When the company had all assembled there were fifty-one altogether who sat down, and it was a very pretty sight. We had extra waitresses in to help, and I remained in the room and superintended them, keeping near the door, of course. Harry behaved beautifully as the vicechairman, taking care never to be the landlord, or to interfere with anything, only once, when Graves—who, of course, couldn’t behave himself even on such an occasion—said, “I say, Mr. Vice, don’t you think this beer is a bit off?” Harry replied, “I don’t know, Mr. Graves; I’m drinking champagne,” which made everybody laugh.

There was plenty of champagne drunk, too, at the head of the table, Mr. Wilkins tasting it, as he said afterwards, for the first time in his life, and everything went off capitally, and not too noisy at first, though the way some of them ate, at the lower end, showed that they meant to have their money’s worth, as well as to show their respect for Wilkins.

After the cheese and celery the doctor rapped the table, and then Harry rapped the table too, and said, “Order for the chair.” And Mr. Wilkins, who knew, of course, what was coming, looked at the pattern of his cheese-plate as though it was a very beautiful picture, and made little pills with the bread by his side, and twisted the tablecloth, and did everything except look at the company.

The doctor made a very nice, kind little speech about Wilkins, referring to the many, many years he had been parish clerk, and how he was looked upon by everybody in the place as a friend, and how sorry they all were to lose him, and how they hoped that a long and happy life with his family awaited him in the new country.

Everybody cheered, and said “Hear, hear,” to the sentiments, the only person interrupting in the wrong place being Graves, who said, “Hear, hear,” when the doctor said, “and now Mr. Wilkins is about to leave us, perhaps for ever.”

At the end of the doctor’s speech everybody got up and raised their glasses, and shouted, “Three cheers for Wilkins!” And then they sang, “For he’s a jolly good fellow,” and kept on till I thought they would never leave off.

After that, Mr. Jarvis, the miller, sang a song, to give Mr. Wilkins time to pull himself together for his reply, and then Mr. Wilkins rose, and the company banged the table till the glasses jumped again, and I thought the whole arrangement would come down with a crash, the tables being only on tressels.

Mr. Wilkins rose and said, “Ladies and gentlemen”—(there were no ladies, so he looked hard at the door where I was trying to keep out of sight)—“this is the proudest moment of my life. I thank you, gentlemen, one and all. I—I had prepared a speech, but every word has gone out of my head. (‘Hear, hear,’ from Graves.) I cannot say what I feel. I have known the company here for many, many years; I have lived among you man and boy, and at one time I thought I should die among you. (‘Hear, hear,’ from Graves again.) But I am going away to a foreign country. I shall find, I hope, new friends there; but I shall never forget the old ones. I thank you one and all, high and low, rich and poor, for your great kindness to me this day. It’s more than I deserve. (‘Hear, hear,’ from Graves again.) This beautiful mug”—(I forgot to tell you that the doctor wound up his speech by presenting the piece of plate and the purse of gold)—“will be treasured by me to the last hour of my life. I shall hand it down to my children untarnished. For that, and the generous gift which you have also given me, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, and, ladies and gentlemen, I can’t say any more, except to say, ‘Good-bye, and God bless you all.’”

Mr. Wilkins, when he came to that, broke down a little, and then everybody cheered, and he sat down. It wasn’t a bad speech—much better than what he had written out to say, which was nearly all taken from an old book of speeches, published at a shilling, as I found out afterwards, and which was what the Prince of Wales might have said at a State banquet, but was all nonsense for a parish clerk.

After Mr. Wilkins’s speech the doctor said, “You may all smoke.” And they did smoke! In five minutes you couldn’t see across the room. And then they had spirits and water, and there were more speeches, and the doctor’s health was proposed, and then Harry’s health coupled with mine, and they would make me come in and stand by Harry while he replied, and I tried to look as dignified as I could, though I felt awfully hot and flustered, till Harry gave me a dreadful slap on the back, which he meant to emphasize what he was saying about me, but which made me feel quite ill for a minute or two. And then they all began to talk at once, and sing songs; and when the banquet broke up, everybody insisted upon seeing Mr. Wilkins home. And it was just as well, for, what with the heat, and the excitement, and the smoke, and the champagne, and hot spirits on the top of that, poor dear Mr. Wilkins was glad of somebody’s arm to lean on.

But it all ended well, and was a great success, though the cleaning-up to get the coffee-room straight for the next morning was awful, especially as the strange people we had in to help, emptied all the bottles and all the glasses, and, the contents being rather mixed, some of them were a little excited, and made more noise about their work than they ought to have done.

The next day I sat down to write my report. Mr. Wilkins, who came round to say good-bye privately to me, as I couldn’t go up to the station with the others to see him off, asked me to put in the speech he had written out, instead of the one he delivered; but I couldn’t do that. I wrote a nice account, giving a few details of Mr. Wilkins’s life, and the names of the principal guests, and, of course, I said what I could about the banquet, and how much everybody enjoyed it, and I put in a nice little line about Harry, though it seemed so funny for me to have to call him “mine host of the ‘Stretford Arms’;” but I knew that was the right way to do it.

It took me nearly all day to write out the report; and then I made a nice clean copy of it, and sent it to our county paper.

And when the paper came out, we couldn’t find it for a long time, till right down in a corner we found three lines: “Mr. Wilkins, for many years parish clerk of ——, was entertained at a banquet by his fellow-parishioners on Thursday last, on the occasion of his departure for Australia.”

I could have cried my eyes out with vexation. The nasty, mean editor had not even said where the banquet was held.

Harry was in an awful rage. He had ordered and paid for a hundred copies—to send away. Thank goodness, poor Mr. Wilkins had sailed for Australia before the paper came out, and so he knew nothing of the cruel treatment which my first attempt at writing for the Press had met with.

That is how Mr. Wilkins left us. It was a pleasant way certainly; but I know he felt going very much indeed. He was an old man to begin life again in a new world. But he has his daughters with him, and if his eldest daughter is as well off as he says she is, perhaps in time he will get reconciled to the change.

We have had one letter from him since he arrived in Australia. The invalid daughter was better, and he gave a wonderful account of the place where he is living. It is a long way “up country,” and he says it is all so new and strange, that sometimes he expects to wake up in his easy-chair in the ‘Stretford Arms’ and find out that he has dropped off for forty winks, and has been dreaming.

