"Now you 'ave gone and done it," said the small servant who opened the
door.  "That's clever, that is.  I suppose you get medals for doing
tricks like that?  Well, well," she continued fractiously, as Erb made no
reply, "don't stand there like a great gawk with the knob in your 'and.
What d'you want?"

"Might Professor Danks be in?" asked Erb.

"He might and he might not," explained the small servant.  "He's jest
sleepin' it off a bit on the sofa."

"Can I see anyone else?"

"Come in," said the girl with a burst of friendliness.  "Never mind about
wipin' your boots; it's getting to the end of the week.  You could see
_her_ if you didn't mind waiting till she's finished giving a lesson."

"Shall I wait here in the passage?"

"Don't disturb him," whispered the girl, "if I let you rest your weary
bones in the back room."  She opened the door of the back room quietly.
"_She's_ as right as rain," whispered the girl confidently, "but _he_--"
The girl gave an expressive wave of the hand, signifying that the
Professor was not indispensable to the world's happiness.  Erb went in.
"I'd stay and chat to you," she said through the doorway, "only there's
my ironin'.  I've got the 'ole 'ouse to look after, mind you, besides
answering the front door."

"Takes a bit of doing, no doubt."

"You never said a truer word," whispered the short servant.  "There's
pictures in that magazine you can look at.  If you want me, 'oller
'Lizer!' over the banisters."

Professor Danks, asleep on the sofa, had the _Era_ over his face for
better detachment from a wakeful world: the paper was slipping gradually,
and Erb, watching him over the top of the book, knew that the eclipse
would be over and the features fully visible in a few minutes.
Meanwhile, he noticed that the Professor was a large, heavy man, with
snowy hair at one end, and slippers which had walked along muddy
pavements at the other; not a man, apparently, of active habits.

"I fear I shall never make anything of you," her decided voice came from
the front room.  "You don't pay attention.  You don't seem to remember
what I tell you."

"Mustn't be too harsh with my husband, miss," said a voice with the South
London whine.  "We all have to make a beginning, don't forget that."

"Now, sir.  Once more, please, we'll go through this piece of poetry.
And when you say the first lines, 'Give others the flags of foreign
states,' show some animation; don't say the words casually, as though you
were talking of the weather."

"You understand, miss," interposed the pupil's wife, "that he's made up
the words out of his own head."

"I am sure of that," with a touch of sarcasm.

"But, whilst he's very clever in putting poetry together, he is not so
good--I'm speaking, Albert dear, for your own benefit--he is not so good
in reciting of them.  And we go out into Society a great deal (there's
two parties on at New Cross only next month that we're asked to), and
what I thought was that it would be so nice any time when an evening
began to go a bit slow for me to say casually, ye know, 'Albert, what
about that piece you made up yourself?'  Then for him to get up and
recite it in a gentlemanly way."

"Come now," said the instructress, "'Give others the flags of foreign
states, I care not for them a jot.'"

"Of course," interposed the wife again, "his high-pitched voice is
against him, but that's his misfortune, not his fault.  Also you may
think that he's left it rather late to take up with elocution.  If we'd
ever had any children of our own--"

"I really think," said the girl, "that we must get on with the lesson.
Now, sir, if you please.  'Give others the flags.'"

The _Era_ had slipped from the Professor's red face, and the swollen,
poached-egg eyes moved, the heavy eyelids made one or two reluctant
efforts to unclose.  The room, Erb thought, looked as though it were
troubled by opposing forces, one anxious to keep it neat and keep it
comfortable, the other with entirely different views, and baulking these
efforts with some success.  Erb saw the household clearly and felt a
desire to range himself on the side of order.

"Good evening," he said, when the leaden eyelids had decided to open.
"Having your little nap, sir?"

The Professor sat up, kneading his eyes and then rubbing his white hair
violently.

"I have been," he said, in a voice that would have sounded important if
it had not been hoarse, "making a brief excursion into the land of
dreams."  He clicked his tongue.  "And a devil of a mouth I've got on me,
too."  He rose heavily and went to a bamboo table where two syphons were
standing, tried them, and found they were empty.  "A curse," he said, "on
both your houses."

"I've called about some lessons."

"Lessons!" repeated the Professor moodily.  "That I, Reginald Danks,
should be reduced to this!  I, who might have been at the Lyceum at the
present moment but for fate and Irving.  How many lessons," he asked with
a change of manner, "do you require, laddie?"

"I thought about six," said Erb.

"Make it a dozen.  We offer thirteen for the price of twelve."

"What would that number run me into?  I want them more for public
speaking than anything else."

"We shall do the whole bag of tricks for you," said the Professor,
placing an enormous hand on Erb's shoulder, "for a mere trifle."

"Who is 'we?'"

"Rather should you say, 'To whom is it that you refer?'  In this
self-appointed task of imparting the principles of voice production and
elocution to the--to the masses," the Professor seemed to restrain
himself forcibly from using a contumelious adjective, "I have the
advantage of valuable assistance from my daughter.  Her system is my
system, her methods are my methods, her rules are my rules.  If at any
time I should be called away on professional business," here the
Professor passed his hand over his lip, "my daughter, Rosalind, takes my
place.  What is your age?"

Erb gave the information.

"Ah," the Professor sighed deeply, "in '74 I was with Barry Sullivan
doing the principal towns in a repertoire.  No, I'm telling you a lie.
It was not in '74.  It was in the autumn of '73.  I played Rosencrantz
and the First Grave-digger--an enormous success."

"Which?"

"I went from Barry Sullivan to join the 'Murderous Moment' Company, and
that," said the Professor, striking his waistcoat, "was perhaps one of
the biggest triumphs ever witnessed on the dramatic stage.  From that
hour, sir, from that hour I never looked back."

The high-voiced pupil in the front room finished his lesson, and his wife
took him off with the congratulatory remark that he promised well to make
her relatives at forthcoming parties sit up with astonishment.  The
Professor's daughter, seeing them both to the front door, remarked that
her pupil would be able to find his way alone the next time, whereupon
the pupil's wife answered darkly, "Do you really think I should let him
go out?"

"Shall I settle with you?" asked Erb.

"My daughter Rosalind," said the Professor regretfully, "insists, as a
general rule, on taking charge of the business side, but on this
occasion--"

"If that's the rule," interrupted Erb, "don't let's break it.  I don't
want any misunderstanding about matters of cash."

"There have been times in my life, sir, when money has been as nothing to
me.  Will you believe that there was a time in my professional career
when I earnt twenty guineas--twenty of the best--per week?"

"Since you ask me, my answer is 'No.'"

"You are quite right," said the Professor, and in no way disconcerted.
"Let us be exact in our statements or perish.  Not twenty guineas, twenty
pounds.  But that," he went on rather hurriedly, "that was at a time when
real acting, sir, was appreciated.  Nowadays they walk in from the
streets.  Ee-locution is a lost art; acting, real acting, is not to be
seen on the London boards.  If you have a cigarette about you, I can get
a light from the fireplace."

Erb acted upon this hint, and listened for the girl's voice.

"Her mother," went on the Professor, puffing at the cigarette, and then
looking at it disparagingly, "her mother before she fell ill--mind, I'm
not complaining--was perhaps, without exception, the most diversified
arteest that ever graced the dramatic stage.  Ingenue, old woman,
soubrette, nothing came amiss to her.  That was the difference between
us--she liked work.  And when, just before the end, when I'd been out of
engagement for some time, she had an offer for the pair of us, two pounds
ten the couple, such was her indomitable spirit that she actually wanted
to accept it.  But I said 'No.'  I put my foot down.  I admit," said the
Professor genially, "that I lost my temper with her.  I told her pretty
definitely that I had made up my mind--"

"Your _what_?" inquired Erb.

"That poverty I could face, dee-privation I could endure, hunger and
thirst I could welcome with o-pen arms, but a contemptuous proposition
such as this I could not, should not, and would not tolerate.  I repeated
this," added the Professor with a fine roll and a sweep of the left hand,
"at the inquest."

"You're a nice one, I don't think," said Erb critically.  "How is it they
let you live on?"

"Laddie," said the Professor, tearfully, "my life is not an enviable one
even now.  My own daughter--Soft!--she comes."

It occurred to Erb later that in his anxiety to show himself a careless,
self-possessed fellow, he rather overdid it, presenting himself in the
light of one slightly demented.  He nodded his head on formal
introduction by the Professor, hummed a cheerful air, and, taking out a
packet of cigarette papers, blew at one, and recollecting, twisted the
detached slip into a butterfly shape and puffed it to the ceiling.  The
girl looked at him, at her father, then again at Erb.  She had a pencil
resting between the buttons of her pink blouse, and but for a slight
contraction of the forehead that is the public sign of private worry,
would have been a very happy-looking young person indeed.

"A would-be student," said her father with a proud wave of the hand
towards Erb, as though he had just made him, "a would-be student, my
love: one anxious to gain at our hands the principles of voice
pro-duction and ee-locution."

"When do you propose to begin, sir?" she asked, limping slightly as she
went to a desk.

"Soon as your father's ready, miss."

"I have heard you speak in the park."

"Most people have!" replied Erb, with a fine assumption of indifference.

"I'll just register your name, please."

"Our sys-tem," said the Professor oracularly, as Erb bent over her and
gave the information (there was a pleasant warm scent from her hair), "is
to conduct everything in a perfectly businesslike manner.  I remember on
one occasion Mr. Phelps said to me, 'Danks, my dear young friend, never,
never--'  My dear Rosalind, give me the word.  What was it," the
Professor tapped his large forehead reprovingly, "what was it I was
talking about?"

"I don't think it matters, father.  You pay in advance, please," she said
to Erb.  "Thank you.  I'm not sure that I have sufficient change in the
house."

"I will step down the road," suggested the Professor with a slight excess
of eagerness, "and obtain the necessary--"

"No, father."

"Think I've got just enough silver," said Erb.

"Thank you, Mr. Barnes."

Good to be called Mister, better still to find it accompanied by a smile
of gratitude that somehow also intimated comradeship and a defensive
alliance against the ingenious Professor.  The Professor, affecting to
examine a pimple on his chin at the mirror, looked at his daughter's
reflection in an appealing way; but she shook her head quickly.  The
Professor sighed and, turning back the cuffs of his shirt, put on an
elderly velvet jacket.

"I have some work to do downstairs," she said, with a curt little bow to
Erb.  "You will excuse me."

"Only too pleased, miss," he said blunderingly.

"Father, you will give Mr. Barnes an hour, please, in the front room.  I
will come up when the time is--"

"Then I needn't say good-bye," remarked Erb gallantly.

The Professor in the front room declaimed to the new pupil a passage from
the "Merchant of Venice," from the centre of the carpet, and then invited
him to repeat it, which Erb did, the Professor arresting him at every
line, correcting the accent with acerbity and calling attention to the
aspirates with something like tears.  "Why don't you speak naturally,
sir?" demanded the Professor, hitting his own chest with his fist, "as I
dew?"  At the end of twenty minutes, when the Professor had furnished
some really valuable rules in regard to the artifices of voice
production, he gave a sudden dramatic start, and begged Erb for pity's
sake not to tell him that the day was Thursday and the hour half-past
seven.  On Erb admitting his inability to give him other information
without stepping beyond the confines of truth, the Professor strode up
and down the worn carpet in a state of great agitation, declaring that
unless he were in the Strand by eight fifteen, or, at the very latest,
eight twenty that evening, he would, in all probability, lose the chance
of a lifetime.

"What am I to do?" he asked imploringly.  "I appeal to you, laddie?  Show
me where duty calls?"

On Erb suggesting that perhaps Miss Rosalind would finish the lesson, the
Professor shook him warmly by both hands and ordered heaven in a
dictatorial way to rain down blessings on the head of his pupil.  One
difficulty remained.  Time pressed, and every moment was (in all
probability) golden.  Could Mr. Barnes, as an old friend, oblige with
half a--no, not half a crown, two shillings.  The Professor, in the
goodness of his heart, did not mind four sixpences, and hurrying out into
the passage, struggled into a long brown overcoat of the old Newmarket
shape, took his soft hat, and, having called over the banisters to his
daughter to favour him with a moment's conversation, bustled through the
passage whispering to Erb, "You can explain better than I," and going
out, closed the door quietly.  There were signs of flour on the girl's
plump arms as she came up; she rolled down the sleeves of the pink blouse
as she entered the front room.  Her forehead contracted as she listened.

"How much did he borrow?" she asked, checking a sigh.

"Nothing," replied Erb boldly.

"Two shillings or a half a crown?"

"But I couldn't possibly think for a moment--" he began protestingly.

"I wish you had," she said.  "Take it, please.  I don't want father to
run into debt if I can help it."

"Makes me feel as though I'm robbing you."

"Do you know," said Miss Rosalind, with not quite half a smile, "it makes
me feel as though I were being robbed.  Let us get on with the lesson,
please; I have another pupil coming at half-past eight."  Erb, for a hot
moment, was consumed with unreasonable jealousy of the next pupil.  "She
is always punctual," added Rosalind, and Erb became cooler.  "Take this
book, please, and read aloud the passage I have marked."

There were faded photographs on the mantelpiece of ladies with exuberant
smiles, calculated to disarm any criticism in regard to their eccentric
attire, their signatures sprawled across the lower right hand corner,
"Ever yours most affectionate!"  A frame that had seen stormy days
outside provincial theatres hung on the wall with the address of its last
exhibition half rubbed off.  Erb as he listened to the girl's serious
corrections and warning, guessed that the half-dozen portraits it
contained were all of Rosalind's mother; they ranged from one as Robinson
Crusoe with a white muff to a more matronly representation of (judging
from her hat) a designing Frenchwoman holding a revolver in one hand, and
clearly prepared to use this.  In another she was fondling a child, whose
head and face were almost covered by a stage wig, and the child bore some
far-away resemblance to the present instructress.  On Rosalind limping
across the room to place on the fire an economical lump of coal, Erb
framed an expression of sympathy; common-sense most fortunately gagged
him.

