DOMESTIC SQUABBLES――BILL RAWTON PAYS A VISIT TO THE EVELINA-ROAD.
Peace’s house in the Evelina-road, to which Mrs. Bourne had paid a
visit, has attained a considerable share of notoriety. It is most
remarkable how he contrived to live there so long and carry on his
lawless practices in the surrounding districts without being
discovered. A glance at his house would, at first sight, have
suggested the impossibility of his going on for so long a time without
being brought to justice.
In the front of him was a row of houses, to the rear were the backs of
a whole roadful of dwellings, in which the windows seemed so many eyes
looking down into the Peace establishment.
On the railway side he was safe enough, as the embankment was high,
and the trains passed within a few yards of his dwelling, but high
above his roof. Yet it does seem, looking from the street, as if he
must have been observed sometimes by the people in the bedrooms to the
rear of that road.
If we take a glance at the back we shall soon find out why Peace
managed to escape observation.
The tenant of No. 5 neglected nothing. He had a microscopic eye for
what people foolishly call “little things.” A master of detail, he
made the stable serve two purposes――to house his pony and to conceal
his doings.
It was constructed so as to shut off all prospect from the rear. The
stable was placed and covered in so cleverly that nothing short of the
power to pierce through wooden boards could have enabled anyone to see
anything.
To make assurance doubly sure, he had, all round the back, a wooden
partition put up――even on the side next the railway, where there was
only the hedge to guard against. Timber of fine quality was used
for this purpose, and the workmanship was creditable to the
carpenter――Peace himself.
A neighbour remonstrated with him once for using such good wood for
what seemed to be so common and trivial a purpose.
“Ah,” replied Peace, “I know my own business best; money’s no object
to me, for I like things well done, whatever it costs.”
He had a peculiar light which enabled him to show varying colours in
rapid succession, and the effect was to dazzle and bewilder the person
in whose face it was flashed. He guarded the lamp very carefully.
Mr. Knight, the neighbour who served him with milk, said they were a
remarkable lot for playing early in the morning. Frequently when he
went out with the milk in the morning he would find Peace playing on
the fiddle, and the lad of seventeen, Willie Ward, strumming on the
guitar. “And capital music it was too,” he added; “sometimes sacred,
but they played all sorts as well――operatic and dance music.”
Occasionally the boy had the violin and Peace the guitar, and they
would go at it for hours, getting a name for the eccentricity which
they took pains to encourage on all sides.
Very rarely when Peace was at home was the sound of music unheard, and
Mrs. Thompson could do her part on the harmonium. “The old gentleman”
was fond of the harmonium; he preferred it to the piano for sacred
music.
“There was a fulness and depth about the notes,” he said, “which gave
the peculiar solemnity he liked in the rendering of sacred music.”
There is a tradition that Peace was once induced to go to some
Methodist chapel, but we think that this story must be relegated to
the region of fiction. Nobody at Peckham believed it, and the
gentleman who was said to have taken him denied that he ever did
anything of the kind. Peace on the Sunday had always a little chapel
of his own, in which the service was exclusively musical.
He read the daily papers with great diligence, yet music had greater
charms to soothe his savage breast, so that when he was wrapt up in
his harmonies, the papers lay unregarded on the doorstep; and
sometimes when the pair of Peaces fiddled and guitared, the milkman,
who was not so enamoured of the melodious art, perused the papers to
see if they were worth a penny.
Mr. Knight usually delivered the milk at Mr. Thompson’s house himself.
He gave rather a different account of the appearance of the habitation
in the morning from that given by the other neighbours, who were
privileged to drop in to tea in the evening. He said that things were
very higgledy-piggledy. All the kitchen utensils seemed to be in a
mess. One morning he particularly remembered seeing all the tea and
supper things in the fire-place within the fender, and on the rug in
front of the fire was Mrs. Thompson lying full length, with a cushion
for a pillow. She had evidently lain there all night; Thompson himself
was then “up.” Perhaps he had been at an unusual distance that
morning. “The family,” he said, seemed to live well. They wanted for
nothing, but they appeared to have it in a rough and ready fashion.