He wrote a lot about the wonderful things he had seen and the wonderful adventures he had had. He says that he has to ride on horseback to get about, and it was very awkward at first; but his son-in-law gave him lessons, and now he is all right. He says he is going to learn how to throw the lasso and catch cattle. I think he has learnt to throw the hatchet. The idea is too absurd of our old parish clerk, the respectable Mr. Wilkins, galloping about the country and catching animals, like those wild fellows you read about on the great American plains.

Still, he is there in the midst of it all, and I don’t suppose we shall ever see him again. It is a strange end to the career of a quiet, old-fashioned old fellow like Wilkins—a man who all his life had hardly spent a week away from the quiet little country place in which he was the parish clerk. I often say to Harry, when we speak of him, “Who ever would have believed such a thing could happen?” And Harry says that in this world there never is any knowing what may happen; but one thing he knows will never happen again, and that is that I shall spend a whole day writing an article for our county paper.

And Harry is perfectly right. But never mind, we have had our revenge. We always took the local paper every week before, and now we have given it up. “That’s the best way to make newspapers feel that you——”

* * * * *

Mr. Saxon arrived! And he never sent word that he was coming! Oh dear, dear! I must come at once. Nothing will be right, and there’ll be a nice to-do if his liver happens to be wrong.

CHAPTER XIX.

ONE OF OUR BARMAIDS.

Your quiet barmaid, who doesn’t dress up a bit, and only says “yes” and “no” when the customers talk to her, is generally slow and makes a lot of silly mistakes, and is afraid of a bit of hard work. She is the sort of girl who can’t take more than one order at once, and draws stout for the people who ask for whiskey, and opens lemonade and puts it into the brandy for gentlemen who have ordered a B. and S. We had one of these extra quiet girls once, and she nearly drove me mad. On Saturday nights, and at busy times, if I hadn’t been in the bar half the people would have gone away without being served. But it was while she was with us that we began to feel uncomfortable about the state of the till, and, after we’d sent her off, it was found out that she’d been giving too much change every night to a scamp of a fellow that had made her believe he was desperately in love with her.

Miss Measom was one of the best barmaids we ever had, as a barmaid; but she was much too flighty for me. I didn’t like her the first day I saw her in the bar. She was what Harry called “larky,” and in a quiet place like ours that sort of thing attracts more attention than it would in London.

But when I knew her better, I really began to like her, and thought that there wasn’t any harm in the girl. It was just her animal spirits. She was full of mischief, and had the merriest laugh I ever heard, and used to say the oddest things. What annoyed me at first was that some of the young fellows who used our house for the billiard room gave her a nickname. They called her “Tommy,” and she liked it. I didn’t. One evening I was in the bar and one of them said, “Tommy, give me another whiskey cold,” and I thought it wasn’t respectful to me, so I said, “That’s not Miss Measom’s name, Mr. Smith, and if you don’t mind I’d rather you didn’t call her by it.”

He was an impudent fellow, and he said, “Oh, I beg your pardon, Mrs. Beckett,” and then he said, “May I have the honour of asking you for another whiskey cold, if you please, Miss Measom?” And then a lot of the young monkeys that were with him began “Miss Measom-ing” all over the place, and the grown-up men, who ought to have known better, did it too, and I was so indignant, I went out of the bar and left them at it.

It was Saturday evening, after the football, and that was always what Miss Measom used to call “a warm time,” because the young fellows in the club got excited, and they brought in the club that had come down to play them, and I was generally rather glad when it was time to shut up.

The night that this happened in the bar that I have told you about, after we’d shut, Miss Measom came to me and she said, “I hope you’re not cross with me, Mrs. Beckett. I can’t help them calling me Tommy, and they don’t mean any harm.” “I am cross, Miss Measom,” I said. “It doesn’t sound nice, and it isn’t the sort of thing for a place like ours. If you didn’t encourage them they wouldn’t do it.”

“I don’t encourage them—indeed I don’t!” said the girl; “but it’s no good my being nasty about it.”

I don’t know what I should have said; but Harry came in at the moment, and, hearing the conversation, he joined in and said he was sure Miss Measom couldn’t help it, and, after all, it was nothing, because young fellows would be young fellows, and you couldn’t expect them to behave in a bar as if they were in a chapel.

That put my back up, and I turned on Harry quite indignantly, for I didn’t like his taking the girl’s side against me.

I don’t know what possessed me to say it, but I said, “Oh, I know Miss Measom is a great favourite of yours; wouldn’t you like me to beg her pardon?”

It was a very foolish thing to say. I felt so directly I’d said it; but I was in a temper, and wouldn’t draw it back.

Harry bit his lip; and Miss Measom flushed scarlet, and went out of the room.

“You’re very unwise to say a thing like that,” said Harry. “I can’t think what’s come to you lately.”

“I will say it,” I said; “and I am not the only person who says it. You are always sticking up for that girl against me. Both of her last Sundays out she has been home half an hour late, and you told me not to be cross with her about it.”

“You’re a foolish little woman,” Harry said. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“Oh, yes; I dare say it’s not an agreeable subject.”

“No, it isn’t; get on with your supper.”

“I shan’t; I don’t want any supper,” I said, pushing my plate away.

“Oh, very well,” said Harry; “perhaps you’re better without it. I should think you’ve got indigestion now, and that’s what makes you so disagreeable.”

With that he got up from the table, and went and sat down in the armchair and lit his pipe, and took up the paper.

And we didn’t speak another word to each other that evening.

* * * * *

The next morning was Sunday, and, after breakfast, Miss Measom came to me and said, “Mrs. Beckett, can I say a word to you?”

“Yes,” I said quite sharply. “What is it?”

“I think I’d better leave.”

“As you please, Miss Measom.”

“Then, as soon as you’re suited.”

“Certainly!” and with that I turned on my heel and went upstairs to dress for church.

I didn’t say anything to Harry about Miss Measom having given notice. To tell the truth, I was beginning to be a little bit ashamed of myself, and to think that I had been too hasty.

After that Miss Measom’s manner quite changed in the bar. She hadn’t a smile for anybody, and the customers asked me what was the matter with the girl. The next Saturday when the young fellows came in one of them called her “Tommy.” She looked up quietly, and said, “Mr. So-and-so, I should be much obliged if you wouldn’t call me that. There are reasons why I ask you, which I can’t tell you.”

