Редьярд Джозеф Киплинг
A Diversity of Creatures
'What 'arm's 'e doing? E's a love-child, but 'is family can pay for 'im. If 'e was locked up 'e'd die all off at once, like a wild rabbit. Won't you, please, look at the drive, sir?'
Midmore looked in the fading light. The neat gravel was pitted with large roundish holes, and there was a punch or two of the same sort on the lawn.
'That's the 'unt comin' 'ome,' Rhoda explained. 'Your pore dear auntie always let 'em use our drive for a short cut after the Colonel died. The Colonel wouldn't so much because he preserved; but your auntie was always an 'orsewoman till 'er sciatica.'
'Isn't there some one who can rake it over or-or something?' said Midmore vaguely.
'Oh yes. You'll never see it in the morning, but-you was out when they came 'ome an' Mister Fisher-he's the Master-told me to tell you with 'is compliments that if you wasn't preservin' and cared to 'old to the old understanding', is gravel-pit is at your service same as before. 'E thought, perhaps, you mightn't know, and it 'ad slipped my mind to tell you. It's good gravel, Mister Fisher's, and it binds beautiful on the drive. We 'ave to draw it, o' course, from the pit, but-'
Midmore looked at her helplessly.
'Rhoda,' said he, 'what am I supposed to do?'
'Oh, let 'em come through,' she replied. 'You never know. You may want to 'unt yourself some day.'
That evening it rained and his misery returned on him, the worse for having been diverted. At last he was driven to paw over a few score books in a panelled room called the library, and realised with horror what the late Colonel Werf's mind must have been in its prime. The volumes smelt of a dead world as strongly as they did of mildew. He opened and thrust them back, one after another, till crude coloured illustrations of men on horses held his eye. He began at random and read a little, moved into the drawing-room with the volume, and settled down by the fire still reading. It was a foul world into which he peeped for the first time-a heavy-eating, hard-drinking hell of horse-copers, swindlers, matchmaking mothers, economically dependent virgins selling themselves blushingly for cash and lands: Jews, tradesmen, and an ill-considered spawn of Dickens-and-horsedung characters (I give Midmore's own criticism), but he read on, fascinated, and behold, from the pages leaped, as it were, the brother to the red-eyed man of the brook, bellowing at a landlord (here Midmore realised that he was that very animal) for new barns; and another man who, like himself again, objected to hoof-marks on gravel. Outrageous as thought and conception were, the stuff seemed to have the rudiments of observation. He dug out other volumes by the same author, till Rhoda came in with a silver candlestick.
'Rhoda,' said he, 'did you ever hear about a character called James Pigg-and Batsey?'
'Why, o' course,' said she. 'The Colonel used to come into the kitchen in 'is dressin'-gown an' read us all those Jorrockses.'
'Oh, Lord!' said Midmore, and went to bed with a book called Handley Cross under his arm, and a lonelier Columbus into a stranger world the wet-ringed moon never looked upon.
Here we omit much. But Midmore never denied that for the epicure in sensation the urgent needs of an ancient house, as interpreted by Rhoda pointing to daylight through attic-tiles held in place by moss, gives an edge to the pleasure of Social Research elsewhere. Equally he found that the reaction following prolonged research loses much of its grey terror if one knows one can at will bathe the soul in the society of plumbers (all the water-pipes had chronic appendicitis), village idiots (Jimmy had taken Midmore under his weak wing and camped daily at the drive-gates), and a giant with red eyelids whose every action is an unpredictable outrage.
Towards spring Midmore filled his house with a few friends of the Immoderate Left. It happened to be the day when, all things and Rhoda working together, a cartload of bricks, another of sand, and some bags of lime had been despatched to build Sidney his almost daily-demanded pig-pound. Midmore took his friends across the flat fields with some idea of showing them Sidney as a type of 'the peasantry.' They hit the minute when Sidney, hoarse with rage, was ordering bricklayer, mate, carts and all off his premises. The visitors disposed themselves to listen.