"You left school when you were very young?" said the girl, looking over
her shoulder from the fireplace.

"Pawsed the sixth standard when I was--"

"Oh, please, please!  Don't say pawsed."

"I passed the sixth standard when I was twelve, because I had to.  Father
was Kentish born, mother wasn't.  Both died in the"--Rosalind put her
hands apprehensively to her ears--"in the hospital in one week, both in
one week, and I had to set to and get shot of the Board School and go
out."

"As?" she asked curiously.

"As chief of the Transport Department to the principal railway
companies," said Erb glibly, "and personal friend, and, I may say,
adviser to his Royal--"

"We will proceed," said Rosalind, haughty on the receipt of sarcasm,
"with the lesson, please.  There is much to be done in the way of
eradicating errors in your speech."

The reliable lady pupil due at eight thirty spoilt her record by arriving
half an hour late.  Thus, when Erb's lesson was finished and the clock on
the mantelpiece gave the hour in a hurried asthmatic way, there was still
time for polite conversation on a variety of topics; the house, Erb
discovered, was not theirs, they only occupied furnished apartments; they
had lived in many parts of London, because, said Rosalind cautiously, the
Professor liked a change now and again.  Erb backed slowly towards the
door as each subject was discussed, anxious to stay as long as possible,
but more anxious still to make his exit with some clever impressive final
remark.  He found her book of notices, and insisted politely on reading
the neatly pasted slips cut from the "Hornsey Express," the "South London
Journal," the "Paddington Magpie," and other newspapers of repute, which
said "Miss Rosalind Danks in her recitals made the hit of the evening,
and the same may be said of all the other artists on the programme."
That "Miss R. Danks, as our advertisement column shows, is to give An
Evening with the Poets and Humorists at our Town Hall on Thursday
evening.  We wish her a bumper."  That "Miss Rosalind Danks's _naivete_
of manner and general _chic_ enabled her in an American contribution to
score a terrific 'succes d'estime.'  She narrowly escaped an enthusiastic
_encore_."  That "Miss Danks lacks some of the charms necessary for a
good platform appearance--"

"I'd like to argue the point with the man who wrote that," said Erb.

"They have to fill the paper with something," remarked Miss Rosalind.

"For a good platform appearance, but she has a remarkably distinct
enunciation, and some of her lines could be heard almost distinctly at
the back of the hall."  That "Miss Danks comes of a theatrical stock, and
her father is none other than the celebrated Mr. Reginald Danks, whose
Antonio still remains in the memory of the few privileged to witness it.
Mr. Reginald Danks informs us that he has had several offers from West
End theatres, but that he has some idea of going in for management
himself as soon as a convenient playhouse can be secured.  Of this, more
anon."

It was natural when Erb had looked through these notices that he should
find in his pocket two or three copies of a small poster advertising a
lecture by him on the forthcoming Sunday evening, at a hall in Walworth
Road.  "Mr. Herbert Barnes," said the poster loudly, adding in a lower
voice, "Organising Secretary Railway Carmen's Union, will speak on The
Working Man: What Will Become of Him?  No collection.  Discussion
invited."  Erb gave Miss Rosalind one of these as a present, and then
said, "Well now, I must be off," as though he had been detained greatly
against his will.

And here it was that Erb made one of those mistakes of commission which
the most reliable of us effect at uncertain intervals.  He took up the
photograph of a fur-coated young man, clean-shaven face, thin lips, and
not quite enough of chin.

"And who," asked Erb pityingly, "who might this young toff be?"

"He is stage manager," she said rather proudly, "to a company touring in
the provinces.  Plays too."

"Relation?"

"Not yet," said Rosalind.

As Erb blundered through the passage Rosalind warned him to attend to the
home-work she had given him to do, and to come promptly to his next
lesson; she held the door open until Erb went out of the gate, a new
politeness which he acknowledged by lifting his hat.  He had never lifted
his hat to a lady before, and had always smiled contemptuously when he
had seen gallant youths performing this act of respect.  To atone for
this retrograde movement he ran against the tardily-arriving lady pupil,
and went on without apology.  The lady pupil ejaculated, "Clown!" and Erb
felt that he had righted himself in his own estimation.

He looked about him as he walked up the crowded pavement towards the
Elephant and Castle, because it was always one of his duties to recognise
the railway vans.  Disappointment clouded his eyes: he blamed himself for
so far forgetting the principal duty of his life as to waste time on
unremunerative investments.  This was why he missed a Brighton goods van
standing with its pair of horses near a large shop in Newington Causeway;
the van boy reported Erb's negligence to his mate when he returned, and
this coming on the top of other annoying circumstances, the Brighton man
said to himself, "This shall be chalked up against you, young Erb."

Erb reached Page's Walk, having tried ineffectually to walk himself into
a good humour, and found Louisa with a round spot of colour high up on
either cheek, looking out of the window of the model dwellings and
hailing him excitedly.

"Put that 'ead of yours in," he counselled.  "You'll go and catch cold."

"You won't catch much," retorted Louisa, "if you don't arrange to be on
'and when wanted.  'Urry upstairs, I've got something to tell you that
can't be bawled."

Erb ran up the stone stairs, and Louisa met him at the door of the
sitting-room, her eyes bigger than ever with the importance.  The room
had a slight perfume of violets.

"Who d'you think's been 'ere?"

"Tell us," said Erb.

"But guess," begged Louisa, enjoying the power that was hers.

"Can't guess."

"Lady Frances," said Louisa, in an impressive whisper.

"Well," remarked Erb curtly, "what of it?"

"What of it?  Why, she wanted you to show her over Bermondsey, and she
waited here upwards of a hower, chatting away to me like anything."

"Any other news?"

"Yes," said Louisa reluctantly, "but nothing of much importance.  Letter
from Aunt Emma; she's coming up soon.  Oh, and a man called to say there
was trouble brewin' at Willer Walk, and would you see about it as soon as
possible."

"_Now_," remarked Erb elatedly, "_now_ you're talking."

CHAPTER VI

THE particular blend of trouble which Willow Walk was occupied in brewing
proved highly attractive to Erb, and one that gave to all the men
concerned a taste of the joys that must have come in the French
Revolution.  A few impetuous young spirits who had been brooding on
grievances since the days when they were van boys were responsible.  Erb
recognised that here was the first opportunity of justifying his
appointment.  Warned, however, by the example of other organisers within
memory, who had sometimes in similar experiments shown a tendency to
excess, Erb took care.  He wrote letters to the General Manager, letters
for which he received a printed form of acknowledgment and no other, he
wrote to the Directors, and received a brief reply to the effect that
they could not recognise Mr. Herbert Barnes in the matter, and that the
grievances of the staff concerned only the staff and themselves; the men
were bitterly annoyed at this, but Erb, because he had anticipated the
reply, showed no concern.  He worked from dawn near to dawn again,
sending letters to members of Parliament, going round to the depots of
other railways, attending meetings, and in many ways devoting himself to
the work of what he called directing public opinion.  In point of fact,
he had first to create it.  For a good fortnight he gave up everything to
devote himself to this one object, gave up everything but his lessons in
Camberwell.  One of the halfpenny evening papers said, amongst other
things, "Mr. Herbert Barnes made an impassioned but logical and
excellently delivered speech."  Erb knew the deplorable looking man with
a silk hat of the early seventies who had reported this, but that did not
prevent him from being highly gratified on seeing the words in print;
Louisa spent eighteenpence on a well-bound manuscript book, and in it
commenced to paste these notices.  The point at issue being that the men
demanded better payment of overtime, Erb found here a subject that lent
itself to oratorical argument; the story of the man who was so seldom at
home that one Sunday his little girl asked the other parent, "Mother,
who's this strange man?" never failed to prove effective, and Erb felt
justified in leaving out the fact that the carman in question was one
accustomed, when his work finished at night, to go straight from the
stables to a house in Old Kent Road, where he usually remained until the
potman cried "Time! gentlemen, time!"

The men had sent in their ultimatum to the head office, and had held
their last meeting.  The Directors had remained adamant on the question
of receiving Erb as spokesman, and the men, not having an orator of equal
power in their ranks, and fearful of being worsted in a private
interview, had insisted either that Erb should accompany the deputation
or that there should be no deputation at all, but only a strike on the
following Monday morning.  (The advanced party protested against the idea
of giving this formal notice of an unlikely event but Erb insisted and
the moderates supported him.  "If we can get what we want," argued the
moderates, "by showing a certain amount of what you may call bluff, by
all means let us stop at that.")

It gave Erb a sensation of power to find that not one of these uniformed
men in their brass-bound caps was strong-minded enough or sufficiently
clear of intellect to carry out any big scheme by himself; they could
only keep of one mind by shoring each other up, and he felt that he
himself was the one steady, upright person who prevented them all from
slipping.  He not only kept them together, but he guided them.  A
suggestion from him on some minor point of detail, and they followed as a
ship obeys the helm; if any began a remark with doubting preface of "Ah,
but--" the others hushed them down and begged them to have some sense.
Erb had made all his plans for the possible stop of work; the other
stations and depots were willing to contribute something infinitesimal
every week with much the same spirit that they would have paid to see a
wrestling match.  All the same, Erb showed more confidence than he felt,
and when he left the men, declining their invitation to drink success to
the movement (clear to them that Fortune was a goddess only to be
appeased and gained over by the pouring out of libations of mild and
bitter), he took cheerfulness from his face, and walked, his collar up,
along Bermondsey New Road to call for his young sister at her workshop.
The sellers on the kerb appealed to him in vain, a shrill-voiced little
girl thrust groundsel in his face, and he took no notice.  Gay bunches of
flowers were flourished in front of his eyes, and he waved them aside.
If the men went weak at the knees at the last moment it would be
deplorable, but it would be an incident for which he could not blame
himself; if he himself were to make some blunder in the conduct of the
negotiations it would be fatal to his career, and all other secretaries
of all other organisations would whisper about it complacently.

"Anxious times, my girl," said Erb to Louisa.  "Anxious times.  We'll
have a tram-ride down to Greenwich and back, and blow dull care away."

"I've just finished," said Louisa in a whisper.  "I'll pop on me hat,
Erb, and be with you in 'alf a moment."

"What's become of your voice?"

"Mislaid it somewhere," said his young sister lightly.  "Can't think for
the life of me where I put it last."

"This work's beginning to affect your chest," said Erb.

"Funny thing," remarked Louisa, with great good temper, halfway up the
wooden stairs of the workshop, "but my medical man ordered me carriage
exercise.  Shan't be two ticks."

When Louisa returned, stabbing her hat in one or two places before
gaining what seemed to be a satisfactory hold, she was accompanied by
giggling young women who had been sent by the rest as a commission to
ascertain whether it was Louisa's own brother or some other girl's
brother who had called for her; Louisa's own statement appearing too
absurd to have any relationship to truth.  Moreover, presuming it were
Louisa's young man who had called for her, it was something of a breach
of etiquette, as understood by the girls of the workshop, for one young
couple to go out alone, the minimum number for such an expedition being
four, in which case they talked not so much to their immediate companion
as to the other half of the square party, with whom they communicated by
shouting.  Having ascertained, to their surprise, that Louisa had spoken
the exact and literal truth, they saw the brother and sister off from the
doorway, warning Louisa to wrap up her neck, and begging Erb to smile and
think of something pleasant.

"Never mind their chaff," said Louisa, in her deep whisper.  "I'd a jolly
sight rather be going out a bit of an excursion with you than I would
with--well, _you_ know."

"Wish you hadn't lost your voice," said Erb, with concern.  "I don't like
the sound of it, at all."

"There's some girls in our place never get it back, and after about four
or five years of it--Don't cross over here."

"Why not?"

"He makes my 'ead ache," said Louisa promptly.  "I've only been going out
with him for a fortnight, and I know all what he's going to say as though
I'd read it in a printed book.  He talks about the weather first, then
about his aunt's rheumatics, then about the day he had at Brighton when
he was a kid, then about where he thinks of spendin' his 'oliday next
year, then about how much his 'oliday cost him last year--"  A mild gust
of wind came and struck Louisa on the mouth; she stopped to cough,
holding her hand the while flat on her blouse.

"Keep your mouth shut, youngster," advised Erb kindly, "until you've got
used to the fresh air."

Because both brother and sister felt that in sailing down to New Cross
Gate on the top of a tram, and then along by a line less straight and
decided to Greenwich they were escaping from worry, they enjoyed the
evening's trip.  Going through Hatcham, Louisa declared that one might be
in the country, and thereupon, in her own way, declared that they were in
the country, that she and her brother had been left a bit of money, which
enabled her to give up work at the factory and wear a fresh set of cuffs
and collars every day: this sudden stroke of good fortune also permitted
Erb to give up his agitating rigmarole (the phrase was Louisa's own, and
Erb accepted it without protest), and they had both settled down
somewhere near Epping Forest; Erb, as lord of the manor, with the vicar
of the parish church for slave, and Louisa as the generous Lady
Bountiful, giving blankets and home-made jam to all those willing to
subscribe to Conservative principles.  They had a stroll up the hill to
Greenwich Park, Lady Louisa forced to go slowly on account of some
aristocratic paucity of breath, and Sir Herbert, her brother, playing
imaginary games of golf with a stick and some pebbles, and going round
the links in eighty-two.  At the Chalet near the Blackheath side of the
park they had tea, Louisa's insistence on addressing her brother by a
full title astonishing the demure people at other wooden tables, puzzling
them greatly, and causing, after departure, acrimonious debate between
husbands and wives, some deciding that Erb and Louisa were really
superior people and others making reference to escapes from Colney Hatch.
Louisa, delighted with the game of fooling people, darted down the hill,
with Erb following at a sedate trot; she stopped three parts of the way
down, and Erb found her leaning against a tree panting with tears in her
eyes.  These tears she brushed away, declaring that something had come to
her mind that had made her laugh exhaustedly, and the two went on more
sedately through the open way at the side of the tall iron gates, happier
in each other's company than in the company of anyone else, and showing
this in the defiant way with which some people hide real emotions.