The young fellow, who was a gentleman, raised his hat, and after that nobody called our barmaid “Tommy” again.

The night before it was Miss Measom’s day to leave, after business she went straight up to her room. When I went up, I had to pass her door, and I thought I heard a strange noise. I stopped and listened, and then I knew it was some one sobbing. I went to Miss Measom’s door and knocked. It was a minute or two before she opened it, and when she did I saw that her eyes were quite red.

“What’s the matter, Jenny?” I said, calling her by her Christian name, feeling rather sorry for her.

She didn’t answer for a second, and then she began to cry right out. So I pushed the door to and made her sit down, and then I said, “Jenny, I don’t want to part bad friends with you. You’re in trouble. Won’t you tell me what it is?”

She looked at me through her tears a moment, and then she said, “Oh, Mrs. Beckett, I’m so sorry I’m going away like this.”

“So am I, Jenny,” I said; “but you gave me notice; you know I didn’t give it to you.”

“I couldn’t bear to cause trouble between you and your husband,” she answered. “You’ve been the nicest, kindest people I ever lived with, and I’ve been very happy here—till—till—till you said what you did; but you didn’t mean it, did you? Tell me you didn’t mean it.”

I hesitated for a moment. But the girl looked so heart-broken that I said, “No, Jenny, I didn’t; and I’m very sorry I ever said it.”

That broke the poor girl down altogether. So I put my arm round her waist, and drew her to me, and kissed her.

“There,” I said, “all is forgiven and forgotten, and if you like to stay on I’ll pay the new girl that’s coming a month’s wages, and tell her she isn’t wanted.”

“No; you are good and kind, as you have always been; but I can’t stay with you now—it wouldn’t be right—unless—unless you know all, and forgive me.”

When she said this it gave me quite a start. A hundred things came into my head. What had I to know, and to forgive when I knew it?

Without meaning it my manner changed, and I said, almost coldly, “What is it that I ought to know?”

“What I am,” she said, looking straight before her at the wall.” If my story were ever to come to you from some one else, after what you said that night, you might think worse of me than perhaps you will when you hear it from my own lips.”

“Go on,” I said hoarsely.

“Mrs. Beckett, you’ve been very cross with me once or twice, when I’ve been late in on my nights out. Shall I tell you where I’d been, and what made me late?”

“Yes—if—if you think you ought to.”

“I had been to London to see my baby.”

“What—are you—are you—a married woman, then?”

“No! God help me, no!”

* * * * *

I can’t recollect what happened, or what I said or did for a few minutes after that. It was such a shock to me—so unexpected—that it almost took my breath away.

All I know is that presently I found Jenny on her knees by my side, pouring her story into my ears, telling it quickly and excitedly, as though she feared that I should refuse to hear her, if she didn’t get it out before I could stop her.

It was a very sad story.

Jenny Measom had been well brought up by her father and mother until she was fifteen, and then her father, who held a good position in a big brewery, had a paralytic stroke. The most unfortunate thing about it was that it happened a week after he had left his old firm of his own accord, and gone to take a better position in another, so that he had not the slightest claim on either firm for much consideration, and the stroke meant ruin. He got a little better, but not well enough to get about or to do anything, and so Jenny’s mother had to take needlework, and Jenny was, by the kindness of the old firm, got into a public-house as a barmaid, and her earnings and her mother’s were all that kept them from the workhouse.

Jenny, with her bright merry ways and her smartness at her work, soon got on as a barmaid, and left the first public-house, and went to a big West End house, where the trade was of a higher character.

It was when she was eighteen, and in this swell West End house, that the great misfortune of her life happened to her. Among the young fellows who came to the bar was one named Sidney Draycott. He was a handsome young fellow, the son of an English doctor who had at that time a practice in Paris. Sidney Draycott was studying for his father’s profession, and, like most young fellows of his class, he spent a good many of his evenings in bars and billiard-rooms.

He fell awfully in love with Jenny, and the poor girl fell in love with him, and they walked out together. It never entered the head of the young girl that the difference in their stations made the acquaintance a dangerous one, for “Sid,” as she called him, had asked her to be his wife. She spoke well, and played the piano, and had learnt quite enough before she left her good school to hold her own in conversation, and to appear a lady.

But the young fellow begged her to keep the engagement secret for the present, as he didn’t want anybody to know until he had passed his examination and become qualified to set up for himself, which would be very soon.

Jenny was in the seventh heaven of delight. She was going to be married to the man she loved, and he was a gentleman. The only person she told was her mother, and she was one of those simple-minded women who know very little of the world, and thought her dear, good, clever Jenny was fit to be a nobleman’s wife.

So things went on, and the young fellow passed his examination, and then he proposed that they should be married quietly before the registrar, and the day was fixed.

The Sunday before the wedding, which was to be on the following Wednesday, was Jenny’s Sunday out. She went with her lover into the country to look at a place where he thought of asking his father to buy a practice. They missed the last train, and they stayed at a little hotel something like ours in that country place.

The landlady took them for a man and wife, and—well, need I tell you any more?

On Monday morning Jenny went back to her business with an excuse about her mother having been ill, and having had to stop with her all night, and in the afternoon Mr. Draycott came in looking very worried, and told her he had just had a telegram calling him to Paris, as his father had been taken suddenly ill, and it was feared that he was dying. The marriage would have to be postponed; but he would hurry back as soon as things turned either one way or the other with his father.

He crossed to Paris by the night mail. What happened nobody ever knew. He was seen at Calais to get into a carriage where there were two other men—Frenchmen—and when the train stopped at Amiens, where there is a buffet, and it waited for a short time, a passenger from Amiens to Paris going to get into the carriage, which was empty, noticed something wrong. There were signs of a struggle, and there was blood here and there.

The guard was called, and a search was made. The two men who had been seen at Calais, the guard then remembered not to have seen get out at Amiens, nor the young Englishman either. No trace of the men was ever found; but the young Englishman was discovered lying on the line half way between Calais and Amiens, with his pockets empty, his watch and his diamond pin gone, and with a terrible injury to his head.

