Some big and important Person at the back, impatient of the delay, here attempted to battle her way through the crowd congested by the too narrow doors. Sir Francis turned and looked at her reprovingly.

"It's no good, Lady Elizabeth. You'll have to wait like the rest of us.

It's only a matter of a few minutes."

"Oh, do hurry up in front there!" Lady Elizabeth called back to him, laughing, but imperious. The pressure she and her party were making still continued, with the result that Deleah was driven roughly forward.

"Gently! Gently!" Sir Francis called again, and Deleah felt that his hands were on her shoulders and he was shielding her with his arms as much as possible from the crushing of the crowd.

A minute, and they were through the doorway into the s.p.a.cious porch, where individual movement was possible, and the fresh night air blew, and Deleah could see the light from the big lamp over the archway flaring on the top of her shabby old fly, while behind it was a long line of handsome carriages whose drivers vituperated the driver of the cab, in his broken hat. At the window was Bessie's face. Bessie's excited voice was heard shrilly calling on Deleah's name.

"Deda! Deda! Where _on earth_ have you got to?"

"Miss Days' carriage stops the way"--the cry which made one Miss Day long to hide her minished head in the earth--woke the echoes again.

Deleah half turned her head on its long neck, whispered a shy "thank you"

to the tall gentleman at her back; and darted away.

"Oh here you are, Deleah! Come along," Reggie Forcus cried, appearing before her. "We thought we'd lost you. Take my arm."

But before Deleah could comply another arm was proffered, and proffered in a manner so brusque and so determined that the young Forcus fell back involuntarily.

"Thank you. Miss Deleah is in my charge," a voice said; and Deleah felt herself dragged through the crowded porch, and over the pavement to the cab-door, on the arm of Mr. Charles Gibbon.

"You'll excuse me," he said, looking in upon the sisters through the cab window when the door was shut. "I hope you young ladies did not think I intruded. But your mother had asked me to keep an eye on you."

"And pray why didn't you come with Reggie?" Bessie demanded indignantly as the fly at last moved on.

Deleah laughed hysterically. "I was torn away from him," she said. "He all but knocked Reggie down, and seized upon me." She indicated the form of Mr. Gibbon, dimly seen, seated sentinel on the box beside the broken-hatted driver.

"Impertinence!" Bessie said. "We have to be civil to him at home, but when we are among other people I think he might leave us to our friends."

"Reggie Forcus hasn't been much of a friend."

"He is going to be for the future. He asked leave to call. It is a little awkward as you are always at the school, and mama is always downstairs"--(Bessie had never yet brought herself to say "Mother is in the shop") "I would have asked him to come in the evenings, but _he_"

(again a nod towards the figure of the guardian-angel on the box-seat) "is always there."

"Well, why not?"

"Can't you understand that Reggie might not care to meet a young man out of a draper's shop?"

"But he comes to call on people in a gro--"

"That's different," Bessie quickly announced. "We weren't always there, remember."

"Wednesday afternoons I am at home after three. Sat.u.r.days I am at home all day."

"I know," Bessie said, but did not promise to avail herself of the protection offered by her sister's presence on those occasions.

CHAPTER XIV

A Tea-Party In Bridge Street

His time being so fully occupied in his own business during the week, and those hours he had been wont to pa.s.s with his friend William Day being still unfilled, Mr. George Boult had fallen into the evil habit of coming to hold a business consultation with the widow on the Sunday afternoons.

The Day family complained bitterly of this custom. The poor grocer-woman's one blessed day was no longer hers, to be pa.s.sed from morn to eve in the midst of her children, in rest and peace and forgetfulness of business worries.

She was too tired for church, she always pleaded; but it was not fatigue alone which kept her from public worship. She was accustomed to her place behind the counter now, and in the work-days of the week was too busy for regret, too anxious to sell her goods to feel any shame in the occupation.

But on that day when the rest of the world of women went forth with husbands and children to take their places, dressed in their best, in family pews, she felt that she lacked the courage to show her face. She who had queened it with the best of them; she who was the widow of a man who had killed himself to escape from prison! She for whom "sympathisers"

and "well-wishers" had collected their sixpenny-pieces that she and hers might be saved from starving.