That was his idea of how they lived when they had no visitors, but Mr.
S. Smith, of Ryde-villas, who let them the house, declared that at
Peace’s little tea parties “everything was up to the knocker.” Peace’s
life in the Evelina-road is perhaps the most remarkable period in his
whole career; and as far as his lawless depredations are concerned,
appears to be almost incredible. But we must not let this little
sketch break the continuity of our story.
A few days after Mrs. Bourne’s visit to our hero, Bandy-legged Bill
put in an appearance. After his escape from the doctor’s house he had,
as already mentioned, been playing at hide and seek. It was Bourne
himself who had aroused the detectives and sought thereby to bring the
unfortunate gipsy under the ban of the law, but despite the vigilance
of Mr. Wrench, Bill had succeeded in keeping out of harm’s way. To
explain how this was done would be only a waste of space, which we
hope to occupy with more important and interesting details.
Bill Rawton did contrive to “dodge” the detectives――that is sufficient
for our purpose. By the merest accident in the world he happened to
meet with Peace in the neighbourhood of Whitechapel.
A mutual recognition took place, and an interchange of expressions of
friendship, for Peace liked the gipsy in consequence of his always
acting fair and square to him. Indeed, it must be conceded to that
worthy that he had done a number of acts of disinterested kindness for
our hero, and as we have before said, with all Bill Rawton’s faults,
selfishness was not one of them.
Peace invited him to his house in the Evelina-road, which Bill
accepted. They very soon became as good pals as ever, but our hero,
albeit he gave his friend an account of his adventures since they had
last parted, did not make any allusion to the Banner-cross murder.
This was a subject upon which he was remarkably reticent. Soon after
this Rawton received the letter from Mrs. Bourne, which Cooney had
undertaken to deliver. He then asked our hero if he had any objection
to receive any communication for him which a friend of his might at
some time or another entrust to his care.
Peace at once expressed his willingness to do so, but told Bill that
he was no longer Charles Peace, but Mr. Thompson, and that on no
account whatever was the name of Peace to be mentioned to a living
soul. He had sufficient confidence in the gipsy to trust him with his
secret thus far, and his confidence was not misplaced.
The gipsy was, as heretofore, true to the core.
One afternoon, when he did not know very well what to be up to, as he
termed it, he determined upon calling again in the Evelina-road, not
that he had the most remote idea any communication from Mrs. Bourne
had been left for him in charge of our hero. Upon Bill’s arriving at
Peace’s house he heard a violent altercation in the front parlour;
this was succeeded by a scream from a woman. Bill entered, and beheld
his friend Peace in the passage giving some straightforward blows to a
female, whom he afterwards took by the shoulders and thrust into an
adjacent apartment, closing the door and locking her in without
further ceremony.
Rawton made no observation, but concluded naturally enough that it was
a domestic squabble, the cause of which he was unable to fathom.
“Oh! it’s you Bill, eh!” cried Peace, catching sight of his friend.
“Come in, old boy.”
Peace went into the front parlour, from whence a moment or so before
he had emerged in such a towering passion.
“What’s the row, guv’nor,” said Bill.
“Oh! row――don’t ask me,” returned his companion. “These women drive me
distracted at times. That fool can’t keep her tongue from wagging, and
I feel like a man who is walking with a lighted pipe over a powder
magazine. Sit down.”
Rawton sat down, but did not make any further remarks for the present.
He was at no loss to see that his friend was in one of his tantrums,
and that he had “let her ladyship have it.”
“I tell you, those two women are the torment of my life,” cried Peace,
still irate.
“Two――eh?”
“Well, yes, two, worse luck. It’s bad enough to be troubled with one,
but two is more than mortal man can bear.”
“It’s no business of mine,” said Bill, “but I should have thought――”
“Well, what should you have thought?”