He was instantly attended to by medical men, and removed to a proper place; but though the wound in time got better, and his life was saved, his brain was affected. The doctors differed about him—some thought that in time he would gradually recover his reason, others that he would never do so. Poor Jenny couldn’t quite explain what it was; but it was supposed to be a clot of blood, or something of the sort, pressing on the brain, which might become absorbed in time, and then he would be all right, but which might not.

The young man’s father recovered from his illness, and had his son brought to Paris, and had the best advice, and it was recommended that he should be sent to an asylum—and there, said poor Jenny, as she finished her story, “the man, who was my affianced husband, now is; and my baby is with my mother, God bless her, for she has never given me one reproach. And so, you see, I have three to keep, Mrs. Beckett, and if I get out of a situation, and there is anything against my character, they must suffer as well as I.”

Poor Jenny—it was a sad story. As soon as she was a little calmer I asked her if she had not let her lover’s father know.

“No,” she said proudly, “I would sooner starve. My poor Sid would have married me, I know; everything was arranged; but how could I go to his father in his great trouble, and tell him that which might perhaps add to his grief and despair?”

“Jenny,” I said, when she had finished, “you have trusted me, and you shall never repent it. I think you are a brave girl, and you may stop with us as long as you like. No living soul shall ever hear your story from me.”

She flung her arms around my neck and kissed me, and cried a little again. And then she said, “Don’t tell Mr. Beckett, will you? I should die of shame if I thought he knew. It’s only a woman who could understand my story and respect me still.”

I gave her the promise, and I kept it until—— But I must not anticipate. I understood now why she was so merry and so gay, and what I called flighty. She was doing as hundreds of poor women do—hiding her heart’s sorrow under a mask of gaiety; forcing herself to appear bright and cheerful, lest the world should suspect her secret. I told Harry the next day that I was very sorry for what I had said about Miss Measom, and that I had determined to keep her on, as she was such a good barmaid; and he said, “As you will, little woman; I leave it entirely to you. I’m sure you’ll do what your heart tells you is right.”

Miss Measom soon recovered her gaiety; it was only when we were alone together that she was quiet and thoughtful, and when she went for her holiday I never grumbled again at her being a little late. I thought of her in the little home, cheering her poor mother and father, and loving her little baby, and thinking of the man who would have been her husband, and of the happy home she might have had but for that terrible tragedy.

Jenny stayed with us for about six months, and then she left us.

How she left us was in this way. One night after we had closed up we were sitting at supper—Harry and I and Jenny, and she picked up the London paper and began to read for a few minutes before going to bed.

Harry was smoking his pipe in his easy chair, and I was looking over some pages of manuscript that I had written in a hurry and wanted to see how they read.

All of a sudden Harry called out, “Look at Miss Measom!”

I looked up and there was Jenny just going down off her chair in a dead swoon. I ran to her and caught her, and told Harry to go out of the room. Then I loosened her dress, and bathed her forehead with some vinegar, and got her to.

“Jenny, dear Jenny,” I said; “what is it? What’s the matter? Are you ill, dear?”

“No,” she whispered, opening her eyes slowly, “look—look at the paper!”

I kept my arm around her and stooped and picked up the London paper, which had fallen from her hands on to the floor.

I looked at it for a minute and couldn’t see anything—then a name caught my eye, and I read this——

“It is reported from Paris that the young Englishman who was robbed and thrown out of a train some time ago between Calais and Amiens has at last recovered from the injury to the brain, which at one time threatened to be permanent. The case has aroused much interest in the medical profession in Paris, where, it may be remembered, his father, Dr. Draycott, has been for many years a resident.”

“Oh, Jenny!” I said; and that was all I could say. But we had a long talk up in her room afterwards, and she decided that she would write the next day to Sidney, under cover to his father—only a line with her address, nothing to worry him, nothing to distress him, only these words:—“The present address of J. Measom is ‘The Stretford Arms,’” and then she added the name of our village and the county.

She put “J.,” not to put “Jenny,” for fear the father might open it. Of course “J.” might be a John, and she wrote it in a big, round hand that might be a man’s.

Three days afterwards a telegram came. She showed it me. It was only this: “My poor darling,—I am coming back as soon as I can travel. Have written. God bless you!”

And then came a letter—a letter written in a shaky hand; but one that poor Jenny kissed and hugged and cried and sobbed over till I really was afraid she would make herself quite ill.

I had an idea that it would be all right for poor Jenny now; but I was a little afraid how the young fellow would take what had happened after he left England. Some men, under the circumstances, would have been heartless enough to—but what is the use of troubling about what some men would have done. Sidney Draycott behaved like a noble and honourable young Englishman. He came back to London a month later, and took Jenny to the church one fine morning, and he brought her out again Mrs. Sidney Draycott.

I went up to town for the day, and was at the church, and I was the only one invited except a great friend of Mr. Draycott’s, who had come up from the country on purpose. Jenny cried, and I cried, and nearly spoilt my beautiful new bonnet strings letting the tears run down them, and after it was all over and Jenny had kissed her husband, she came up and put her arms round my neck and kissed me, and then we both had just one little moment’s cry together, and then they both went off quietly in a four-wheel cab to see the baby.

* * * * *

Ever since Jenny Measom left us she has written to me and I have written to her. Some time ago, when I was not very well, the doctor said that I wanted a change, and so I wrote to Jenny, and said that perhaps I was going to the seaside, and she might not hear from me till I came home again. Two days afterwards I got such a nice letter back saying that she and her husband would be very angry if I didn’t come and stay with them. It would do me quite as much good as the seaside and more, and her husband, being a doctor, if I was out of sorts could make me up all manner of nice things to take. Of course this was a joke, but the invitation wasn’t, and I went. And I was very glad that I did, for they made quite a fuss with me, and I couldn’t have been treated better if I had been a duchess.

They have the loveliest little place, in a nice country town, where Mr. Draycott is established as a doctor, and is doing wonderfully well. Quite a lovely home it is, and they are so happy. And Jenny has her baby and her mother with her to help her, and to keep her company when the doctor is out on his rounds.

The people about the place of course, don’t know when they were married, as it has been kept quite secret. Even Mr. Draycott’s father thinks they were married secretly before he left London for Paris and met with that terrible adventure. Old Mr. Draycott has been over once from Paris, and Jenny says that he fell quite in love with her before he left, and said that his son was a lucky dog. Wasn’t it nice of him? Poor old Mr. Measom died very soon after the wedding; but he died very happy, knowing his daughter was comfortably settled. Poor old gentleman! it was the best thing perhaps, for he had become quite childish.

