THE EPISODE OF THE BAKER’S BOY
As I continued wondering, with the paper still in my hand, mamma’s
voice called to me outside the door.
“Norah! there’s the baker at the door; you must go and take in the
bread.”
“Mamma!” I exclaimed.
“You must. Jane said she would come back for tea, but she hasn’t put
in an appearance yet. Somebody must go, and I can’t, and your sisters
are dressing; you ought to be ready by now; you must do those errands.
There, he’s knocking again--go down to him at once!”
I obeyed. Did my hair somehow, crammed my hat on anyhow, and down the
stairs I went. A pretty task to set me! Down the kitchen stairs I
hurried, to the area door, on the glass window of which vigorous
knuckles were beating a sort of tattoo. The moment I opened it I was
greeted in the most surprising way.
“Now then, slowcoach, you seem to take some time a-washing of
yourself! Think I’ve got nothing else to do except keep on a-waiting
here all day?”
I was astonished. I fancy, when he saw me, that the speaker was
astonished too, though he scarcely showed it in a manner which I
thought fitting.
“Hollo! beg pardon! my crikey! Are you the new young lady?”
Evidently this was a person who needed a good deal of freezing. I
wondered that even Jane had not succeeded in snubbing him into better
manners. I assumed my most dignified bearing--which is not saying
much, for dignity is not my strongest point--and was as frigid as the
fact that my actual temperature was somewhere about boiling point
permitted.
“Please give me the bread.”
“That’s all right! I’ll give it you with the very greatest pleasure;
and I’d like to give you something else as well.”
And before I could stop him, this remarkable individual was off at a
gallop on a line which was distinctly his very own.
“My name’s Bob Stevens. I’ve been walking out with the young lady what
was here before you. She left yesterday; cruel hard they treated her;
no young lady couldn’t have stood it what had any spirit. This is a
nice place, this is--five scratch-catting young women, and an old
geeser of a mother. It won’t suit you; you’ll leave at the end of your
month, they all of them do.”
That was an outrageous falsehood. Some of our servants have stopped
with us more than a year. But it was impossible for me to contradict
him.
“But Eliza--that’s the young lady I was a-telling you about--ain’t
quite my fancy. And if so be as you haven’t got a young man just at
present, or if you was a-feeling a bit off colour with the one you
have got, why, I’d be proud and happy to fill the situation. I’m
getting good money--five-and-twenty bob a week without perks”--I
suppose he meant perquisites--“besides money in the bank, and a few
sticks towards a home, including a drawing-room settee in sky-blue
satin what I got from a friend of mine whose wife hooked off with
another bloke. You just tell me your night out, and I’ll be there on
time, you bet your hat--and a beauty it is, regular market-garden I
call it--and if we don’t fix the day before we part, it won’t be no
fault of mine. I mean business, I do, straight.”
Anything like that person’s volubility I never encountered. I could
not stop him. I seldom am ready of speech, and before that baker’s boy
I felt tongue-tied. Not the least amazing part of it was that he
seemed a mere lad of, at the outside, eighteen years, with a fresh
complexion, and, I should have said, a babe for innocence. It shows
how deceptive appearances are. At last I could get a word in edgeways,
and I got it.
“I think you are mistaken.”
But he cut me short.
“Not much, I’m not. I’m not that sort of chap. Never make mistakes, I
don’t--at least, not of that kind. I know when I like a girl as well
as any man; and I tell you, honest, that I never was so gone on a
young lady as I am on you.”
“I still think you are mistaken, because I happen to be one of the
five scratch-catting young women you alluded to. I am Miss Norah
O’Brady.”
Some baker’s boys would have been abashed, but he was not. He retained
his presence of mind in a fashion I could not have equalled. And,
really, for a person in his position, he was not bad-looking.
“Lor’, now, if I didn’t think you was a real lady! You’d have been
took for a real lady by almost anyone. You look it--every inch. A
regular queen you look. You’ll excuse me, miss, for seeming to make so
free; but, however humble a man may be, he’s still a man.”
“Please give me the bread.”
He began cramming loaves and things in paper bags into my arms in a
manner which I found embarrassing, talking all the time.
“If there’s any mortal thing that I can do for you, no matter what it
is, you’ve only got to name it, and you can consider it done. What’s
more, I’m on to get you any blessed thing you want, from the Lord
Mayor’s coach to----”
I did not wait for him to explain to what--I presume his remarks were
tailing off into metaphor--but, withdrawing into the passage, I shut
the door in his face, taking the precaution to turn the key.
It was well I did, because he instantly tried the handle, and, when he
found it would not yield, rapping at the frosted glass panels, he
addressed me from without:
“Excuse me, miss, for one single moment, but would you allow me to
say----”
I should have thought that permission to say anything was the last
thing he would have required. Anyhow, I did not give it.
Depositing the articles he had just given me on the kitchen table, I
marched upstairs. At the top I met mamma.
“Norah, what do you mean by carrying on an animated conversation with
the baker’s man?” I carrying on an animated conversation! My share in
it had been small. “What an extraordinary creature you are. Your
cheeks look as if they were positively burning.”
Hers would have looked the same if she had borne my part in the scene
which had just been enacted. But I said nothing.
“You must go and do those errands at once, your sisters are waiting.
Be as quick as you decently can, and please, if possible, forget
nothing.”
She gave me no time to compose myself, but opening the front door with
her own hands ushered me through it, as if I were some bothering
visitor whom she was in a dreadful hurry to see the last of.
As I might have expected, that baker’s boy was still there. He had
hardly had time to take himself off with his barrow. But that was no
reason why he should plant himself right in the centre of the
pavement, and address me, the moment I appeared, as if I had been an
equal, with mamma looking down at us from the open door.
“Excuse me, miss, if I seem to take a liberty, but might I ask you if
you was fond of chocolate creams?”
I held my head a trifle higher than I might have done if mamma had not
been up there, because I _am_ fond of chocolate creams, though what
business it was of his I cannot think--and I annihilated him finally:
“If you attempt to speak to me again I shall report you to your
master, and you will find yourself without a situation.”
I marched off and left him standing in a preposterous and most
unseemly attitude--his great basket at his side--as if glued to the
paving-stones. And I heard him mutter:
“Cruel as the grave--and cold.”
That ridiculous, insolent boy--he was nothing else--positively heaved
a sigh which followed me like a gust of wind, with mamma still at the
top of the front-door steps.