“Of course, if the driver hears you,” answered Mr Fluke in a sharp tone. “The boy may be a good arithmetician, but he knows nothing of London life,” he muttered to himself. “To be sure, how should he? But he must learn—he will in time, I suppose; I once knew no more than he does.”
Owen saw several coaches passing, and he shouted to them at the top of his voice, but no one took the slightest notice of him. At length the driver of a tumble-down looking vehicle, with a superb coat of arms on the panel, made a signal in return and drew up near the pavement.
“You will know how to call a coach in future,” said Mr Fluke. “Step in.”
The porter, who had been watching proceedings, not having ventured to interfere by assisting Owen, put the box in, after Mr Fluke had taken his seat, and then told the coachman where to drive to. The latter, applying his whip to the flanks of his horses, made them trot off, for a few minutes, at a much faster rate than they were accustomed to move at. They soon, however, resumed their usual slow pace, and not until Mr Fluke put his head out of the window, and shouted, “Are you going to sleep, man?” did he again make use of his whip.
“You must learn to find your way on foot, boy,” said Mr Fluke. “I do not take a coach every day; it would be setting a bad example. I never yet drove up to the counting-house, nor drove away in one, since I became a partner of old Paul Kelson, and he, it is my belief, never got into one in his life, until he was taken home in a fit just before his death.”
Owen thought he should have great difficulty in finding his way through all those streets, but he made no remark on the subject, determining to note the turnings as carefully as he could, should he accompany Mr Fluke the next morning back to Wapping.
The coach drove on and on; Mr Fluke was evidently not given to loquacity, and Owen had plenty of time to indulge in his own reflections. He wondered what sort of place his newly found relative was taking him to. He had not been prepossessed with the appearance of the office, and he concluded that Mr Fluke’s dwelling-house would somewhat resemble it. The coach at last emerged from the crowded streets into a region of trees and hedge-rows, and in a short time stopped in front of an old-fashioned red brick house, with a high wall apparently surrounding a garden behind it. At that moment the door of the house opened, and a tall thin female in a mob cap appeared.
“Bless me!” she exclaimed, as she advanced across the narrow space between the gate and the doorway; “and so he has come!”
She eyed Owen narrowly as she spoke. Simon Fluke declining her help as he stepped out, pointed to Owen’s box, which the coachman, who had got down from his seat, handed to her. Mr Fluke having paid the fare, about which there was no demur, he knowing the distance to an inch, led the way into the house, followed by Owen, the old woman, carrying his box, bringing up the rear.
“I have brought him, Kezia, as I said I possibly might. Do you look after him; let us have supper in a quarter of an hour, for I am hungry, and the boy I am sure is.”