When I left to come back again to the ‘Stretford Arms,’ I was quite another woman. My cheeks were quite fat and rosy again, and Harry, when he met me at the station, pretended not to know me, but came up and said, “I beg your pardon, miss, but have you seen a pale young woman named Mary Jane anywhere about?”

The big goose! I gave him a kiss before all the railway porters, who wouldn’t look the other way, and I said, “No, I haven’t, and I hope she won’t see me or she mightn’t like me kissing her husband.”

Before I left I told Jenny and her husband that I should insist on their coming and staying for a week at our hotel as our guests, and they have promised that they will. When I asked them, Jenny looked up, with a twinkle in her eye, and the old saucy look on her face, and she said, “I’ll come; but you must promise not to be cross with Mr. Beckett if anybody calls me ‘Tommy,’ won’t you?”

Dear old “Tommy!” Oh, how glad I am that I didn’t let her go away through my nasty jealous temper! Who knows if things would have turned out so happily as they did if I hadn’t made it up with her and asked her to stay on at the ‘Stretford Arms.’

After Jenny left we had a barmaid, who——

* * * * *

Nurse, will you stop those children? Whatever are they making such a noise about? Master Harry and the baby fighting for the kitten! Then, take the kitten away from them! That poor kitten! I’m sure I expect to see it pulled in two sometimes. Can anybody tell me why cats and kittens and dogs let little babies pull them about and hardly ever scratch or bite? It is always a mystery to me.

CHAPTER XX.

MR. SAXON AGAIN.

“Good heavens! Mrs. Beckett,” he almost shrieked. “Is it possible that you, you who have witnessed my awful sufferings, you who have seen me tear my hair and bite the chair backs and kick the wall and hurl the coals out of the coal-scuttle at my own grinning demoniacal image in the looking-glass, can say such a thing as that? A blessing to prolong my life! Why, if the doctor had taken me away when I was born and drowned me in a pail of warm water, like they do the kittens, he would have been the best friend I ever had.”

“Oh, Mr. Saxon,” I said, “how can you say such dreadful things? I’m sure you have much to be thankful for. Many people envy you.”

“Do they?” he said. “Then more fools they. Look at me, Mrs. Beckett. Do you see how yellow I am? Do you know I go to bed at night half dead, and get up the next morning three-quarters dead, having spent the night in dreaming that I’m being hanged, or pursued by a mad bull, or having my chest jumped on by a demon? Do you know that I can’t open a letter without trembling, lest it should tell me of some awful disaster? That I’m so nervous, that if I see anybody coming that I know, I bolt round a corner to get away from them, and that I’m so restless that I can never stay in one place more than a week together, and that I’ve had the same headache for ten years straight off?”

“Yes, sir,” I said; “I know that you do get like that sometimes, and it must be very unpleasant; but if you’d take more care of yourself, and not work so hard, and take more exercise, perhaps you’d be better.”

He laughed a contemptuous sort of laugh.

“Oh, of course, it’s all my own fault. Everybody tells me that. When I was a boy, the doctors said I should outgrow it; when I was a young man, they said after thirty I should be better. When I was thirty, they said it was a trying age; but by the time I was forty I should be all right. Well, I’m forty now, and look at me. I’m a wreck—a perfect wreck.”

“Oh, come, sir,” I said; “I don’t see where the wreck comes in. You’re broad and upright, and you look as strong as a prize-fighter. Everybody who sees you says, ‘Is that Mr. Saxon? Why, I expected to see a cadaverous skeleton, by what I’ve heard about his being such an invalid.’”

“Oh yes, I know,” he said; “people say the same thing to me. I never get any sympathy. I dare say when I’m in my coffin people will come and look at me and say, ‘What a humbug that fellow is! Why, he looks as jolly as possible.’”

I tried to turn the conversation, because when Mr. Saxon begins to talk about himself and his wrongs and his ailments he will go on for hours if you’ll let him, so I asked him if he was writing anything new.

“Yes,” he said; “I’m writing my will. I’ve come down here to be able to work at it quietly, without anybody coming and putting me in a rage, and making me say something in that important document, in my temper, that I may be sorry for afterwards. Mrs. Beckett, I’ve left instructions that I’m to be cremated. If you’d like to be present at the ceremony I’ll drop in a line to say that you are to be invited. It is a very curious spectacle, and well worth seeing.”

It was a nice thing, wasn’t it, for him to ask me to come and see him cremated? But it was no good taking him seriously when he was like that, so I said, “Thank you, sir; you are very kind; but I’d very much sooner see you eat a good dinner. What shall I order for you?”

He thought a minute, and then he said, “Let me see, I have four hours before dinner. I can get my will finished in three, so you can order me for dinner some salmon and cucumber, some roast pork and apple sauce, and a nice rich plum-pudding, and, I think, if I have a bottle of champagne with it, and after that some apples and some Brazil nuts, and a bottle of old port, the chances are that I shan’t linger long.”

“Oh, Mr. Saxon,” I said, “the idea of your eating such a dinner as that, and you complaining of indigestion! Why, it’s suicide!”

“Of course it is,” he said, with an awful grin. “That’s what I mean it to be. It’s the only way I can do it without letting the blessed insurance companies have the laugh of me.”

I only give you this conversation just to show you the sort of mood he was in when he came on his second visit. He hadn’t brought the Swedish gentleman with him to get into a temper with, and as he could not well go on at me and Harry, he went on the other tack, and turned melancholy.

I felt as if I should like to give him a good shaking; but, of course, I was obliged to be polite, so I said, “If you are dull when you’ve done your work, sir, I hope you will come downstairs and sit with us; my husband will be very pleased, I’m sure.”

“Thank you,” he said; and then he went upstairs, and presently when I passed his door I heard him giggling to himself, and presently he laughed right out loud.

I thought to myself, “I wonder what he’s so merry about all by himself,” so I knocked at the door, and made an excuse to go in.

He had several sheets of paper in front of him, and he was chuckling and writing, and grinning all over his face.

“Here, Mrs. Beckett,” he said, “what do you think of this for a will?”