'You never give me no notice about changin' the pig,' Sidney shouted. The pig-at least eighteen inches long-reared on end in the old sty and smiled at the company.
'But, my good man-' Midmore opened.
'I ain't! For aught you know I be a dam' sight worse than you be. You can't come and be'ave arbit'ry with me. You are be'avin' arbit'ry! All you men go clean away an' don't set foot on my land till I bid ye.'
'But you asked'-Midmore felt his voice jump up-'to have the pig-pound built.'
''Spose I did. That's no reason you shouldn't send me notice to change the pig. 'Comin' down on me like this 'thout warnin'! That pig's got to be got into the cowshed an' all.'
'Then open the door and let him run in,' said Midmore.
'Don't you be'ave arbit'ry with me! Take all your dam' men 'ome off my land. I won't be treated arbit'ry.'
The carts moved off without a word, and Sidney went into the house and slammed the door.
'Now, I hold that is enormously significant,' said a visitor. 'Here you have the logical outcome of centuries of feudal oppression-the frenzy of fear.' The company looked at Midmore with grave pain.
'But he did worry my life out about his pig-sty,' was all Midmore found to say.
Others took up the parable and proved to him if he only held true to the gospels of the Immoderate Left the earth would soon be covered with 'jolly little' pig-sties, built in the intervals of morris-dancing by 'the peasant' himself.
Midmore felt grateful when the door opened again and Mr. Sidney invited them all to retire to the road which, he pointed out, was public. As they turned the corner of the house, a smooth-faced woman in a widow's cap curtsied to each of them through the window.
Instantly they drew pictures of that woman's lot, deprived of all vehicle for self-expression-'the set grey life and apathetic end,' one quoted-and they discussed the tremendous significance of village theatricals. Even a month ago Midmore would have told them all that he knew and Rhoda had dropped about Sidney's forms of self-expression. Now, for some strange reason, he was content to let the talk run on from village to metropolitan and world drama.
Rhoda advised him after the visitors left that 'if he wanted to do that again' he had better go up to town.
'But we only sat on cushions on the floor,' said her master.
'They're too old for romps,' she retorted, 'an' it's only the beginning of things. I've seen what I've seen. Besides, they talked and laughed in the passage going to their baths-such as took 'em.'
'Don't be a fool, Rhoda,' said Midmore. No man-unless he has loved her-will casually dismiss a woman on whose lap he has laid his head.
'Very good,' she snorted, 'but that cuts both ways. An' now, you go down to Sidney's this evenin' and put him where he ought to be. He was in his right about you givin' 'im notice about changin' the pig, but he 'adn't any right to turn it up before your company. No manners, no pig-pound. He'll understand.'
Midmore did his best to make him. He found himself reviling the old man in speech and with a joy quite new in all his experience. He wound up-it was a plagiarism from a plumber-by telling Mr. Sidney that he looked like a turkey-cock, had the morals of a parish bull, and need never hope for a new pig-pound as long as he or Midmore lived.
'Very good,' said the giant. 'I reckon you thought you 'ad something against me, and now you've come down an' told it me like man to man. Quite right. I don't bear malice. Now, you send along those bricks an' sand, an' I'll make a do to build the pig-pound myself. If you look at my lease you'll find out you're bound to provide me materials for the repairs. Only-only I thought there'd be no 'arm in my askin' you to do it throughout like.'
Midmore fairly gasped. 'Then, why the devil did you turn my carts back when-when I sent them up here to do it throughout for you?'
Mr. Sidney sat down on the floodgates, his eyebrows knitted in thought.
'I'll tell you,' he said slowly. ''Twas too dam' like cheatin' a suckin' baby. My woman, she said so too.'
