He was still seated at the table when she returned to him; the bread-and-b.u.t.ter she had cut for him untouched on his plate, his tea untasted.

"I thought perhaps you were not coming back," he said. He sighed, as if relieved from an anxiety which had been painful. "Miss Deleah, I wish very much to speak to you."

There were a few things in the matter of deportment he had learnt since living over the grocer's shop; one was that a man must not sit while a lady is standing. So he stood up in his place now, and waited till she had taken hers again behind the tea-urn.

"Oh, but, Mr. Gibbon, do eat your tea!"

He pushed his plate away: "I don't want to eat. I want to talk to you."

Glancing at him she saw that his face, ordinarily of a deep-diffused red, was as pale as it is possible for such a face to become. Often when she had felt his eyes upon her and had looked up frankly to meet them, she had noticed how quickly he had averted them, almost as if detected in a crime.

Now she found them fixed upon her face.

"There is something I have made up my mind to tell you," he said.

"It won't take long, I hope? Because as Emily is at church I have to clear the tea-things."

She jumped up at once and began to do so. "He is going to tell me about Bessie," she said to herself. She did not particularly desire his confidence, and with a little more clatter and fussiness than was necessary to the task, she put the cups and plates on the tray.

In a preoccupied manner he helped her to do this, took the tray from her, when it was laden, to the kitchen, while she carried the eatables. Coming back, together they folded the tablecloth. A pleasant enough occupation to be shared with a pretty girl; but it was evident, although his trade had made his blunt fingers deft at the handling of material, and he was carefully observant of the practice which must be followed in the art, that he was thinking of other things than maintaining the creases in the tablecloth.

"There!" said Deleah, as an announcement that their light labours were finished. She had put the cloth away in the press, and turned to find the Honourable Charles, as she and Bessie to themselves always called their boarder, standing with his back to the little dresser at which Emily made her pastry, his arms crossed upon his chest.

"Now you can go and sit down in comfort, and smoke the pipe of peace on my special window-seat--I give you permission--and watch the good people going to church."

"That is, if you are coming."

"I think I'll go first and see what has become of mama."

"This will do, for a few minutes, Miss Deleah. We will stop here," he said.

So Deleah, there being no escape, perched herself on the corner of the table where the plates and tea-cups were collected until Emily should return to wash them, and waited for what he had to say.

He found some difficulty in beginning apparently, and frowned upon the matting covering the floor.

"It's about myself," at length he began with an effort painful to see; his hands seemed to be pulling tensely upon his folded arms, the blunt fingers of the broad red hands showed white upon the coat-sleeves, his face was still of the muddy pink which with him stood for pallor.

"I hope you won't think it intruding of me to talk about myself."

"Which in other words means about Bessie," said Deleah to herself, strung up, now that it was inevitable, for the revelation.

"It's about my prospects. Perhaps you think I haven't got any, Miss Deleah. Or any position, to speak of? I have not, I know. Not like your friend, Mr. Forcus. He's got this thousands a year, where at most I can hope for hundreds, I suppose."

Deleah divined the sore feeling in his mind and hastened to bring the balm: "Reggie Forcus might have millions where he will have thousands--and the more he had the less likely would he be to affect any of us. He has been here this afternoon, and if he remembers he may come again. But that is simply the whim of an idle young man who at the moment can think of nothing more amusing to do."

"I thought he seemed to take a good deal of interest. I caught him looking--"

"At Bessie? He likes her, of course, and there was once a great friendship. If--things--hadn't happened, I dare say it might have come to more than friendship. But they did happen, and--" She broke off. Never could she without suffering and difficulty allude to the tragedy which had cost them so dear.

"I a.s.sure you, Mr. Gibbon," she began again, and smiled encouragingly upon him, "you are of far more importance to us than Mr. Reginald Forcus is ever likely to be."

"I thank you for telling me that," he said, and his fingers strained tighter upon his coat-sleeves.

Then he lifted his eyes and looked at her as she sat, perched with ease and grace among the tea-cups on the kitchen table. Every movement of hers was made, every posture taken, with ease and grace. It happened, for Deleah's fortune, to be the day of the small woman; the day when she of inches was p.r.o.nounced a gawk, and she of five feet and a little--slim of waist, of foot, of hand, of ankle--slid with ease and naturalness into a man's heart.

"Thank you for that," said the Manchester man again, with a kind of hoa.r.s.e fervour in his voice. "You are always kind. I don't think the angels in heaven are kinder than you."

A statement at which Deleah among the tea-cups laughed light-heartedly.

"No. Don't laugh," he said almost fiercely. "It is true! I believe it with all my soul."

He looked from her to the floor at his feet again, frowning upon it, striving for the calmness to proceed with that which he had to say in the order he had taught himself to believe was best for his case.

"I'm getting two hundred a year," he said. "This year, come Christmas, I'm to have a rise to two hundred and fifty. Next year"--he paused, set his lips tightly--"next year I mean to ask for a share in the business."

"Do you?" said Deleah with polite interest. "Do you really think you will get it, Mr. Gibbon?"

"I shall get it, fast enough. I shall get it, for this reason: if Boult doesn't give it me I shall leave him. Boult can't afford to lose me. I don't want to boast, but it's true. He can't afford to lose me, and he knows it. Do you know," and he lifted his head, speaking more naturally and looking at her with pride in his achievement, "in the two years I have been in the concern I have _doubled_ the takings in my department?"

"Really? How very clever of you, Mr. Gibbon! You _must_ be pleased!"

He looked at her, and laughed hopelessly. "You don't understand these things, Miss Deleah. You don't realise that what I have done means much."

"Oh, but I do, Mr. Gibbon! I have always thought that you must be a quite wonderful business man; so quiet, so regular, thinking of nothing but your work."

"I do think of other things," he said fervidly. "I want to get on. I want to improve myself, and my position. There's an end I'm working for. If a man sets an end before him, and works for all he's worth to get it, does he get it, Miss Deleah?"

"He gets it. Never doubt it!"

"Well then, see! When I get my share of the business I shall work the whole show up as I have worked my own department. The other establishments in the same line can put their shutters up. It's the biggest drapery business in the town now--Boult is proud enough to ram that fact down your throat--but I shall make it the biggest drapery business in the Eastern Counties."

"How splendid of you, Mr. Gibbon! And supposing Mr. Boult won't give you the share?"

"I am not sure it would not be better. In that case I shall start on my own. Not in a shop. I shall open a warehouse for the sale of my goods, alone."

"Those calicoes, and prints, and 'drabbets,' you go to Manchester to buy?"

put in Deleah, anxious to show that she understood.

"Manchester goods. I shall carry with me all the little customers who come to me now to take my advice what they shall buy, and a lot of shopkeepers of a better cla.s.s, who will deal with a wholesale mean but will not buy their goods of Boult."

"Poor Mr. Boult!"

"He must look after hisself. I heard Miss Bessie say the other day that the wholesale line was genteeler than retail--." He broke off and looked questioningly at Deleah, who had formed no opinion on the subject.

"Bessie knows about these things," she a.s.sured him. "Then, you will become a very rich man, Mr. Gibbon. And will go away, and never help us to make mincemeat any more, or to clear the table after Sunday tea. You will drive your carriage with a _pair_ of horses--not one miserable screw like Mr.

Boult--and you will live in a fine house, and grow roses, and build conservatories; won't you?"

"Yes," he a.s.sented solemnly. Then he unfolded his arms and' stretching them sideways gripped with each hand the ledge of the dresser against which he leant. "I shall want you to come with me," he said.