Erb/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
TURMOIL of the mind that followed in the next few days was increased by the worry of a Society engagement. To the servants' party in Eaton Square, Erb, having been formally invited, sent answer that he was busy with meetings of one sort and another, and begged, therefore, to be excused: this to his sister Louisa's great content. Arrived another post-card from Alice, saying that if this meant that he would not come unless Louisa were invited, then she supposed there was nothing to do but to ask them both; she would send a few things down by Carter Paterson the day before the party, that Louisa might adorn herself with something like distinction, and do as little harm as possible to the repute of Alice. To this, after an enthusiastic discussion (that was not a discussion, in that Louisa did all the talking), a reply was sent, stating that Louisa and himself would arrive by a series of 'buses on the night mentioned, and that Louisa begged her sister would not deprive herself of articles of attire, “me having,” said Louisa's note, “ample.” The incident had its fortunate side, insomuch that it absorbed the whole mind of the young sister, and prevented her from giving much attention to the matter of Erb's forced resignation. Lady experts called every evening at the model dwellings to give advice in regard to costume, and, in the workshop, other white-faced girls pushed aside the relation of their love affairs in order to give their minds to this subject: Louisa's current young man received stern orders not so much as dare show his face in Page's Walk for a good fortnight. It was only on the evening of the party, when Louisa, gorgeously apparelled, sat in the living-room, ready a full hour before the time for starting, and Erb in his bedroom about to start on the work of changing from a parcels carman to a private gentleman, that the short girl found leisure and opportunity to review Erb's affairs.
“And all the rest,” said Louisa severely in conclusion, “all the rest of these 'umbugs reaping the fruits of your labours, and you thrown out neck and crop. I can't think how you come to be such a idiot. You don't see me doing such silly things. What do you think your poor mother would say if she were 'ere?”
“You haven't seen the evening paper, I s'pose?” asked the voice of Erb, muffled by soap-suds.
“Evening paper!” echoed the short sister, fractiously. “Is this a time for bothering about evening papers? The question is what are you going to do next, Erb? Been round to any of the other stations?” A grunt from the bedroom intimated a negative answer. “You'll come to rack and ruin, Erb, that's what you'll come to if I don't look after you.”
“Catch hold.” A bare arm held out from the bedroom doorway a pink evening paper.
“What d'you want me to read now? I don't want to go botherin' my 'ead about murders when I'm full of this party.”
“Where my thumb is,” said Erb's voice. A damp mark guided her attention, and she read it, her lips moving silently as she went through the paragraph, her head giving its uncontrollable shake.
“We understand that a Society of Railway Carmen has been formed, and that the first meeting will be held at the Druid's Arms, Southwark, on Saturday evening, at half-past nine o'clock, a late hour fixed in order to secure the attendance of the men. There are two candidates for the position of secretary—Messrs. Herbert Barnes and James Spanswick. The former is losing his situation for taking part in a labour movement, and his case has excited a great deal of interest.”
“I say,” cried Louisa, in an awed voice, “that's never meant for you, Erb?”
“It ain't meant for anyone else,” called Erb. “Seen anything of my stud?”
“Where did you put it last? But, just fancy, in print too. And underneath is something about royalty.” Louisa clicked her tongue amazedly. “You never said anything about it, either.”
“No use talking too much—why, here's the collar stud in the shirt all the time.—no use talking too much beforehand. Besides, it isn't what you may call definitely settled yet. Spanswick's got very strong support, and he hates me as much as he likes beer. I said something rather caustic on one occasion about his grammar.”
“I shall snip this out,” said Louisa, as Erb appeared struggling into his coat, “and I shall show it privately to everybody I come across in Eaton Square to-night.”
“I don't know that that's worth while,” he said doubtfully.
“It'll let 'em see,” said Louisa, with decision, “that they ain't everybody. When you've done trimming your cuffs with the scissors, let me have 'em.”
No further word of disparagement came from the short girl as she trotted along proudly by the side of her brother to the junction where New Kent Road starts for Walworth and town. Indeed, outside the tram she expressed some surprise at the fact that so many people were not acquainted with her brother; she consoled herself by the assurance that once Erb obtained a start the whole world would join her in an attitude of respect; she also enjoyed, in anticipation, the reflected glory that would be hers in the workshop the following morning. Being as outspoken in praise as in blame, it resulted, as they walked over Westminster Bridge and took an omnibus, that not only Louisa, but Erb himself, had attained a glowing state of content, and when they arrived eventually at the house in Eaton Square (lighted recklessly below and sparsely illuminated above) they felt that the world might possibly contain their equals, but they were certainly not prepared to look on anybody as a superior.
