“Aunt kept on saying I ought to bring her up to London with me.” The perturbed lad examined closely the peak of his cap. “What the others seeggested was that I should get you to go down to Railway Terrace and argy it all out with my late landlady. One of the ticket collectors said there wasn’t nobody on the station who could make himself so unpleasant as you, Mr. Swan, when you felt so inclined.”
“I do my best,” admitted Porter Swan.
“’Nother one recommended you should go down there and knock at the door and pretend to have had a drop or two too much.”
“Why pretend?”
The new porter had endured a hard week; all the tricks of an inventive staff had been played upon him, and Porter Swan took a lively interest in these, prompting colleagues to further efforts. Now that young Mannering arrived with his troubles and appealed for help, games were set aside.
“She’s evidently a terror,” admitted Porter Swan presently. “If you’d only come and asked me at the outset I might have told you where to go. ’Pon me word, I don’t know quite now what to be up to!”
“If you don’t,” said young Mannering hopelessly, “then no one does.”
“Why not go back and make the best of it for a while?”
“Mr. Swan,” declared the youth tearfully, “I do assure you her chops are worse than her vegetables, and her vegetables worse than her chops. I was bound to leave.”
“And you want your property, then, without paying too much?”