The meal finished, the boy asked for a cigarette, and, smoking this with great enjoyment, told Myddleton West his adventures. The journey back from Brenchley had not been without drawbacks. At Orpington, Bobbie had interfered on behalf of the gipsy’s wife, with the perfectly natural result that she had turned on him indignantly, and both man and wife had, in turns, thrashed him, and had then started him adrift without his cornet. From Orpington to London he had walked.
“And now,” said Bobbie—“and now my difficulty is how to get back to the ’omes without looking a silly fool. What would you advise, sir?”
“I should send a wire,” counselled Myddleton West promptly. “Apologize for your absence, and say that you will be there in a few hours.”
“It’d pave the way a bit,” acknowledged the boy.
“Here’s a form. Write the address of the Superintendent.”
“You must tell us what else to say.”
The telegram drawn up on the dictation of the newspaper man, seemed to Bobbie an admirable document; one calculated to remove difficulties. Miss Langley being summoned, the boy was conveyed to the kitchen downstairs, where, furnished with a cake of yellow soap, he remained under the tap for about ten minutes. This so much improved his appearance that when Myddleton West started with him to take train at Blackfriars, the two sisters forced upon his acceptance a triangular chunk of seed cake and a gay almanack with a portrait of the Princess of Wales, which Bobbie decided to take as a propitiatory offering to the mother of Collingwood Cottage. The telegram was despatched from an office in Fleet Street after Bobbie had read it through once more with increased satisfaction.
“It ain’t too humble,” he said approvingly, “and it ain’t too much the other way. Seems to me to hit the ’appy medium.”
The fares from Temple Station to Bishopsgate and from Liverpool Street to the destination being ascertained from a railway time book, Bobbie agreed to accept from Myddleton West the precise amount and no more. He showed gratitude with less reserve than he would have exhibited in the years before he entered the Homes, and, as he trotted beside the long-legged journalist, he endeavoured politely to find a subject for conversation that would be pleasing to his companion.
“How are you getting along with your young lady, sir?” he asked with interest.