It was not until the Committee Meeting of the R.C.S. had nearly finished one evening that Erb, in searching for a letter which some members desired to see, found the note from Lady Frances’s uncle. He tore the flap casually, and, recognising it, placed the opened envelope aside, and pursued his searches for the required document. Spanswick, with a busy air of giving assistance, looked through the letters, and opened the communication which Lady Frances had brought.
“Pardon, old man,” whispered Spanswick confidentially. “Didn’t know I was interfering with money matters.”
CHAPTER X
It is the ingenious habit of Kentish railways directly that hop-picking is over and pay-day is done, to advertise excursions to London at a fare so cheap that not to take advantage of it were to discourage Providence in its attempts to make the world pleasant. Country folk, who make but one visit a year to town, seize this September opportunity; some avail themselves not only of this but of the Cattle Show trip later on; a few also take the pantomime excursion in February, and these are counted in quiet villages as being, by frequent contact with town, blades of the finest temper, to whom (if they would but be candid) no mysteries of the great town are unknown. Erb’s Aunt Emma, giving herself reward for a month’s hard work in the hop-garden, came up every year by the September excursion. It happened on this occasion that the day could not have made a more awkward attempt to fit in with Erb’s convenience.
“Well,” said Aunt Emma, in the ’bus, desolately, “I’m not surprised! It’s what comes of looking forward to anything. When I heerd as you may say, you’d left the railway, I said to the party that comes in on Mondays to help me do my week’s washing, ‘I don’t know,’ I says, ‘what to think ’bout all this.’”
“Any other day, almost,” urged her nephew, “I could have arranged for the day off, but I’ve got important work to do that’ll take me up to nine o’clock.”
“Whenever I find a bit of a lad giving up a honest living, I always say to Mrs. Turley, I say, ‘Dang it all, this won’t do!’ And when it ’appened to my brother’s own boy I turned round at once, I did, and I said, ‘I don’t know what to—’”
“If Louisa had been quite herself, why, of course, she—”
“I’ll get back to Lonnon Bridge,” said Aunt Emma grimly. “Reckon I shall be some’ing like Mrs. Turley’s eldest. He come up one November, he did—first time he’d been to Lonnon—and it were a bit foggy, so he kep’ in the station all day; when he come home, he says, ‘Mother,’ he says, ‘it’s a fine big place, Lonnon is, but it dedn’t quite come up to my expectations.’” The parchment-faced old lady was pleased by Erb’s reception of this anecdote, and, gratified also to get a smile from other passengers, she relaxed in manner; Erb saw the opportunity.
“Tell you what we’ve arranged, Aunt Emma. Louisa and me talked it over as soon’s ever we made out your letter—”