“Aunt kept on saying I ought to bring her up to London with me.”  The perturbed lad examined closely the peak of his cap.  “What the others seeggested was that I should get you to go down to Railway Terrace and argy it all out with my late landlady.  One of the ticket collectors said there wasn’t nobody on the station who could make himself so unpleasant as you, Mr. Swan, when you felt so inclined.”

“I do my best,” admitted Porter Swan.

“’Nother one recommended you should go down there and knock at the door and pretend to have had a drop or two too much.”

“Why pretend?”

The new porter had endured a hard week; all the tricks of an inventive staff had been played upon him, and Porter Swan took a lively interest in these, prompting colleagues to further efforts.  Now that young Mannering p. 226arrived with his troubles and appealed for help, games were set aside.

“She’s evidently a terror,” admitted Porter Swan presently.  “If you’d only come and asked me at the outset I might have told you where to go.  ’Pon me word, I don’t know quite now what to be up to!”

“If you don’t,” said young Mannering hopelessly, “then no one does.”

“Why not go back and make the best of it for a while?”

“Mr. Swan,” declared the youth tearfully, “I do assure you her chops are worse than her vegetables, and her vegetables worse than her chops.  I was bound to leave.”

“And you want your property, then, without paying too much?”

“I’d rayther get it without paying nothing at all.”

Porter Swan went off duty at seven, having first washed with unusual vigour and changed his official headgear for the bowler hat of private life.  Near the suburban station he bought a cigar, and, lighting it, strode towards Railway Terrace, rehearsing the coming debate on the way.  At the door of No. 17 he gave a sharp, definite knock and frowned at some children who ran up to watch the course of events.  He had to knock again, and this time also rattled the flap of the letter-box to express impatience.

“Well?” asked the trim, determined p. 227woman at the open doorway.  “What are you kicking up all this row for?”

“I don’t want to make any unpleasantness, or any un-anything else,” he began truculently, “but you’ve got a tin box belonging to one of our young men, and I have to request, ma’am, that you hand it over to me at your early convenience.”

“Pay me his week’s board and lodging, and you can take not only the tin box, but all that’s in it.”

“Goes against the grain,” he said loudly, “to argue with a lady, but I ask you one simple question.  Have you, since you’ve taken to letting, ever had a lodger that stayed so long as a month?”

“The last two,” she replied calmly, “stayed until they got married.”

“They must have had iron constitutions,” he argued.

“Martha!” she called, turning her head.

“Yes, mother.”

“Did you hear what this gentleman said?”

“Yes, mother.”

“It’s as well,” she remarked to him, “to have a witness.  Makes all the difference in a court of law.”  She found her handkerchief.  “I’ve always made it a special boast that I never had to tell a lodger to go, and I do think it’s hard—”

“Look here, ma’am,” said Porter Swan, still in aggressive tones, “we don’t want to p. 228quarrel.  We want to arrange this trifling affair in a nice, sensible, amicable way.”

“If you’re going to settle it,” she said, “I’ll go and make out the bill.”

“Let me understand first of all,” repressing annoyance.  “What does your claim actually amount to?”

She mentioned the sum.

“And you’ve got the assurance to stand there and demand all that for keeping this young country lad for three days!  Why, it’s my opinion you’re nothing more nor less than a female swindler.”

“Martha!” she called.  “Are you still listening, dear?”

Porter Swan went on to the house of his own landlady, where he complained with bitterness of the absence of a mat and the condition of the wallpaper; she soothed him with a cup of tea so excellent that it stood outside the pale of criticism.  In his room he used the hair-brush with considerable fierceness, a process that seemed to arouse ideas, for after a few moments’ consideration he changed his collar and fixed a necktie hitherto reserved for Sundays, Good Friday, and Christmas Day.  Then he set out, whistling as he went, announcing cheerfully to his landlady that he would return in less than half an hour.  If her husband came in, she was to beg him to stay up: Porter Swan would have something to relate to him.  In Douglas p. 229Street he purchased a threepenny bunch of chrysanthemums—all white.

At the door of the house in Railway Terrace he gave this time a deferential knock.  The child answered it, crying to her mother that the man with the red face had called again.  Swan asked the little girl whether she cared for flowers, and made a genial presentation.