“Good gracious, sir!” I said, “you’re not laughing over your will, are you?”

“Yes, I am. I can’t help it. It’s so jolly funny. Ha, ha, ha!”

He began to read his will to me, and presently, I couldn’t help it, I was obliged to laugh too. It was so utterly ridiculous. He had actually gone and made a comic will leaving the oddest things to people, and cracking jokes about everything, just as if it was the funniest thing in the world to say what’s to be done with your property when you’re dead.

“I say, Mrs. Beckett,” he said, “won’t it be a lark when the old lawyer reads this out? I hope he’ll be a good reader, and make the points. I’d give something to see the people when they hear it read. I hope they’ll be a good audience.”

When he saw that it amused me, he was as pleased as Punch, and quite jolly. All his melancholy had gone. He read that will over and over again to himself, and seemed thoroughly to enjoy it; and I’m quite sure that he felt awfully sorry that he couldn’t get all the people called together and have it read to them without his being dead, so that he could hear them laugh at what he called his “wheezes.”

He said that he was sure his will would be a great success, and it put him in a good humour for the rest of the day, and he quite enjoyed his dinner, which, you may be sure, wasn’t roast pork or salmon, as he had ordered; but a nice fried sole, and a boiled chicken, and a semolina pudding, which I knew wouldn’t hurt him, and I wouldn’t let him have the champagne, pretending that we were quite out of the only brand he cared for.

After dinner he smoked a cigar by himself, and then he came down into our bar-parlour and smoked a pipe.

Several of our regular customers knew him, through his having been with us before, and they remembered him, so he joined in the conversation, which got on foreign parts; and, as he was known to travel abroad a good deal, they asked him questions about the places he had seen.

I will say this for Mr. Saxon: he never wanted much encouragement to start him off talking, and when he did begin he went on.

I’m quite sure that it wasn’t all true what he told the people in our bar-parlour. He couldn’t help exaggerating, if it was to save his life; but I believe the stories he told were founded on fact, only he made them as wonderful as he could.

He had been in the winter to Africa, and he told us of a very wonderful adventure he had with a lion. It seems he was very anxious to kill a lion and bring it home with him. So one day that he heard a lion had been seen in the mountains near where he was, he went off on a hunting expedition and camped out in the open air. The first night he thought it was very jolly; but when he woke up in the morning he found he had got the rheumatics so fearfully that he could hardly move. So he told the Arabs, who were with him, to go hunting, and he would stop in the tent and rub himself with liniment, as he couldn’t walk till the rheumatics went off.

The Arabs went off to look for the lion, and soon after they had gone Mr. Saxon heard a curious noise, and looking up, he saw a great big lion coming stealthily towards him.

He was awfully frightened, and picked up his gun and went as white as death, and waited for the animal to come on. When it began to move, he noticed it was rather lame, and moved very slowly, so he aimed at it and fired; but not being a good marksman, the shot went a long way over the lion’s head.

Then he felt so frightened, he said, that he was quite paralyzed, and he fired again; but the bullet didn’t go near the lion.

Then he dropped his gun and tried to run away; but the rheumatism was so dreadful that he couldn’t move, and still the lion crept nearer and nearer. He gave himself up for lost, and thought he should never see anybody again, when the animal, who was evidently in pain, limped into the tent.

He thought it would jump on him and eat him, but instead of that it only sat down on its haunches by his side in the tent and groaned, and held up one of its paws.

All of a sudden, he having a lot of experience with dogs, guessed that the lion was suffering from rheumatism, and so he thought he would try an experiment. He got out his bottle of liniment, and took the lion’s leg and rubbed the liniment well into it, the lion sitting quite still all the time, only holding its head on one side, as the liniment was very strong, and it got up its nose and made its eyes water.

After he had rubbed it well the lion seemed to be better, and wagged its tail, and would have licked his hand, he said, only he didn’t like the liniment that was on it. And presently it got up and went away, walking much easier than before.

Mr. Saxon said the relief to his feelings was so great that he felt quite exhausted, and fell asleep, and when he woke up, to his horror he saw three lions in his tent—it was the lion he had rubbed, who had brought his wife, the lioness, and his eldest son, a very fine young lion, and it was evident that he had brought them to be rubbed with the liniment, as they held out their legs towards him.

Mr. Saxon said that evidently all the family had slept in a damp place and got rheumatic. He rubbed the lioness and the young lion till all his liniment was gone, and then they went away.

When the Arabs came back in the evening they said they had had no sport, as they found the lions gone from their lair. “Yes,” said Mr. Saxon, “they have been here.” At first the Arabs would not believe him, but he showed them the footsteps of the lions, and then they did, and said it was very wonderful.

They had to camp in the same place that night, as Mr. Saxon was not well enough to go on. The next morning when they got up it was found that they were short of provisions, and they were wondering what they would do, when one of the Arabs said, “Oh, look there; there is a lion coming. Let us shoot him!” “No,” said Mr. Saxon, “perhaps it is one of my friends.” And so it was—it was the old lion, and he had a very fine sheep in his mouth. He marched into the tent, laid the sheep at Mr. Saxon’s feet, and then, nodding his head to the Arabs, turned round and walked away again.

He had brought Mr. Saxon a present of a sheep, to show his gratitude for being eased of the rheumatism with the liniment.

Mr. Saxon said it was one of the most wonderful instances of gratitude in a wild beast that had ever been known, and we all thought so too.

Some of the people in our parlour believed it was all gospel truth; but Harry laughed, and so did I. I had heard Mr. Saxon’s wonderful stories about his travels before.

I knew it was true about his suffering with rheumatism, though, because I had seen him; and I’ve heard the Swedish gentleman tell how, when Mr. Saxon was in Rome, he had it so bad that he could hardly move, and the twinges used to make him yell out. And one day one of the Pope’s chamberlains came to take him to the Vatican, and he couldn’t crawl across the room. He was in an awful state, because he was to be introduced to the Pope, and it was a great honour, and it made him very upset to think he should have to lose it. The Pope’s chamberlain, who was an Englishman, recommended a very hot bath. So Mr. Saxon had one put in his bedroom; and, in his hasty, impulsive way, got into it without trying the heat. It was so hot that he was nearly boiled alive, and he jumped out in such a hurry that the bath was tilted over, and boiled all the pattern out of the carpet, and went through the ceiling, and Mr. Saxon danced about, and swore, and went on dreadfully—like he can if he’s put out. It cost him ten pounds for the damage; but his rheumatics had gone quite away, and he was able to be introduced to the Pope that afternoon; so he didn’t mind the ten pounds. But the Swedish gentleman told us that he was the colour of a boiled lobster for a fortnight afterwards.

