The days in general resembled each other at the Cottage Homes, but there were exceptions. For instance, Bank Holidays. On the first Bank Holiday after the winter, came to the homes long, awkward young men who had been boys, caught years since in the streets of Shoreditch, and transferred (as Bobbie had been transferred) and educated and trained, and who being now plutocrats in the enjoyment of twenty-five shillings a week, or bandsmen capable of blowing agreeable airs in military bands, or wide-trousered sailors with a roll in their walk and brown open throats; these came to re-visit the place that had made men of them, and to salute respectfully admiring foster-parents, saying, Yes, thank you, mother, I’m getting along middling, thanks, mustn’t grumble, I s’pose, and how are you, and how’s father? And I’ve took the liberty, mother, which I trust you’ll excuse, of bringing you my photograph, which I hope you’ll accept with my best compliments. The foster-mother having been duly ecstatic over the photograph, (“Your nose has come out so well, boy, that’s what I like about it”), there would be tea in the dining-room with some of the present boarders standing around open-eyed and open-mouthed, whilst the young man told mother amusing anecdotes of his present occupation, and fenced mother’s delicate inquiries concerning the whereabouts of his heart. It was a proud young man who, the boys being ordered from the room, could bring from the breast pocket of his coat a cabinet-sized picture of an elegant young woman standing by a rustic gate with an open book in her hand (this to show that in her, literature had a friend) and an unconscious but slightly anxious look on her face as who should say, “Oh dear, dear, dear, I do hope nobody is photographing me,” and to announce that this was his own, his very own young lady. The cottage having been visited, there were nurses to call upon in the detached houses in fields beyond the gate, and the masters of the school, and (with great respect) the superintendent and his wife in their house, and the doorkeeper and his wife in their cottage (“My word, I shall never forget the day I come here first”), and finally to light cigars in full view of the admiring boys and depart. Also came friends of the boys or their more or less unfortunate parents; and these, the way from Hoxton being long and places of refreshment by the way numerous, sometimes arrived at the gates in such extravagant spirits that, to the bitter sorrow of some expectant youngster within, they could not be admitted. Bobbie on a certain Easter Monday was feeling sick at the throat upon seeing other boys with friends around them, when to him were announced two ladies—Mrs. Bell and Miss Trixie Bell!
“Hello, Bobbie,” cried Mrs. Bell, “don’t you look a treat!”
Mrs. Bell was costumed in a manner which reflected credit not only upon herself and her dressmaker, but also in some way upon the boarder at the Cottage Homes whom she was visiting. Beneath a heavy fur-bordered cloak Bobbie could not help noting that Mrs. Bell was in blue satin; a broad band sparkling with beads went around her ample waist. Her face, it is true, had become scarlet from the exercise of walking, but this only lent a further variety of colour to her general appearance; her black bonnet escaped the charge of monotony by the presence of deftly placed yellow roses in full bloom. Her daughter, growing and already several p. 45years older in manner than her mother, was more demurely apparelled, and as she stood near her mother she drew careful diagrams on the gravel with the end of her parasol. Glancing at her, it occurred to Bobbie for the first time that Trixie Bell would become rather a fine young woman when Time had lent further aid; she was neatly gloved, her shoes were beyond criticism. One of the duties that had come with years was, it appeared, to pilot her mother, and to warn her when natural exuberance caused that good woman to approach those rocks which, in speech, cause disaster.
“I never saw such a difference in all my life,” declared Mrs. Bell. “Why, you ’aven’t been here a couple of years and your hands are as clean as clean.”
“How are you getting on, ma’am?” he asked civilly. “Still in that little place in Pimlico Walk?”
“Me and mother,” interposed Miss Bell, “think of taking a business now in the Kingsland Road.”
“Ho, ho!” said Bobbie, “mixing with the upper ten, aye?”
“I ’aven’t got reely used to the idea yet,” confessed Mrs. Bell. “I shall miss the smell of the fried fish shop at the end dreadfully. When the wind is in the east it is quite a ’earty meal merely to look out of the doorway and sniff.”
“You’d better find somewhere to sit down, mother,” said her daughter, severely.
“I could do with a chair.”
“Come into my cottage,” said Bobbie, with pride. “This way! I’ll introduce you to mother.”
“I must say,” remarked Mrs. Bell, as they walked along the broad space between the lines of cottages, “that I’d no idea you were so comfortable. I thought they was always thrashing of you at these schools.”
“Not always,” said Bobbie.
“And fed you on brimstone and treacle.”
“You’re thinking of the old days, mother,” said Trixie. “It’s all been altered since your time.”
“Not, mind you,” said Mrs. Bell, “that I was a charity gel. Such education as I had was got at a very high-class school off the ’Ackney Road, where you had to pay your threepence a week, and where the head-mistress—unfortunately she’d no roof to her mouth—had once upon a time been lady’s maid in a very good family indeed. I don’t say I’m perfect,” argued the lady, “but the stigmer of being a charity—”
“Look where you’re going, mother.”
“Here we are,” said Bobbie. “I’ll just go first and see if you can come in.”
Not only could they go in, but they did go in, and Mrs. Bell’s astonishment at the cleanliness of the place was so frank and so genuine that the Collingwood mother instantly unbent from a rigid attitude of defence and took Mrs. Bell into the sitting-room, where over a strong cup of tea that extorted from Mrs. Bell (her be-rosed bonnet untied and the cloak loosened) further compliments, the two ladies discussed new soaps as opposed to what they called elbow grease, and found common ground in applauding the manners of thirty years ago. Bobbie and Miss Trixie Bell, thus released from attendance, strolled round the gardens, where Bobbie showed the p. 46young woman his special plot, and gave her, comme souvenir, a potato, which owed its existence and growth to his efforts. He took her to see the small room near the school, where the band practised, and confided to her his aspirations in regard to the cornet. On Trixie desiring, with some diffidence, to know what Bobbie proposed to be when he should arrive at manhood, he replied, “A sailor, very like,” and Miss Bell instantly expressed her disapproval on the ground that occupation at sea took a man from his home to an extent that was scarcely convenient. Bobbie acknowledged that he had not at present made up his mind definitely, and that perhaps after all he should come back to Hoxton and dodge about and pick up a living somehow, but this plan also found disfavour in the young woman’s eyes, and she argued against it with much force and eloquence until Bobbie felt bound to interfere.
“Tell you what,” he said brusquely, “I shall do jest what I jolly well like.”
Returning to Collingwood after this heated debate, the two appeared rather silent, and when a long red-haired girl nodded from the other side of the way to Bobbie, Miss Bell inquired curtly concerning her, to which Bobbie replied frivolously and incorrectly that her name was Montmorency, speaking of her as the lady to whom he was engaged to be married; the facts being that her name was Nutler, and that he and the ruddy-haired young lady had not yet exchanged a word with each other. Mrs. Bell found herself borne off by her perturbed daughter in the middle of an interesting description of the manner in which she lost Mr. Bell, and at the gates the good soul kissed Bobbie and gave him a shilling; the while Miss Bell walked off and assumed a languid interest in a mail cart belonging to an infant boarder. Bobbie touched his cap.
“It’s my belief, Trixie,” declared Mrs. Bell, before she was out of hearing, “that he’ll grow up a perfect gentleman.”
“Oh, will he?” said Bobbie to himself, with great artfulness. “Shows how much she knows about it.”