For a few seconds the teachings of the Immoderate Left, whose humour is all their own, wrestled with those of Mother Earth, who has her own humours. Then Midmore laughed till he could scarcely stand. In due time Mr. Sidney laughed too-crowing and wheezing crescendo till it broke from him in roars. They shook hands, and Midmore went home grateful that he had held his tongue among his companions.
When he reached his house he met three or four men and women on horse-back, very muddy indeed, coming down the drive. Feeling hungry himself, he asked them if they were hungry. They said they were, and he bade them enter. Jimmy took their horses, who seemed to know him. Rhoda took their battered hats, led the women upstairs for hairpins, and presently fed them all with tea-cakes, poached eggs, anchovy toast, and drinks from a coromandel-wood liqueur case which Midmore had never known that he possessed.
'And I will say,' said Miss Connie Sperrit, her spurred foot on the fender and a smoking muffin in her whip hand, 'Rhoda does one top-hole. She always did since I was eight.'
'Seven, Miss, was when you began to 'unt,' said Rhoda, setting down more buttered toast.
'And so,' the M.F.H. was saying to Midmore, 'when he got to your brute Sidney's land, we had to whip 'em off. It's a regular Alsatia for 'em. They know it. Why'-he dropped his voice-'I don't want to say anything against Sidney as your tenant, of course, but I do believe the old scoundrel's perfectly capable of putting down poison.'
'Sidney's capable of anything,' said Midmore with immense feeling; but once again he held his tongue. They were a queer community; yet when they had stamped and jingled out to their horses again, the house felt hugely big and disconcerting.
This may be reckoned the conscious beginning of his double life. It ran in odd channels that summer-a riding school, for instance, near Hayes Common and a shooting ground near Wormwood Scrubs. A man who has been saddle-galled or shoulder-bruised for half the day is not at his London best of evenings; and when the bills for his amusements come in he curtails his expenses in other directions. So a cloud settled on Midmore's name. His London world talked of a hardening of heart and a tightening of purse-strings which signified disloyalty to the Cause. One man, a confidant of the old expressive days, attacked him robustiously and demanded account of his soul's progress. It was not furnished, for Midmore was calculating how much it would cost to repave stables so dilapidated that even the village idiot apologised for putting visitors' horses into them. The man went away, and served up what he had heard of the pig-pound episode as a little newspaper sketch, calculated to annoy. Midmore read it with an eye as practical as a woman's, and since most of his experiences had been among women, at once sought out a woman to whom he might tell his sorrow at the disloyalty of his own familiar friend. She was so sympathetic that he went on to confide how his bruised heart-she knew all about it-had found so-lace, with a long O, in another quarter which he indicated rather carefully in case it might be betrayed to other loyal friends. As his hints pointed directly towards facile Hampstead, and as his urgent business was the purchase of a horse from a dealer, Beckenham way, he felt he had done good work. Later, when his friend, the scribe, talked to him alluringly of 'secret gardens' and those so-laces to which every man who follows the Wider Morality is entitled, Midmore lent him a five-pound note which he had got back on the price of a ninety-guinea bay gelding. So true it is, as he read in one of the late Colonel Werf's books, that 'the young man of the present day would sooner lie under an imputation against his morals than against his knowledge of horse-flesh.'
Midmore desired more than he desired anything else at that moment to ride and, above all, to jump on a ninety-guinea bay gelding with black points and a slovenly habit of hitting his fences. He did not wish many people except Mr. Sidney, who very kindly lent his soft meadow behind the floodgates, to be privy to the matter, which he rightly foresaw would take him to the autumn. So he told such friends as hinted at country week-end visits that he had practically let his newly inherited house. The rent, he said, was an object to him, for he had lately lost large sums through ill-considered benevolences. He would name no names, but they could guess. And they guessed loyally all round the circle of his acquaintance as they spread the news that explained so much.
