Life on the Westmouth being too exacting to permit one to count the hours, Robert Lancaster came to the end of his training there with a sudden jerk that almost astonished him.  Fifty lads were taken off the books, of whom he found himself to be one; some of them deciding for the merchant service, were despatched to the Home at Limehouse for that purpose; others, qualified in regard to measurement and desires, only waited for the brigantine to arrive for their names to be taken off the Watch Bill, and to resign their numbers to other lads.  The old captain, meeting Robert on the upper deck, honoured him with five minutes’ conversation, giving him a word of counsel, and directing him to give the old ship a call whenever the chance to do so offered.

“Don’t forget, my lad, that now your opportunity is coming to show us all that the trouble and money you have cost have been well laid out.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Keep yourself straight; be obedient to your officers, remember that the Navy has a fine, a glorious reputation, which you must help to keep up.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Above all, be a credit to the Westmouth, and see that we have good news of you.  That will do.”

“Pardon, sir.  Any objection to my having a day in London ’fore I join the—”

“To visit friends?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If you please,” said the old captain with his sharp air of courtesy.

See Robert Lancaster clearing his locker down on the lower deck and distributing souvenirs to his colleagues; a part of the inside of a watch to one; a copy of “Kidnapped” to another; several pieces of rare old string to the boy from Poplar, now, under the stress of Westmouth discipline, a contented, optimistic lad.  See Robert Lancaster going off in the gig with six shillings tied in his handkerchief, being part of the prize for swimming gained by him at the last competition, and taking train at the small station for Fenchurch Street.  See him arriving near the old neighbourhood and walking with a fine, sailor-like roll in his wide trousers and open-necked jacket towards Pimlico Walk, in which thoroughfare, now it seemed to p. 109him more preposterously narrow than ever, children stopped the playing of tipcat to stare at him open-mouthed, and women going into miniature shops arrested themselves in order to ascertain, from feelings of vague curiosity, his destination.

“No one about?” he asked in the doorway of Mrs. Bell’s millinery establishment.  The small window was still set out with magnificent feathered hats, but there appeared to be a suggestion of good taste in the arrangement that had in the old days been absent.

“Yes,” said a little girl sitting on a high chair behind the counter, “there’s me.”

“No one else?”

“Who else d’you want?” asked the girl cautiously.

“Isn’t Mrs. Bell about?”

“She’s been bedridden for the last six months, if that’s what you call being about.”

“And Trixie?”

“You mean Miss Bell?”

“Miss Bell, then.”

The girl stepped from the stool, and went to the foot of the stairs.

“Shawp!” she cried.  She returned at once to the counter with a manner slightly less defensive.  “She sits upstairs and reads to the old gel in the middle of the day, and I’m in charge down ’ere.  When she comes down I go up, see?  It don’t do to leave the place without someone.”

There was a rustle on the lower stairs.

“Bobbie!”  A delighted exclamation.

“’Ullo, Trix,” he said nervously.  “How’s the world using you?”

“’Aven’t you grown?”

“You’ve been at that game, too.  I s’pose I was about the last person that was in your mind.”

“Yes,” said Trixie Bell, “the very last.  Me and mother were just then talking about you upstairs.  Isn’t your face brown, too?”

“Yours isn’t brown,” said Robert, with a clumsy attempt at compliment, “but it’s got every other good quality.”

“’Tilderann,” commanded Trixie Bell, insistently, “go upstairs and sit with mother at once, and tell her that Mr. Lancaster has called.”  The little girl slid from the high stool again and disappeared reluctantly.  “Up the stairs, I said,” remarked Trixie, looking round the corner after her, “I didn’t ask you to wait on the second step listening.”

Miss Bell returned demurely to the inner side of the counter.

“Girls,” she said, with an air of maturity, “want a lot of looking after.”

“Who looks after you?” asked Bobbie, leaning over the counter.

“Oh, I can take care of myself.”

“For one day, at any rate, I’m going to take care of you.  Give me a kiss.”

