At about seven o’clock on the next evening, Arthur Prescott was sitting smoking in his friend’s room, which was immediately under his own. The two apartments were similar in size, but this was the only resemblance that existed between them. Arthur’s was strictly a student’s room, plain and neat, half office, half sitting room, with a few bookshelves filled with plain, legal-looking volumes. Stiff dining-room chairs with leather-covered seats, a horsehair sofa at the hardness of which Frank was constantly grumbling, and two easy chairs of questionable comfort, nearly made up the inventory of the contents. Frank’s room was in strong contrast to this; it was handsomely, indeed luxuriously, furnished. The walls were wainscoted with dark, or rather black oak, on the panels of which hung 196a few really good pictures, which Frank had purchased during his rambles in Spain. The curtains were green, and the floor covered with a rich Turkey carpet, in which the same colour predominated. In the centre of the mantelpiece stood a bronze statue from Herculaneum, flanked by two real Etruscan vases, and a pair of magnificent Venetian goblets. Crossed above these upon the wall were two long Turkish jasmine pipe-stems, with their red bowls and amber mouth-pieces; and higher still, two swords, Toledo and Damascene, bought in the countries where they were manufactured. On brackets round the room were a few Parian marble statuettes. On a small round table stood a large Turkish narghile, with its long tube of green and gold coiled round it like a glistening snake. In the recess on one side of the fire-place was a really good library of choice standard works; in the other was a perfect confusion of boxing-gloves, single-sticks, foils, masks, heavy clubs, and dumb-bells, with which, as Frank said, he kept his hand in for a quarter of an hour before breakfast. The chairs were covered with furniture to match the hangings, but this was their 197only point of mutual resemblance. They were all of different shapes; most of them being of the sort coming under the general term of easy, while the two large ones by the fire, in which the occupants of the room were seated, were of a particularly comfortable and luxurious appearance. It was about these very chairs that the young men were speaking.
“It is quite a treat to sit in them,” Prescott said.
“Yes,” Frank answered, puffing out his smoke with an air of extreme contentment. “I flatter myself that they approach as nearly to perfect comfort as it is possible for anything earthly to do. I do love an easy chair. I remember when I was a child I used to be tortured, not as a punishment, mind, but as a regular thing—tortured by having to sit on a high-legged, straight-backed chair, with a seat no bigger than a cheese-plate, so that you could neither lean forward nor backward. How my unfortunate little back used to ache! I really wonder that my spine ever grew straight. At other times, when not in that terrible little chair, I had to sit bolt upright, and it was a penal offence to loll, as my grandmother 198called it, or in any way to approach a comfortable attitude.”
“It was nearly as bad in my case, Frank,” Prescott said. “I believe our fathers had a vague idea that unless we sat perfectly upright, our spine would become irretrievably crooked, whereas I really believe the reverse to be nearer the fact. I feel certain that many a man and woman with a curved spine and broken health has nothing but those atrocious chairs and the miserable stiff attitudes they had to sit in as children to thank for their misfortunes.”
“If our ancestors had but used their common sense,” Frank said, “which with respect to the treatment of their children they never seem to have done, they would have seen that the straightest and best formed people in the world, the Arabs of the Desert, and I may add the North American Indians—as they used to be, before they were improved off the face of the earth—never sat on a chair in their lives, but always either lay at full length, or squatted on the ground with their backs in a bow.
“Halloa!” he broke off; “there’s a single knock at the door; I wonder who that can 199be, I have not ordered anything that I know of.”
So saying he got up and went to the outer door. A boy was standing there.
“Please, sir, I want to see Mr. Maynard.”
“I am Mr. Maynard,” Frank said; “what do you want?”
“Please, sir, my name is Evan Holl.”
“Oh, is it you, Evan? Come in, it is so dark out here I did not know you again. I am glad you have come.”
Frank led the way back again into the sitting-room, followed by Evan, greatly abashed at the splendour of its belongings.
“Well, Evan, my lad,” Frank said, leaning against the mantel, “I suppose your mother has told you what I said to her. Mr. Prescott here and I were so much pleased with your pluck the other day at the Serpentine, that I thought we should get on together capitally, for if there’s one thing more than another I like, it is pluck. What do think of it; would you like to come?”
“Please, sir, I should like it very much.”
“That’s right, Evan. Now you understand you are to be my man of all work—errand-boy, 200footman, valet, groom, coachman, gardener, butler, sailor, steward and cook—in fact, general factotum.”
Prescott laughed, and Evan opened his eyes in astonishment.
“Lor’ bless you, sir, I don’t know nothing about driving coaches, or gardening, or cooking.”
“No!” Frank said in a tone of great surprise. “Of course in that case I shall not be able to trust either my coach or my garden into your charge at present. As to cooking, I should advise you to commence as soon as possible; and I should recommend you to go through a course of study: begin, say, by boiling a potato in its skin; next endeavour to reach perfection with an egg; proceed gradually to a rasher of bacon; and after that, master the intricacies of chops and steaks. I think that will do for the present; my little favourite dishes I will myself instruct you in afterwards.”
“What nonsense you do talk, Frank!” Prescott said, laughing; “the boy does not know whether you are in earnest or not.”
Which, indeed, was the truth, for Evan was standing shifting uneasily from one foot to the 201other, and twirling his cap between his hands with a look of considerable embarrassment.
“Well, Evan,” Frank went on, “as Mr. Prescott seems to think that at present we had better leave these matters alone, I suppose we must postpone the cooking part of the business, as well as the driving and gardening, and hope that it will all come in time. And now, Prescott, about his dress; what do you say to a neat thing in green, picked out with scarlet?”
“Nonsense, Frank! I don’t see that you want to put him in livery at all.”
