“Toff! I’d like to give ’im toffee! Comes into my ’ouse with ’is ’at on, and looks round ’im as though ’e was afraid to touch the floor with ’is boots. Sh’ld ’ear ’im talk, just as though ’is voice ’adn’t any stomach in it. I told ’im we had Murchison, Mrs. Gibbins or no Mrs. Gibbins. ’E looked me over as though I was a savage, and said, ‘Haw, yes, Dr. Murchison ’as all the parish cases, I believe.’ ‘And a good job, sir,’ says I. Lor’, I wouldn’t as much as scrub ’is dirty linen.”
Mr. Bains fingered his chin and sucked peacefully at his pipe.
“I likes brawn in a man,” he said, “and a big voice, and a bit of spark in th’ eye.”
“Don’t give me any of yer ‘trousers stretchers’ or yer fancy weskits—Murchison’s my man.”
“Grit, blessed grit to the bone of ’im.”
“And a real gentleman. Takes ’is ’at off in a ’ouse. T’other chap ’ain’t no manners.”
It is a cheap age, and cheap sentiment satisfies the masses, a mere matter of melodrama in which the villain is hissed and the “stage child” applauded when she points to heaven and invokes “Gawd” through her cockney nose. Sentiment in the more delicate phases may be either the refinement of hypocrisy or the shining out of the godliness in man. The trivial incidents of life may betray the true character more finely than the throes of a moral crisis. The average male might have dropped Miss Pretoria’s flowers round the nearest corner, or thrown them into his study grate to wither amid cigar ends and burned matches. James Murchison kept the flowers and gave them to his wife.
“Put them in water, dear, for me.”
“From a lady, sir?” and Catherine’s eyes searched the lines upon his face. She was jealous for his health, but her eyes were smiling. Dearest of all virtues in a woman are a brave cheerfulness and a tactful tongue.
Her husband kissed her, and it was a lover’s kiss.