"_You're_ a bright companion," said Louisa satirically, as the tram
turned with a jerk at the foot of Blackheath Hill.  "You 'aven't made me
laugh for quite five minutes."

"I've been thinking, White Face."

"My face isn't white," protested his sister, leaning back to get a
reflection of herself in a draper's window.  "I've got quite a colour.
Besides, why don't you give up thinking for a bit?  You're always at it.
I wonder your brain--or whatever you like to call it--stands the tax you
put on it."

"You'd be a rare old nagger," said Erb, hooking the tarpaulin covering
carefully and affectionately around his sister, "if ever anybody had the
misfortune to marry you.  It'd be jor, jor, jor, from morning, noon, till
night."

"And if ever you was silly enough to get engaged, Erb.  That's Deptford
Station down there," said Louisa, as the tram stopped for a moment's
rest.  "I used to know a boy who's ticket collector now.  He got so
confused the other day when I come down here to go to a lecture that he
forgot to take my ticket."  She laughed out of sheer exultation at the
terrifying powers of her sex.  "Take my advice, Erb, don't you never get
married, even if you are asked to.  Not even if it was young Lady
Frances."

"Young idiot," said Erb.  "Think I ever bother my head about such
matters?  I've got much more important work in life.  This business that
I've got on now--"

"Our girls are always asking about you," said Louisa musingly.  "It's
all, 'Is he engaged?' 'Does he walk out with anybody?'  'Is he a woman
'ater?' and all such rot."

Erb looked down at the traffic that was speeding at the side of the
leisurely tram and gave himself up for a while to the luxury of feeling
that he had been the subject of this discussion.  He thought of his young
elocution teacher, and wondered whether he had any right to accept this
position of a misogynist when he knew so well that it was made by adverse
circumstances and the existence of a good-looking youth with an
unreliable chin and his hair in waves.  The driver below whistled
aggrievedly at a high load of hops that was coolly occupying the tram
lines; the load of hops seemed to be asleep, and the tram driver had to
pull up and whistle again.  In a side road banners were stretched across
with the word "Welcome," signifying thus that a church bazaar was being
held, where articles could be bought at quite six times the amount of
their real value.  A landau, drawn by a pair of conceited greys, came out
of the side street, with a few children following and crying,
"Ipipooray!" the proud horses snorted indignantly to find that they were
checked by a bucolic waggon and a plebeian tram.  A young woman with a
scarlet parasol in the landau looked out over the door rather anxiously.

"It's her ladyship," cried Louisa, clutching Erb's arm.

"Good shot," agreed Erb.

"If only she'd look up and recognise us," said Louisa.  The other people
on the tram began to take an interest in the encounter, and Louisa's head
already trembled with pride.

"She wouldn't recognise us."

"Go on with you," contradicted his sister.

Louisa was afflicted with a sudden cough of such eccentric timbre that
some might have declared it to be forced.  People on the pavement looked
up at her surprisedly, and Lady Frances just then closing her scarlet
parasol, for the use of which, indeed, the evening gave but little
reason, also glanced upwards.  Erb took off his hat and jerked a bow, and
Louisa noticed that the closed scarlet parasol was being waved
invitingly.  She unhooked the tarpaulin cover at once, and, despite Erb's
protestation that they had paid fares to the Elephant, hurried him down
the steps.  To Louisa's great delight, the tram, with its absorbedly
interested passengers, did not move until the two had reached the open
landau, and Lady Frances's neatly-gloved hand had offered itself in the
most friendly way.  Louisa declared later that she would have given all
that she had in the Post Office Savings Bank to have heard the comments
of the passengers.

"This," said Lady Frances pleasantly, "is the long arm of coincidence.
Step in both of you, please, and let me take you home to your place."

"If you don't mind excusing us--" began Erb.

("Oh you--you man," said his sister to herself.  "I can't call you
anything else.")

"Please, _please_," begged Lady Frances.  They stepped in.  By a great
piece of good luck,' Erb remembered that amongst the recipes and axioms
and words of advice on the back page of an evening paper he had a night
or two previously read that gentlemen should always ride with their backs
to the horses, and he took his seat opposite to Lady Frances: that young
woman, with a touch on Louisa's arm, directed the short girl to be seated
at her side.

"Bricklayers' Arms Station, Old Kent Road," said Lady Frances.  Mr.
Danks, in livery, and his hair prematurely whitened, had jumped down to
close the door.  Mr. Danks touched his hat, and, without emotion, resumed
his seat at the side of the coachman.  "You are keeping well, I hope?"
To Louisa.

"I _have_ been feeling a bit chippy," said Erb's sister, trying to loll
back in the seat, but fearful of losing her foothold.

"So sorry," said Lady Frances.  "And you?"

"Thank you," said Erb, "middlin'.  Can't say more than that.  Been
somewhat occupied of late with various matters."

"I know, I know," she remarked briskly.  "It is that that makes it
providential I should have met you.  My uncle is a director on one of the
railways, and he was talking about you only last night at dinner."

"Very kind of the gentleman.  What name, may I ask?"  Lady Frances gave
the information, gave also an address, and Erb nodded.  "Me and him are
somewhat in opposite camps at the present time."

"My uncle was anxious to meet you," said young Lady Frances, in her
agreeable way.

"Just at this moment I scarcely think--"

"Under a flag of truce," she suggested.  "I was going to write to you,
but this will save me from troubling you with a note."

"No trouble."

"I've been opening a bazaar down here," went on Lady Frances with a
determined air of vivacity.  "The oddest thing.  Do you ever go to
bazaars?"

"Can't say," said Erb cautiously, "that I make a practice of frequenting
them."

"Then let me tell you about this.  When you open a bazaar you have first
to fill your purse with gold, empty it, and then--"

Louisa sat, bolt upright, her feet just touching the floor of the
carriage, and feeling, as she afterwards intimated, disinclined to call
the Prince of Wales her brother.  Her ears listened to Lady Frances's
conversation, and she made incoherent replies when an opinion was
demanded, but her eyes were alert on one side of the carriage or the
other, sparkling with anxiety to encounter someone whom she knew.  Nearly
everybody turned to look at them, but it was not until they reached the
Dun Cow at the corner of Rotherhithe New Road (the hour being now eight
o'clock), at a moment when Louisa had begun to tell herself regretfully
no one would believe her account of this gratifying and epoch-making
event, that into Old Kent Road, chasing each other, came two girls
belonging to her factory.  The foremost dodged behind a piano-organ that
made a fruitless effort to make its insistent jangle heard above the roar
and the murmur of traffic; seeing her pursuer stand transfixed, with a
cheerful scream of vengeance half finished, she turned her head.  At the
sight of Louisa bowing with a genteel air of half recognition the first
girl staggered back and sat down helplessly on the handles of the
piano-organ, jerking that instrument of music and causing the Italian
lady with open bodice to remonstrate in the true accents of Clerkenwell.
When near to Bricklayers' Arms Station Louisa saw again her current young
man morbid with the thought of a wasted evening, but still waiting
hopefully for his _fiancee_, now three hours behind time; the young
gentleman's eyesight being dimmed with resentfulness, it became necessary
for her to wave a handkerchief that might, she knew, have been cleaner,
and thus engage his attention.  At the very last possible moment he
signalled astonished acknowledgment.

For Erb, on the other hand, the journey had something less of exultation.
From the moment of starting from St. James's Road, Hatcham, the fear
possessed him that he might be seen by some member of his society, who
would thereupon communicate facts to colleagues.  Thus would his
character for independence find itself bruised: thus would the jealousy
of the men be aroused; thus would the Spanswick party be able to whisper
round the damaging report that Erb had been nobbled by the capitalists.
Wherefore Erb, anxious for none of these eventualities, tipped his hat
well over his forehead, and, leaning forward, with his face down,
listened to Lady Frances's conversation.  The carriage had a scent of
refinement; the young woman opposite in her perfect costume was something
to be worshipped respectfully, and he scarce wondered when, at one point
of the journey up the straight Old Kent Road, he heard one loafer say to
another, "Where's there an election on to-day?"  Lady Frances, having
completed her account of the bazaar, had information of great importance
to communicate, and this she gave in a confidential undertone that was
pleasant and flattering.

"From what my uncle says, it appears there is a strike threatening,
and--you know all about it perhaps?"

"Heard rumours," said Erb guardedly.

"He is anxious that you should call upon him at the earliest possible
moment to discuss the affair privately, but he is most anxious that it
should not appear that he has sought the meeting.  You quite see, don't
you?  It's a question of _amour propre_."

"Ho!" said Erb darkly.

"And I should be so glad," she went on, with the excitement of a young
diplomatist, "if I could bring you two together.  It would be doing so
much good."

"To him?"

"I could drive you on now," she suggested hesitatingly, "and we should
catch my uncle just after his dinner; an excellent time."

"I think," said Erb stolidly, "that we'd better let events work out their
natural course."

"You're wrong, quite wrong, believe me.  Events left alone work out very
clumsily at times."  Lady Frances touched him lightly on the knee.
"Please do me this very small favour."

"Since you put it like that then, I don't mind going up to see him
to-night.  Not that anything will come from it, mind you.  Don't let's
delude ourselves into thinking _that_."

"This," cried Lady Frances, clapping her hands, "is excellent.  This is
just what I like to be doing."  Erb, still watching fearfully for
acquaintances, glanced at her excited young face, with respectful
admiration.  "Now, I shall drive you straight on--"

"If you don't mind," said Erb, "no; we'll hop out at the corner of Page's
Walk."

"And not drive up to the dwellings?" asked Louisa disappointed.

"And _not_ drive up to the dwellings," said Erb firmly.  "I'll get on
somehow to see your uncle to-night."

"You won't break your word?"

"I should break a lot of other things before I did that."

Thus it was.  Lady Frances shook hands; Erb stepped out, looking narrowly
through the open gateway of the goods station, and offering assistance to
Louisa absently.  As he did so, he saw William Henry, his old van boy,
marching out of the gates in a violently new suit of corduroys, and with
the responsible air of one controlling all the railways in the world.

"Get better soon," said Lady Frances to Louisa.  "Mr. Barnes, to-night."
Mr. Danks, down from his seat and closing the door (Erb and his sister
standing on the pavement, Erb wondering whether he ought to give the
footman threepence for himself, and Louisa coming down slowly from heaven
to earth), Mr. Danks received the order, "Home, please."

Erb went half an hour later by tram to Westminster Bridge and walked
across.  He perceived the necessity for extreme caution; reading and
natural wisdom told him that many important schemes had been ruined by
the interference of woman.  He looked at the lights that starred the
borders of the wide river, saw the Terrace where a member of Parliament
walked up and down, following the red glow of a cigar, and he knew that
if he were ever to get there it would only be by leaping successfully
over many obstacles similar to the one which at present confronted him;
to allow himself to be distracted from the straight road of progress
would be to court disaster.

"Boy," said the porter at the Mansions, "show No. 124A."  In a lift that
darted to the skies Erb was conveyed and ordered to wait in a corridor
whilst Boy, who wore as many buttons as could be crowded on his tight
jacket, went and hunted for Lady Frances's uncle and presently ran him to
earth in the smoking room, bringing him out triumphantly to the corridor.
Erb found himself greeted with considerable heartiness, invited to come
into the smoking room that looked down at a height suggesting vertigo at
St. James's Park, taken to a corner, and furnished with a big cigar.  Men
in evening dress, with the self-confidence that comes after an adequate
meal, were telling each other what they would do were they Prime
Minister, and Erb was surprised to hear the drastic measures proposed for
stamping out opposition; some of these seemed to be scarcely within the
limits of reason.  And what had Erb to say?  A plain man, said Lady
Frances's uncle of himself (which, in one respect at any rate, was a
statement bearing the indelible stamp of truth), always of opinion that
it was well to plunge _in medias res_.  On Erb replying that at present
he had no remark to offer, the purple-faced Director seemed taken aback,
and diverted the conversation for a time to Trichinopolies and how best
to keep them, a subject on which Erb was unable to speak with any
pretence of authority.

"A little whiskey?" suggested the Director, with his thumb on the
electric bell, "just to keep one alive."

