“If I have to order you,” said Mr. Baynes, speaking with great distinctness, “to come and take off my boots again, I shall dock half a crown off your weekly allowance to-morrow.”

She did not answer.

“My best plan,” he went on, “will be to draw it all up in black and white, so that we can have a clear and proper understandin’ one with the other.  We must have a proper system of fines, same as they do in every well-regulated business.  Fetch the pen and ink and paper.”

“How would it be to fetch it for yourself?”

He stared at her amazedly.  Searching his pockets, he found there a small memorandum-book and a short piece of pencil.

He wrote this carefully on a page, regarding it with satisfaction at the finish.  “See what that means?  That means, for every time you pretend to be deaf when I shout at you, you’ll be docked a bob at the end of the week.”

“I see.”

“Just as well you do,” remarked Baynes threateningly.  “We will now proceed to the next item: ‘Food not cooked to W. B.’s satisfaction, one-and-six.’  How many t’s in ‘satisfaction’?”

“Many as you like.”

“Impudence,” he continued, writing as he spoke, “one-and-three.  Wait a bit; I haven’t finished yet.  ‘Clean collar not ready when required, sixpence.’”

“There won’t be anything left,” mentioned his wife, “if you put many more down.”

“And when any of my relatives look in they can see it too?”

“Reminds me,” he said, taking his pencil again.  “‘Relations, two a month.  All in excess of this number, fourpence per relation.’  Take the list and read it out to me, and then kneel down and take off my boots as I ordered you to do some considerable time ago.”

Mrs. Baynes accepted the list, inspected it; then tore the page into several pieces and threw these into the fireplace.  In the pocket of an underskirt she found a purse, and from this brought four new banknotes.

“Have a good look at them, William,” she said.  “You won’t get a chance of seeing them again.  I’m just going along to the Post Office to put them away before it closes.”

“How—how did you come by them?”

“I’m not bound to answer you,” remarked Mrs. Baynes, “but perhaps I may as well.  The money has come to me from poor Uncle Ernest, who popped off last month.  He’s left a sim’lar amount to my two sisters.”

“You was his favourite,” said Baynes, “and if he’d got money to leave—and this is the first I’ve heard of it—he ought to have left it all to you.  I must have a glance at his will and see whether we can’t dispute it.”

“You’ll do nothing of the kind.”

“Not for us.  For me,” corrected Mrs. Baynes.  “It belongs to me and only to me.  You haven’t anything to do with it.”

“I’ve heard,” he remarked, “of sudden riches affecting the brain, but this is the first time I’ve actually come across such an instance.”  He bent and started to unlace his boots.  “We’ll talk the matter over again later on.  By the by,” relacing his boots, “there’s no reason why you should go out on a wet night like this and catch your death of cold.  I’ll trot along to the Post Office for you.  I’m more used to handling money than what you are.”

“That’s been the case hitherto,” she admitted, “but I must learn how to do it now.  You stay here and enjoy your pipe, and when I come back I’ll tell you how you’ve got to behave to me in the future.”

“I suppose,” he inquired with some bitterness, “I’ve got your precious sisters to thank for all this?”

“No,” she answered, “poor Uncle Ernest.”

“This is very nice and comfortable,” he said, after the meal.  “Somehow, that little legacy of yours, if you’ll pardon the expression, my dear, seems to me likely to prove a blessing in disguise.”

“No disguise about it.”

“Seeing that I never expected nothing—”

“Quite so, quite so.  Only that the Post Office pays such a trifling rate of interest.”

“The money’s safe there,” she interrupted, “that’s the great thing.”

“I should be the last to recommend anything that wasn’t perfectly and absolutely sound,” declared Baynes.  “We’re on good terms with each other now, and your interests are my interests.  We two are one, so to speak.  Only that, getting about as I do, I keep my ears open—”

“Listeners never hear any good of themselves.”

“But sometimes they hear good about other matters.  Two chaps were talking on the tramcar last week, and I was sitting just at the back.  Jockeys from the look of ’em.  They didn’t know I was taking in all they were saying, and they talked quite freely to each other, just as I might to you in this room.  Vinolia was what they were chatting about.”

“Old Brown Windsor is as good as anything.”

“What does thirty-three to one mean, William?”

“But supposing—”

“My dear,” he said, putting down the newspaper, “we’ve been getting on particular well together this last forty-eight hours or so; don’t let us begin arguing and spoil it.  I’ve been into the law of the matter, and I find I’ve got no right to touch your money in any way whatsoever, but it’s my positive duty to see that you don’t do anything silly and stupid with it.”