There remained only one couple of his once intimate associates to pacify. They were deeply sympathetic and utterly loyal, of course, but as curious as any of the apes whose diet they had adopted. Midmore met them in a suburban train, coming up to town, not twenty minutes after he had come off two hours' advanced tuition (one guinea an hour) over hurdles in a hall. He had, of course, changed his kit, but his too heavy bridle-hand shook a little among the newspapers. On the inspiration of the moment, which is your natural liar's best hold, he told them that he was condemned to a rest-cure. He would lie in semi-darkness drinking milk, for weeks and weeks, cut off even from letters. He was astonished and delighted at the ease with which the usual lie confounds the unusual intellect. They swallowed it as swiftly as they recommended him to live on nuts and fruit; but he saw in the woman's eyes the exact reason she would set forth for his retirement. After all, she had as much right to express herself as he purposed to take for himself; and Midmore believed strongly in the fullest equality of the sexes.
That retirement made one small ripple in the strenuous world. The lady who had written the twelve-page letter ten months before sent him another of eight pages, analysing all the motives that were leading her back to him-should she come? – now that he was ill and alone. Much might yet be retrieved, she said, out of the waste of jarring lives and piteous misunderstandings. It needed only a hand.
But Midmore needed two, next morning very early, for a devil's diversion, among wet coppices, called 'cubbing.'
'You haven't a bad seat,' said Miss Sperrit through the morning-mists. 'But you're worrying him.'
'He pulls so,' Midmore grunted.
'Let him alone, then. Look out for the branches,' she shouted, as they whirled up a splashy ride. Cubs were plentiful. Most of the hounds attached themselves to a straight-necked youngster of education who scuttled out of the woods into the open fields below.
'Hold on!' some one shouted. 'Turn 'em, Midmore. That's your brute Sidney's land. It's all wire.'
'Oh, Connie, stop!' Mrs. Sperrit shrieked as her daughter charged at a boundary-hedge.
'Wire be damned! I had it all out a fortnight ago. Come on!' This was Midmore, buffeting into it a little lower down.
'Iknew that!' Connie cried over her shoulder, and she flitted across the open pasture, humming to herself.
'Oh, of course! If some people have private information, they can afford to thrust.' This was a snuff-coloured habit into which Miss Sperrit had cannoned down the ride.
'What! 'Midmore got Sidney to heel? You never did that, Sperrit.' This was Mr. Fisher, M.F.H., enlarging the breach Midmore had made.
'No, confound him!' said the father testily. 'Go on, sir! Injecto ter pulvere-you've kicked half the ditch into my eye already.'
They killed that cub a little short of the haven his mother had told him to make for-a two-acre Alsatia of a gorse-patch to which the M.F.H. had been denied access for the last fifteen seasons. He expressed his gratitude before all the field and Mr. Sidney, at Mr. Sidney's farm-house door.
'And if there should be any poultry claims-' he went on.
'There won't be,' said Midmore. 'It's too like cheating a sucking child, isn't it, Mr. Sidney?'
'You've got me!' was all the reply. 'I be used to bein' put upon, but you've got me, Mus' Midmore.'
Midmore pointed to a new brick pig-pound built in strict disregard of the terms of the life-tenant's lease. The gesture told the tale to the few who did not know, and they shouted.
