“O haste to aid, ere aid be vain.”

    Scott.

Though Johnnie’s journey was over, his troubles were not at an end. When he came to the first houses, the way seemed still to lengthen out before him, and everything appeared to be still asleep, though the daylight was coming in as brightly as a foggy morning allowed. Nor did he know his way; he had only driven to a timber-yard once with his cousin, and dined with him at a little public-house close by, and had no more than a dim recollection of shops, which looked quite different now, with all their shutters up. Only a milk-cart, coming in with full tins, seemed to give a sign that people would want their breakfast some time or other; and next appeared a very black sweep with his cart, and two miserable little bare-footed boys running beside it, as black as the silhouette over Mrs Thorpe’s chimney.

Half-past five struck, and charwomen began to come out of side alleys, baker’s shops to take down their shutters. Johnnie ventured to ask one of the apprentice boys doing so the way to the Royal George Hotel.

“D’ye want to bespeak the best apartments?” was all the answer he got, as the lad stopped his whistling and looked superciliously at Johnnie’s battered, dusty working dress, and old straw hat.

He found he should only be laughed at and walked on, renewing his question when he saw a good-natured-looking woman in a black bonnet and stout canvas apron, apparently going out for a day’s washing.

“Is it the Royal or the King George Tavern as you mean, my son?” she asked him.

“Oh! the Royal—the one where the gentlemen goes,” said Johnnie. “I’ve got a message for one of ’em.”

“Bless you, my lad, they won’t never let you in at this time of morning,” said the woman.

“It’s very particular,” returned John. “I came off at night to tell him.”

She looked at him curiously. “And what might it be, young man! Some one taken very bad, no doubt.”

“No—not that,” said John, and she looked so kind, he could not help telling. “But he have got a machine, and Jack Swing is coming, and if he don’t come home to see to the poor ladies—”

“Bless me, and who may it be?”

“Captain Carbonel—out at Uphill.”

“Never heard tell of the place.”

“It’s out beyond Poppleby.”

“My! And you’ve comed all that way to-night?”

“The ladies are very good. He’s a right good gentleman. All one to the poor as to the rich.”

“I say! You are a good young man, to be sure! I’d go with you and get to the speech of Lavinia Bull, the chambermaid, what I know right well; but if I’m not at Mrs Hurd’s by six o’clock, she’ll be flying at me like a wild cat. Mercy on me, there it goes six! Well, if that fine dandy, Boots, as is puffed up like a peacock, won’t heed you, ask for Lavinia Bull, and say Mrs Callendar sent you, and he will call her fast enough.”

John thanked her and was going off at once, but she called out, “Bless the boy, he’s off without even hearing where to go! Just opposite the City Cross, as they calls it.”

It was not much like a cross to Johnnie’s mind, being a sort of tower, all arches and pinnacles and mouldered statues, getting smaller up to the spiring top; but he knew it, and saw the hotel opposite with all its blinds down, nothing like astir yet, except that some one was about under the great open doorway leading into a yard, half entrance, to the hotel.

He could see a man brushing a shoe, and went up with “Please, sir—” But he was met by, “Get off you young vagabond, we want none of your sort here.”

“Please, sir, I have a message for Miss Bull;” he hesitated.

“She ain’t down. Get off, I say. We don’t have no idle lads here.”

“It’s very particular—from Mrs Callendar.”

“Old witch! Have she been burning any one’s shirt fronts. I say, Jem, you see if Lavinia is in the kitchen, and tell her old Callendar has been burning holes in her stockings or collars, and has sent a young scarecrow to tell her.”

John opened his mouth to say it was no such thing; but the under shoeblack, who was a sort of slave to Boots, made an ugly face at him, and was gone, turning coach wheels across the yard. In another minute Lavinia, a nice brisk looking young woman, had come up with, “Well, young man, what has Mrs Callendar been after now?”

“Please, ma’am, nothing; but she said as how I was to ask for you. It’s for Captain Carbonel, ma’am, a message from Uphill—that’s his home.”

“Captain Carbonel—that’s Number Seven,” she said, consulting a slate that hung near the bar. “He was to be called at eight o’clock. Won’t that do?”

“Oh no, no, ma’am,” implored John, thinking that the captain was taking his rest away from home. “It’s very particular, and I have come all night with it.”

“You have got to call Number Five for the High Flier at half-past six,” she said, turning to Boots. “Could not you take up word at the same time?”

“Catch me running errands for a jackanapes like that,” said Boots, with a contemptuous shrug, turning away, and brushing at his shoe.

“Never mind him,” said good-natured Lavinia. “What shall I say, young man?”

“Oh, thank you, miss. Say that John Hewlett have brought him a message from Uphill.”

“Jack Owlet! Oh my! Hoo! hoo!” exclaimed the blacking boy, as soon as Lavinia had disappeared up the stairs, dancing about with his hands on his hips. “Look here, Tom,”—to a boy with a pail, who had just come in—“here be an Owlet’s just flown in out of the mud. Hoo! hoo! Where did you get that ’ere patch on your back.”

“Where you never got none,” responded the other boy. “Mother stitched it for him.”

“Ay, sitting under a hedge, with her pot hung up on three sticks and a hedgepig in it,” added the younger Boots. “Come, own up, young gipsy! Yer come to get a tanner out of Number Seven with your tales.”

“I’m no gipsy,” growled John; “but—”

“Come, come,” called out Boots, “none of your row. And you, you impudent tramp, don’t ye be larking about here, making the lads idle. Get out of the yard with ye, or I call the master to you.”

The landlord might probably have been far more civil; but poor Johnnie did not know this, and could only move off to the entrance of the court, so that when Lavinia in another moment appeared and asked where he was, Boots answered—

“How should I tell? He was up to mischief with the boys, and I bade him be off.”

“Well, Number Seven is ever so much put about, and he said he would be down in a jiffy! So there!”

Lavinia held up her skirts, and began in her white stockings to pick her way across the yard, while Boots sneered, and began brushing his shoe, and whistling as if quite undisturbed; and in another moment Captain Carbonel did appear, coming down the stairs very fast, all unshaven, and with a few clothes hastily thrown on, and quite ran after Lavinia, passing her as she pointed out beyond the entrance, where John was disconsolately leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets, feeling how utterly weary and hungry he was, and with uneasy thoughts about his father coming over him.

“Oh, there you are, John Hewlett! What is it? No one ill?” exclaimed the captain............