“Sorry to trouble you once more, ma’am,” he said, taking off his hat and throwing away the end of the cigar, “but I’ve come round to apologise.  In the heat of argument I used one or two remarks I’d no business to use to any lady, and if you’ll kindly dismiss them from your mind I shall esteem it a favour.”

“Look what he’s give me, mother,” said the child.

“A sweet-faced little thing,” mentioned Swan, gazing down at the youngster sentimentally.  “I’ve often thought that if ever I did get married—  Only”—with a regretful shrug of the right shoulder—“I’ve never been lucky enough to find any one that cared for me.  That accounts for my want of good manners.”

“It is a bit noticeable,” she agreed.

“It’s partly, too,” he contended, “the result of good nature.  This young chap, he appealed to me to help him, and I, foolish like, consented to do my best.  Never p. 230occurred to me that I should be no use at all when I set myself against the sharpness of a woman.  When a woman’s got a clear head and a certain amount of good looks, no man has the leastest chance.”  He looked around the passage for a new subject.  “Is this the late lamented, may I ask, ma’am?”

“That’s Lord Kitchener,” she answered, not displeased.  “Would you care to come in and sit down for a bit?  I expect you’re tired, running about all over the place.  Martha dear, you come in, too, and let us see how nicely you can arrange the flowers.  That,” entering the front room and pointing to a large, tinted photograph, “that was Mr. Rickards.”

“Sensible sort of forehead,” said Porter Swan guardedly.

“More than could be said of what was inside it.  He was always talking about what he’d put by in the Railway Savings Bank, and every pay day he used to come home and say, ‘It’s adding up rapidly,’ and ‘You won’t want for nothing, my love, if I should be took away.’  And,” with acerbity, “when he did go off, I found that instead of having about forty pounds there—enough to give me the chance of opening a little business—he hadn’t put by as many shillings.  Not as many pence.”

“Some men are like that.”

“All men are like that,” she insisted.

p. 231“No, no, no!” protested Swan.  “We’ve got our faults, but we haven’t got the same kind of faults.  Most of us are straightforward.  How do you manage to rub along, ma’am, if it isn’t a rude question?”

“It is a rude question; but I do dressmaking, and I take lodgers.”

“You take in lodgers?”

She smiled, and Swan could not help thinking that only trouble interfered with her good looks.  She sent the child to the scullery for a jug of water.

“Not for me,” he insisted.  “I shall have something with my supper, later on.”

“It’s for the flowers,” as the child obeyed.  “And I didn’t want her to hear what I was about to tell you,” she went on confidentially.  “The fact is—  As you say, it has been an extraordinary autumn.  The sun to-day was enough to make people’s eyes ache.”

“Ain’t spilt a drop,” announced the child, who had returned swiftly.

Swan moved his chair nearer.

“You’ve got eyes,” he said, lowering his voice, “eyes like the head-lights on an engine.”

She tried to frown, and gave a meaning glance in the direction of the occupied little girl.

“I shall be dreamin’ of ’em for weeks,” he whispered earnestly.  “I’m not one to take much notice of females in a general p. 232way—a woman hater; that’s what they call me in the porters’ room—but as I was going to say, I can quite well imagine a chap like myself, going on for years just racketing about and then coming across a pair of eyes like yours and saying to himself, ‘Swan, old man, it’s time you began to take matters seriously!’”

“Martha, my dear, go on with your work.  Me and Mr. Swan are only talking business!”

“You must have been a decent-looking girl in your day,” Swan went on.  “Of course, time doesn’t stand still with any of us, and very few can weather the storm, as you may say, without showing some signs of wear and tear.”

“I’ve had more of a struggle than most,” she said, glancing at the mirror.

“You want somebody to take you out for walks, and now and again an evening at the theatre.  Sometimes I get pit orders for two, and I tear ’em up, because,” said Swan, with a touch of melancholy, “simply because I can’t get no one to go with.”

“That is a shame!” she cried.  “Surely your landlady—”

“You know what landladies are,” he interposed.  “Always on the make.  So long as they can over-charge you, that’s all they want.  I don’t mean anything pe............