting married were she less reserved in manner, a drawback which had already cheated her of more than one invitation to Epping Forest on early-closing day. “For,” said Mr. Libbis, the tobacconist, to his friend at the second-hand shop, “she may be as ’aughty as she likes, but after all, mind you, she’s only a girl.”