“One jibber would have been enough for you to do with at a time.”
“You are right――they are both jibbers; but then it’s no use talking
about the matter――every man has his troubles in this world.”
“And yours appear to be women――eh, old man?” cried the gipsy, with a
laugh, for he was well acquainted with his friend’s predilection for
the fair sex.
“Now don’t chaff me, I tell you――I’m in no mood to stand it.”
Rawton said no more. He looked hard at the speaker, and saw that he
was still in a great state of flustration.
The gipsy remained silent and thoughtful for some time.
Presently Mrs. Peace entered the room; she started at perceiving
Rawton. “Dear me! how are you?” she said, offering the gipsy her hand.
“I’m pretty well for an old un,” replied Bill. “We ’aven’t met for a
good while. How’s yourself?”
“Middling――only middling; but I am glad to see you.”
“Thank you, marm, an’ the same to you.”
“Where is Susan?” said Mrs. Peace, addressing herself to her husband.
“Where I put her――in the next room. Hang her! she can’t, or rather
won’t, keep her tongue still. I tell you what it is――she shan’t go out
of the house at all. I’ll stop this little game! I’ll tame her, as
sure as my name is――――”
He was about to say Charles Peace, but he substituted “what it is,”
instead.
“Nobody wants her to go out,” said his wife.
“Well, then, why does she? Merely out of aggravation. But I won’t have
it. If she does, I shall have to wring her neck, that’s all.”
“I’ll look after her; do not put yourself in these tantrums.”
“But you don’t look after her.”
“Yes; I do.”
“I say you don’t. If you had there wouldn’t have been this row. I am
sick and tired of speaking about this.”
“She’s in the next room; I’ll give her a good talking to,” observed
Mrs. Peace, who was on the point of leaving the parlour.
“Here,” shouted her husband, “take the key of the next room. I’ve
locked the self-willed obstinate fool in.”
Mrs. Peace took the key, unlocked the door of the back parlour, and
went into the kitchen with Mrs. Thompson.
“She wants a deal of watching, that woman does,” observed our hero.
“And if she is not watched, mind you, she’ll most likely get me into a
devil of a mess.”
“Oh, Jerusalem――will she, though?”
Peace nodded significantly.
“I give in to you, Charlie,” said Bill, “you’ve had more experience
with women and such like than I have by a long way. I confess they’ve
generally proved too much for me.”
“I’ll take good care they don’t get the better of me――not if I can
help it,” remarked our hero; “but let’s drop this――I’m sick of it. We
will talk about other matters. How fares it with you? Have you managed
to keep dark?”
“As dark as the old gentleman himself. Not a blessed crusher has been
at my heels. I’ve dodged them to rights; but I say, Charlie, old man,
you’ve got a jolly comfortable little crib here, snug, quiet, and
everything you can desire.”
“It would be comfortable enough if it wasn’t for anxiety of mind. That
’ud knock over any man.”
“Anxiety of mind?”
“Yes. Well, you see, Bill, these women are almost more than I can
manage. To a certain extent they have me in their power, and they know
it.”
“I see――might round upon you at any moment?”
“If they felt disposed to do so of course they could.”
“Ah, but they won’t do that; leastways, I think not. I can answer for
one――the other I know nothing about.”
“Umph!” ejaculated Peace――“all the better for you. I wish I had known
nothing about her.”
“Women will be your downfall, old man,” observed Rawton. “There aint
any mistake about that.”
“Get out; mind your own business. I know my way about, and don’t
intend them to get the best of me, if I can help it.”
“All right, Charlie; I dare say you know best.”
“But I’m blowed if I ain’t forgot something.”
“What’s up, then?”
“Why, I’ve got a letter for you.”
“For me? Never!”
“I say I have. A lady――a proper sort of one, too, I can tell
you――called here a few days ago, and asked if I knew you. She was as
nicely behaved a woman as I ever clapped eyes upon, and her manner was
so sweet and gentle, so ladylike, that――well, hang me, if I didn’t get
quite spoony on her.”