“Jackson,” said the buttoned boy who opened the door as they descended the area, “this looks like your lot.”
“They call her Jackson,” whispered Louisa to her brother, interrupting his protest. “Parlourmaid here is always called Jackson.”
Alice came forward. A spray of wild flowers meandered from the waist of her pale blue dress to her neck; she took her brother's hand up high in the air before shaking it. A few tightly-collared young men stood about the entrance to the cleared kitchen, encouraging white gloves to cover their hands; they also had bunches of flowers in buttonholes, and one of them wore an open dress waistcoat. A Japanese screen masked the big range; nails in the walls had been relieved of their duties, a white-cloth'd table with refreshments stood at the end near a pianoforte.
“You're early,” said Alice, kissing her sister casually.
Louisa took the brown paper parcel from Erb's arm. “Thought you'd like the evening to start well,” she said. “Any gentlemen coming?”
“Haven't you got eyes?” asked Alice, leading the way upstairs and waving a hand in the direction of the shy youths.
“Gentlemen, I said,” remarked Louisa.
“I shall begin to wish I hadn't asked you,” said Alice pettishly, “if you're going on like that all the evening. I believe you only do it to annoy me.”
“What else could I do it for?” asked the short sister.
“Erb,” ordered the tall sister from the stairs, “you leave your hat and coat in that room. Thank goodness! I've got a brother who knows how to behave. Good mind now not to titivate your hair for you.”
“You mustn't mind me,” said Louisa, relenting at this threat. “It's only me manner.”
They were received on returning downstairs by the housekeeper, a large important lady in black silk and with so many chains that she might have been a contented inmate of some amazingly gorgeous and generous prison; the housekeeper having been informed that Erb was an official on a South of England railway begged him to explain why, in travelling through Ireland during the winter, it was so difficult to obtain foot-warmers, and seemed not altogether satisfied with the reply that it was probably because the Irish railways did not keep them in sufficient quantities. The cook, also stout but short, engaged Erb for the first two dances, assuring him (this proved indeed to be a fact) that she was, in spite of appearances, very light on her toes, and quoting a compliment that had been paid to her by a perfect stranger, and therefore unbiased, at Holborn Town Hall in the early eighties. But, after all, added cook inconsequently, the proof of the pudding was in the eating.
“And this, Erb, is Jessie,” said Alice, introducing a large-eyed young woman in pale green. “Jessie is my very great friend.” She added, “Just at present.”
“I think you speak, Mr. Barnes?” said the large-eyed young woman earnestly.
“I open my mouth now and again,” admitted Erb, “just for the sake of exercising my face.”
“Ah!” she sighed, looking at him in a rapt, absorbed way. “Somehow you put it all in a nutshell. I could almost—perhaps, I ought not to say it—but I could almost worship a clever man.”
Erb, reddening, said that there were precious few of them about.
“Talk to me, please!” she said appealingly. “Button this glove of mine, and then tell me all about yourself. I shall be frightfully interested.”
“You don't want to hear about me,” said Erb, essaying the task set him.
“If you only knew!” she said.
This was really gratifying. Erb had wondered whether the evening would interfere for a time with consideration of his great crisis: he soon found that the evening was to put that subject entirely out of his thoughts. This was in itself a relief, for, despite confidence in himself, he felt nervous about the result of the forthcoming meeting; to-night he could dismiss worry and give his mind a holiday. He found that Jessie's surname was Luker, and the house called her Masters; the tall young woman declared that she positively hated the name of Luker, and confessed to a special admiration for the name of Barnes, strongly contesting Erb's suggestion that Barnes was a second-class sort of name, and worthy of little esteem. Near the pianoforte that had been fixed in the corner of the kitchen, a sombre young person in black sat on a chair that had to be improved and made suitable by an enormous dictionary, fetched by the pageboy from upstairs, and, receiving orders to play just what she liked for the first, this lady struck violently into the prelude of a waltz, choosing a square in the pattern of the wall-paper before her at which she could yawn. Couples, standing up, waited impatiently for the real waltz to commence; young women moving a smartly-slippered foot; Louisa formulating her first protest against convention by saying aloud to her partner, a precise footman, “Oh, let me and you make a start!” The others said, “S-s-s-h!” and watched the butler. The butler gave a pull at his yellow waistcoat and advanced solemnly to the housekeeper.