Such pagan delights as these were followed by pagan sloth of evenings when men and women elsewhere are at their brightest. But Midmore preferred to lie out on a yellow silk couch, reading works of a debasing vulgarity; or, by invitation, to dine with the Sperrits and savages of their kidney. These did not expect flights of fancy or phrasing. They lied, except about horses, grudgingly and of necessity, not for art's sake; and, men and women alike, they expressed themselves along their chosen lines with the serene indifference of the larger animals. Then Midmore would go home and identify them, one by one, out of the natural-history books by Mr. Surtees, on the table beside the sofa. At first they looked upon him coolly, but when the tale of the removed wire and the recaptured gorse had gone the rounds, they accepted him for a person willing to play their games. True, a faction suspended judgment for a while, because they shot, and hoped that Midmore would serve the glorious mammon of pheasant-raising rather than the unkempt god of fox-hunting. But after he had shown his choice, they did not ask by what intellectual process he had arrived at it. He hunted three, sometimes four, times a week, which necessitated not only one bay gelding (£94: 10s.), but a mannerly white-stockinged chestnut (£114), and a black mare, rather long in the back but with a mouth of silk (£150), who so evidently preferred to carry a lady that it would have been cruel to have baulked her. Besides, with that handling she could be sold at a profit. And besides, the hunt was a quiet, intimate, kindly little hunt, not anxious for strangers, of good report in the Field, the servant of one M.F.H., given to hospitality, riding well its own horses, and, with the exception of Midmore, not novices. But as Miss Sperrit observed, after the M.F.H. had said some things to him at a gate: 'It is a pity you don't know as much as your horse, but you will in time. It takes years and yee-ars. I've been at it for fifteen and I'm only just learning. But you've made a decent kick-off.'
So he kicked off in wind and wet and mud, wondering quite sincerely why the bubbling ditches and sucking pastures held him from day to day, or what so-lace he could find on off days in chasing grooms and brick-layers round outhouses.
To make sure he up-rooted himself one week-end of heavy mid-winter rain, and re-entered his lost world in the character of Galahad fresh from a rest-cure. They all agreed, with an eye over his shoulder for the next comer, that he was a different man; but when they asked him for the symptoms of nervous strain, and led him all through their own, he realised he had lost much of his old skill in lying. His three months' absence, too, had put him hopelessly behind the London field. The movements, the allusions, the slang of the game had changed. The couples had rearranged themselves or were re-crystallizing in fresh triangles, whereby he put his foot in it badly. Only one great soul (he who had written the account of the pig-pound episode) stood untouched by the vast flux of time, and Midmore lent him another fiver for his integrity. A woman took him, in the wet forenoon, to a pronouncement on the Oneness of Impulse in Humanity, which struck him as a polysyllabic résumé of Mr. Sidney's domestic arrangements, plus a clarion call to 'shock civilisation into common-sense.'
'And you'll come to tea with me to-morrow?' she asked, after lunch, nibbling cashew nuts from a saucer. Midmore replied that there were great arrears of work to overtake when a man had been put away for so long.
'But you've come back like a giant refreshed… I hope that Daphne'-this was the lady of the twelve and the eight-page letter-'will be with us too. She has misunderstood herself, like so many of us,' the woman murmured, 'but I think eventually …' she flung out her thin little hands. 'However, these are things that each lonely soul must adjust for itself.'
'Indeed, yes,' said Midmore with a deep sigh. The old tricks were sprouting in the old atmosphere like mushrooms in a dung-pit. He passed into an abrupt reverie, shook his head, as though stung by tumultuous memories, and departed without any ceremony of farewell to-catch a mid-afternoon express where a man meets associates who talk horse, and weather as it affects the horse, all the way down. What worried him most was that he had missed a day with the hounds.
He met Rhoda's keen old eyes without flinching; and the drawing-room looked very comfortable that wet evening at tea. After all, his visit to town had not been wholly a failure. He had burned quite a bushel of letters at his flat. A flat-here he reached mechanically towards the worn volumes near the sofa-a flat was a consuming animal. As for Daphne … he opened at random on the words: 'His lordship then did as desired and disclosed a tableau of considerable strength and variety.' Midmore reflected: 'And I used to think… But she wasn't… We were all babblers and skirters together… I didn't babble much-thank goodness-but I skirted.' He turned the pages backward for more Sortes Surteesianae, and read: 'When at length they rose to go to bed it struck each man as he followed his neighbour upstairs, that the man before him walked very crookedly.' He laughed aloud at the fire.
'What about to-morrow?' Rhoda asked, entering with garments over her shoulder. 'It's never stopped raining since you left. You'll be plastered out of sight an' all in five minutes. You'd better wear your next best, 'adn't you? I'm afraid they've shrank. 'Adn't you best try 'em on?'