“It’s mine to do what I like with.”

“Let’s change the subject,” urged Baynes, “and have a nice talk over old times.  When do you reckon it was you first felt drawn towards me?”

“Very well, then,” she said, “I shall have to make inquiries and see about doing it myself.”

“Rather than you should be taken in by a set of rogues,” he conceded, “I’ll do as you wish.  But, mind you, I’m acting in entire opposition to my better judgment!”

Baynes, back from work on the day of the race, found his wife waiting at the front gate, tapping at it impatiently; as he came within six houses of his home, he shook his head.  She took up the hem of her apron, and with this to her eyes ran indoors.  From the kitchen he roared a command to her to come down and leave off snivelling and make herself useful.  Obtaining no reply, he took the trouble to go to the foot of the stairs and make the formal announcement that, unless she descended at once, he would break every bone in her body.  She came, red-eyed, and, kneeling, unlaced his boots.

“Don’t, William, don’t!”

“Oh, but I’m going to tell you the truth,” he said with determination.  “I’m not the man to mince my words.  You get no sympathy out of me.  There’s only yourself to blame, and you’ve got to recognise the fact.  I’m not going to have you going about saying that you was recommended to back the horse by other people.  What you did, you did with your eyes open.”

“Where did it come in?”

“Don’t interrupt me,” shouted Baynes, “when I’m talking!  Been and lost the thread of my argument now.  Besides, what does it matter where it came in?  You asked me to back the horse to win; there was nothing said about backing it for a place.  As I told you, I couldn’t get thirty-three to one; but I did, after a lot of trouble, manage to put your money on at twenty-five.  I’ve behaved straightforward throughout the entire business, and, now it’s over, all I ask is that nothing more shall be said about it.  I’m sick and tired of the whole affair.  Perhaps another time you’ll listen to me when I give you good advice.”

“I shall never back a horse again,” she declared tearfully.

He was pinning the sheet of notepaper to the wall at the side of the looking-glass when his wife returned.  Glancing at the watch, he waited grimly for her explanation.

“Had to wait,” she said, “and find a boy selling evening newspapers.”

“And what might you want, pray, with evening newspapers?  Furthermore, where’s the jug?”

“If you want beer, fetch it!” she replied.  “That was a good joke of yours about the horse, but you’d better not let me catch you being quite so funny again.  It upset me, and I don’t like being upset.”

He snatched the journal from her.  She compelled him to give it back and to take it properly.  In the stop-press space he read out: “Vinolia, one; Gay Lothario, two; Messenger Boy, three.”

Baynes stood gazing at the fire, making the clicking noises with his tongue which folk adopt when, in disconcerting circumstances, speech fails.

“I can’t do it.  I can’t do it.”

“Don’t you start being stupid,” commanded Mrs. Baynes.  “Do as I tell you.”

Baynes had written the figures, and was about to enter on the task of multiplication, with one hand gripping the top of his head, when he suddenly threw away the pencil.

“My dear,” he said, “I want you to be so kind as to listen to me, and I must ask you not to be madder than you can possibly help.  I admit the case is somewhat trying; but you have to remember that we all have our cross to bear.  I never backed that horse!”

A pause of some moments in length.

“You mean,” said his wife slowly, “to look me in the face and to tell me that, after what you overheard on the tramcar—”

“I never overheard nothing of the kind on the tramcar.”

“Perhaps, William, you’ll kindly tell me what horse you did put the money on?”

“I never,” he answered, “put no money on any horse whatsoever.”

“Then where is the money?”

“In the inside pocket of the jacket I’m wearing at the present moment,” he said sulkily.

“But what did you intend to do with it?”

“Do you realise, William, that if you’d obeyed my orders we should have been in a position to buy a nice little house of our own here in Old Ford, and never had to pay a week’s rent again?  Do you understand how much you owe me?  Do you comprehend—”

“My dear,” he appealed, putting his hands together, “let me off as light as you can.  I won’t go lording it about the place any more.  In future, I’ll only lord it over myself.”

“First time I’ve ever been in one of these new-fangled contrivances.”

“It’ll be the last, if you ain’t careful,” said the conductor, punching a penny ticket.

“But I made up my mind to do it,” addressing the others.  “Down in the country where I live, they’ve been throwing it up agenst me for some time past.  And so I determined, next time I come up to see my sister, I’d take a trip by one of them, jest in order to see what happened, and—here I are.”