“Mrs. Margetson,” he said, “I'm not so handy on me feet as I used to be, but I trust I may have the honour of opening the dance with you?”
“Mr. Rackham,” replied the housekeeper with a slight bow, “thank you very much for asking, but, as you know, the leastest excitement makes my head a torture. Would you mind,” with a wave of the fan, “asking Mamselle to take my place?”
“I shall have much plaisure,” said the French lady's-maid, promptly. “A deux temps or a trois temps, Meestair R-rack-ham?”
“Leave it to you, Mamselle,” replied the butler.
The two went half-way round the kitchen before the other couples ventured to move: a nod from the housekeeper then gave permission. Erb found himself rather unfortunate at first, and this was his own fault, for, with his usual manner of taking charge, he endeavoured to pilot the agreeable Miss Luker and ran her into rocks and whirlpools and on to the quicksands of ladies' trains; it was only after the fourth disaster, when the fiancé of the upper-housemaid (who was one of the tightly-collared men and wore his short hair brushed forward in the manner of grooms) said to him audibly, “Not accustomed to drive, apparently!” that he permitted Miss Luker to take up the duty of guidance, and thereafter they went in and out the swinging dancers with no accident. Miss Luker was quite a marvellous young woman, for she could dance and talk calmly at the same time, a trick so impossible to Erb that, when he attempted it, he found he could only stammer acquiescence to some contestable theory advanced by his partner, or ejaculate some words in acceptance of an undeserved compliment.
“It seems like fate,” sighed Miss Luker, as she saved Erb from sweeping the player from her dictionary and chair, “but do you know you have exactly my step? It seems like fate,” repeated Miss Luker, as the music stopped and couples began to walk around the room, “and it is fate.”
“I don't quite follow you,” said Erb, trying to regain his breath and dodging the long train of Mamselle. “To my mind, most things depend on us, and if we want anything to happen we can generally make it happen. Otherwise, where would ambition, and energy, and what not come in?”
“You mustn't talk above my head,” said Miss Luker, winningly. “You forget how stupid we poor women are.” An accidental lull came in the clatter of conversation.
“You're an exception,” declared Erb.
His sister looked over their shoulders at him with surprise, and the footman winked. The others, with an elaborate show of tact, began to speak hurriedly on the first subject that occurred to them, and the lady at the pianoforte, checked half-way through a yawn, was ordered by the housekeeper to play a set of Lancers. Erb, in his life, had many trying moments, but none seemed so acute as this, when he had been caught paying a compliment to a lady. Nevertheless, some excuse could be urged: whenever he glanced at Miss Luker, now with the gloomy young man for partner, he found that her large eyes were looking at him, and she turned away quickly with great show of confusion. When the Lancers had, by gracious permission of the housekeeper, repeated its last figure, cook, beckoned aside by the footman, introduced her partner with due formality. Mr. Danks—the footman bowed.
“We—er—know each other by reputation, Mr. Barnes.”
“Very kind of you to say so, Mr. Danks,” said Erb.
“When you feel inclined for a cigarette,” said the footman, “give me the word. They won't let us smoke here, but we can go into the pantry, or we can take a whiff round the square if you prefer it.” Here the footman frowned, “I often wonder whether 'round the square' is a correct expression. Find any trouble, may I ask, in choosin' your language?”
“It comes to me pretty free,” said Erb, “if I'm at all 'eated.”
“Heated,” corrected Mr. Danks, “heated! Before I went to my uncle's in Southampton Street, Camberwell, to take lessons, I used to drop 'em like—like anything.”
“Never trouble about trifles meself.”
“For public men like me and you,” said Mr. Danks. He stopped a wink, perceiving that what he had thought to be a humorous remark did not, judging from Erb's expression, really bear that character. “Like me and you,” he went on, “the letter aitch is one of the toughest difficulties that we have to encounter. In my profession, at one time, it was looked on, to use your words, as a trifle. Those times, Mr. Barnes, are gone and done with. The ability to aspirate the letter aitch in the right place—in the right place, mind you—has done more to break down the barriers that separated class from class than any other mortal thing in this blessed world.”
“I wonder, now,” said Erb, with some interest, “whether you're talking rot, or whether there's something in what you say?”
“If you think anything more of it,” said Mr. Danks, feeling in his waistcoat pocket, “take my uncle's card, and go on and chat it over with him.”
