“Go along. How could I?”
“Might have been managed, Polly,” he answered
musingly. “Never mind, better luck next
time. What you’ve got to do, my angel, is
to find where that lady lives—the one that
sat next our friend, you know, not the foreigner.
Keep your eyes open, Polly, and be smart, and if you
tell me where she lives then I shall have something
more to say to you. It’s between me and
you, my beauty. You just bring me that little
bit of information and you won’t regret it.”
MR. PARISH PURSUES A BROUGHAM
Christopher Parish lived at home, that is to say,
he was not a lodger under an alien roof, like the
majority of such young men in London, but abode with
his own people—his mother, his elder brother,
and his brother’s wife. They had a decent
little house in Kennington, managed—rather
better than such houses generally are—by
Mrs. Parish the younger, who was childless, and thus
able to devote herself to what she called “hyjene,”
a word constantly on her lips and on those of her
husband. Mr. Theodore Parish, aged about five-and-thirty,
was an audit clerk in the offices of a railway company,
and he loved to expatiate on the hardship of his position,
which lay in the fact that he could not hope for a
higher income than one hundred and fifty pounds, and
this despite the trying and responsible nature of
the duties he discharged. After dwelling upon
this injustice he would add, with peculiar gravity,
that really in certain moods one all but inclined
to give a hearing to the arguments of socialistic
agitators. In other moods, and these more frequent,
Mr. Parish indulged in native optimism, tempered by
anxiety in matters of “hyjene.” He
was much preoccupied with the laundry question.
“Now, are you quite sure, Ada, that this laundress
is a conscientious woman? Does she manage her
establishment on modern principles? I beg you
will make a personal inspection. If ever a laundress
refuses to let you make a personal inspection be sure
there is something wrong. Just think how vital
it is, this washing question. We send our clothes,
our personal garments, to a strange house to be mixed
with—”
And so on at great length, Mrs. Theodore listening
patiently and approvingly. With equal solicitude
did they discuss the food upon their table.
“Theo, I shall have to change our baker.”
“Ah, indeed! Why?”
“I hardly like to tell you, but perhaps I had
better. I have only just found out that a sewer-trap
quite close to his shop gives out a most offensive
affluvia, especially in this hot weather.
The air must be full of germs. I hardly know
whet her we ought to eat even this loaf. What
do you think?”
Every one’s dinner was spoilt. Theodore
declared that really, when one considered the complicated
and expensive machinery of local government, if sewer
traps and affluvias were allowed to exist in
the immediate neighbourhood of bakers’ shops,
why it really made one inclined to think and ask whether
there might not be something in the arguments of the
Socialists.