“Bobbie!  People can see through the shop window.”

“You won’t give me a kiss?”

“There’s a time,” said the pleasant-faced young woman, with great p. 110preciseness, “and a place for everything, and this is neither the time nor—”

One advantage of being trained as a British sailor is that you can vault over a counter and jump back again before anyone has time to protest.

“You’ll make me cross,” said Trixie, with great confusion and delight.

“Give it back to me, then,” suggested Robert.

“I fancy I see myself doing that,” said Trixie, ironically.

“I’ve fancied it a lot of times,” remarked Robert.  “Now it seems to me we’ve arrived at what you may call reality.”

“Of course,” said Trixie, leaning on the counter and keeping one eye on the window, “it isn’t exactly as though we were strangers, is it?  What I mean to say is, we’ve known each other, Bobbie, for a long time, and you’ll be seventeen next birthday—”

“Don’t argue,” said Robert.  “Do what I ask you.”

“It’ll ’ave to be a very little one,” said Miss Bell, seriously.  And leaned forward.

“Thanks,” said Robert.  “That’s what I’ve been looking forward to.”

“Now, you must give up all this nonsense,” declared Trixie, with a sage air, and glancing at herself in the panel looking-glass, “and behave.  Will you come upstairs and see mother?”

“I thought p’raps you and me might go out this afternoon for a bit of a outing.  I’ve got to rejoin my ship this evening, and I shan’t have many chances of seeing you when I’m down at Plymouth.”

“There’s something in that,” admitted Trixie.  “I’ll see if I can get a lady friend of mine from Pitfield Street to look in for a few hours.”  She raised her voice and called at the foot of the stairs.  “’Tilderann!  Come down this minute.”

The girl obeyed, remarking in a grumbling undertone that the place was a perfect treadmill, and that for her part she envied the folk in Pentonville; she went to the doorway and reproved two infants outside for breathing on the glass, in good, well-chosen, and effective terms.

“Don’t put your arm round my waist, Bobbie,” whispered Trixie as they went up the dim, narrow staircase.  “Besides, there’s a buckle on my belt.  Mother, ’ere’s a gentleman come to call on you.”

Mrs. Bell, raising her head from the white pillow, gave a chuckle of recognition.  Robert, with his cap off, made his way round the bedstead, which seemed nearly to fill the room, but not quite, and shook hands with the large invalid.

“My poor old ’ead,” she remarked, jovially, “gets in such a fluster, sometimes, that I can’t remember nothing, and when the gel said Mr. Lancaster was in the shop it took me minutes to think who she meant.  D’you think Trixie’s growed?”

“Growed up and growed ’andsome,” said Robert.  Mrs. Bell gave a sigh of content, closing her eyes for a moment.  “And how are you, ma’am?  On the mend, I ’ope.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Bell, opening her eyes and speaking loudly, “I’ve got nothing to complain of.”  She lowered her voice, and added confidentially, so that Trixie should not hear, “May pop off at any moment.”

p. 111Trixie having explained the proposal that Robert had made, suggested that she should go round now to engage the services of the millinery friend in Pitfield Street.  Her mother agreed cheerfully.

“Of course,” said the old lady in a very loud tone, “I’ve been used to a active life, and naturally enough it goes somewhat against the grain for me to be kep’ in one room for monce and monce.  Otherwise I feel as well—”  Trixie went out of the room, closing the door, and Mrs. Bell stopped and winked solemnly.  “It’d never do to let her know the truth,” she whispered.  “I always like to pretend before her I’m getting better.  It’s a rare game sometimes the dodges I ’ave to get up to so that she shouldn’t know how bad I am.”

“Trixie isn’t a bad sort,” remarked Robert.

“She’s my daughter,” said Mrs. Bell.