“'Professor of Elocution. Declamation Taught in Ten Easy Lessons!'” read Erb.
“His daughter knows you; heard you speak in Southwark Park.”
“Not a lame girl?”
“If I hadn't gone to him,” said Mr. Danks nodding affirmatively, “I should never have known how to recite.”
“Nice drawback that would have been. So her name's Danks?”
“Rosalind Danks.”
“Rosalind,” repeated Erb thoughtfully.
“As it is,” said the other with a wink of satisfaction, “my 'King Robert of Sicily' gets me more invites out than I know what to do with. I suppose your sister has told you all about it.”
“Talks of nothing else,” declared Erb inventively.
To his surprise, Mr. Danks shook him very warmly by the hand, and with the remark that he must now do the amiable to the remaining member of the family, left Erb and went across to Louisa—Louisa, flushed and almost attractive-looking from the excitement of dancing. Erb calculated the distance between himself and the fair Miss Luker, and, with an attempt to imitate the easy manner of Mr. Danks, lounged across in her direction, but before he reached her three of the young men had formed up defensively, and Erb had to lean clumsily against the wall near to his short sister and her new companion. Mr. Danks had placed a footstool for Louisa.
“You are rather short,” explained the excellently mannered footman.
“I stopped growin' a purpose,” said Louisa, kicking the footstool aside.
“You don't resemble your sister at all.”
“Mustn't let her hear you say that,” remarked Louisa, “else she'll be mad.”
“It's been a very dull season in town,” said Mr. Danks regretfully.
“Have you been away, then?”
“I suppose you get a good many engagements, Miss Barnes? What I mean to say is, don't you find it a great tax? The demands of society seem to increase year by year.”
“It's some'ing awful,” agreed Louisa. “I shall be out again—let me see”
“To-morrow night?”
“In about six weeks' time, to a cantata at Maze Pond Chapel. Scarcely gives you time to breathe, does it?”
Alice perceived that her brother was growing moody in his solitude, and brought up to him the French lady's maid, who, discovering that he had once spent a day at Boulogne—conveyed to and fro by a free pass—talked to him vivaciously on the superiority of her native country over all others. The young woman at the pianoforte, aroused from a brief nap, was ordered to play a schottische.
At this point the evening suffered a check. It was cook's fault. Cook, fearing that the hours were not moving with enough rapidity, suggested games; suggested also one called the Stool of Repentance. Necessary for one person to leave the room, and Mr. Danks being selected for this honour, went out, and the others thereupon selected libellous statements, of which Erb took charge.
“Come in, King Robert of Sicily,” called Erb. Mr. Danks entered, and was ordered by cook (hugging herself with enjoyment) to take a chair in the centre of the kitchen. “Someone says you're conceited.”
“That's you,” said Mr. Danks pointing to Alice.
“Wrong!” remarked Erb. “Someone says all the gels laugh at you.”
“That's you,” decided Mr. Danks, pointing at cook. Cook now convulsed with amusement.
“Wrong again! Someone says you can't recite for nuts.”
“I say,” urged Mr. Danks, wriggling on the chair, “I'm as fond of a joke as anyone, but really That sounds like you, miss.” Louisa shook her head negatively.
“You're not lucky, old man. Someone says you'll never get married in all your life for the simple reason that no one wants you.”
“That's you this time, at any rate,” cried Mr. Danks, with melancholy triumph. And, as Louisa it was, the short young woman had to go out.
“Come in!” cried Erb, when the accusations had been decided upon. “Some of 'em have been making it warm for you, Louiser.”
“I'll make it hot for them, Erb.”
“Someone says you'd be a fine looking gel if you were twice as broad and three times as long.”
“Cook!” exclaimed Louisa.
Cook, slightly disappointed at this swift identification, made her way out with a large sigh of regret at enforced exercise. It was determined now to show more ingenuity, and cook had to knock two or three times ere permission could be given for her return.
“Someone says,” remarked Erb, “that you're the finest woman in Eaton Square, bar none.”
Cook laughed coquettishly. “That sounds like you, Mr. Barnes.”
“No fear,” said Erb. “Someone says that you'll get engaged some day”
“What nonsense!” interrupted cook delightedly.
“If you only wear a thick veil over your face.”
“Look here!” said cook definitely. “That's enough of it. If I find out who said that I shall make no bones about it, but I shall go straight upstairs and complain to Lady Frances, so there now.”
“Someone says,” Erb went on, “that you've got such an uncommon size mouth that it would take three men and a boy to kiss you.”