Another time that he had the rheumatism come on very awkwardly—so the Swedish gentleman told us, and I think he tells the truth—was at Madrid. Mr. Saxon was at a bull-fight, and after the third bull had been killed the beautifully dressed men who fight the bulls all went out, and the people all began to jump into the arena. Mr. Saxon and the Swedish gentleman thought that was a short cut to get out, so they got over into the circus too. Presently, to their horror, the doors were opened, and two bulls came galloping in. The Swedish gentleman jumped over the barriers quick; but Mr. Saxon, when he went to follow, had a sudden attack of rheumatics in his legs, and couldn’t move. He gave a horrified look, and saw one of the bulls making straight at him. He turned round to try and run; but the bull caught him, and threw him right up on the top of the barrier, and the Swedish gentleman seized him and pulled him over, while all the people clapped their hands, and shrieked with laughter.

Of course Mr. Saxon thought he must be wounded, and couldn’t make out why he didn’t feel where the bull’s horns had been; but when he looked round he saw all the people in the ring playing with the bulls, and the boys waving their cloaks in front of them, and then running away; and then he saw that the bulls had big indiarubber balls on their horns, to prevent them hurting.

It was explained to him afterwards by a Spanish gentleman that, after the real bull-fight is over, the young bulls, with their horns protected, are turned into the ring for the boys and young men to play with, and it is with these bulls that many, who afterwards become bull-fighters, take their first lesson. But it was very awkward for Mr. Saxon having his rheumatics come on just as the bull was running at him, before about five thousand people in the great bullring at Madrid.

The Queen of Spain, Mr. Saxon told us, was in the royal box, and she laughed as heartily as anybody. So Mr. Saxon tells everybody that he has had the honour of appearing as a bull-fighter before the royal family in Madrid, which is much more true than a good many of the stories he tells about his adventures abroad, I dare say.

The next day Mr. Saxon was rather melancholy again, and he said he shouldn’t stop, as he thought the country didn’t suit him at that season of the year. It was the autumn; and he said the fall of the leaf always made him ill.

“Yes, sir,” I said; “a good many people feel it. It’s always a trying time for invalids.”

“My dear Mrs. Beckett,” he said, “all times are alike to me. In the winter my doctor says, ‘Ah, it’s the cold weather makes you queer; you’ll be better when it’s over.’ When the spring comes, he says, ‘People with livers are always queer in the spring.’ When it’s summer, he says, ‘The heat always upsets livers.’ When it’s autumn, he says, ‘People with the least acidity in their blood always feel the autumn;’ and when it’s winter it’s the cold that’s bad for me again. And that’s the game they’ve played with me for the last ten years. It’s just the same if I go out of town for the benefit of my health. If I go to the seaside, the sea is bad for bilious people. If I go inland, it isn’t bracing enough. If I go to a bracing place, the air is too strong for me. If I go to a relaxing place, the air is too mild for me. There isn’t one of the beggars who pocket my guinea that has the honesty to say that nothing will ever make me any better.”

“I wonder you take their prescriptions,” I said, “if you don’t believe they can do you any good.”

“I’m not going to take any more,” he said. “Why, this last year I’ve tried the hot-water cure, the lemon cure, and the cold-water cure. I’ve worn four different sorts of pads and belts, I’ve been medically rubbed, and I’ve put myself on milk diet. I buy everything that’s advertised in the newspapers and on the hoardings, and I take everything everybody sends me, and the only time I was really well for a week was when I sent my little dog, who had a bad liver, to the veterinary surgeon, and he sent her some powders, and I took them by mistake for my own. When I went to get some more, the vet. had gone for his holiday and left an assistant. The assistant looked over the books and sent me some more powders. I thought they tasted different; but I took them, and ever since that I have never been able to pass a cat’s-meat barrow without wanting to stand on my hind legs and beg. The stupid assistant had made up some powders to give a dainty pet dog an appetite instead of my little dog’s liver powders.”

“Oh, Mr. Saxon,” I said, laughing; “you don’t expect me to believe that!”

“I can’t help whether you believe it or not, Mrs. Beckett,” he said; “I’m only telling you what actually happened.”

I stopped with him a little and tried to persuade him to give us a little longer trial. He couldn’t expect changes of air to do him good in a day. He said there was something in that, and he’d try another day or two.

I got Harry to offer to go for a long walk with him; and when Harry came back, he said, “My dear, I really think this time Mr. Saxon is a bit dotty.”

“Whatever do you mean, Harry,” I said.

“Well, he’s been asking me if I could get him a nice jolly crew of sailors to man a pirate ship for him, as he thinks of turning pirate. He says he’s been ordered a sea voyage, and that’s the only way he could take it without feeling the monotony of it.”

“Oh,” I said, “you mustn’t take any notice of his talking like that. Once, when he was ordered horse exercise, I remember him saying that he’d turn highwayman, and wear a mask, and have pistols in his belt, as he must have something to occupy his mind while he was riding, or he should go to sleep and tumble off.”

Poor Mr. Saxon! I often wonder whether people, who don’t know him well, believe that he really means the idiotic things he says. He says them so seriously that you can’t help being taken in by them sometimes.

After he had been with us a couple of days he sent a telegram to London and had a telegram back, and then he called me up, and he said, “Mrs. Beckett, I’m going to ask you a very great favour.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, wondering what was coming.

“A very dear friend of mine,” he said, “who has been for five years in a lunatic asylum has been cured, and is to be released to-morrow. He has a wife and family. Before he goes home to them we are anxious to see how he will behave—if he is quite cured, in fact.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, still wondering what I had to do with his mad friend.

“I have asked him to come here and stay with me.”

“What, sir!” I said, starting. “To come here!”

“Yes; but don’t be alarmed. I believe he is quite cured, and as sane as I am now. He is a very nice man—a little odd in his ways; but he wouldn’t hurt a fly. He is coming to-night. I assure you there is no danger, or I wouldn’t have asked him: only his friends think it will be better for him to get accustomed to his freedom before he goes home.”