So she sent the girls to church with Franky, on the Sunday morning, while she, prayer-book in hand, would sit in Deleah's favourite window-seat, beneath the canary's cage, to watch the smart and prosperous Sabbath people airing their newest clothes on the opposite pavement of the street.

Presently Emily, her preparations for dinner made, would come to stand beside her mistress's chair, to turn a critical eye upon the pa.s.sers-by beneath. Emily knew the names of most of the people of any consideration who pa.s.sed; knew, and could at length relate the history of themselves and their domestic economies.

"There's Mrs. Hamley, m'm. I haven't never seen her in that black lace shawl before."

"Perhaps she's laid it by from last summer," Mrs. Day would suggest.

"Not she!" Here Emily would lean over the back of her mistress's chair and crane her neck to get a better view of the raiment in question. "Bran'

new, I'll lay a guinea! And her still fifteen pound in your debt!"

"Here come the Briggses! Look out, m'm!" presently she would cry. "Well, and ain't they figged out! The whole four of the girls--and every one of 'em in a new bonnet! And them buyin' a pound-and-a-half of b.u.t.ter a week for the whole fam'ly! Tha's what I always say, m'm; the Briggses is a fam'ly that save out of their insides to put it on their bids. Now, here come the best-lookin' young ladies and young gentleman we have set eyes on yet." And then Mrs. Day's own daughters, with Franky clinging to Deleah's arm, would be seen to approach.

"We think so, don't we, Emily? It's because they're our own, you know,"

the mistress would say, with her deprecating smile. "It's because they're ours, that they seem to look so nice."

But in her heart she heartily agreed with Emily that hers was indeed a charming family.

In the evening Bessie would go off to church again, escorted by Emily, but Deleah would stay with her mother. They would sit together in peaceful, delicious idleness over the winter fire, or, it being summer, they would go forth, escaping by backways and narrow lanes of the old town from the crowded pavements to the quiet roads with their formal rows of trees, their flower-packed gardens and trim hedges. Slowly they would pace along, enjoying the sweeter air of the suburbs, or, gardenless themselves, would stand to peep through garden-gates at the well-ordered array of geranium, calceolaria, verbena; sniffing the fragrance from the serried rows of stocks, the patches of mignonette, or the blossoming lime-trees overhead.

When on that scented Sabbath peacefulness the warm dark would begin to descend, it sometimes happened that the boarder, Charles Gibbon, who also loved the scent of flower and of shrub, and enjoyed the soft air of evening upon his cheek, would meet or overtake Mrs. Day and her daughter as they sauntered homewards; and in a very friendly and pleasant way the three would finish their walk together.

But about the Sunday afternoons there was a less agreeable tale to tell.

The young ladies retired with their books to their bedrooms, on those occasions; Franky took refuge with Emily in the kitchen, a store of oranges and nuts having been laid in by that faithful retainer for his entertainment there. The Manchester man saw more than enough of his employer on week-days, and would have preferred to pa.s.s a Sabbath afternoon in the cellar with the coals, to spending that portion of his precious holiday with his employer. Poor Mrs. Day was compelled therefore to receive her taskmaster and benefactor alone.

Then had her books to be produced, her order-sheet criticised; then was comparison made between this week's takings and those of the corresponding week last year. If, as too often happened, alas! the sales had been less, the poor apologetic tradeswoman had to suffer for it.

"You are losing custom. You must not lose it," the tradesman would bl.u.s.ter. Or "Your expenses are too much. You are eaten up with expenses,"

he would insist. "You don't see how you can reduce them? Do with less help, my good lady. What do people do who can't afford help? Go without it, and do the work themselves. It's what you must do. It is indeed, I do a.s.sure you. Cut down your expenses. Cut them down! Cut them down!"

"It is easier to say that than to do it," poor Mrs. Day would demur. "We have nothing superfluous."

"You will be surprised how much you can do without if you really make the effort. Get rid of your a.s.sistant in the shop. Get rid of your servant. A servant is a very pleasant possession, but if we can't afford to keep one, we can't. What is Miss Bessie doing all day long?"

"Bessie is useful in the house. Bessie is not strong," Bessie's mother would plead; and George Boult would snort the suggestion to scorn.