Before that excellent young lady returned poor Mrs. Bell and Robert had a long, confidential talk.  The cheerful old lady regretted that her time had arrived before Trixie had become a grown woman, but this regret was tempered by confidence in her daughter, and by a promise which had been given by Miss Threepenny to come and live with Trixie when all was over.  There breathed pride in the statement that her doctor from New North Road could find no English name for her illness, and had been compelled to fall back on the Latin tongue to give it title; Mrs. Bell’s old head trembled with gratification as she told Robert of this.

“D’you mind ’olding my ’and, Bobbie?” she asked, interrupting herself.  “I feel so much more contented somehow when someone’s ’olding me ’and.  Thanks!  As I was telling you—”

The doctor had some time since recommended that she should be taken away to the seaside, a procedure which might prolong her life for a few months, but the old lady congratulated herself upon having had the shrewdness to reply that Hoxton was as good a place to die in as any other, and that she had not been saving money all her life in order to spend it foolishly on herself at the end.  The good soul seemed quite happy; everybody, she said, was very kind to her, and Trixie, who in former days had been somewhat masterful towards her, now waited on her “hand and foot.”  Mrs. Bell declared that she only wished everybody could be looked after at the end of all as effectively.  Trixie, returning with her substitute, came upstairs in a hat which Robert, on being appealed to for an opinion, declared looked like ten thousand a year, and they said good-bye to Mrs. Bell, Trixie promising to send up ’Tilderann and to return herself at the earliest possible hour.

“Don’t ’urry,” said the old lady.  “And, Bobbie!  Come back one moment.  Trixie, you go down.”  Robert obeyed.  “I shan’t be seeing you again,” said the old lady brightly.  “If so be as I should meet your poor mother, I shall tell her what a fine lad you’ve growed to.”  Robert bent and kissed the large white face.  “Be good, won’t you,” she whispered brokenly, “to her?”

“You can make yourself quite sure about that, ma’am,” said Robert.

Before going west on this sunny afternoon, the young lady insisted that Robert should accompany her for a short tour through certain streets in Hoxton, where her lady acquaintances resided, which same young women p. 112told each other afterwards that they had not realized what the word pride really meant until seeing Trixie with her young man.  They looked at Ely Place from the dwarf posts at the Kingsland Road end, where towzled-hair, half-dressed, grubby babies played games with mud and swore at one another, but the two agreed that they had no desire to go through the Place.  One more girl acquaintance in a Hoxton street shop in whose sight Robert had to be paraded, and then the two young people, walking down into Old Street, took a tram for Bloomsbury.

“You pay for yourself,” said Trixie Bell definitely, “I’ll pay for myself.”

“No fear,” protested Robert, “I pay for both to-day.  This is my beanfeast.”

“Then I go no further,” declared the young woman.  “Agree to that, Bobbie, or down the steps I go.”

“You are obstinate,” said Robert.  “I never saw such a one for ’aving her own way.”

“Not much use having anybody else’s way,” she said.  “Bloomsbury, one,” she said to the conductor.

The principle thus definitely laid down being adhered to during the afternoon, Robert found himself unable in consequence to assume the air of condescension and patronage that he had promised to wear; indeed, Miss Bell took the entire management of the afternoon into her own hands, with a quaint air of decision which surprised Robert and interested him, so that when at the end of the tram line she said, “Regent’s Park,” it was to Regent’s Park they went; on Robert in his reckless way suggesting a ’bus, she said, “Walk, it’s no distance,” and that was the mode of transport adopted.  In Regent’s Park they sat on chairs near to sweet-smelling oval bouquets of flowers, watching the white-sashed nursemaids and the children, and whilst Robert (to Trixie’s content) smoked a large, important cigar, she chattered away about her plans for the future.  Trixie revived the old ambition of a milliner’s establishment, with French words in white letters on the window, in some position not too far distant from Pimlico Walk, so that old customers should be preserved, whilst new ones were being caught; Robert watched her admiringly as she sketched this magnificent project, noting the decision of her chin and the flush of interest on her attractive face.  The cigar finished, or nearly finished (for Robert was not yet a confirmed smoker), they walked arm-in-arm through the gates to the ............