"Honored Miss: As an old and humble friend of your late lamented grandfather, whose loss I can never recover from, nor has it yet been made up to me in any way"—Angela laughed—"I venture to address the following lines in secrecy and confidence, knowing that what ought not to be concealed should be told in the proper quarter, which is you, miss, and none other.
"Everybody in these parts knows me; everybody knows Bunker, your grandfather's right-hand man; wherefore what I write is with no other design than to warn you and to put you on your guard against the deceitful, and such as would abuse your confidingness, being but young—ay, yes, and therefore ignorant of dodges, and easy to come round.
"You have been come round, and that in such a shameful way that I cannot bear myself any longer, and must take the liberty of telling you so, being an old and confidential adviser. Your grandfather used to say that even the brewery wouldn't be where it is now if it hadn't been for me, not to speak of the house property, which is now a profitable investment, with rents regular and respectable tenants, whereas before I took it in hand the houses were out of repair, the rents backward, and the tenants too often such as would bring discredit on any estate. I therefore beg to warn you against two persons—young, I am sorry to say, which makes it worse, because it is only the old who should be thus depraved—whom you have benefited and they are unworthy of it.
"One of them is a certain Miss Kennedy, a dressmaker, at least she says so. The other is—I write this with a blush of indignant shame—my own nephew, whose name is Harry Goslett."
"Bunker!" murmured Angela. "Is this fair to your own tenant and your own nephew?"
"As regards my nephew, you have never inquired about him, and it was out of your kindness and a desire to mark your sense of me, that you gave him a berth in the brewery. That young man, miss, who calls himself a cabinet-maker and doesn't seem to know that a joiner is one thing and a cabinet-maker another, now does the joinery for the brewery, and makes, I am told, as much as two pounds a week, being a handy chap. If you asked me first, I should have told you that he is a lazy, indolent, free and easy, disrespectful, dangerous young man. He has been no one knows where; no one knows where he has worked, except that he talks about America; he looks like a betting man; I believe he drinks of a night; he has been living like a gentleman, doing no work, and I believe, though up to the present I haven't found out for certain, that he has been in trouble and knows what is a convict's feelings when the key is turned. Because he is such a disgrace to the family, for his mother was a Coppin and came of a respectable Whitechapel stock, though not equal to the Bunkers or the Messengers, I went to him and offered him five-and-twenty pounds out of my slender stock to go away and never come back any more to disgrace us. Five-and-twenty pounds I would have given to save Messenger's brewery from such a villain."
"Bunker, Bunker!" murmured Angela again.
"But he wouldn't take the money. You thought to do me a good turn and you done yourself a bad one. I don't know what mischief he has already done in the brewery, and perhaps he is watched; if so it may not yet be too late. Send him about his business. Make him go. You can then consider some other way of making it up to me for all that work for your grandfather whereof you now sweetly reap the benefit.
"The other case, miss, is that of the young woman, Kennedy by name, the dressmaker."
"What of her, Bunker?" asked Angela.
"I hear that you are givin' her your custom, not knowing, maybe, the kind of woman she is nor the mischief she's about. She's got a house of mine on false pretences."
"Really, Bunker," said Angela, "you are too bad."
"Otherwise I wouldn't let her have it, and at the end of the year out she goes. She has persuaded a lot of foolish girls, once contented with their lowly lot and thankful for their wages and their work, nor inclined to grumble when hours were long and work had to be done. She has promised them the profits, and meantime she feeds them up so that their eyes swell out with fatness. She gives them short hours, and sends them out into the garden to play games. Games, if you please, and short hours for such as them. In the evening it's worse, for then they play and sing and dance, having young men to caper about with them, and you can hear them half a mile up the Mile End Road, so that it is a scandal to Stepney Green, once respectable, and the police will probably interfere. Where she came from, who she was, how she got her money, we don't know. Some say one thing, some say another; whatever they say it's a bad way. The worst is that when she smashes, as she must, because no ladies who respect virtue and humble-mindedness with contentment will employ her, that the other dressmakers and shops will have nothing to do with her girls, so that what will happen to them no one can tell.
"I thought it right, miss, to give you this information, because it is certain that if you withdraw your support from these two undeserving people, they must go away, which as a respectable Stepney man, I unite in wishing may happen before long, when the girls shall go on again as before and leave off dancing and singing to the rich, and be humble and contented with the trust to which they were born.
"And as regards the kindness you were meditating toward me, miss, I think that I may say that none of my nephews—one of whom is a Radical, and another a captain in the Salvation Army—deserves to receive any benefits at your hands, the least of all that villain who works in the brewery. Wherefore, it may take the form of something for myself. And it is not for me to tell you, miss, how much that something ought to be for a man in years, of respectable station, and once the confidential friend of your grandfather, and prevented thereby from saving as much as he had otherwise a right to expect.
"I remain, miss, your humble servant,
"Benjamin Bunker."
"This," said Angela, "is a very impudent letter. How shall we bring him to book for it?"