“What! another?”
“Oh! as for that it’s only in a manner of speaking. Well, after some
conversation and a little music we got quite friendly-like.”
“Yes, I understand; she knew me, did she?”
“Yes, and left a packet for you. A letter with an enclosure. So she
told me. I’ll give it you.”
Peace went to a side table, unlooked his desk, and drew therefrom the
letter which had been given to him by Mrs. Bourne.
Rawton glanced at the writing on the envelope, and turned suddenly
pale.
“Why what on earth ails you?” cried Peace.
“Oh nothing, I’m all right.”
He twisted the letter in his hands for some little time as if afraid
to break the envelope which enclosed it.
“Fire away, old man――open it,” said his companion.
“Oh! yes, certainly.”
Bill did as he wished, and drew forth a slip of paper and two £10
notes.
“Finnips, eh, Bill?” cried Peace in a voice of surprise.
“Yes; two tenners as I’m a living man.”
“Well I’m blessed. What did you mean the other day by saying you had
not a friend in the world?”
“I’ve one or two friends left for all my grumbling,” observed Rawton,
“and she who sent these is one.”
It was easy to see that he was much moved, for as he held the notes
his hands trembled, and his countenance was indicative of deep
emotion.
“You are a star in your way,” said Peace.
“Why?”
“Why, indeed, to all appearance you seem to be knocked silly instead
of being pleased as anyone else would be under the circumstances.
Who’s your friend?”
“Oh, I hardly know what to say to that question.”
“If it’s a secret, keep it to yourself. I don’t expect you are the
sort of man to make up to the widow.”
“Widow?”
“Yes, she had on widow’s weeds when she called.”
“I suppose so.”
“I know it, and that’s better than supposing. She’s a downright good
sort, I should say.”
“You are right; she is a good sort.”
“Her name is Mrs. Bourne.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because she said so. Why, her husband that was, Doctor Bourne,
committed suicide. His furniture and other effects were brought under
the hammer, and, strange to say, I attended the sale and bought his
violin――that one that you see lying on the top of the piano. We played
a duet or two together when she called.”
“Did you?”
“Yes. What is there to be surprised at in that we did?”
“Ah! you’d be surprised if you knew all.”
“But I don’t know all; in point of fact, I know nothing as yet.
Certainly not from you.”
“No, that is true enough.”
“Why, Bill, what’s the matter with you? You don’t appear to me to be a
bit like yourself. Keep your pecker up, old man. There’s nothing so
very dreadful in receiving two tenners from a pretty woman――is there?”
“Oh, dear me, no, nothing at all; but I am surprised, never expected
she would come here or give a thought about me――never expected it――and
don’t deserve it. I think I’ll send them back.”
“Don’t be a fool. Send them back! Why you must be off your head to
think of such a thing. Send back the flimsies――well that’s beyond a
joke.”
Bill Rawton made no reply――he seemed to be at a loss to determine his
course of action, and remained for some time silent and thoughtful.
“I say again, you’re a star; I can’t make you out,” observed his
companion.
“Well, you see, Charles,” said the gipsy, “we’ve all got our weak
places. The most callous cove as ever lived finds that out some time
or another, though maybe he don’t care to confess it, and somehow or
another I aint come off scot-free. The lady as called on you was, when
I first knew her, one of the purtiest creatures as ever broke the
bread of life. I met her when she warn’t but a wee bit of a thing, a
chit of a girl, as one might say――and――to meet her was to love her.”
“Oh, scissors! it came to that――did it? What you, Bill the gipsy, fall
in love with a ladylike person such as she appears to be?”
“It doesn’t seem natural, does it?” returned Rawton; “and now nobody
would b’lieve it; perhaps can’t quite b’lieve it myself. But mind yer,
she aint nuffin to me, nor has been for more than――well, getting on
for twenty year. I hadn’t set eyes on her for all that time, nor she
me――supposed her to be dead――I had been dead to her for ever so long a
time. Well, you see, Charlie, lately, by the merest accident in the
world, I met with her. She was at this time the wife of that doctor
chap named Bourne, and I was well-nigh upsetting the apple cart when I
got acquainted with old Gallipot. I wished myself at Jericho――in
quod――anywhere, rather than where I was.”
