Post Haste. Robert Michael Ballantyne
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sorry the dear girl cannot live with me: I had fully meant that she should, but my little rooms are so far from the Post-Office, where her work is, you know, that it could not be managed. However, we see each other as often as possible, and she visits sometimes with me in my district. What has made you so late, Phil?”
“I expected to have been here sooner, cousin,” replied Phil, as he took off his greatcoat, “but was delayed by my friend, George Aspel, who has come to London with me to look after a situation that has been promised him by Sir James Clubley, M.P. for I forget where. He’s coming here to-night.”
“Who, Sir James Clubley?”
“No,” returned the boy, laughing, “George Aspel. He went with Mr Blurt to a hotel to see after a bed, and promised to come here to tea. I asked him, knowing that you’d be glad to receive any intimate friend of mine. Won’t you, Coz?”
Miss Lillycrop expressed and felt great delight at the prospect of meeting Phil’s friend, but the smallest possible shade of anxiety was mingled with the feeling as she glanced at her very small and not too heavily-loaded table.
“Besides,” continued Phil, “George is such a splendid fellow, and, as maybe you remember, lived with us long ago. May will be glad to meet him; and he saved Mr Blurt’s life, so you see—”
“Saved Mr Blurt’s life!” interrupted Miss Lillycrop.
“Yes, and he saved ever so many more people at the same time, who would likely have been all lost if he hadn’t swum off to ’em with the rocket-line, and while he was doing that I ran off to call out the lifeboat, an’ didn’t they get her out and launch her with a will—for you see I had to run three miles, and though I went like the wind they couldn’t call out the men and launch her in a minute, you know; but there was no delay. We were in good time, and saved the whole of ’em—passengers and crew.”
“So, then, you had a hand in the saving of them,” said Miss Lillycrop.
“Sure I had,” said Phil with a flush of pleasure at the remembrance of his share in the good work; “but I’d never have thought of the lifeboat, I was so excited with what was going on, if George hadn’t sent me off. He was bursting with big thoughts, and as cool as a cucumber all the time. I do hope he’ll get a good situation here. It’s in a large East India house, I believe, with which Sir James Clubley is connected, and Sir James was an old friend of George’s father, and was very kind to him in his last days, but they say he’s a proud and touchy old fellow.”
As Phil spoke, the door, which had a tendency to burst that evening, opened quickly, though not so violently as before, and May Maylands stood before them, radiant with a glow of expectation.
Phil sprang to meet her. After the first effusions were over, the brother and sister sat down to chat of home in the Irish far-west, while Miss Lillycrop retired to a small kitchen, there to hold solemn converse with the smallest domestic that ever handled broom or scrubbing-brush.
“Now, Tottie, you must run round to the baker directly, and fetch another loaf.”
“What! a whole one, ma’am?” asked the small domestic—in comparison with whom Dollops was a giantess.
“Yes, a whole one. You see there’s a young gentleman coming to tea whom I did not expect—a grand tall gentleman too, and a hero, who has saved people from wrecks, and swims in the sea in storms like a duck, and all that sort of thing, so he’s sure to have a tremendous appetite. You will also buy another pennyworth of brown sugar, and two more pats of butter.”
Tottie opened her large blue eyes in amazement at the extent of what she deemed a reckless order, but went off instantly to execute it, wondering that any hero, however regardless of the sea or storms, could induce her poor mistress to go in for such extravagance, after having already provided a luxurious meal for three.
It might have seemed unfair to send such a child even to bed without an attendant. To send her into the crowded streets alone in the dusk of evening, burdened with a vast commission, and weighted with coppers, appeared little short of inhumanity. Nevertheless Miss Lillycrop did it with an air of perfect confidence, and the result proved that her trust was not misplaced.
Tottie had been gone only a few seconds when George Aspel appeared at the door and was admitted by Miss Lillycrop, who apologised for the absence of her maid.
Great was the surprise and not slight the embarrassment of May Maylands when young Aspel was ushered into the little room, for Phil had not recovered sufficiently from the first greetings to mention him. Perhaps greater was the surprise of Miss Lillycrop when these two, whom she had expected to meet as old playmates, shook hands rather stiffly.
“Sure, I forgot, May, to tell you that George was coming—”
“I am very glad to see him,” interrupted May, recovering herself, “though I confess to some surprise that he should have forsaken Ireland so soon, after saying to me that it was a perfect paradise.”
Aspel, whose curly flaxen hair almost brushed the ceiling, brought himself down to a lower region by taking a chair, while he said with a meaning smile—
“Ah! Miss Maylands, the circumstances are entirely altered now—besides,” he added with a sudden change of tone and manner, “that inexorable man-made demon, Business, calls me to London.”
“I hope Business intends to keep you here,” said Miss Lillycrop, busying herself at the tea-table.
“That remains to be seen,” returned Aspel. “If I find that—”
“The loaf and butter, ma’am,” said Tottie, announcing these articles at the door as if they were visitors.
“Hush, child; leave them in the kitchen till I ask for them,” said Miss Lillycrop with a quiet laugh. “My little maid is such an original, Mr Aspel.”
“She’s a very beautiful, though perhaps somewhat dishevelled, original,” returned Aspel, “of which one might be thankful to possess even an inferior copy.”
“Indeed you are right,” rejoined Miss Lillycrop with enthusiasm; “she’s a perfect little angel—come, draw in your chairs; closer this way, Phil, so—a perfect little angel—you take sugar I think? Yes. Well, as I was saying, the strange thing about her was that she was born and bred—thus far—in one of the worst of the back slums of London, and her father is an idle drunkard. I fear, also, a criminal.”
“How strange and sad,” said Aspel, whose heart was easily touched and sympathies roused by tales of sorrow. “But how comes it that she has escaped contamination?”
“Because she has a good—by which I mean a Christian—mother. Ah! Mr Aspel, you have no idea how many unknown and unnoticed gems there are half smothered in the moral mud and filth of London. It is a wonderful—a tremendous city;—tremendous because of the mighty influences for good as well as evil which are constantly at work in it. There is an army of moral navvies labouring here, who are continually unearthing these gems, and there are others who polish them. I have the honour to be a member of this army. Dear little Tottie is one of the gems, and I mean, with God’s blessing, to polish her. Of course, I can’t get her all to myself,” continued Miss Lillycrop with a sigh, “for her mother, who is a washer-woman, won’t part with her, but she has agreed to come and work for me every morning for a few hours, and I can get her now and then of an evening. My chief regret is that the poor thing has a long long way to walk from her miserable home to reach me. I don’t know how she will stand it. She has been only a few days in my service.”
As the unpolished diamond entered at this moment with a large plate of buttered toast, Miss Lillycrop changed the subject abruptly by expressing a hope that May Maylands had not to go on late duty that evening.
“Oh, no; it’s not my turn for a week yet,” said May.
“It seems to me very hard that they should work you night and day,” said Phil, who had been quietly drinking in new ideas with his tea while his cousin discoursed.
“But they don’t work us night and day, Phil,” returned May, “it is only the telegraphs that do that. We of