A youth next to her, with a girl companion, mentioned that it was a pity they so often exploded, and blew up in the air; the girl jerked with her elbow and begged him not to make her laugh in public.

The passengers gave up all attempt to read, and offered her their complete attention.  “So painful for friends,” said a woman opposite, winking at the rest.  “Understand what I mean.  Having to come and sort out the bits, and say, ‘That looks like Uncle James’s ear; if I could only find the other one, I should be able to start piecing him together.’  You see, they don’t allow compensation unless you can produce the complete individual.”

“That don’t seem exactly fair.”

“It isn’t fair,” agreed the humorous woman.  “But there’s lots of things like that here in London.  For instance, if the inspector came in now, and found you sitting up in the first-class part of the car, he’d want to charge you excess.”

“In that case,” she said affrightedly, taking a grip of her parcel, “I’d better move down nearer towards the door.”

“I recollect,” said the man, “what ’appened in the Garden of Eden.”

“That were before my time,” she said, putting it back into her pocket.  “But I always like to reward kindness wherever I come across it.  And I must say you London folk are partic’lar nice to strangers.  Nothing you won’t do for them.  When I get back home, I shall tell my neighbours how pleasant you’ve been to me.  What’s that building supposed to be, may I ask?”  Pointing through the window at Bayswater Road.

“That,” answered the man, “is a monument put up to Julius Cæsar.  The chap, you know, who was in the Battle of Trafalgar.”

“I remember.  At least, I say I remember; but that’s a lie.  I recollect reading about it when I was at school.  And isn’t this a nice open part here, too!  Trees, and goodness knows what all!”

“Richmon’ Park,” explained her informant readily.  “That’s the proper name of it.”

“It’s been moved.”

“Ah, well,” she said resignedly, “I find the best plan in London is to take everything as it comes.  What I’ve always been hoping—  But there, it’s no use talking about what isn’t likely to happen.”  They pressed for details.  “It would be too much like luck for it to occur to me.  But what I’ve always wished for was that I might catch sight, just for once in my life, of the new King and Queen—”

Two passengers called her attention eagerly to a couple walking along by the railings, arm-in-arm; gave a fervid assurance.

“Well, well, well!” fanning herself with an ungloved hand.  “To think of him strolling along with a pipe in his mouth, for all the world like an ordinary individual!  And not over-dressed neither.  That’s something more for me to tell ’em when I get home.  Wouldn’t have missed the sight for anything.  But I were always under the impression that he was a gentleman with a beard.”

“Shaves it off, just about this time, every year.”

“I see,” she remarked contentedly.  “More for the sake of change, I suppose, than anything.  Talking of that, I suppose there’s nobody here could oblige me with silver for a sovereign?”

“And which way do I go now, young man?”

“You get off the step,” replied the irritated conductor.  “You cross the roadway.  You take a ’bus going West.”

“Which do you call West?”

The motor-omnibus restarted.  Passengers gazed amusedly at her, craning necks in the hope of witnessing one more diverting incident; as she vanished they became quite friendly, wondering whether she would ever reach her destination, and speaking of the simplicity and foolishness of country folk.

The conductor, testing it with the aid of his teeth, announced he was able to make nothing of it; he doubted whether the owner would succeed.  Alarmed, the rest of the passengers searched muffs and pockets; three purses were missing, and some articles of less value.  Frantic inquiries for the nearest police-station.  A man who had lost nothing said he suspected the country lady all along.

“What we ought to be uncommon thankful for,” said the conductor, stopping near Edgware Road, “is that she didn’t pinch the blooming ’bus!”

“She was clearly in the wrong, I suppose?”

“Absolutely!” he declared, with emphasis.  “It’s made me feel that I want to get away for a time from everything and everybody.  And yours is the only establishment of its kind.  Cheque’s all right, I hope?”

“I hope so, too,” said the voice.  And called out, “Pass one!”  A curtain pulled aside and the young man, his chin out determinedly, moved.  “Take the four slips, please.  You’ll have to fill them in.”

“Not what I call cold,” answered the driver, snatching a piece of straw from a truss and starting to chew it.  “Remember January in ’27?”

“Can’t say I do.”