“What harm did you do, then?”
“A goodish bit of harm――that is, I might have done, but as matters
turned out, there wasn’t much call for grumbling, though it was a
narrow squeak.”
“I’m blessed if I know what you’re driving at, Bill, and that’s the
truth. You’re getting into a fog, and no mistake.”
“No I aint, I sees my way clear enough.”
“Glad you do. It’s more than I can. How was it that you were so near
upsetting the apple-cart?”
“Cause Gallipot was a varmint, a bad un, and wanted an excuse to get
rid of his wife――that’s why――don’t you see?”
“Not just at present.”
“Well, I’ll go back a bit.”
“Yes, do try back.”
“I will. As I was a saying, Charlie, I fell in love with her.”
“Oh, gammon and all――shut up.”
“But I won’t shut up; I did more than this. When she was a chit of a
girl as didn’t know her own mind, and was anxious to get away from her
stepmother, who treated her with the greatest unkindness, she gave her
consent and became my wife.”
“Your wife!” cried Peace, wheeling back his chair, and regarding the
gipsy with an incredulous look. “Why you must have taken leave of your
senses.”
“No, I aint; what I’ve said is the solemn truth. She became my wife;
but, Lord, it wasn’t to be supposed that a purty delicate creature
like her would stay with me――it wasn’t possible――not likely. She was a
deal too good for me, and so in less than six months after our wedding
we parted. I gave her up. She went her way, and I went mine. She left
the country. Remained in India for some years, so I was told; indeed,
I thought she was there still; never dreamed of her being in this
country. However, she was, and we met.”
“And did you claim her then as your wife.”
“Claim her! I should think not. Hav’n’t I told you we were separated
twenty years ago――divorced?”
“Oh, you were divorced.”
“Well, in a manner of speaking we were.”
“I’ll tell you what it is, old man, you’re having a bit of game with
me to-day.”
“No, I aint――it’s all fair and square what I’ve been a telling yer.
It’s as right as the mail――aint a bit of falsehood about it――not a
morsel. I tell ye I wouldn’t harm a hair of her head, and if needs be,
if needs be, I’d lay down my life for her. There, I’ve said it out――I
mean it!”
“It is a most extraordinary thing that you should never have told me
anything about your having a wife before,” cried Peace――“a most
extraordinary circumstance.”
“I never told anyone, ’cos why, it’s so many years ago that I had
really forgotten all about Hester Teige, as she was called.”
“That was her maiden name, then?”
“Yes, Hester Teige. She had changed it three or four times, I believe,
before she became Mrs. Bourne.”
“But how about the bit of a mess you were likely to get into?”
“You shall hear.”
Bill Rawton at this point proceeded to give Peace a succinct detail of
all the particulars connected with his visit to Bourne’s house, with
which the reader is already acquainted.
“Now I understand,” observed our hero. “Old Gallipot wanted to come
the artful dodge and be rid of his partner without the trouble or risk
of putting her out of the way. Very natural, and, all things
considered, a wise course, perhaps; but he was floored, it seems, just
in the nick of time.”
“Oh, I haven’t the slightest doubt about the end. If he couldn’t be
shut of her by fair means he would have done it by foul. She would
have been poisoned like his first wife. He was a cold-blooded, cruel
scoundrel.”
“Upon my word, the story you’ve been telling sounds more like a
romance than an actual reality.”
“Perhaps it does; it seems almost like a romance. When I think of the
time when I first met with Hester, and what I have passed through
since then――what I am and what I might have been, and how gentle and
beautiful she was, I feel a heavy weight fall upon me――I feel that I
want a heart not made out of human flesh, but out of the nether
millstone.”