Lady Frances's uncle sighed on receiving Erb's reply, and proceeded to
relate a long and not very interesting anecdote concerning an attempt
that had once been made to swindle him by an hotel proprietor at Cairo,
and the courageous way in which he had resisted the overcharge.  On Erb
looking at his silver watch, the colour of the Director's face, from
sheer anxiety deepened, and he waved into the discussion with a "Pall
Mall Gazette" a silent friend who had been sitting in a low easy chair,
with hands clasped over his capacious dress waistcoat, gazing at the room
with the fixed stare of repletion.  The silent friend craned himself into
an upright position and lumbered across the room to the window.  The
Director, thus usefully reinforced, proceeded to open the affair of the
impending strike, and, having done this, urged that there never was a
difficulty yet that had not a way out, and demanded that Erb should show
this way out instantly.  Erb suggested that the Director's colleagues
should receive him and the men, listen to their arguments, and concede
their requests, or some of them.  Director, appealing for the support of
the silent man, but receiving none, replied explosively, "That be hanged
for a tale!"  On which Erb remarked that he had some distance to go, and
if the Director would excuse him--  Director said, fervently, "For
goodness gracious' sake, let us sit down, and let us thresh this matter
out."  Giving up now his original idea of an exit, he remarked that a
golden bridge must be built.  Why should not Erb simply stand aside, and
let the men alone seek consultation with the Directors?  Erb declared
that he would do this like one o'clock (intimating thus prompt and
definite action), providing there was good likelihood of the men's
requests being complied with.  Director, looking at silent friend, and
trying to catch that gentleman's lack lustre eye, inquired how on earth
he could pledge his colleagues.  Erb, now interested in the game,
suggested that Lady Frances's uncle probably had some idea of the
feelings entertained by his fellow directors, and the host, giving up all
efforts to get help from his silent friend, admitted that there was
something in this.  Pressed by Erb to speak as man to man, Director gave
the limits of concession that had been decided upon--limits which would
not, however, come within sight unless the men came alone, and quite
alone, to plead their cause.  Erb thought for a few moments, the glare of
the silent friend now directed upon him, and then said that he would take
Director's word as the word of a gentleman; the men should send a
deputation the following day in their luncheon hour, and he (Erb) would
stand aside to watch the result.  Director offered a hand, and Erb,
instinctively rubbing his palm on his trousers, took it, and the silent
friend thereupon suddenly burst into speech (which was the last thing of
which one would have thought him capable) saying huskily, and with
pompous modesty, that he was very pleased to think that any poor efforts
of his should have brought about such a happy agreement; that it was not
the first time, and probably would not be the last, that he had presided
over a meeting of reconciliation, and that his methods were always--if he
might say so--tact, impartiality, and a desire to hear both sides.

"Quite glad to have met you," said the Director, also gratified in having
accomplished something that would give him the halo of notoriety at
to-morrow's Board meeting.  "You'll go far.  Your head is screwed on the
right way, my man.  Not a liqueur?"

"I take partic'lar care it ain't screwed in any other fashion," said Erb.

"Good-bye," said the Director.

"Be good," said Erb.

CHAPTER VII

ERB admitted, at an elocution lesson in Camberwell, that the settlement
of the Willow Walk affair had given him a good jerk forward.  There was
always now a quarter of an hour between the close of his time and the
appearance of the next pupil--a quarter of an hour generally occupied by
a soliloquy from Erb, prefaced by the cue from Rosalind.  "Well now, tell
me what you've been doing this week."  She had some of the important
security that comes to an engaged young woman, and Erb, who looked
forward to this weekly exchange of confidences, forced himself to ask
politely after Mr. Lawrence Railton, of the "Sin's Reward" Company, and
when Rosalind answered (as she usually did) with a sigh that Mr. Railton
had not written for some time, Erb made excuses for him on various
grounds, such as that he was probably over-occupied with the work of his
profession, that a man in Mr. Railton's place had to be here, there and
everywhere, that it being sometimes the gentleman's affectionate habit to
scribble a hurried postcard to his _fiancee_ on the Sunday journeys,
likely enough there would be a letter next Monday.  On this Rosalind
would brighten very much, and sing cheerful words of praise of Mr.
Railton, who occupied, it seemed, a unique and delicate position, in that
he was much too good for the provinces and not quite good enough for
town; nevertheless, "Sin's Reward" had booked a week for the Surrey, and
the young woman's bright eyes danced at the thought of seeing him again.
Mr. Railton's real name was Botts, which was held to be unattractive as a
name on the bills; his father was a silver chaser in Clerkenwell, and it
was generally understood that Mr. Railton had had to cut off his parents
with a shilling on the grounds that they insisted on calling him Sammy.

Walking home after this fifteen minutes of happiness, Erb found himself
continuing the talk, and affecting that Rosalind was tripping along at
his side: it was in these silent talks that he dared to call her "dear,"
thereupon colouring so much that passers-by glanced at him curiously;
plain-faced ladies went on gay with the thought that their features had
the power to confuse a stranger.  When, in these circumstances, he
encountered men of the society they were sometimes greatly diverted, and
cried, "'Ullo, Erb.  Going over a speech, eh, Erb?"

No doubt at this period of Erb's popularity.  His unselfish reticence in
the Willow Walk affair, the commonsense he exhibited in one or two minor
troubles, the increased polish of the spoken word: all these things
increased the men's respect.  Also they knew that he worked for them day
and night: he had not developed the swollen head of importance that in
secretaries of other societies was nearly always a prominent feature.  He
organised a system of benefits on three scales, by which, if you paid in
twopence a week, you received fifteen shillings a week in the case of
unjust dismissal; twelve shillings a week for unjust suspension; and ten
shillings a week for strike pay.  He arranged with a pushful solicitor in
Camberwell to give legal advice.  He had written one or two articles
concerning the society in weekly penny papers, and in these he had taken
care not to obtrude his own name or his own work.  Even Spanswick
admitted now that Erb was turning out better than he had expected, but
Spanswick's views might have been brightened by the fact that Erb was
organising a ticket benefit at the Surrey on Spanswick's behalf: this not
so much on account of any personal misfortune, but because Mrs.
Spanswick, always a thoughtless, inconsiderate woman, had mistakenly
chosen a time when Spanswick was temporarily suspended from duty for
insobriety, to present him with twin babies.  "Three," grumbled
Spanswick, "three, I could have understood.  There'd been a bit of money
about three.  But two--"  Spanswick's friends had promised to rally round
him, a feat they performed in theory only, and Erb had to go elsewhere to
find buyers of the tickets.  Lady Frances had taken a box--a fact which
modified and chastened Spanswick's very extreme views in regard to what
he usually called the slave-owning upper classes.  Lady Frances had done
a kinder thing than this.  On one of her visits to Bermondsey she had met
Louisa, white-faced and twitching as a result of her work, had gone to
Louisa's employer, and had made him shake in his very shoes by denouncing
him and all his works, had demanded for Louisa a fortnight's holiday,
which the employer, anxious enough to conciliate this emphatic young
titled person, and fearful of being sent to the Tower, at once conceded;
sent Louisa, with sister Alice for company, away to the country house at
Penshurst where the better side of Alice's nature detached itself, and
she became an attentive nurse.  Erb's Aunt Emma lived at Penshurst: the
old lady went up high in the estimation of the other villagers by reason
of her nieces' visit to the Court.

The month being July, work well in demand and overtime to be had without
asking, Erb was able to obtain consent to almost any project that he
liked to submit to his committee.  The society was new enough to feel the
enthusiasm of youth; the men were pleased with the sensation of power
that it gave to them, and they assumed there were no limits to its
possibilities.  From which causes Erb had several irons heating in the
fire, of which one was a new paper to be called "The Carman," to be
issued twice a month, and to cost one halfpenny per copy.  The expense of
production would be something more than this, but when Erb, who was to be
managing editor, used that blessed word "propaganda," there was nothing
more to be said, and the last doubter gave in.

It was at this time that Erb gave up whistling in the streets.

The white-haired labour member had taken him to the House on two
occasions, and in the smoking room had introduced him to some wealthy
members of the party; and, whilst the board at the side showed the names
of unattractive speakers, the members chatted so agreeably that Erb
forgot himself occasionally and addressed one who was in evening dress,
and had so much money that he wore several coins on his watch chain, as
"Sir;" lifting of eyebrows on the part of the labour member told him he
had blundered.  Members asked questions of Erb, questions which betrayed
the fact that their knowledge of the real feelings of the working men was
superficial, and thenceforth Erb felt more at his ease.  They gave their
names as patrons of the Spanswick benefit, and the member who wore coins
offered Erb a cigarette, and, seeing him through the outer lobby, begged
him to drop a line should anything important occur; this in a way that
suggested later to Erb, as he crossed Westminster, that the coin member
wanted to find opportunity of becoming attached to some creditable
grievance, not so much for the sake of the grievance as for the sake of
himself.

"Now," said Erb definitely to the fringe of lights near St. Thomas's
Hospital, "I'm not going to be made a cat's paw, mind you."

Interest came with the arrangements for Spanswick's benefit.  This
necessitated calls at the theatre near the Obelisk in the evenings, and
speech with excited men who went about behind the scenes with their hats
at the backs of their heads: men who were for ever mislaying letters and
documents, and complaining of everybody else's carelessness, and
eventually finding the letters or documents in their own hands; the while
on the stage some lady in black, with her face whitened, was bewailing to
a keenly interested house the perfidy of man, and assuring the gallery of
her determination to track down one particular individual, though he
should have made his way to the uttermost ends of the earth.  The
Spanswick night was to be a ticket benefit (which, being interpreted,
meant that only the tickets sold outside the theatre would add to
Spanswick's income and assuage his present distress), and the night
selected was a Friday in the week booked by the "Sin's Reward"
Company--Friday, because that was near to the men's pay day, and would
hook them at the fleeting moment when spare cash was on the very point of
burning a hole in their pockets.  Because Lawrence Railton was of the
company, and because Erb was responsible for the success of the evening,
Rosalind communicated to the scheme the keen interest that became her so
well; her father, with ponderous generosity, had promised to ensure a
triumphant evening by giving what he termed the considerable advantage of
a somewhat long and not altogether undistinguished experience.  Erb was
anxious to see Lawrence Railton, desirous of seeing what manner of youth
had succeeded where he had desired to do so.  Matters being as they were,
there was no alternative but to play the friend of the family, to meet
Mr. Railton with the outstretched hand of amity, to congratulate him, and
to save up presently for a wedding present which should represent nicely
a genial interest in the welfare of the young couple.  A plated
cruet-stand he thought, as at present advised, but there were arguments
in favour of an inkstand that looked like a lawn-tennis set--an inkstand
had a suggestion of literary tastes that appealed to the prospective
editor of "The Carman;" it suggested also a compliment to Rosalind that a
cruet-stand with the best intentions could never convey.  He did not
quite know how he would endure it all.  Perhaps it would best be remedied
by increased application to the work of the society, and if ever the day
should come when he found himself elected to a seat in that House at
Westminster (the outside of which he went to see very often, just for
self-encouragement), Rosalind would feel that she might have done better
than marry Mr. Lawrence Railton.

"But I don't quite see," admitted Erb, as he wrestled with all this, "I
don't quite see what sort of help I shall get out of that."

CHAPTER VIII

AT the Obelisk streets radiate, and the trams going to London have to
make their choice.  The theatre in the road that leads to Blackfriars
Bridge is a theatre of middle age, with its own opinion of the many
juvenile competitors that have sprung up during recent years in near and
in distant suburbs: it endeavours to preserve the semblance of youth and
modernity by putting on four white globes of electric light, but its age
is betrayed by a dozen women with aprons full of oranges, "Two a punny, a
punny for two" (oranges are not eaten in the new theatres), and a tray on
high trestles loaded with pigs' trotters, which no one ever buys.  Some
steps go up to the shilling and the sixpenny seats; early doors, which
exact from the over-anxious an additional threepence, are in a dark alley
at the side, at the end of which is a door that leads to the box-office
by day and the stage entrance by night.  The outside of the house has
coloured posters of grisly scenes that make the passer-by chill with
fear: a yellow woman hurled down a blue precipice; the same lady bound by
cords to a grandfather's clock, which shows the hour as three minutes to
twelve, and facing her two crape masked men with pistols; underneath the
horrid words, "At midnight, my lady, you die."  A pleasanter note in the
frames of photographs that hang slightly askew.  Here, Mr. Lawrence
Railton as a wicked Italian (at any rate, his moustache turns upwards, as
Gratiano in a third-hand costume of the Louis the Fifteenth period, as
Inspector Beagle in "Tracking the Criminal," and in as many more
characters as the frame will carry).  In the centre, Mr. Lawrence Railton
as the art of the photographer would have him be in real life, evening
dress, insufficient chin, contemptuous smile--the portrait which occupied
the position of honour on Rosalind's mantelpiece.

A conspicuous evening for Erb, by reason of the circumstance that he had
the honour of conveying Rosalind to the theatre; this because her father,
having borrowed individual shillings on individual days from her on the
promise of accompanying her had, at the last moment, come into a windfall
of two and threepence, and had thereupon remembered an urgent appointment
with a dramatist of note at a public-house just off the Strand.  "Should
the fates be kind," said Rosalind's father, "I shall endeavour to honour
the performance with my presence later on."  Louisa, interested in
everything that interested Erb, had organised a raffle at her factory for
a circle ticket, and a chapel-going girl, who had picked the highest
number out of a straw hat accompanied her, with the full
anticipation--this being her first visit to the play--that she was about
to witness scenes that might well imperil her future existence;
unwilling, all the same, to give her prize away or to sell.  Erb,
confronted with the responsibility of transporting three ladies, had
vague ideas of a four-wheeler, but remembered in time that this would
excite criticism from members ever anxious to detect and crush any effort
he might make to commit the unpardonable sin of "putting on side;"
compensation came in being allowed to walk by the side of Rosalind, who,
near Camberwell Gate, seemed to be dressed prettily but with restraint,
but who, as they approached the Elephant and Castle, increased in
smartness by contrast with the surroundings of Walworth Road.  There were
crossings to be managed, and Erb, in the most artful way, assisted her
here by insinuating his arm underneath her cape, wondering at his own
courage, and rather astonished to find that he was not reproved.
Rosalind's manner differed from that of other young women of the district
in that she dispensed with the defiant attitude which they assumed, never
to be varied from the first introduction to the last farewell.

