Part 25 (2/2)
I destroyed the book: one can't be too careful, with children about the house.”
”I a.s.sure you, sir--”
”I don't suggest for a moment that you would be guilty of any such expressions as Shakespeare uses. We live in a different age.
Still, poetry, as such, gives me no pleasure. I believe very firmly, Benny--as you may have gathered--in another world, and that we shall be held strictly to account there for all we do or say in this one.”
”Yes, sir.”
”If you will wait a moment, I have a note to write. You will deliver it, please, to Mrs. Trevarthen on your way home. But first I wish you to walk up to the school and fetch Master Clem.”
Mr. Benny, absorbed in poetical composition, had either failed to hear the explosion at the gate, or had heard and paid no heed to it. He wondered why Master Clem should need to be fetched from school.
”And Miss Myra?” he suggested.
”Miss Myra has been sent to her room in disgrace,” said Mr. Sam.
Mr. Benny asked no further questions, but pocketed the letter which Mr.
Sam indited, and fetched his hat. As it happened, however, at the gate he met Hester leading Clem by the hand; and receiving the child from her, handed him over to Susannah.
”You are going home?” he asked, as he rejoined Hester at the gate.
They were already warm friends.
”I am on my way. And you?”
”We'll cross the ferry together, if you'll wait a moment while I deliver a note at Mrs. Trevarthen's.”
Mrs. Trevarthen was at her door. She took the note, and, before opening it, looked at Hester curiously.
”You know what's inside of it, I reckon?” she said, turning to Mr. Benny.
”Not a word.”
”My eyes are bad,” said Mrs. Trevarthen, who, as a matter of fact, could not read.
Mr. Benny knew this, and knew also that Mrs. Trevarthen as a rule employed Aunt Butson to write her few letters and decipher the few that came to her.
”The light's bad for the time of year,” he said. ”Shall I read it for you, missus?”
”No; let _her_ read it,” answered the old woman, holding out the letter to Hester. Hester took it and read--
”Madam,--This is to inform you that the rent of my cottage, at present occupied by you on a monthly tenancy at 9 pounds per annum, will from the first of next month be raised to 15 pounds per annum; also that the tenancy will not, after that date, carry with it a permission to let lodgings.--Yours truly, S. ROSEWARNE.”
In the silence that followed Mrs. Trevarthen fixed her bright beady eyes steadily on Hester. ”You've driven forth my son from me,” she said at length, ”and you're driving forth my lodger, and there's n.o.bbut the almshouse left. Never a day's worry has my son Tom given to me, and never a ha'p'orth o' harm have we done to you. A foreigner you are and a stranger; the lad made me promise not to curse 'ee, and I won't. But get out of my sight, and the Lord deliver us from temptation!--Amen.”
Poor Mr. Benny, who had written half a dozen enthusiastic verses on the opening of the new school, crushed them down in his pocket. He had been so proud of them, too!
They ran--
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