There was a mournful cadence in the gipsy’s voice as he gave utterance
to these words, which made them additionally expressive, as the sounds
fell upon the ears of Charles Peace the burglar.
Then on the bronzed and wrinkled cheeks of Bill Rawton two tears
chased their way. They were the first he had shed for many a year. The
hard man’s heart was softened. The remembrance of his early days――the
dawn and noontide of love――seemed to him then like the oasis in the
sterile and arid desert, and he leant forward and buried his face in
his hands.
To say that Charles Peace was moved by the display of feeling in one
from whom he would have least expected to find any genuine sentiment,
would be, perhaps, saying too much. But he was surprised; more so,
perhaps, than he had been in the whole course of his life.
He might well be so, for many reasons. He never for a moment gave his
companion credit for so much chivalrous and disinterested feeling as
he had displayed in his endeavours to shelter and shield Mrs. Bourne,
and perhaps the reader will find it difficult to believe that a man of
such essentially coarse a type as Rawton was capable of being moved by
the higher instincts of our nature.
In answer to this we have but to declare that the gipsy’s character is
sketched from life; the leading incidents in his career are but
records of actual occurrences; his devotion to Mrs. Bourne was the one
bright spot on his character, which nothing could dim or diminish.
Throughout his life he invariably spoke of her with respect and
admiration, not unmixed by a latent but enduring love.
Instances of this kind are by no means so rare as people are led to
believe, although, perhaps, they are not outwardly manifested, as in
the case of Rawton. The human character is diverseful, and it would
not be a pleasing thought, nor indeed would it be correct, to suppose
the most callous do not possess “one touch of nature which makes the
whole world kin.”
“What can be said about Peace, then?” some of our readers may exclaim.
It is true he was a bold bad man, who had but little to recommend him;
he was about as bad a sample of the human species as it is possible
for us to find. Nevertheless, he had some lighter shades in his
character. He was fond of animals, of music; he was not an unkind
father. Perhaps there may be what we may term negative qualities, for
taken altogether he cannot be deemed anything else than a ruffian or
freebooter of the very worst type.
Rawton remained for some time silent, with his head resting on his
hands, and Peace was so taken back by the narrative and the deep
dejection of the gipsy, that he had not the heart to question him
further, and so the two sat in the front parlour of the house in the
Evelina-road for some minutes without exchanging a word.
“I’ve known this bloke for a good while,” murmured Peace to himself,
“but I’m blessed if he haven’t queered me now and no mistake. Hang the
fellow! I’m afraid some parson has got hold of him.”
He took his violin and began to play a prelude to a new piece of
music.
“Ah, that’s right,” cried Rawton. “Give us something soft and
touching; you know I always like to hear you play.”
“You want something lively, old fellow, to cheer you up,” returned our
hero. “You’re down among the dead men just now, and seem inclined to
do the snivelling business, which, to say the truth, I should have
thought quite out of your line.”
“Don’t be hard on a cove, Charlie――I’m a bit down, I confess; but,
fire away, let’s have a tune.”
Peace played a surprising bravura air upon his violin. As the strains
of music reached the ears of the gipsy his countenance became radiated
with pleasurable emotion.
“That’s grand, an’ no mistake,” he ejaculated. “I wish I could handle
the instrument as you do; but that I never shall, it ain’t in me――not,
mind you, but I’ve a great liking for it――always had.”
“Well do you feel better, old man?” inquired Peace, with a lurking
smile upon his countenance.
“Yes, a deal better.”
“That’s well. Have a dram of brandy――that’ll set you to rights.”
He passed the bottle towards his companion.
Bill poured himself out a glassful, which he drank off at one gulp.
“You are all right now,” said Peace, “or you ought to be by this time.
Pull yourself together, and drop the sentimental.”
“Ah,” murmured the gipsy, “I dare say you think me a weak silly fool,
and, indeed, to say the truth, I think so myself. But you must know,
Charlie, that I never think of Hester Teige and of the days when I
first knew her, without many bitter regrets for the past.”
