"Best to hold one's tongue about it, eh? Anyway, the old lady's got a berth for a time. Rum story! She'd have been put to it if it hadn't been for the turn things took. When's she to go?"
"To these here Towels, or Towers, whichever you call 'em? M'riar didn't spot that. When she's took back, I suppose. When the young lady goes."
"What'll your young customer say to Mrs. Prichard being gone, when his aunt brings him back?"
Uncle Mo seemed to cogitate over this. He had not perhaps been fully alive to the disappointment in store for Dave when he came back and found no Mrs. Picture at Sapps Court. Poor little man! The old prizefighter's tender heart was touched on his boy's behalf. But after all there would be worse trials than this on the rough road of life for Dave. "He'll have to lump it, I expect, Jerry," said he. "Besides, Mrs. P., she'll come back as soon as the new plaster's dry. She's not going to stop at the Towels—Towers—whatever they are!—for a thousand years."
CHAPTER XXXI
HOW GWEN GOT AT MRS. PRICHARD's HISTORY, OR SOME OF IT. ONE CRIME MORE OF HER SON'S. THE WALLS OF TROY, AND THOSE OF SAPPS COURT. AUNT M'RIAR'S VISIT OF INSPECTION. HOW SHE CALLED ON MRS. RAGSTROAR, WHO SENT HER SECRETIVE SON ROUND. HIS MESSAGE FROM MR. WIX. WHO WAS COMING TO SEE HIS MOTHER, UNLESS SHE WAS SOMEBODY ELSE. A MESSAGE TO MR. WIX, UNDERTAKEN BY MICHAEL. UNCLE MO's JOY AT THE PROSPECT OF DAVE AND DOLLY
How very improbable the Actual would sometimes feel, were it not for our knowledge of the events which led up to it!
Nothing could have been more improbable per se than that old Mrs. Prichard, upstairs at No. 7, down Sapps Court, should become the guest of the Earl and Countess of Ancester, at The Towers in Rocestershire. But a number of improbable antecedent events combined to make it possible, and once its possibility was established, it only needed one more good substantial improbability to make it actual. Gwen's individuality was more than enough to supply this. But just think what a succession of coincidences and strange events had preceded the demand for it!
To our thinking the New Mud wanted for Dave's barrage was responsible for the whole of it. But for that New Mud, Dave would not have gone to the Hospital. But for the Hospital, he would never have excited a tender passion in the breast of Sister Nora; would never have visited Granny Marrowbone; would never have been sought for by The Aristocracy at his residence in Sapps Court. Some may say that at this point nothing else would have occurred but for the collapse of Mr. Bartlett's brickwork, and that therefore the rarity of sound bricks in that conglomerate was the vera causa of the events that followed. But why not equally the imperfection of old Stephen's aim at Achilles? If he had killed Achilles, it is ten to one Gwen would have gone abroad with her mother, instead of being spirited away to Cavendish Square by her cousin in order that she should thereby become entangled in slums. Or for that matter, why not the death of the Macganister More? Had he been living still, Cousin Clo would never have visited Ancester Towers at all.