“Of course, sir,” I said; “but it’s a great responsibility for you.”

“Oh, I’m not afraid; but I want you to help me.”

“How, sir?”

“Well, please put him a very blunt knife at dinner, and if he gets up in the morning before I do and goes out, just ask your husband not to let him go far away or let him out of his sight. That’s all.”

“Very good, sir,” I said; but I didn’t like it, and I went down. I said to Harry, “Here’s a nice thing. Mr. Saxon has asked a lunatic to stay with him, and he wants us to look after him!”

That night the gentleman arrived. He was a very thin, very mild, amiable-looking gentleman of about fifty, with long black hair, turning grey.

Mr. Saxon told us he was a literary gentleman and a fine scholar, and had written a great many burlesques, and it was this that had brought him to a lunatic asylum. He certainly was a little odd, and seemed rather nervous. I thought that was on account of his finding himself without any keepers about him.

He spoke very nicely, and laughed a good deal, and seemed a little fidgety and funny; but that was all.

I put him a very blunt knife at dinner, and when he tried to cut his meat with it, he said, “God bless me; this is an awful knife! Give me another, please.”

I looked at Mr. Saxon for instructions; but he shook his head. So I said, “It’s the sharpest we have, sir.”

“Shall I cut your meat up for you, Bob?” said Mr. Saxon.

“No, thank you,” said the gentleman; and he made another try; but he groaned over it and went quite hot, and kept saying, “God bless me!” and muttering to himself.

He and Mr. Saxon sat and smoked pipes all the evening, and they went to bed early, Mr. Saxon telling me not to give his friend a candle, as it wasn’t advisable to trust him with fire.

The gentleman asked for a candle. But I said I was very sorry, but all the candles were engaged.

He went into his bedroom and went to bed in the dark. But he went on awfully, groaning, and saying, “God bless me!” and that he never heard such a thing in his life.

In the morning he got up early, and, to our horror, came down with his hat on and went out.

“Harry,” I said, “Follow him, quick; he’s going towards the horse-pond.”

Harry said it was all very fine. He wished Mr. Saxon would take charge of his own lunatics; but he put on his hat, and went after the gentleman.

They came in in half an hour, the gentleman looking very bad tempered.

At breakfast, I heard him say to Mr. Saxon that the landlord had been following him.

“Nonsense, Bob,” said Mr. Saxon. “Come, old fellow, eat your breakfast.” There were chops for breakfast, and I had put the blunt knife on again. The gentleman tried to cut his chop with it, and then he flung it down, and said, “God bless me, Saxon, I can’t stand this place. I can’t cut my food; I have to go to bed in the dark; and I’m followed when I go out. One would think they took me for a lunatic.”

“Poor fellow,” I said to myself; “that’s always the way. They never have the slightest idea that they are lunatics.”

The gentleman and Mr. Saxon went out for a walk, and the gentleman came in first and went up to the sitting-room. I heard him open the window, and that gave me a turn. I thought, “Oh, dear me, he has given Mr. Saxon the slip. Perhaps he is going to throw himself out of the window.”

I rushed upstairs and opened the door, and saw that he was leaning half way out of the window. He made a movement, as if he was going to throw himself right out; but I rushed in, and seized him by the coat-tails.

“Sir,” I said; “come in, please; that window’s dangerous!”

“God bless me!” he said, turning round. “What does all this mean? Am I in a private lunatic asylum?”

“No, sir,” I said. “Pray be calm, sir. Come, sit down; you’re not very well. Mr. Saxon will be here directly.”

He sat down, and looked at me, with such a strange look on his face, that I felt he had been let out too soon, and I made up my mind to advise Mr. Saxon to send him back. It wasn’t safe to have an only half-cured lunatic about the place.

“Go out of the room, if you please, madam,” he said. “I think it is very great impertinence on your part to come in without being asked.”

“No, sir,” I said; “I shall not leave you in your present condition, and if you make any resistance I shall call my husband. Now be a good, kind creature, and sit still till Mr. Saxon comes in.”

“God bless me,” he said, “am I mad? What does it mean? I—I—confound it, Saxon” (Mr. Saxon had come in), “what sort of a place is this that you’ve asked me to? Is it an hotel, or an asylum for idiots? This woman is certainly mad!”

“Poor gentleman!” I thought, “they always think it’s you and not them that’s mad.”

Mr. Saxon looked at me and then at his friend, and then he burst out laughing.

I don’t know what put it into my head; but it came like a flash that I’d been “had,” as Harry calls it.

I went hot and cold, and didn’t know which way to look.

“It’s all right, Bob,” said Mr. Saxon; “don’t blame Mrs. Beckett. It’s my fault. I told her you were only let out of a lunatic asylum yesterday, and she and her husband have been seeing that you don’t get into mischief.”

I made for the door, and got downstairs quick. But I could hear the gentleman going on, and saying it was too bad, and that it was a shameful thing to have made out that he was a lunatic. But he was all right at dinner-time, and he laughed about it, and said Mr. Saxon was an awful man, and always up to some idiotic trick or other.

And so he was. But it was a long time before I felt quite comfortable with the gentleman we’d treated as a lunatic, and given a blunt knife to, and made to go to bed in the dark, and watched about wherever he went.

It was too bad of Mr. Saxon to play such a trick on us; for the gentleman was as sane as he was, and, if it came to that, a good deal saner. For sometimes Mr. Saxon does things, and says things, that are only fit for a lunatic asylum; and I’ve heard his friends say to him, “Why, if anybody who didn’t know you were to hear you, they’d take you for a lunatic.”

Mr. Saxon and the gentleman who wrote burlesques went away together. Mr. Saxon was really much better when he left, and he said so. He’s promised to send us his portrait with his autograph under it to put up in our little private room, and before he left I got his permission to allow me to dedicate my next book to——

* * * * *

What! The billiard balls gone. Nonsense! You’ve looked everywhere for them, John, and they’re not there? You don’t mean to say they’re stolen? Well, I declare, what next! I suppose somebody has been in and found the place empty and walked off with them. I knew something would come of that separate entrance. It’s your own fault, for not locking the room up when you go to dinner. Your master will be in a fine way when he hears of it. I expect he’ll make you pay for them, and it will serve you right.