“I don't want to lose me temper,” said cook heatedly, and speaking with no stops, “and I'm not going to but once I know who dared say that and I'll go to the County Court first thing to-morrow morning and take out a summons against them people shan't go saying just what they like about me behind me back without having to prove every single No, no, I'm not getting cross nothing of the kind but once I know who so much as dared It's a silly stupid game and I can't think why it was ever suggested.”
They were going back to dancing after this unsuccessful essay, when a quiet tap came at the door of the kitchen; and the couples, standing up to begin, suddenly released each other, the French lady's-maid crying humorously, “Ciel! c'est mon mari!” Conversation ceased, and cook bustled forward and opened the door.
“May I come in, cook, I wonder?”
“Why,” cried cook, hysterical with delight, “as though you need ask, my dear, I mean, m'lady!”
It seemed to Erb that the West End possessed some exceptional forcing properties that made all of its young women grow tall. He stood upright, as though on parade, unconsciously following the lead given by the tightly collared men and by Mr. Danks. As the very tall young woman went across the silent room to the housekeeper his gaze followed her; he would have given half his savings to have been permitted to assume a light, unconcerned, and, if possible, a defiant manner.
“Do you know,” she said brightly, “that I have not been down here since I was ten years old?”
“That's twelve years ago, Lady Frances,” said the housekeeper. The housekeeper adjusted a bow at the white shoulders of the new arrival with an air of privilege.
“You sometimes used to let me bake things, didn't you, cook?”
“I had to take care you didn't eat 'em,” said cook, admiring her from the opposite side of the room. The strain on severe countenances around the kitchen relaxed slightly. “The others,” added cook proudly, “don't remember. It was before their time, Lady Frances.”
“And now that I am here,” said Lady Frances, “it seems that I am to spoil your party.” The servants and their visitors murmured, “Oh, no!” in an unconvincing way.
“What I thought was,” she went on brightly, “that I might play to you.”
“We have taken the liberty,” said the housekeeper, “of hiring a musical person.”
“But you will be glad of a rest,” said Lady Frances, touching the pianoforte girl and stopping her in a yawn. “When I was at school at Cheltenham I used to be rather good at dance music.” She turned suddenly and looked down at Louisa. “Perhaps you play?”
“Me?” echoed Louisa confusedly. “I draw the line at a mouth organ.” Louisa's sister Alice lifted her eyes in silent appeal to the fates. “And even that I'm out of practice with.” Louisa found her handkerchief in a back pocket, and with some idea of hiding her confusion, rubbed her little nose vigorously.
“I think you have dropped this,” said Lady Frances, stooping.
“Oh, that's only a bit out of this evening's newspaper. About my brother,” added the girl.
“Really! May I read it, I wonder.”
“Spell the words you can't pronounce,” said Louisa. The room waited. Erb shifted his feet and endeavoured to look unconcerned.
“Are you Miss Spanswick, then?” pleasantly and encouragingly.
“Am I Miss Spanswick?” echoed Louisa with despair in her voice. “Give it 'old! This is my brother's name—Herbert Barnes—and, consequently, my name is Barnes. Not Spanswick.”
“I see! Tell me what can I play?”
“Play something you know,” advised Louisa.
“Rackham! please suggest something.”
“If it wasn't troubling your ladyship,” said Mr. Rackham, taking off the dictionary, “and putting you to a great amount of ill-convenience, I should venture to suggest—hem!—a set of quadrilles.”
Something in the playing, once the couples had persuaded themselves to make up sets and to dance to such an august musician, that had escaped the art of the hired girl. An emphasis at the right place; a marvellous ability for bringing the music of each figure to an end just as the dancing ceased, so that there was no longer necessity for clapping of hands to intimate that further melody was useless, or to go on dancing with no music at all. For the next, Lady Frances played a well-marked air for a new dance that had possessed town, and in this Miss Luker gave up her partner and undertook to teach Erb, who was not fully informed on the subject. It occurred to Erb, as he tried to lift his foot at the appointed moment, and prepared immediately afterwards to swing the agreeable upper housemaid round by the waist, that although his partner had modelled her style on that of the young woman seated at the pianoforte, there existed between them a long interval. Both had the same interested way of speaking, the same attention in listening, but, with Miss Luker, there seemed to be nothing at the back of the eyes. Erb, finding himself possessed with a hope that Lady Frances might presently speak to him, tried to compensate for this weakness by telling Miss Luker, when they were lifting one foot and swinging round at the far end of the kitchen, that the title meant nothing to him, and that, for his part, he preferred to mix with everybody on a common platform, to which Miss Luker replied, “Ah! that's because you're a railway man.” Presently, in one of those sudden blanks of general talk that surprise the unwary, his raised voice was heard to say—
“Consequence is that the few revel in luxury, while the many” He hesitated, and went on floundering through the silence. “Whilst the many 'ave not the wherewithal to buy their daily bread.”