“Ah, I dare say. It won’t do to give way to this sort of thing. Are
you spoony on her now?”
“Spoony be hanged!――she’s nothing to me, and I am nothing to her. Lord
bless yer, what can you be thinking about? Why, she’s far above me in
every way. What am I, old man? A cadger――a dodger――a miserable wretch
who’s not worth her notice.”
“She has noticed you, though,” returned Peace. “Aint she left you two
tenners?”
“Ah, true. Well, I rather fancy it would be best for me to return
them. Did she leave her address?”
“Not a bit of it. She left no address with me, so you must pocket the
affront――that’s the best thing you can do.”
“I don’t like to take her money. I would sooner rob than accept
anything from her.”
“And why, pray?”
“Because I don’t deserve it, and would rather not have a sixpence of
her money.”
“You don’t like to be beholden to her. Is that what you mean?”
“No, it aint that; but I don’t like her to think that what I’ve done
was with any idea of getting paid for it. It goes agin the grain for
me to receive a single quid from one whom I would serve for the mere
pleasure of serving her.”
“Well, you are a stunner, and no mistake!” cried Peace. “I never could
have believed you had so much honour in you――not unless I had been
witness of it.”
“I’m a queer chap, Charles, and I dare say I’ve queer ways, but I am
too old to alter now; but there, let us say no more about the matter.
We’ll talk about something else.”
“I think we had better. Perhaps you’ll be a little more reasonable
upon other subjects. Are you in the mind to take a bit of a drive with
me this evening?”
“In course I am; where to?”
“That we will determine by and bye. I am going to have a spin in the
pony trap, and shall be glad of your company.”
“All right, I’m your man. Never say no to a good thing. Is it business
matters you are going on?”
Peace smiled.
“Well, yes, it’s all in the way of business.”
“What time do you start?”
“Oh, about seven o’clock, I suppose.”
“Very good, I’ll come round at that time.”
“No, don’t do that. I would rather you would not. Meet me in the road,
and I can pick you up. Do you see?”
“Just as you like, where shall I meet you then?”
“Ah, I don’t know, let’s see; Spurgeon’s Tabernacle will be as good a
place as any.”
“I’ll be there, old boy, only let me know the time.”
“From seven to about a quarter or twenty minutes after. I’m sure not
to be later than that.”
“I’m on. Will be there at seven without fail. Now I’ll be off; but, I
say, keep yourself quiet, and don’t have any more shindies with the
women.”
“Oh no; that’ll be all right,” replied Peace, with a laugh. “Don’t you
bother yourself about my domestic affairs. Good-bye for the present.
You won’t forget the appointment?”
“Not I――t’aint likely.”
Bill Rawton took his departure.
Peace returned to his little parlour, and began scraping away at his
violin.
Presently Willie Ward came in and took up the guitar, and they played
several duets.
Mrs. Peace, who had been in the kitchen below endeavouring to console
Mrs. Thompson, shortly after this presented herself.
“Ah! it’s you, eh?” cried our hero. “Well, what about that beauty?
Wants to go out again, I suppose, to make as much mischief as
possible.”
“She does not want to go out, and has promised to remain indoors, but
of course she does not like to be kept a prisoner.”
“I tell you she must not go out. She can have whatever she likes, and
enjoy herself as much as she likes here, but I will not have her
trapesing about and letting everybody know our business, and what is
going on here.”
“I’ll take good care she doesn’t do that any more.”
“That’s all right then. I hope you’ll keep your word this time.”
“Mother’s sure to do that,” cried Willie. “She does her best, I’m
sure.”
“I wish I could be as sure of it; but no matter. Now then go on with
your music.”
The two began to play once more. Mrs. Peace, who had quite enough of
their musical entertainments, left the room, and made the best of her
way towards the kitchen.
As seven o’clock approached the pony and trap were got ready, and
Peace drove off to meet Bill Rawton.