"And now the question is," said Louisa's colleague, "ought I to go in or
ought I to stay outside?"

"Considering you've got a ticket," replied little Louisa satirically, "it
seems a pity to go in.  Why not stay outside and 'ave an orange instead?"

"Oh," said the chapel-goer recklessly, "now I'm here I may jest as well
go on with it.  In for a penny in for a pound.  If the worst comes to the
worst, I can shut me eyes and--  Who's that lifting his cap to you?"

"'Ullo," remarked Louisa, "you alive still?"

The lad threw away the end of his cigarette, and, advancing, remarked in
a bass voice that he had thought it as well to come up on the off chance
of meeting Louisa.

"My present young man," said Louisa, introducing the lad.

"Well," said the chapel young woman resignedly, "this is the beginning of
it."

Erb, again assisting, took Rosalind up the broad stone staircase; swing
doors permitted them to go into the warm, talkative theatre.  A few
shouts of recognition were raised from various quarters as Erb went in,
and he nodded his head in return, but he looked sternly at the direction
whence a cry came of "Is that the missus, Erb?" and the chaffing question
was not repeated.  Down near the stage the orchestra made discordant
sounds, the cornet blew a few notes of a frivolous air for practice.  Erb
bought a programme for Rosalind, and asked if anything else was required;
but Rosalind, from a satin bag which hung from her wrist, produced a pair
of early Victorian opera glasses, bearing an inscription addressed to her
mother, "From a few Gallery Boys," and said, "No, thank you," with a
smile that made his head spin round.

"But would you mind," she flushed as she leaned forward to whisper this,
"would you mind telling Mr. Railton that I--I should _very_ much like to
see him after the show?"

At the stage door a postman had just called, and Erb, waiting for
permission to go in whilst the door-keeper sorted the letters, could not
help noticing that a violet envelope, in a feminine handwriting, was
placed under the clip marked R; it was addressed to Lawrence Railton,
Esquire.  The doorkeeper gave permission with a jerk of the head, as
though preferring not to compromise himself by speech, and Erb went up
through the narrow corridor where the office and the dressing-rooms were
situated.  Cards were pinned on the door of the latter, and one of them
bore, in eccentric type, the name of the gentleman for whom Rosalind had
given him the message.  A lady's head came out cautiously from one of the
other rooms and called in a shrill voice, "Mag-gie!"  A middle-aged woman
flew from somewhere in reply with a pair of shoes.  Below, the orchestra
started the overture of an elderly comic opera; a boy, in a cap, came
along the corridor shouting, "Beginners, please!"

"She got in everything for the entire week," said a triumphant voice
inside the room, "settled for my washing, cashed up for every blessed
thing, and I've never paid the old girl a sou from that day to this.
Hullo! what's blown this in?"

Two young men in the small room, and each making-up in front of a
looking-glass; before them open tin cases, powder puffs, sticks of grease
paint; bits of linen of many colours.  On the walls previous occupiers
had drawn rough caricatures: here and there someone had stuck an
applauding newspaper notice, or a butterfly advertisement.  Neither of
the young men looked round as Erb came in, but each viewed his reflection
in the looking-glass.

"Name of Railton?" said Erb, inquiringly.

"That's me," replied one of the two, still gazing into his looking-glass.

"My name's Barnes.  I'm secretary to the R.C.A.S."

"Any connection with the press?" asked Mr. Railton, fixing a white
whisker at the side of his floridly made-up face.

"Not at present!"

"Then what the devil do you mean," demanded the other hotly, "by forcing
your way into the room of two professional men?  What--"

"Yes," said the man at the other glass, taking up a hand-mirror to
examine the back of his head, "what the deuce next, I wonder?  For two
pins I'd take him by the scruff of his neck and pitch him downstairs."
He glanced at Erb, and added rather hastily to Mr. Railton: "If I were
you."

"I shall most certainly complain to the management," went on Mr. Railton.
"It isn't the first time."

"I don't know," said his companion, "what they think the profession's
made of.  Because we allow ourselves to be treated like a flock of sheep
they seem to think they can do just what they damn well please."

"I've a precious good mind," said Mr. Railton, vehemently, "to hand in my
notice.  Would, too, if it wasn't for the sake of the rest of the crowd."

He ceased for a second, whilst he made lines down either side of his
mouth, falling back from the mirror to consider the effect.

"Quite finished?" asked Erb, good humouredly.  "If so, I should like to
tell you, my fiery-tempered warriors, that I have only called with a
message from Miss Danks--Miss Rosalind Danks."

"That's one of yours, Lorrie!"

"You mean," said Mr. Railton casually, as he toned down a line with the
powder-puff, "a dot and carry one girl?"

"Miss Danks," said Erb, "is the leastest bit lame."  He repeated
precisely the message which Rosalind had given him, and Mr. Railton
clicked his tongue to intimate impatience.  "I'll call in again later
on," said Erb, "when you've finished your little bit, and then I can take
you round to where she's sitting."

"Now, why in the world," cried Mr. Railton, throwing a hairbrush on the
floor violently, "why in the world can't people mind their own business?
There's a class of persons going about on this earth, my dear Chippy--"

"I know what you are going to say," remarked the other approvingly.

"And if I had my will I'd hang the whole shoot of them.  I would,
honestly."

"I quite believe you would," said Chippy.

"And I'd draw and quarter them afterwards."

"And then burn 'em," suggested Chippy.

"And then burn 'em."

"Would you amiable gentlemen like to have the door closed?" asked Erb.

"Put yourself outside first," recommended Mr. Railton.

The stage and its eccentricities attracted Erb as they attract everyone,
and, a licensed person for the evening, he went about through the
feverish atmosphere, meeting people who appeared ridiculous as they stood
at the side of the stage waiting to go on, but who, as he knew, would
look more life-like than life with the footlights intervening.
Pimple-faced men, in tweed caps, hidden from the audience, held up
unreliable trees; kept a hand on a ladder, which enabled the leading lady
to go up and speak to her lover from the casemented upper window of a
cottage; ran against each other at every fair opportunity, complaining in
hoarse whispers of clumsiness.  A boy came holding clusters of shining
pewter cans by the handles, and peace was restored amongst the stage
hands, but for the folk in evening dress, with unnatural eyes and amazing
faces, who stood about ready to go on, there remained the strain of
excitement; some of them soliloquised in a corner, whilst others talked
in extravagant terms of dispraise concerning the new leading lady,
hinting that no doubt she was a very good girl and kind to her mother,
but that she could not act, my dear old boy, for nuts, or for toffee, or
for apples, or other rewards of a moderate nature.  These seemed to be
only their private views, for they were discarded when the leading lady
came down the ladder, and they then gathered round her and told her that
she was playing for all she was worth, that she had managed to extract
more from that one scene than her predecessor had obtained from the
entire play, and hinting quite plainly that it was a dear and a precious
privilege to be playing in the same company with her.  Mr. Lawrence
Railton brought for the leading lady a wooden chair; a middle-aged bird
(who was her dresser) hopped forward bringing a woollen shawl, that had
started by being white and still showed some traces of its original
intention, to place around her shoulders.

"I don't know," said Mr. Railton, stretching his arms, when, having been
ousted from attendance by others, he had strolled up towards Erb, "I
don't feel much like acting to-night!"

"Do you ever?" asked Erb.

"It's wonderful," went on the young man, "simply and absolutely wonderful
the different moods that one goes through, and the effect they have on
one's performance.  I go on giving much the same rendering of a part for
several nights on end, and, suddenly, I seem to get a flash of
inspiration."

"Better language!" recommended Erb.

"A flash of inspiration," said the white whiskered young man with perfect
confidence, and keeping his eye on the stage.  "It all comes in a moment
as it were.  And then, by Jove! one can fairly electrify an audience.
One sees the house absolutely rise."

"And go out?" asked Erb.

On the stage the leading man (who was an honest gentleman farmer, showing
the gentleman by wearing patent boots, and the farmer by carrying a
hunting crop), cried aloud demanding of misfortune whether she had
finished her fell conspiracy against him, and this, it appeared, was the
cue for Lawrence Railton in his white whiskers and frock-coated suit and
a brown hand-bag to go on with the announcement that he had come to
foreclose a mortgage, information which the house, knowing vaguely that
it boded no good to the hero, received with groans and hisses.  Erb,
watching from the side, prepared for an exhibition of superior acting on
the part of Mr. Railton, and was somewhat astonished to find that,
instead of playing a part that forwarded the action of the piece, he was
a mere butt sent on in order to be kicked off, treatment served out to
him by an honest labourer, faithful to his master and with considerable
humour in his disposition.  Any expectations that Railton would take a
more serious part in the melodrama were set aside, in a later scene of
Act I., when the hero and the faithful young labourer had both enlisted
in a crack cavalry regiment, he came on with his brown bag to find them
and give information of importance, and was at once, to the great joy of
the pit and gallery, again kicked off, whilst the regiment, consisting of
eight men and a girl officer, marched round the stage several times to a
military air, and, after the girl officer had delivered a few sentences
of admirable patriotism, went off to the Royal Albert Docks to take ship
for South Africa.  Indeed, throughout the piece it was Mr. Railton's
privilege to follow the leading man and his low comedy friend, and
whether he encountered them on the quay at Cape Town, out on the veldt
near Modder River, or at the Rhodes Club at Kimberley, he was ever hailed
by the entire theatre with joyous cries of "Kick him, kick him!" advice
upon which the low comedy man always acted.

"D'you like your job?" asked Erb at the end of Act II., as he prepared to
go round to the front and collect the men of his committee.

"Someone must hold the piece together," said young Railton, wearily
making a cigarette.  "Take me away, and the entire show falls to pieces.
Even you must have noticed that."

"Upon my word," said Erb, looking at him wonderingly, "you are a perfect
marvel.  I never saw anything like you."

"Thanks, old chap," replied the other gratefully, and shaking his hand.
"Meet me after the show and we'll have a drink together.  I was afraid at
first you were a bit of a bounder.  Don't mind me saying so now, do you?"

"Not at all," replied Erb.  "You gave me much the same impression."

"That's most extr'ordinary.  There's an idea for a curtain-raiser in
that.  Two men beginning by hating each other, and later on--"

"Any message for your young lady?"

"Which?" asked Mr. Railton.

"You know very well who I mean," said Erb with some annoyance.

"Oh," with sudden enlightenment, "you mean the Danks person.  Oh, tell
her I'm all right."

Erb looked at him rather dangerously, but the young man, secure in the
mailed armour of self-content, did not observe this.  Erb, placing his
doubled fists well down into the pockets of his coat, turned and went
off.

"By the bye," called Mr. Railton, in his affected voice.

Erb did not trust himself to answer, but went down the narrow stone
passage, and drew a deep breath when he reached the doorway and the dimly
lighted alley; he had work to do, and this, as always, enabled him to
forget his personal grievances.  In the saloon bar of a neighbouring
public-house he found two members of his committee: because they wore
their Sunday clothes they smoked cigars, extinguishing them carefully,
and placing the ends in their waistcoat pockets; they came out on Erb's
orders to take up position at the stage door.  The others were in front
of the house, and Erb, going in and standing by the swing door of the
circle, discovered them one by one and gave them signal to come out,
which they did with great importance, stepping on toes of mere ordinary
people in a lordly way.

"Did he send any message?" asked Rosalind anxiously.

"Sent his love."  Worth saying this to see the quick look of relief and
happiness that danced across her face.  "Said he was looking forward to
seeing you."

"Ah!"

Three minutes later, when the leading man had done something noble that
in the proclaimed opinion of the heroine (there, oddly enough, as a
nurse) foreshadowed the inevitable Victoria Cross, and Mr. Railton had
come on in a kilt to be kicked off once more, and there remained only the
affairs of England, home, and beauty to be arranged in the last act; the
curtain went down, and two minutes later still, the orchestra having
disappeared in search of refreshment and the audience occupied in
cracking nuts and hailing acquaintances with great trouble at distant
points, the curtain went up again on a flapping scene, behind which the
tweed-capped men, it appeared, were setting an elaborate set for Act IV.,
doing it with some audible argument and no little open condemnation of
each other's want of dexterity.  Chairs on the stage stood in a
semicircle, and marching on from the left came the dozen members of the
committee in their suits of black, twirling bowler hats, and glancing
nervously across the footlights in response to the ejaculatory shouting
of names.  Spanswick, wearing a look of pained resignation, received a
special shout, but the loudest cheers were reserved for the secretary,
and those in front who did not know him soon took up the cry.

"Erberberberb--"

It became certain at once that Payne was not to give an epoch-making
speech.  Confused perhaps by the footlights, uncertain of the attitude of
this great crowded theatre, Payne's memory ran its head against a brick
wall and stayed there: he made three repetitions of one sentence, and
then, having reversed the positions of the tumbler and the decanter,
started afresh, the audience encouraging him by cries of "Fetch him out,
Towser, fetch him out," as though Mr. Payne were an unwilling dog, but
the same brick wall stood in his way, and, concluding weakly with the
remark, "Well, you all know what I mean," he called upon Erb, and sat
down glancing nervously across to the pit stalls, where was Mrs. Payne,
her head shaking desolately, her lips moving with unspoken words of
derision.

