“Look where you’re going, mother.”
“Here we are,” said Bobbie. “I’ll just go first and see if you can come in.”
Not only could they go in, but they did go in, and Mrs. Bell’s astonishment at the cleanliness of the place was so frank and so genuine that the Collingwood mother instantly unbent from a rigid attitude of defence and took Mrs. Bell into the sitting-room, where over a strong cup of tea that extorted from Mrs. Bell (her be-rosed bonnet untied and the cloak loosened) further compliments, the two ladies discussed new soaps as opposed to what they called elbow grease, and found common ground in applauding the manners of thirty years ago. Bobbie and Miss Trixie Bell, thus released from attendance, strolled round the gardens, where Bobbie showed the young woman his special plot, and gave her, comme souvenir, a potato, which owed its existence and growth to his efforts. He took her to see the small room near the school, where the band practised, and confided to her his aspirations in regard to the cornet. On Trixie desiring, with some diffidence, to know what Bobbie proposed to be when he should arrive at manhood, he replied, “A sailor, very like,” and Miss Bell instantly expressed her disapproval on the ground that occupation at sea took a man from his home to an extent that was scarcely convenient. Bobbie acknowledged that he had not at present made up his mind definitely, and that perhaps after all he should come back to Hoxton and dodge about and pick up a living somehow, but this plan also found disfavour in the young woman’s eyes, and she argued against it with much force and eloquence until Bobbie felt bound to interfere.
“Tell you what,” he said brusquely, “I shall do jest what I jolly well like.”
Returning to Collingwood after this heated debate, the two appeared rather silent, and when a long red-haired girl nodded from the other side of the way to Bobbie, Miss Bell inquired curtly concerning her, to which Bobbie replied frivolously and incorrectly that her name was Montmorency, speaking of her as the lady to whom he was engaged to be married; the facts being that her name was Nutler, and that he and the ruddy-haired young lady had not yet exchanged a word with each other. Mrs. Bell found herself borne off by her perturbed daughter in the middle of an interesting description of the manner in which she lost Mr. Bell, and at the gates the good soul kissed Bobbie and gave him a shilling; the while Miss Bell walked off and assumed a languid interest in a mail cart belonging to an infant boarder. Bobbie touched his cap.
“It’s my belief, Trixie,” declared Mrs. Bell, before she was out of hearing, “that he’ll grow up a perfect gentleman.”
“Oh, will he?” said Bobbie to himself, with great artfulness. “Shows how much she knows about it.”
CHAPTER VII.
Occasions when the boy allowed himself an outburst of rebellion became more rare as he felt his way slowly up the school-room to the height of the third standard; the Collingwood mother found herself able one day to congratulate him on the fact that for two months he had not imperilled his right to a meat dinner. Excellence of table proved, indeed, with all the boys in the Cottage Homes a powerful incentive to good behaviour. The bill of fare changed every day; boiled beef and carrots on (say) Thursday were followed by roast mutton on Friday and by Irish stew on Saturday, with a precise allowance to each cottage (a restriction which did not apply to vegetables), so that meals had, by reason of this variety, a charm of unexpectedness which pleased the boys greatly. In their own homes in Hoxton most of them had only been sure of two things in regard to dinner—either that there would not be enough, or that there would be none at all. Thus it was that when appeals to a boy’s sense of honour or his sense of decorum failed, an appeal to his appetite proved effective. With Bobbie, moreover, there was ever, as a high goal to be strived for, the band. With the assistance of a good-natured euphonium who lived in Collingwood, and after much wrestling with obstinate difficulties, the knowledge that F.A.C.E. spelt the open spaces became his proud possession; other musical facts capitulated on seeing his determination. Whenever tempted to punch another boy’s head, and roll that boy on the asphalted space where they played during the ten minutes’ relief from school, and to tear that boy’s pocket, and to do him grievous damage, the thought of himself marching in the band uniform and blowing the cornet part of the “Turkish Patrol” arrested his hand; the same thought did him the same good service when, on being sent to the store-keeper’s room, he found himself near to an open drawer containing sugar and chocolate. At times, however, temper burst so suddenly that there was no time for the thought of cornet to intervene, and then the possibility of being allowed to join the band went away so far as to be nearly out of sight, and Bobbie mourned. On one of these grey days he happened to be despatched to the bandmaster with a note. The bandmaster was rehearsing the overture to “Zampa” in the small room overfilled with noise by twenty lads, who had become scarlet-faced from the tension of watching the slips of music before them, of watching, also, the bandmaster’s beat.
“’Pon my word,” cried the bandmaster explosively, rapping the stand before him with his stick, and stopping the brazen blasts that had made windows shake, “if you cornets aren’t enough to make a saint forget himself. What do you think you’re doing?”