“Order, there!” commanded the girl imperatively. “Some of you’ll get chucked out if you don’t keep quiet.”
The last verse came to the deeply interested compartment:
“And now she is the lawyer’s wife,
And dearly the lawyer loves her;
They live in a happy content of life
And well in the station above her.”
The women clapped hands. One remembered her grandmother singing it years and years and years ago; another had heard it once and only once, at a Foresters’ fête; a third had always recollected the air, but the words she could not have recalled though you offered her a pension. The London children, touched by the genuine enthusiasm, sang “Blow Away the Morning Dew” and “The Two Magicians.” The audience pressed apples upon them.
“You’re never getting out here, my dears?” protested the brown-faced woman. They assured her this was their destination. “Well, then,” taking up her heavy basket, “dang it all—it only means a extra fowermile walk for me—if I don’t get out with you, just for the pleasure of your company!”
XV—MY BROTHER EDWARD
The case of my brother Edward is typical of many, and I set the facts down here, partly as reminder to myself, mainly for the information of the public. I said once, when in the company of some other bright spirits, that the pupils of yesterday are the teachers of to-morrow, by which remark I meant to convey that we learn in our youth, and in our middle age become, in turn, the instructors. Poor Edward had the same advantages that came to me in school days, the very same advantages. Our mother consulted us in turn; I, the elder, decided, without hesitation, to go into the City; Edward, a year later, suggested that he should go into an engineering place at Wandsworth, on the other side of the river.
“No, no,” I said when I reached home that night. “This won’t do at all. Choose a refined occupation. We don’t want all Fulham to think that the sweeps are continually coming in and going out of the house. We may have our faults, but no one can say that we haven’t always worn a clean collar.”
“I’ll keep mine for Sundays,” remarked Edward.
“Mother,” I went on, “please let it be understood that this is a matter which concerns me to some extent. Supposing I wished to bring home a friend from Bucklersbury, and supposing that just as I opened the front gate Edward came along. How should I be able to explain—”