"I'm going to take five minutes," said Erb, in his distinct and
deliberate way.  He took out his watch and laid it on the table.  "Even
if I'm in the middle of a sentence when that time is up, I promise I'll
go down like a shot.  I suppose you know the story of the man who--"

Good temper smiled and laughed from the front row of the pit stalls and
up to the very topmost row of the gallery at Erb's anecdote, and, hoping
for another story, they sat forward and listened.  He knew that he held
them now, knew they would cheer anything he liked to say, providing he
said it with enough of emphasis.  He went on quickly that this advantage
might not be lost, pounding the palm of one hand with the fist of the
other, so that the dullest might know by this gesture when a point was
intended; spoke of the good feeling that was aroused by the presence of a
fellow-man's misfortune; mentioned the work of his own society, urged
that so long as this feeling of comradeship existed, so long would their
condition improve, not perhaps by a leap or a bound, but by steady,
cautious, and gradual progression.  Up in the circle his young elocution
teacher nodded approvingly, flushing with pride at her pupil's careful
enunciation, giving a start of pain at a superfluous aspirate that
cleaved the air.

"He can talk," admitted a man behind her.

"If I'd had the gift of the gab," said the man's neighbour, "I could have
made a fortune."

Erb stepped out near to the footlights and gave his peroration in an
impassioned manner that had the useful note of sincerity.  Those in the
theatre, who were sympathisers, rose and cheered like a hurricane; the
rest, not to be left out of a gratifying show of emotion, joined in, and
Spanswick, the hero of the evening, as he rose from his chair to say a
few words, might have been a leading politician, a general who had
rescued his country from difficulties, or an exceptionally popular member
of the Royal Family, instead of a railway carman of third-rate excellence
with a notable wife.

Spanswick said this was the proudest moment of his life.  Spanswick would
never forget that night: useless for anybody to ask him to do so.  If
people should come to Spanswick and invite him to erase that evening from
his recollection, he would answer definitely and decidedly, "Never!"  So
long as memory lasted and held its sway, so long would he guarantee to
keep that evening in mind, and carry remembrance with him.  Thus
Spanswick, in a generous way that suggested he was doing a noble and
spontaneous act, and one for which the audience should be everlastingly
grateful.  Payne, as Chairman, rose, and ignoring a suggestion from the
gallery that he should dance a hornpipe, led the group off, the members
looking shyly across at the audience, and the audience howling
indignantly at one of the men who replaced his hat before getting off.

"Were you nervous, Erb?" asked Louisa excitedly.  "_I_ was.  Nearly
fainted, didn't I?"

"Oh, don't talk," whispered her lady-companion, enchanted by the
commencement of Act Four.  "Don't talk, please, when there's such
beautiful things going on."

Mr. Railton had nothing to do in the last act, the dramatist having
apparently felt that the thin vein of humour which had been struck in the
character was by this time exhausted, and Rosalind looked with anxiety at
the curtained doorway of the circle, but Mr. Railton did not appear
during the last act, and he was not in the vestibule below when the
audience poured out into Blackfriars Road.  She was very silent on this,
and when Erb saw her into a tram she shook hands without a word.  Going
back to assist Louisa's young man in the task of escorting the two other
ladies, he found himself intercepted by Mr. Lawrence Railton--Railton, in
an astrachan bordered coat, and well wrapped around the throat, giving
altogether the impression that here was some rare and valuable product of
nature that had to be specially protected.

"I want you!" said the young man.

"You'll have to want," said Erb brusquely, and going on.

"But it concerns the girl you were speaking of."

"Where can we go?" asked Erb, stopping.

"Come round to the bar at the back of the circle," said Railton, "and you
can give me a drink," he added generously.

A few members of the company were near the bar, and Railton, to
compensate for the presence of such an ordinary-looking companion, began
to talk loudly and condescendingly.  Never drank till after the show, he
explained, some drank during the performance, but none of the best men
did so.  One could not give a good reading of the part unless one
observed the principles of strict abstemiousness.  He flattered himself
that he was not one likely to make mistakes, and he held his future, as
it were, well and securely in both hands.  If Erb would promise not to
let the matter go any further, he would show him, in the strictest
confidence, a letter from a West End manager, that would prove how near
one could be to conspicuous success.

"Not that one," he said, opening a violet envelope.  "That's from a dear
thing at Skipton.  Worships the very ground I walk on."

The letter in question fell on the floor.  Erb picked it up and, in doing
so, could not help noticing that it began: "Sir, unless you forward two
and eight by return, the parcel of laundry will be sold without--"

"Here it is," cried Railton.  "'Mr. So-and-so thanks Mr. Lawrence Railton
for his note, and regrets that the arrangements for the forthcoming
production are complete.'"  "Regrets, you see, mark that!  A post
earlier, and evidently he would have--don't drown it, my dear chap!"

"In regard," said Erb, putting down the water-bottle, "to Miss Rosalind
Danks."

"I hadn't finished what I was saying."

"Didn't mean you should.  Let's drop your personal grievances for a bit.
Why didn't you come round and see her before she left?"

"Now that," said Railton, leaning an elbow on the counter, "goes straight
to the very crux of the question.  That's just where I wanted to carry
you.  I hate a man who wastes time on preliminaries.  My idea always is
that if you've got a thing to say, say it!"

"Well then, say it!"

"My position," said Railton, importantly, "is this.  I have, as I think I
said, the artistic temperament.  I am all emotion, all sentiment, all
heart!  It may be a virtue, it may be a defect; I won't go into that.
The point is that little Rosie is the exact opposite.  I confess that I
thought at one time that we might be well suited to each other, but I see
now that I made a mistake.  Doesn't often happen, but I did make a
mistake there, and the unfortunate part of the business is that I--in a
kind of way, don't you know--promised to marry her."

"So I understood.  When does the affair come off?"

"My dear old chap," said Railton, with effusive confidence, "the affair
is off.  But you know what women are, and I find it rather
difficult--for, mind you, I am above all things a man of honour--I find
it rather difficult to write to her and tell her so.  Some men wouldn't
hesitate for a moment.  Some men have no delicacy.  But what I thought
was this: Do you want to earn a couple of pounds?"

"Go on!" said Erb, quietly.

"Assuming that you _do_ want to earn a couple of pounds, this is where
you come in.  You, I gain, have a certain admiration for her.  Now, if
you can take her off my hands so that I can get out of the engagement
with dignity, I am prepared to give you, in writing mind, a promise to
pay--"

Mr. Railton went down swiftly on the floor.  The other people hurried up.

"You dare strike me!" he cried complainingly, as he rose his handkerchief
to his face.  "Do it again, that's all."

He went down again with the same unexpectedness as before.  Three men
stood round Erb, who looked quietly at his own clenched fist; the
knuckles had a slight abrasion.

"Want any more?" he asked.

Mr. Railton made one or two efforts from his crumpled position to speak;
the three men suggested police, but he waved his hand negatively.

"Do you want any more, you scoundrel you?" repeated Erb.

"No," answered Mr. Lawrence Railton, weakly, from the linoleum, "I don't
want any more.  I always know my limit."

CHAPTER IX

THIS being a period of his life when Erb could do nothing wrong, the
unpremeditated experiment with fists had a result that seldom attends
efforts of the kind.  Railton sent to Erb by post the following day an
elaborate letter of apology, in which he argued that Erb, by a quite
excusable error, had misunderstood what he (Railton) had intended to
convey; that he honoured Mr. Barnes for the attitude he had taken up
(which, under similar circumstances, would have been his own), that he
should of course carry out his engagement with the young lady whose name
it was unnecessary to mention, that he should ever retain an agreeable
memory of Mr. Barnes (to whose efforts in the cause of labour he begged
in passing to offer his best wishes), he trusted very sincerely that
their friendship would not be impaired by the unfortunate incident of the
preceding night.  Thus Mr. Railton, with many an emphasising underline
and note of exclamation, and a flourish under the signature, intended to
convey the impression that here was a document of value to be preserved
for all time.  On Erb discovering his elocution teacher--whose lessons he
now scarce required, but whose services as instructress in the art of
public oratory he continued for the sheer pleasure of listening to her
private speech--on Erb discovering her at his next visit with traces of
recent tears he insisted on knowing the cause, and was told, first, that
father had been borrowing seventeen shillings and sixpence, which she
would have to pay back, amount required in order, the Professor had
explained to the credulous lender, to enable him to purchase a comedy
which had a part that would fit the Professor like a glove ("I can see
myself in it," the Professor declared); and on Erb dismissing this
incident as too common for tears, Rosalind reluctantly showed him a
letter from the admirable Railton, written by that young gentleman at the
same time apparently as the communication he had sent to Erb: in this he
regretted time had not permitted him to call at Camberwell Gate, the loss
was his; but what he particularly wanted to say was that the farce of
their engagement need no longer be allowed to run.  On neither side,
wrote Mr. Railton, had there been any real affection, and he was sure
that this formal intimation would be as great a relief to Rosalind as to
himself; he trusted she would find another good _fiance_, and he was,
with all regards, her friend and well-wisher, Lawrence Railton.  Erb,
greatly concerned for Rosalind, told her nothing of the incident of the
benefit performance, but tried to comfort her with the suggestion that
Railton had probably written without thought.

"I am beginning to see," said Rosalind presently, "I am beginning to see
that I have at least one real friend in the world."

"One's ample," replied Erb stolidly.

With the men of the society the occurrence gave to Erb distinct
promotion.  Something to have a quick mind with figures, something to be
ready of speech, something to be always at hand wherever in London a
railway carman was in trouble, but better than all these things was it to
be able to think of their secretary as one able to put up his fists.
Wherever he went, for a time, congratulations were shouted from the hood
of parcels carts or the high seat of pair-horse goods vans; boys hanging
by ropes at the tail boards giving a cheer as they went by.  There is
nothing quite so dear and precious as the world's applause, and if here
and there a man should announce his distaste for it, the world may be
quite sure that this is said only to extort an additional and an undue
share.  At the next committee meeting Erb was requested, with a good deal
of importance, by Payne, as chairman, to be good enough to leave the room
for ten minutes: on his return it was announced to him that, moved by G.
Spanswick, and seconded by H. R. Bates, a resolution had been carried,
according to Herbert Barnes, secretary, an increase in salary of twenty
pounds per annum.  Erb announced this to his young white-faced sister,
and added to the announcement an order directing her to leave her factory
and look after the home in Page's Walk; but Louisa would not hear of
this, declaring that a humdrum life would never suit her, that she should
mope herself into a state of lunacy if Erb insisted, and that the money
could be laid out much more usefully on, first, a pianoforte; second, a
new suite of chairs for the sitting room in place of furniture which had
been in the Barnes family for two generations; third, in articles of
costume for Erb, and--if any sum remained--in something for herself.
They argued the point with desperate good humour from either side of the
table, until Erb found that she was really in earnest, and then he gave
in.

"You always have your own way, Louisa."

"Precious little use having anybody else's," she retorted sharply.

"You've got a knack of deciding questions," complained her brother,
good-temperedly, "that makes you a little debating society in yourself."

"There's something in connection with your society," went on Louisa,
encouraged, "that you might arrange if you'd got any gumption."

"Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that I have."

"It's this.  When one of your single chaps gets engaged let him begin
paying into a wedding fund.  You've got your strike funds and what not,
but you ain't got no wedding fund."

"We haven't any wedding fund," corrected Erb.

"Oh, never mind about grammar," said his young sister impetuously, "I'm
talking sense.  Let them all pay a bob or so a week, and the one that
draws a good number gets his ten pound and goes off and gets married like
a shot.  See what an interest it'd make the girls take in your society.
See how it'd make your young carmen sought after.  See how fine it'd be
for them to start life on their own, instead of having to go on paying so
much a week for 'ire to the furniture shops.  See how--"

"A reg'lar little orator," said Erb approvingly.  "It must run in the
blood, I think.  Besides, there's an idea in what you say."

"I never speak," said his sister with confidence, "without I say
something."  She paused for a moment.  "I suppose, Erb, that--that with
all this money coming in, you'll begin to think about getting--"

He put his knife and fork down and rose from his chair.

The marriage club was only one of the new features that Erb introduced to
the society, but it was the one which had a tinge of melancholy, in that
it appeared to him that he was almost alone in not having in hand a
successful affair of the heart.  Lady Frances came frequently to
Bermondsey, where she threw herself with great earnestness into the
excellent work of providing amusing hours for children--children who had
never been taught games, and knew no other sport than that of imperilling
their little lives in the street.  Erb, being seen with her one evening
as she returned from a Board School, there ensued at the next committee
meeting considerable badinage of a lumbering type; Payne declared that
Erb should join the wedding club in order that the happy pair should be
in a position to set up a house in Portman Square together; Spanswick
remarked with less of good temper, that some people's heads were getting
too big for their hats; whilst other members, ever ready to take part in
the fine old London sport of chipping, offered gibes.  Erb retorted with
his usual readiness, and laughed at the suggestion; but afterwards found
himself fearing whether Lady Frances was, in point of fact, lavishing
upon him a hopeless affection.  He had almost persuaded himself to admit
that this was the case, when his sister Alice made one of her
condescending calls at Page's Walk and gave, with other information, the
fact that the sweetheart of Lady Frances, a lieutenant, the Honourable
Somebody, had some time since been ordered away on a mission to the
North-West Coast of Africa; her young ladyship was, by this desperate
interest in the juveniles of Bermondsey, endeavouring to distract her
mind from thoughts of her absent lover.  Erb breathed again and gave
assistance in managing the most trying boys at the "Happy Evenings."  One
night, as he performed the duty of seeing Lady Frances through the
dimly-lighted streets to Spa Road Station, they met Rosalind and her
father.  Rosalind flushed hotly, and Erb wondered why.  He demanded of
her the reason at the next elocution lesson, and Rosalind said calmly,
that it was because at that moment she had given her second-best ankle a
twist.