“My dear Prescott,” Frank said, plaintively, “you have no idea of the fitness of things. You destroy all my illusions. I did think that green picked out with scarlet would have harmonised well with the room. Do you not agree with me, now, that a Turkish dress with a fez, and especial instruction as to cleaning and lighting pipes and making black coffee, would have a good effect;—a sort of Nubian slave attire, only he would have to black his face to be in keeping? You would not mind that, Evan, would you?”
Evan had by this time an idea that his new master was only joking, so he answered more 202briskly, “I don’t know that I should mind it much, sir.”
“That is right,” Frank said, approvingly; “but I foresee a difficulty in the matter. You see, Prescott, if he blacks his face, of course his hands must be blacked, too, and that would be disagreeable, for it would be sure to come off. I wonder, now, whether I could get a good receipt anywhere. I should say that a gipsy would be a likely person to apply to. They say, you know, that they steal children and dye them brown, and perhaps they could do rather a darker shade if they liked. However, till I find a gipsy the matter must stand over.”
“There, Frank, do stop talking nonsense, and let the boy go.”
“Very well, Evan, that will do for to-night. You understand, there will not be much for you to do for the present. Keep yourself clean and tidy; lose no time when I send you on messages; and, above all—and this I feel sure I may trust you in from what your mother says of you—above all, never tell me a lie; whatever may happen, tell me exactly the truth, and I have no question that we shall get on capitally together. I will 203give you a line to my tailor, and tell him to fit you out with a suit of plain undress livery. And now, here are three sovereigns, take them to your mother, and ask her to get you shoes and everything you may want, and then you will start fair. I have arranged nothing about your wages, but we shall not differ about that. There, good night, Evan; go with the note at once to the tailor’s; I have told him to get, at any rate, some of your things ready by the day after to-morrow, and when you have got them come here at once. You will sleep in the little room off the passage. I will get a bed and things for you to-morrow. Good-night.”
Evan took his leave, highly contented with his visit, and went home in great spirits, and related to his brothers and sisters what had taken place at the interview. The little ones were so amused at the idea of Evan dressed up as a black boy, and having his face painted, that Mrs. Holl had the greatest difficulty in getting them off to sleep, their laughter bursting out afresh again and again; so that at last father himself had to halloa at the foot of the stairs, that if they were not quiet he should have to come 204up to them, a threat which they knew meant something, whereas all mother’s scolding went for nothing.
After Evan had left, Prescott announced his intention of going up to read, and asked Frank what he intended to do with himself.
“What time is it now?—half-past seven. Tomorrow evening I am engaged out. I think I shall go down and see my uncle.”
Frank, in accordance with this intention, proceeded to change his coat, Prescott waiting while he did so. He took a quantity of letters from his pocket.
“How terribly letters do accumulate, and I am afraid that most of them want answering. Put me in mind of it to-morrow morning, Prescott, and I will do a regular batch of letter writing. What’s this? Ah! Stephen Walker—by the way I promised to look him up, and see how he is after his shaking. It is somewhere down Knightsbridge way, so I may as well do it while I think of it. As he is a tobacconist, I will go in and get a cigar, and if he recognises me, well and good; if not, I shall not introduce myself. Good-bye, old man, take care of yourself. 205Mind, you breakfast with me in the morning.”
Frank Maynard found the shop of Stephen Walker without much difficulty. The solitary candle burnt on the counter, but no one was in the shop. However, on hearing the door open, Carry came out of the back room, where she had been sitting reading, bringing another lighted candle in her hand. Frank, who had fully expected to see an elderly man make his appearance, was not a little surprised at seeing such a remarkably pretty girl come out. He asked for some tobacco, which Carry, who had noticed at the first glance that he was not a regular customer, gave him in silence; for, indeed, at the moment he entered, she had been engaged in a most interesting chapter of her book, and she was longing to get back to it again.
“Have you any good cigars?” Frank asked.
Almost mechanically she drew back the glasses from above the cigars upon the counter. Frank glanced at them.
“No, thank you,” he said. “I mean, have you any really good ones?”
206Carry looked fairly up at Frank for the first time.
“Come, now,” he urged, “I have no doubt but that you have a box of good ones which you keep for your favoured customers.”
Carry smiled, and brought out the box which was usually reserved for Fred Bingham’s smoking. “I believe these are good, sir.”
“Yes,” Frank said, examining them, “these look the right thing, I will take half a dozen.”
Now Frank had entered the shop with his mind perfectly made up, that unless he was recognised, he should go out again without saying who he was; but Carry looked so very pretty and bright, that he thought it would be very pleasant to sit down and have a chat with her, and to do so there was no other way than to say who he was. So he began,—
“Mr. Walker—your father I presume—has he quite recovered from the fright and the shock he got the other day?”
The bright eyes glanced up inquiringly at him now, and a flash of eager colour came across her face.
207“How did you know my father was hurt, sir?”
“I saw him fall,” Frank said; “indeed I was fortunately close to him at the time, and helped him to pick himself up.”
“Did you indeed, sir?” Carry asked earnestly, “and was it you really who saved his life?”
“I do not know that I actually saved his life,” Frank said, smiling, “but I certainly helped him up.”
“Father! father!” Carry cried, flying into the next room and calling up the stairs. “Come down, come down at once; here is the gentleman who saved your life.” Then she rushed back into the shop, but this time to the same side of the counter as that on which Frank was standing, seized his hand in hers, and looked up into his face with those large eyes of hers. “Oh, I am so glad you have come, I wanted so much to thank you; so, so much. Father has told me all about it, and I know that I owe his life to you.”
“Don’t say anything more about it,” Frank said; “I saved your father’s life by the simple accident that I happened to be close to him when 208he fell, and fortunately having my wits about me, picked him up in time.”
“It is very well for you to say so, sir,” Carry said, “but you ............