'Here?' said Midmore.
''Suit yourself. I bathed you when you wasn't larger than a leg o' lamb,' said the ex-ladies'-maid.
'Rhoda, one of these days I shall get a valet, and a married butler.'
'There's many a true word spoke in jest. But nobody's huntin' to-morrow.'
'Why? Have they cancelled the meet?'
'They say it only means slipping and over-reaching in the mud, and they all 'ad enough of that to-day. Charlie told me so just now.'
'Oh!' It seemed that the word of Mr. Sperrit's confidential clerk had weight.
'Charlie came down to help Mr. Sidney lift the gates,' Rhoda continued.
'The floodgates? They are perfectly easy to handle now. I've put in a wheel and a winch.'
'When the brook's really up they must be took clean out on account of the rubbish blockin' 'em. That's why Charlie came down.'
Midmore grunted impatiently. 'Everybody has talked to me about that brook ever since I came here. It's never done anything yet.'
'This 'as been a dry summer. If you care to look now, sir, I'll get you a lantern.'
She paddled out with him into a large wet night. Half-way down the lawn her light was reflected on shallow brown water, pricked through with grass blades at the edges. Beyond that light, the brook was strangling and kicking among hedges and tree-trunks.
'What on earth will happen to the big rose-bed?' was Midmore's first word.
'It generally 'as to be restocked after a flood. Ah!' she raised her lantern. 'There's two garden-seats knockin' against the sun-dial. Now, that won't do the roses any good.'
'This is too absurd. There ought to be some decently thought-out system-for-for dealing with this sort of thing.' He peered into the rushing gloom. There seemed to be no end to the moisture and the racket. In town he had noticed nothing.
'It can't be 'elped,' said Rhoda. 'It's just what it does do once in just so often. We'd better go back.'
All earth under foot was sliding in a thousand liquid noises towards the hoarse brook. Somebody wailed from the house: ''Fraid o' the water! Come 'ere! 'Fraid o' the water!'
'That's Jimmy. Wet always takes 'im that way,' she explained. The idiot charged into them, shaking with terror.
'Brave Jimmy! How brave of Jimmy! Come into the hall. What Jimmy got now?' she crooned. It was a sodden note which ran: 'Dear Rhoda-Mr. Lotten, with whom I rode home this afternoon, told me that if this wet keeps up, he's afraid the fish-pond he built last year, where Coxen's old mill-dam was, will go, as the dam did once before, he says. If it does it's bound to come down the brook. It may be all right, but perhaps you had better look out. C.S.'
'If Coxen's dam goes, that means… I'll 'ave the drawing-room carpet up at once to be on the safe side. The claw-'ammer is in the libery.'
'Wait a minute. Sidney's gates are out, you said?'
'Both. He'll need it if Coxen's pond goes… I've seen it once.'
'I'll just slip down and have a look at Sidney. Light the lantern again, please, Rhoda.'
'You won't get him to stir. He's been there since he was born. But she don't know anything. I'll fetch your waterproof and some top-boots.'
''Fraid o' the water! 'Fraid o' the water!' Jimmy sobbed, pressed against a corner of the hall, his hands to his eyes.
'All right, Jimmy. Jimmy can help play with the carpet,' Rhoda answered, as Midmore went forth into the darkness and the roarings all round. He had never seen such an utterly unregulated state of affairs. There was another lantern reflected on the streaming drive.
'Hi! Rhoda! Did you get my note? I came down to make sure. I thought, afterwards, Jimmy might funk the water!'
'It's me-Miss Sperrit,' Midmore cried. 'Yes, we got it, thanks.'
'You're back, then. Oh, good!.. Is it bad down with you?'
'I'm going to Sidney's to have a look.'
'You won't get him out. 'Lucky I met Bob Lotten. I told him he hadn't any business impounding water for his idiotic trout without rebuilding the dam.'
'How far up is it? I've only been there once.'
