The waiter nodded briskly.
“Upon my word, sir,” he said, approvingly,
“I think the little gentleman will know how
to eat it.”
“I’ll give you a dinner, Georgey,”
repeated Robert—“some stewed eels,
a little Julienne, a dish of cutlets, a bird, and
a pudding. What do you say to that, Georgey?”
“I don’t think the young gentleman will
object to it when he sees it, sir,” said the
waiter. “Eels, Julienne, cutlets, bird,
pudding—I’ll go and tell the cook,
sir. What time, sir?”
“Well, we’ll say six, and Master Georgey
will get to his new school by bedtime. You can
contrive to amuse the child for this afternoon, I dare
say. I have some business to settle, and sha’n’t
be able to take him out. I shall sleep here to-night.
Good-by, Georgey; take care of yourself and try and
get your appetite in order against six o’clock.”
Robert Audley left the boy in charge of the idle waiter,
and strolled down to the water side, choosing that
lonely bank which leads away under the moldering walls
of the town toward the little villages beside the
narrowing river.
He had purposely avoided the society of the child,
and he walked through the light drifting snow till
the early darkness closed upon him.
He went back to the town, and made inquiries at the
station about the trains for Dorsetshire.
“I shall start early to-morrow morning,”
he thought, “and see George’s father before
nightfall. I will tell him all—all
but the interest which I take in—in the
suspected person, and he shall decide what is next
to be done.”
Master Georgey did very good justice to the dinner
which Robert had ordered. He drank Bass’
pale ale to an extent which considerably alarmed his
entertainer, and enjoyed himself amazingly, showing
an appreciation of roast pheasant and bread-sauce
which was beyond his years. At eight o’clock
a fly was brought out for his accommodation, and he
departed in the highest spirits, with a sovereign
in his pocket, and a letter from Robert to Mr. Marchmont,
inclosing a check for the young gentleman’s
outfit.
“I’m glad I’m going to have new
clothes,” he said, as he bade Robert good-by;
“for Mrs. Plowson has mended the old ones ever
so many times. She can have them now, for Billy.”
“Who’s Billy?” Robert asked, laughing
at the boy’s chatter.
“Billy is poor Matilda’s little boy.
He’s a common boy, you know. Matilda was
common, but she—”
But the flyman snapping his whip at this moment, the
old horse jogged off, and Robert Audley heard no more
of Matilda.
COMING TO A STANDSTILL.
Mr. Harcourt Talboys lived in a prim, square, red-brick
mansion, within a mile of a little village called
Grange Heath, in Dorsetshire. The prim, square,
red-brick mansion stood in the center of prim, square
grounds, scarcely large enough to be called a park,
too large to be called anything else—so
neither the house nor the grounds had any name, and
the estate was simply designated Squire Talboys’.