“That was a teaser,” said the coachman.  He gave four slaps to each shoulder.  “Snowed up jest afore we got to Reading.  No chance of escape.  Not a bit of food after the third day.  Fortunately, the guard was a plumpish man; Tom Bates his name was; the chap who’s with us to-day is thin, I’m sorry to say.  Bates’s widow took it very well, considerin’ how onreasonable some women are.  Course, the passengers made a collection for her.  Tottled up poor Tom, they did, and paid for him at the rate of eightpence a pound.  As she very properly remarked, it isn’t every widow that can say of her late husband that he was worth his weight in copper.”

The young man offered his cigar-case, and the driver, with a dexterous scoop, took the whole of the contents and dropped them into one of his enormous pockets.

“I should imagine that he resented the impertinence.”

“He might have done all that you say,” remarked the driver, slapping one of the horses, “only he was froze.  Froze stiff.”

“Bless my soul!” cried the young man.  “What a shocking end!”

“That wasn’t the end, bless you.  Tried all we knew to bring back his circulation, but nothing seemed any use, and it wasn’t until we got to a oast-house and got the hop-driers to put him in the oven—”

“Hops in December?”

The youth congratulated himself upon his acuteness in seeing through the device, but later, when he ducked his head on the stage coach going through the archway and adjusting his muffler, made a polite reference to the weather and its possibilities, the driver, who was smoking one of the cigars, responded only with a grunt.  He tried again as they took a corner rather narrowly, and this time the driver made no response of any kind.  Later, when a hackney coach called out something derisive, he ventured to suggest a retort, and then the driver hinted plainly that he was not in the mood for conversation, that if he should change his views he would make intimation of the circumstance; in the meantime the young man had better talk quietly to himself, or address his remarks to one of the other passengers.  The youth, giving up with regret the impression that all stagecoach drivers were communicative, cheery, and dispensers of merry anecdotes, turned to a fellow-traveller seated behind.

“Seasonable weather.”

“What you say?”

“I said,” mentioned the young man deferentially, “it was seasonable weather.”

“When?” asked the passenger behind.

“Do you know what you do mean?”

“I know what I’m driving at,” he asserted, becoming somewhat nettled; “but apparently I don’t make sufficient allowance for lack of intelligence on your part.”

“If it didn’t mean taking my hands out of my pocket,” said the passenger behind, “I’d knock your head clean off your shoulders.  That’s what I’d do to you.  Clean off your shoulders!”

They pulled up at a roadside inn, and the young man, thoughtful and slightly moody after these rebuffs, brightened as he swung himself down with assistance from the axle and, stamping to and fro, endeavoured to restore circulation.  Two ladies, one old and one young, stepped from the interior of the coach and looked around distractedly.  He went forward and asked whether he could be of any service.

“Lunch?” he echoed.  “Why, of course!  I declare I had nearly forgotten lunch.  Pray follow me.  The others have preceded us, but doubtless—”

“We are greatly indebted to you, sir,” declared the elder lady.  “My niece is unused to any but the most delicate refinements of life, and it is on her account rather than my own that I ventured to appeal to you.”

“We had a most objectionable travelling companion, so different from the class my niece and myself mix with.  Her grandfather, you will be interested, perhaps, to hear, was no less a person than—”

“Aunt, dear?”

“Yes, my love.”

“Food!”

In the largest room (which seemed too small for its sudden rush of custom) male passengers were feeding themselves noisily and screaming, with mouths full, to the dazed serving-maids and to the apoplectic landlady; they gave a casual glance at the two ladies and their escort, and made no effort to give space at the one table.  The young man appealed; they jerked him off impatiently.  One continued an anecdote after the interruption.

“If there are any gentlemen present,” said the youth, in a loud voice, “will they be so good as to note that here are two ladies, desirous of obtaining some refreshment before proceeding on the journey.”

There was a pause, and the sulky passenger who had travelled in the second seat looked up from his tankard, which he had nearly finished.

“Did you say ‘if’?”

“Then here’s my answer to you!”

The ladies shrieked and fainted.  The youth, wiping from his face the contents of the sulky man’s tankard, demanded whether any one possessed a brace of pistols.  Willing hands pressed forward, showing an eagerness to assist that had hitherto been absent.  As the serving-maids brought burnt feathers to the two lady passengers, he strode out to a snow-covered field at the back, the conductor in attendance, the rest tossing coins on the way to decide who should have the honour of supporting the sulky man.  The coachman, restored to cheerfulness, paced the ground with laborious exactitude.

“Are you ready, gentlemen?  Then at the word ‘Three.’  One, two—”