The awkward silence continued, broken only by the music from the pianoforte and the swishing of skirts.
“Erb,” said his sister Alice, frowning over Mr. Danks's shoulder, “remember where you are.”
“Exercise tack, my dear sir,” recommended the butler. “Exercise tack.”
“Even visitors,” remarked the housekeeper severely, so that the young woman at the pianoforte should hear, “even visitors ought to draw the line somewhere. We can't help our opinions, but we can all stop ourselves from expressing them.”
The music stopped, and the household looked rather nervously towards the chair, with an endeavour to ascertain whether the occupant had overheard the discordant remarks. To their relief, she leaned engagingly back, and beckoned to Louisa. Louisa, her head twitching with pride and agitation, went across the floor, and stood swinging her programme round and round.
“You can play!” admitted Louisa. “Where did you pick it up?”
“I want you to bring your brother over to me,” said Lady Frances.
Quite useless for the kitchen to pretend that it was giving its entire mind to the subject of refreshments. The situation demanded their eyes and ears; they ate oblong pieces of cake in a detached way, rather as though they were feeding someone else; the housekeeper looked at Alice, and shook her head desolately.
“I have been reading about you,” said Lady Frances in her alert, interested way.
“Licker to me how these things get into the papers,” he mumbled.
“I should be tremendously interested in life,” said the girl, “if I occupied your position. There's something sporting about it.” She looked at him intently, and he rubbed his nose under a vague impression that it bore some defect. “I wish you the best of good luck.”
“Then I shall have it,” said Erb. Alice looked round the room triumphantly, as who should say, Now we are scoring. “Not acquainted much with the working-classes, p'raps, me lady?”
“To my regret, no!”
“They're made up of all sorts,” went on Erb, wishing that he dared to look at her white shoulders as she looked at his face, “and for the most part they are very easily led. It's only now and again that you find one step out of the common ruck.” He hesitated, seeing no way out of the sentence except by a self-congratulatory exit.
“If I should ever want to see through Bermondsey,” she said, clasping her knee, her head up attractively, “will you be my guide?”
“It would be a proud moment,” said Erb. He added, hastily, “For me, I mean.”
“Cook, shall I play one more, and then go back upstairs and leave off bothering you?”
“The idea,” said cook reproachfully; “the idea, m'lady, of calling it botherin' us.”
The others murmured polite sympathy with cook's view, but when Lady Frances had played the four figures in a manner that seemed to Erb quite without flaw, she said good-night, giving a special word to Louisa that made the short girl redden with delight; coming back to the doorway after cook had seen her out to say to Erb—
“Won't forget your promise, will you?”
The dance finished at half-past eleven, and the yawning player went off to another engagement in Eccleston Street that began at midnight and was to last until the hour of four. The servants came up the steps of the area to see their visitors go, Alice now so proud of her brother that she declined to acknowledge the compliments of Mr. Danks, ignoring that gentleman's fervent assurance that she had been, as he expressed it, the belle of almost the entire evening.
“Good-bye, Mr. Barnes,” said Miss Luker fervently. She walked on a few steps with him. “This evening will always, always remain in my mind as a precious memory.”
“I shan't forget it in a hurry.”
“Oh, thank you for those words,” whispered Miss Luker.
“Don't mention it.”
“But promise. You won't think harshly of me, will you?”
“As a matter of fact, I don't suppose I shall 'ave time to think of you at all, 'arshly or otherwise. To-morrow night there's an important meeting on, and”
“But if you should want to write to me,” went on Miss Luker, undeterred and looking back at the gossiping bunch of visitors near the area entrance, “let me know and I'll send you some addressed envelopes. We live in a censorious world, Mr. Barnes, and Here comes your young sister. Think of me at four o'clock every afternoon, and I'll promise to think of you.”
“Well, but,” protested Erb, “what's the use?”
“Bah!” said Miss Luker, with a sudden burst of undisguised contempt, “I wouldn't be a dunderheaded man for anything.”