'Not more than four miles as the water will come. He says he's opened all the sluices.'
She had turned and fallen into step beside him, her hooded head bowed against the thinning rain. As usual she was humming to herself.
'Why on earth did you come out in this weather?' Midmore asked.
'It was worse when you were in town. The rain's taking off now. If it wasn't for that pond, I wouldn't worry so much. There's Sidney's bell. Come on!' She broke into a run. A cracked bell was jangling feebly down the valley.
'Keep on the road!' Midmore shouted. The ditches were snorting bank-full on either side, and towards the brook-side the fields were afloat and beginning to move in the darkness.
'Catch me going off it! There's his light burning all right.' She halted undistressed at a little rise. 'But the flood's in the orchard. Look!' She swung her lantern to show a front rank of old apple-trees reflected in still, out-lying waters beyond the half-drowned hedge. They could hear above the thud-thud of the gorged floodgates, shrieks in two keys as monotonous as a steam-organ.
'The high one's the pig.' Miss Sperrit laughed.
'All right! I'll get her out. You stay where you are, and I'll see you home afterwards.'
'But the water's only just over the road,' she objected.
'Never mind. Don't you move. Promise?'
'All right. You take my stick, then, and feel for holes in case anything's washed out anywhere. This is a lark!'
Midmore took it, and stepped into the water that moved sluggishly as yet across the farm road which ran to Sidney's front door from the raised and metalled public road. It was half way up to his knees when he knocked. As he looked back Miss Sperrit's lantern seemed to float in mid-ocean.
'You can't come in or the water'll come with you. I've bunged up all the cracks,' Mr. Sidney shouted from within. 'Who be ye?'
'Take me out! Take me out!' the woman shrieked, and the pig from his sty behind the house urgently seconded the motion.
'I'm Midmore! Coxen's old mill-dam is likely to go, they say. Come out!'
'I told 'em it would when they made a fish-pond of it. 'Twasn't ever puddled proper. But it's a middlin' wide valley. She's got room to spread… Keep still, or I'll take and duck you in the cellar!.. You go 'ome, Mus' Midmore, an' take the law o' Mus' Lotten soon's you've changed your socks.'
'Confound you, aren't you coming out?'
'To catch my death o' cold? I'm all right where I be. I've seen it before. But you can take her. She's no sort o' use or sense… Climb out through the window. Didn't I tell you I'd plugged the door-cracks, you fool's daughter?' The parlour window opened, and the woman flung herself into Midmore's arms, nearly knocking him down. Mr. Sidney leaned out of the window, pipe in mouth.
'Take her 'ome,' he said, and added oracularly:
'Two women in one house,
Two cats an' one mouse,
Two dogs an' one bone-
Which I will leave alone.
I've seen it before.' Then he shut and fastened the window.
'A trap! A trap! You had ought to have brought a trap for me. I'll be drowned in this wet,' the woman cried.
'Hold up! You can't be any wetter than you are. Come along!' Midmore did not at all like the feel of the water over his boot-tops.
'Hooray! Come along!' Miss Sperrit's lantern, not fifty yards away, waved cheerily.
The woman threshed towards it like a panic-stricken goose, fell on her knees, was jerked up again by Midmore, and pushed on till she collapsed at Miss Sperrit's feet.
'But you won't get bronchitis if you go straight to Mr. Midmore's house,' said the unsympathetic maiden.
'O Gawd! O Gawd! I wish our 'eavenly Father 'ud forgive me my sins an' call me 'ome,' the woman sobbed. 'But I won't go to 'is 'ouse! I won't.'
'All right, then. Stay here. Now, if we run,' Miss Sperrit whispered to Midmore, 'she'll follow us. Not too fast!'
They set off at a considerable trot, and the woman lumbered behind them, bellowing, till they met a third lantern-Rhoda holding Jimmy's hand. She had got the carpet up, she said, and was escorting Jimmy past the water that he dreaded.