Lady Frances brought to Erb an invitation that flattered him.  Her uncle,
of Queen Anne's Mansions, a man in most of the money-making schemes of
London, but one never anxious to obtrude his own name or his own
personality, felt desirous of starting a movement for (to give the full
Christian names) "The Anglicising of Foreign Manufactures."

This Lady Frances explained to him, with her usual vivacity, the while
both kept an eye on some noisy Bermondsey infants, who were playing in
the hall of the Board School.

"Other countries are getting ahead of us, my uncle says, and unless
something is done at once, British trade (Now, children, do play without
quarrelling, please, to oblige me!), British trade will go down, and
down, and down, and there will be nothing left."

"Are things really so bad?"

"Oh, they're terrible," declared Lady Frances, with great cheerfulness.
"Apparently the bed-rock has almost been reached, and it is only by a
great and a unanimous effort that Great Britain will ever again be
enabled to get its head above water.  So, at any rate, my uncle tells
me."

"I don't know--(Young Tommy Gibbons, if I catch you at that again you
know what will happen)--I don't know that I've ever studied the subject
in the large.  My own society takes up nearly all my time, and other work
I leave to other people."

"Exactly, Mr. Barnes, exactly!  I quite understand your position.  But I
have such faith in my uncle.  Do you know that nearly everything he
touches turns into money."

"Very agreeable gift."

"But the point is this, that nothing can be done unless capital and
labour work in unison for a common end.  One is affected quite as much as
the other, and alone neither can do anything.  British trades are being
snapped up by America, by France, by Germany, even by Belgium, the only
remedy, my uncle says, is for us to take some of their manufactures and
plant them here.--(I was sure you'd fall down and hurt your knee, little
boy.  Come here and let me kiss the place and make it well)--I don't know
whether I make myself quite plain to you, Mr. Barnes?"

"In one sense you do," said Erb.  "Only thing I can't see is, where your
uncle imagines that I come in."

A dispute between two children over a doll necessitated interference,
based on the judgment of Solomon.

"Obviously," replied the girl, delighted at the importance of her task,
"obviously, your work will be to organise."

"Organise what?"

"Meetings of working men to take up the idea, discussion in the halfpenny
papers, argument in workshops.  In this way," she said, with her engaging
frankness, "in this way, you see, you could strengthen my uncle's hands."

"Not sure that that is the one desire of my life."

"I am so clumsy," deplored Lady Frances.

"Not more than most people."

"If you would only see my uncle and argue it out!  He, I am sure, would
succeed where I," with a sigh, "where I so horribly fail."

"Look here," said Erb, hastily, "if it's any satisfaction to you, I'll
say at once that I'm with the movement, heart, body, and soul."

Lady Frances took his big hand and patted it thankfully.

"Can't tell you how pleased I am," she declared.  "I'll send on all the
circulars and figures and things when I reach Eaton Square
to-night--(Children, children, you are tiresome, really)--and then you
can start work directly, can't you?"

A busy man always has time to spare; it is only your lazy person who can
never place a minute at anyone's disposal.  Thus it was that Erb tacked
on to his other duties, the work of making known the Society for
Anglicising Foreign Manufactures, pressing into the service all the young
orators of his acquaintance, and furnishing them with short and easy
arguments.  Our import trade was so many millions in excess of our
outgoing trade: why should this be so?  Our villages were becoming
deserted, and country manufactories dwindled day by day: this must be
stopped.  Vague talk about technical education; praise for the English
working man, and adulation of his extraordinary, but sometimes dormant
brain power; necessity of providing tasks for the rising generation that
they might not push men of forty out of berths.  An agreeable programme,
one that could be promulgated without those submissive inquiries
addressed to the labour leaders in the House, which always had a
suggestion of servility.  Erb, the following Sunday, spoke at Southwark
Park in the morning, at Peckham Rye in the afternoon, and Deptford
Broadway in the evening, and, the subject being new, he found himself
invited to address several working men's clubs during the week.
Paragraphs, slipped into the newspapers, sometimes contained his name:
Lady Frances wrote that her uncle was delighted, and had asked to be
especially remembered.  A later note mentioned that it was intended to
hold a mass meeting at St. James's Hall, to bring the subject well before
the people of London: her uncle would not be able to be present, but he
had begged her to request Mr. Barnes to speak on this occasion: there
would be a Duchess of philanthropic tendencies in the chair, and several
members of Parliament had promised to speak.  "Don't disappoint us!" said
the postscript appealingly.  Erb sent an agreeable postcard in reply, and
a friend of his, an assistant-librarian in the Free Library, promised to
devote himself to work of research and ascertain how one addressed a lady
of such distinguished rank as the wife of a Duke.  The
assistant-librarian urged that evening-dress was the correct thing, and
offered to lend a suit which he and his brother wore when they went out
into society, patronising dances at the Surrey Masonic Hall but here
Erb's commonsense interfered.  The meeting was advertised in the daily
papers and on hoardings, his name given as Herbert Barnes, Esquire, with
full qualifications set out: he never saw one of the posters without
stopping to enjoy the sight, and it pained him extremely to find that on
one or two in the neighbourhood of home some friend had erased the affix.
Louisa went boldly one evening to the offices of the new society, in
College Street, Westminster, and obtained a copy of the poster; this she
would have exhibited in the front window, but compromised by sticking it
at its four corners on the wall of the sitting room.

St. James's Hall was not over-crowded on the evening, and a wealthy
member of the committee went about telling everybody that a smaller room
would have been cheaper, but it was full enough to please Erb as he took
a view of it from the stairs leading to the platform.  The platform was
fringed with palms; on the walls were hung banners, with quotations from
Shakespeare down to the newest poet; quotations, that appeared to give
vague support to the movement.  Lady Frances, hovering about in the
manner of an anxious butterfly, introduced Erb to the Duchess, and the
Duchess, without using her lorgnon, said beamingly that she had read all
of Mr. Barnes's works, and felt quite too delighted to meet the author;
Erb protested nervously that he had never written a book, but the Duchess
waved this aside as ineffective badinage, and went on talking the while
she looked away through her glasses at arriving people.  So delighted,
said the Duchess absently, to mingle with men of talent; it took one into
another atmosphere.  The Duchess, for her part, claimed to have powers of
observation, and trusted piously that she was not altogether without a
sense of humour, but these exceptional qualities, she said, had never
availed her when she took pen in hand.  Erb, perceiving the futility of
contradiction, suggested that she should one day, when a spare moment
arrived, have another dash at it, and the Duchess, bringing her gaze by a
process of exhaustion round to him, stared at him wonderingly for a
moment, and then promised to act upon his advice.  A shy little man of
letters being submitted just then to her consideration, the Duchess
dropped Erb, and engaged in animated monologue on the subject of labour
and how to conciliate it: her own method seemed to be to treat it as an
elephant and give it buns.  Erb stood about the room, whilst well-dressed
people flew one to the other with every sign of gratification; he felt
all his usual difficulty of not knowing what to do with his hands.  The
people had a manner of speech that he could understand with difficulty,
they talked of things that for him were a sealed book.  Three clergymen
who came in a bunch and seemed similarly out of the movement, gave him a
feeling of companionship.  When they all formed in a line and marched up
on the platform to a mild, whispered cheering from the Hall, Erb's
interest quickened, and the slight feeling of nervousness came which
always affected him when he was going to speak.

"And I _do_ think," said the Duchess, with shrill endeavour to make her
voice reach the back of the hall, "I _do_ think that the more we consider
such matters the more likely we are to understand them and to realise
what they mean, and to gain a better and a wider and a truer knowledge."
The three clergymen said, "Good, good," in a burst of respectful
approbation, as men suddenly illuminated by a new thought.  "I am tempted
to go further," said the Duchess, waving her notes threateningly at the
audience, "to go further, and express myself, if I may so say, that
having put our hands to the plough--"  She looked round at the straight
line of folk behind her, and they endeavoured to convey by their looks
that if a Duchess could not be allowed the use of daring metaphor, then
it would have to be denied to everybody.  "Having put our hands to the
plough, we shall not turn back--(slight cheering)--we shall not
falter--(renewed slight cheering)--we shall not loiter by the roadside,
but we shall go steadily on, knowing well that--that--"  Here the Duchess
found her notes and read the last words of her peroration carefully,
"knowing well that our goal is none other than the rising sun, which
symbolises so happily the renaissance--"  Here she looked down at the
reporters' table, and seemed about to spell the word, but refraining
contented herself by saying it again with great distinctness.  "The
renaissance of British Trade and British Supremacy!"

A service member of Parliament proposed the first resolution, and did so
in a speech that would have suited any and every occasion on sea or land,
in that it was made up entirely of platitudes, and included not one
argument that could be seized by the most contentious; the whole
brightened by what the member of Parliament himself described as a most
amusing discussion which he had held with a man of the labouring classes
not many years since (on which occasion the member had travelled second,
this being notoriously the only way of discovering the true aspirations
of the lower classes), and the member had subjected the man to a rigid
cross-examination of the most preposterous and useless nature which he
now repeated with many an "Ah, but I said--" and "Now listen to me, my
good fellow--" and "Permit me to explain what I mean in simple words so
that even you can understand," the labouring man eventually giving in
(so, at any rate, the Member declared), admitting that the gallant Member
had won the game at every point--the probability being that the poor
fellow, bullied and harried by a talkative bore, had done so in the
interests of peace and with a desire to be let alone and allowed to read
his evening paper.  The service Member clearly prided himself not only on
the acuteness which he had displayed in the argument, but also on the
wonderful imitative faculty which enabled him to reproduce the dialect of
his opponent, a dialect which seemed to have been somewhat mixed, for in
one instance he spoke Lancashire with, "Aye, ah niver thowt o' that," and
the next broad Somerset, "There be zummat in what yew zay, zir," and anon
in a strange blend of Irish and Scotch.

"'That this meeting calls upon the working classes to put aside all
differences and to contribute their indispensable assistance to the new
movement, from which they themselves have so much to gain.'  Will Mr.
Herbert Barnes please second?"

This was written on the slip of paper, and passed along to Erb at a
moment when the grisly fear had begun to possess him that he might not be
called upon at all.  He nodded to the secretary, and felt that the
audience, now tired of listening to spoken words, looked at him
doubtfully.  One of the three clergymen being selected to move the
resolution, the other two looked at their shoes with a pained interest,
and presently tugged at their black watch-guards, ascertained the time,
and, just before the chosen man arose, slipped quietly out.  Fortunately
for Erb, the remaining clergyman started on a line of reasoning
excellently calculated to annoy and to stimulate.  Began by pointing out
that everybody nowadays worked excepting the working man, doubted whether
it was of much use offering to him help, but declaring himself, in
doleful tones, an optimist, congratulated the new movement on its
courage, its altruism, its high nobility of purpose, and managed, before
sitting down, to intimate very defiantly that unless labour seized this
unique opportunity, then labour must be left to shift for itself and
could no longer expect any assistance from him.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" said Erb distinctly.  The promise of listening to
a voice that could be heard without difficulty aroused the Hall.  "I
should be glad if the gentleman who spoke last could spare just three
minutes of his time, and refrain for that space from making a hurried and
somewhat undignified departure from the Hall."  The clergyman who had
adopted the crouching attitude of those who desire to escape furtively
from close confinement, returned and sat, his back straightened.  "He has
spoke--I should say, he has spoken--in a patronising way of labour, and I
want to tell him that we resent very strongly his condescending and
almost contemptuous words."

His predecessor rose and said, "May it please your--"

"No, no, no!" said Erb, with but a slight modification of his Southwark
Park manner, "I didn't interrupt the reverend gentleman, and I'm not
going to allow him to interrupt me.  Or to assume the duties, your
Grace," with a nod to the chair, "which you perform with such conspicuous
charm and ability."

The Duchess, who, fearing a row, had been anxiously consulting those
around her in order to gain hints as to procedure, recovered confidence
on receiving this compliment, and gave a smile of relief.  Men at the
table below adjusted their black leaves of carbonic paper and began to
write.

"Now, I've been into the details almost as carefully as the reverend
gentleman has, and what I want to say, in order that this audience should
not consider that we are absolutely silly fools, is, that so far from
this movement having been arranged in order to benefit the workers
exclusively, it is very clear to me that there's a few behind the scenes
who are going to make a bit out of it."

One cry of approval came from the distant gallery, but this scarcely
counted, for it was a voice that had applauded contrary statements with
the same decision.  Erb knew the owner of the voice, a queer old crank,
who went about to public meetings, his pockets bursting with newspapers,
more than content if in the Free Library the next day he should find but
one of his solitary cries of "Hear, hear," reported in the daily press.

"I've no doubt they feel pretty certain of a safe eight or ten per cent.;
if they didn't, this meeting would never have been held, and we should
have been denied the pleasure of listening to that lucid and illuminating
speech with which your Grace has favoured us.  I say this that the
previous speaker may see and that you all may recognise the fact that if
those I represent give the cause any assistance, we do so with our eyes
wide open, and that we are not blindfolded by the cheap flannel sort of
arguments to which we have just listened.  But let me go on.  Because
this is going to be a soft thing for the capitalists, it by no means
follows that it is going to be a hard thing for the worker.  On the
contrary!  I can see--or I think I can see--that this is likely to
benefit both of us.  (Cheers.)  And whilst I repudiate the attitude and
the arguments of the last speaker, I promise you that I am prepared to do
all that I can for the scheme--(cheers)--not in the interests of capital,
for capital can look after itself, but in the interests of labour, which
sometimes wants a lot of looking after.  Your Grace, I beg to second the
resolution."

Not a great speech by any means, but one with the golden virtue of
brevity, and one spoken with obvious earnestness.  The Hall liked it; the
subsequent speakers made genial references to it, and the Duchess, in
acknowledging a vote of thanks, repaid Erb for his compliment to herself
by prophesying that Mr. Barnes would prove a pillar of strength to the
cause, declaring graciously that she should watch his career with
interest, and gave him a fierce smile that seemed to hint that this in
itself was sufficient to ensure success.  (Later, when he said goodbye,
the Duchess called him Mr. Blenkinsop, and begged him to convey her
kindest regards to his dear wife.)

"I wonder," said a gentleman with concave spectacles, "I wonder, now,
whether you have a card about you?"

"Going to do a trick?" asked Erb.

"Here's mine.  Have you ever thought of entering the House?"

"Someone would have to provide me with a latch-key."

"I take you!" remarked the spectacled gentleman adroitly.  "Don't happen
to be Welsh, I suppose, by any chance?  Ah! a pity!"

For a moment it occurred to Erb that this might be a sample of
aristocratic chaff; he stopped his retort on seeing that the other was
talking with perfect seriousness.  "But something else may happen at any
moment.  We live in strange times."

"We always do," said Erb.

"I shall keep you in my mind."

Lady Frances eluded some dowagers who were bearing down upon her, and
came to him; she took an envelope from a pretty hiding place.

"My uncle particularly begged me to give you this.  You were so good, Mr.
Barnes.  (Don't open it until you get home.)  Your speech was just what
one wanted.  You quite cleared the air."

"Afraid I should clear the 'All."  Lady Frances seemed not to comprehend,
and the knowledge came to Erb that he had missed an aspirate.

"My uncle will be so pleased.  I shall be down at Bermondsey next week,
and I can bring any message my uncle wishes to send.  I don't bother you,
Mr. Barnes?"

"Need you ask?" replied Erb.

"You're not going?" with her gloved hand held out.

Erb took the hint and made his exit with difficulty, because several
ladies buzzed around him, humming pleasant words.  The spectacled man
walked with him along Piccadilly, talking busily, and expressed a desire
to take Erb into the club for coffee.  "Only that my place is so deucedly
uncivil to visitors."  He contented himself with a threat that Erb should
most certainly hear from him again.

"I shan't lose your address," said the spectacled person.

It was not until the Committee Meeting of the R.C.S. had nearly finished
one evening that Erb, in searching for a letter which some members
desired to see, found the note from Lady Frances's uncle.  He tore the
flap casually, and, recognising it, placed the opened envelope aside, and
pursued his searches for the required document.  Spanswick, with a busy
air of giving assistance, looked through the letters, and opened the
communication which Lady Frances had brought.

"Pardon, old man," whispered Spanswick confidentially.  "Didn't know I
was interfering with money matters."

CHAPTER X

IT is the ingenious habit of Kentish railways directly that hop-picking
is over and pay-day is done, to advertise excursions to London at a fare
so cheap that not to take advantage of it were to discourage Providence
in its attempts to make the world pleasant.  Country folk, who make but
one visit a year to town, seize this September opportunity; some avail
themselves not only of this but of the Cattle Show trip later on; a few
also take the pantomime excursion in February, and these are counted in
quiet villages as being, by frequent contact with town, blades of the
finest temper, to whom (if they would but be candid) no mysteries of the
great town are unknown.  Erb's Aunt Emma, giving herself reward for a
month's hard work in the hop-garden, came up every year by the September
excursion.  It happened on this occasion that the day could not have made
a more awkward attempt to fit in with Erb's convenience.

"Well," said Aunt Emma, in the 'bus, desolately, "I'm not surprised!
It's what comes of looking forward to anything.  When I heerd as you may
say, you'd left the railway, I said to the party that comes in on Mondays
to help me do my week's washing, 'I don't know,' I says, 'what to think
'bout all this.'"

"Any other day, almost," urged her nephew, "I could have arranged for the
day off, but I've got important work to do that'll take me up to nine
o'clock."

"Whenever I find a bit of a lad giving up a honest living, I always say
to Mrs. Turley, I say, 'Dang it all, this won't do!'  And when it
'appened to my brother's own boy I turned round at once, I did, and I
said, 'I don't know what to--'"

"If Louisa had been quite herself, why, of course, she--"

"I'll get back to Lonnon Bridge," said Aunt Emma grimly.  "Reckon I shall
be some'ing like Mrs. Turley's eldest.  He come up one November, he
did--first time he'd been to Lonnon--and it were a bit foggy, so he kep'
in the station all day; when he come home, he says, 'Mother,' he says,
'it's a fine big place, Lonnon is, but it dedn't quite come up to my
expectations.'"  The parchment-faced old lady was pleased by Erb's
reception of this anecdote, and, gratified also to get a smile from other
passengers, she relaxed in manner; Erb saw the opportunity.

"Tell you what we've arranged, Aunt Emma.  Louisa and me talked it over
as soon's ever we made out your letter--"

"I don't perfess," remarked the old lady, "to be first-class in me
spellin'.  'Sides, I got someone else to write it."

"And we decided that we'd get a friend of mine--a friend of ours to look
after you for the day."

"What's he like?" asked the old lady, with reluctant show of interest.

"It's a she!"

"Your young woman?"

"I don't go in for anything of that kind," said Erb, looking round the
'bus apprehensively.  "Too busy for such nonsense."

"Never knew the man yet," said Aunt Emma, "that couldn't make time to get
fond of somebody."

Arrived at the office at Grange Road, Erb was showing the aunt some of
his newspaper notices, when he heard on the stairs the swish of skirts.
He lost the remaining half of his remark.

"And you've been fairly walking out, then, as you may say, with our Lady
Frances?"

"You can't call it that, Aunt.  I've only just been paying her polite
attention."

"I know what you mean," remarked the old lady acutely.  "Her
grandmother--I'm speaking now of forty year ago, mind you--her
grandmother ran off with a--let me see!  Forget me own name next."

Erb answered the quiet tap at the open door.

"Good girl!" he cried cheerfully.  "Welcome to our baronial hall!  Aunt
Emma, this is the young lady that's going to pilot you round.  Almost
makes you seem," he said to Rosalind, "like one of the family."

"I only had to put off three pupils," said Rosalind quickly.  "How do you
do?"

"I'm going downstairs to fetch coffee and scones for you two," announced
Erb.  "Try not to come to blows whilst I'm away."

"My sciatica is just beginning to wake up, as you may say," replied Aunt
Emma.

"So sorry," said Rosalind sympathetically.  "It must interfere with
getting about."

"Thank you," replied Aunt Emma coldly.  "I'm able to set up and take
nourishment."

"I expect your nephew has a lot of callers," she said with determination.
"He knows a good many people."

"Are you acquainted with our Lady Frances," asked the aunt in a
mysterious whisper.

"I have just seen her," flushing a little for some reason.

"These upper classes, they don't stand at nothing, as you may say,
when--"  Erb returned, and the aunt, with the wink of a diplomatist,
raised her voice.  "They paid eight to the shillin' this year it ought
to've been seven.  I said so straight, all through the hopping, I did, to
Mrs. Turley."

The doors were to open at two for the afternoon's entertainment, and the
aunt's idea was that it were well to get there by noon, and thus ensure
the best value in seats for a shilling; Rosalind gently over-ruled this,
and they went first to Westminster Abbey, at which the aunt sneered,
saying it was not her idea of a place of worship, and to the National
Gallery, in regard to the contents of which the old lady hinted that they
compared badly with a rare set of illuminated almanacks which she had at
home, issued yearly by Deane, the grocer; the almanacks, it appeared, had
the advantage of giving the date of jolly nigh every month you could
think of.  Trafalgar Square, looked on as a square, the aunt thought not
much better than middling; the Embankment, in her opinion, lacked many of
the attractions that she remembered once to have found at Ramsgate.  But
when, later, they were seated in the front row of the gallery in a small
hall, and the curtain went up disclosing a crescent of black-faced men,
with instrumentalists behind them, and similarly coloured gentlemen, with
be-frilled shirtfronts, at either end asked riddles of the gentlemanly
man at the centre, riddles of which the gentlemanly man almost alone in
the Hall knew not the answer, able only to repeat the question in a
sonorous manner, then Aunt Emma relinquished all attempt at criticism,
and gave herself up to pure delight.  "Can you tole me, Mithter Johnthon,
how a woman differth from an umbrella?"

"Can I tell you," repeated the gentlemanly man very distinctly, "how a
woman differs from an umbrella?"

"Now 'ark for the answer!" whispered Aunt Emma, nudging her young
companion gleefully.

"No, sir," said the gentlemanly man, "I cannot tell you how a woman
differs from an umbrella."

"You can't tole me how a woman differth from an umbrella?  Why,"
explained the corner-man, "you can shut an umbrella up!"

"How in the world they think of all these things!" said Aunt Emma
exhaustedly.  "Dang my old eyes if it 'ent a miracle!"

Aunt Emma wept when a thin-voiced youth sang, "Don't neglect your mother
'cause her hair is getting grey," became hysterical with amusement over,
"I'm a gay old bachelor widow."  Rosalind found herself enjoying the
enjoyment of the old lady, and when they came out into daylight, and went
across the way to a noble establishment, where they had high tea, the two
were on excellent terms with each other, and information regarding small
scandals of Penshurst was placed freely at Rosalind's disposal.  The old
lady spoke in an awed whisper when she came to the people at the Court,
and arrested a slice of ham on her fork, as though sensible of the
demands of etiquette when dealing with the upper classes.

"You're not married, my dear," said Aunt Emma, loosening the strings of
her bonnet and allowing it to fall to the back of her head in an elegant
way, "or else I could speak more free, as you may say, on the subject.
That grandmother of hers--"  The old lady pursed her lips, and glanced at
her reflection in the mirrored walls with a pained shake of the head.

"But," urged Rosalind, perturbed by the aunt's confident manner of
prophecy, "Lady Frances, I understand, is engaged to a lieutenant out in
North Africa."

"Then sooner he comes back," shaking a spoon threateningly, "sooner he
comes back the better.  I don't want to go opening my old mouth too wide,
or else like enough I shall go and put my foot in it.  I've said all I
want to say, and I don't want folk to turn round arterwards and say to
me, 'Why didn't you give us warnin'?'  Strikes me, my dear, we might have
drop more hot water with this yere tea."

"Do you know her uncle at all?"

"I know _of_ him.  I used to be upper housemaid at the Court."

"And what--"

"I don't think no worse of him," said Aunt Emma in a slow, careful, and
judicial manner, "I don't think no worse of him than what he's thought
worse of."

"I see," said Rosalind doubtfully.  The girl was silent for a few
moments.  She looked at the walnut face of Erb's aunt, at the elderly
dimple beside the mouth, she watched the old lady's cautious way of
munching food.

"What you thinking of, my dear?"

"Nothing, nothing," said Rosalind, arousing herself.

"You won't 'spect me to finish up these yere bits I hope," said Aunt
Emma, looking at the crusts by the side of her plate.  "My teeth ain't
what they was when I was your age.  Ah," with a sigh, "that seems long
time ago."

"You have never been married, have you?"

"Could ha' been," said the old lady shortly.  "'Twarnt for want of being
asked."

"Why, of course not."

"Only chap I ever wanted," she said reminiscently, "I let him go and get
snapped up by someone else; silly bit of a gel that I was.  I tell ye
what 'tis!"

People at the neighbouring tables were listening, and Rosalind touched
her wrinkled hand gently to call her attention to the fact.

"Once you've made up your mind, as you may say, about a young man, you've
got to be jeggerin' well careful you don't go and lose him.  Makes all
the difference whether you get the right man or the wrong man, or no man
at all.  Now what about this Drury Lane?  We'd bedder be too soon than
too late."

A wonderful old person for her age, and Rosalind, made rather thoughtful
for some reason by the conversation, had much ado to keep up with her as
they walked through Leicester Square and Long Acre in the direction of
Autumn Melodrama.  When the doors opened, Erb's aunt fought her way in
with the best of them, securing two seats in the second row, and keeping
strong men and insurgent women at bay until Rosalind came up; she ordered
a very tall man in the front row to sit down, and when he replied that he
was a sitting down Aunt Emma suggested that he should lie down.  Then the
old lady loosened her elastic-sided boots slightly, and prepared to meet
enjoyment.

A great evening.  Aunt Emma confessed to Rosalind, as they came out,
that, say what you liked, there was no place like London, and, but for
the fact that she wanted to save the bit of money she had put away, she
would willingly bid good-bye to Penshurst and come up to town, spending
every afternoon at Moore and Burgess', and every evening at Drury Lane.
Outside the theatre was Erb.

"Nice young woman, if ever there was one," whispered Emma to her nephew.
"Superior manner, and all that."

"Thought you'd get along all right with her," remarked Erb.

"I've been giving her advice."

"Trust you."

"Wonnerful to see such qualities of people about," said the old lady,
hailing Rosalind into the discussion as they walked along the crowded
Strand.  "Nothin like this down where I live."

"Have you far to walk at the other end?" asked the girl solicitously.

"Not fur," replied the wonderful old lady.  "Ony 'bout four mile and
h'af."

The excursion train was nearly ready to start, and Erb, finding an old
acquaintance in the guard, arranged for appropriate finish to a great day
by placing his aunt in a first-class compartment.  She remarked gleefully
that this would be something to tell Mrs. Turley.

"God bless ye, my dear," she said, kissing Rosalind.  "And don't forget
what I told you.  Erb, take care of her."

Rosalind wanted to go into the Strand telegraph office opposite the
station for a moment, if Erb did not mind.  Erb did not mind, and he
waited.

"As much as that?" said Rosalind to the clerk.  "Seems a lot of money."

"Well, you see, miss," replied the clerk, apologetically, "people don't