<h2><SPAN name="page158"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>XVII.</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">This</span> visit was but the first of
many from Mr. Butson: until after a very few months he came as
regularly as Uncle Isaac himself. He recovered his old
appearance a little at a time, one new article of clothing coming
after another; but he seemed to have no luck in his quest for a
job—or very little. What small success he found was
ever brought to naught by the captiousness—even the
rudeness—of those in direction, or their unreasonable
exactions in the way of work. To simple Nan May he seemed
the most shamefully ill-used of exemplars.</p>
<p>Johnny and Bessy were less enthusiastic. Bessy said
nothing, but avoided Mr. Butson as much as possible, sitting in
the shop when he was in the back parlour. Johnny went for
walks in the evening, and grumbled, wondering why his mother
encouraged this stranger—“cadging suppers,” as
he uncivilly put it. Nan May was hurt at the expression,
and feared that the workshop was spoiling Johnny’s
manners.</p>
<p>News came from Bob Smallpiece that his poor old mother was
dead at last, and buried in the high <SPAN name="page159"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>churchyard where Johnny’s
grandfather lay. Also that Bob would come to London now,
for a visit, at the first opportunity. Now it was a fact
that Bob Smallpiece, for a year or two, had been inclined to
marry; though it was a thing he might never have thought of if he
had seen less of Mrs. May. But he was a man of practical
temperament, making up in his commonsense for a great lack of
agility of mind. There were certain obstacles, he
saw—obstacles that must remove of themselves or not at
all. First, his old mother. It would not seem fair to
bring a wife to nurse a bedridden old woman—at anyrate it
was scarce an attraction. More, the old woman herself had a
dread of it. She feared the chance of being thought a
burden by a newcomer, and would often beg Bob not to marry till
she were gone; sometimes with the assurance that she would not be
long now. Then—to say nothing of old Mr.
May—there had been the children, who, familiar as he was
with them, afflicted him, in this particular matter alone, with
an odd shyness. Again, when the old man died, the May
family must needs come to London, if only that Johnny might go to
his trade; while Bob Smallpiece must stay at the forest.
But he was ever patient and philosophical.</p>
<p>Now that some difficulties were gone, another arose. Nan
May, all unaware of his slow designs, was settled in London, with
ties of business. But perhaps, after all, the business was
not flourishing—might be a burden <SPAN name="page160"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>better laid
down. And as to Johnny—he was earning wages of some
sort now, and at most his apprenticeship would be out when he was
twenty-one.</p>
<p>Bob Smallpiece had reserved one piece of news till he could
deliver it in person. This was that at last he had let the
cottage, at three-and-sixpence a week, to a decent woodman and
his wife. And so, wearing a new neckcloth, and with three
weeks’ rent in his pocket, Bob Smallpiece appeared in
Harbour Lane one spring morning, a vast astonishment of leather
and velveteen, such as had never before brought a Blackwall
housewife to attention in the midst of her dusting and
sweeping. No name was painted over the shop, but no
stranger could pass its red and blue and green without stopping
to look; least of all Bob Smallpiece, in quest of the place
itself. Nan May saw him, and ran to the door; and Bessy,
with her crutch and her book, met him half-way to the
back-parlour, gay and laughing.</p>
<p>Bob regarded the well-filled shop, the neat room, with some
mixture of feelings. Prosperity was excellent in its own
way, but it made the new obstacle more formidable. Further,
Mrs. May, though she was pleased to hear that the cottage was
let, and grateful enough for his trouble in letting it, was not
so overjoyed as she might have been if the weekly
three-and-sixpence had come at a time of pinching; more, she
handled the half-sovereign almost as disrespectfully as the
sixpence, and <SPAN name="page161"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
161</span>dropped it into a part of her purse where it fell among
other gold. Poor Bob saw the obstacle not only bigger, but
double. Not merely was Nan May tied to London by her trade
and by Johnny’s apprenticeship, but she was a well-to-do
tradeswoman, with whom a poor forest-keeper could expect no more
than respectful acquaintance. He half feared she might even
offer to pay him for his trouble with the cottage, and grew red
and hot with the apprehension. But this affliction was
spared him though Nan did venture to ask if his care of her
property had involved out-of-pocket expenses; a suggestion which
Bob repudiated desperately.</p>
<p>Neither Bessy nor her mother could understand why their
visitor’s manner was so constrained and awkward, nor why he
announced that he “must be going” after sitting for
twenty minutes. But that, of course, was not to be
allowed. Johnny would be home in half an hour, and there
would be some dinner. So Bob Smallpiece, who wanted to get
away somewhere by himself and think things over, remained, and
made his part of the conversation as well as he could.</p>
<p>Johnny came, smudgy and hungry, surprised to find that his old
friend, big man as he was, seemed to be scarcely so big as when
he saw him last, eighteen months ago. For Johnny himself
was grown surprisingly, and seemed like to stand as high as Bob
Smallpiece’s shoulder by his seventeenth birthday.
Bob found more <SPAN name="page162"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
162</span>to talk of now that Johnny had come, and he ate even
better than Johnny himself, for nothing spoiled the
keeper’s appetite. When could they all come to the
forest again for a day? Nan May shook her head. She
had no days free but Sundays—she might come some day,
perhaps; some Sunday in the vague future. But Johnny might
get a day off at a slack time, and he and Bessy would come.
Bessy brimmed over with delight at the prospect. Every day,
since she had left it, the forest had seemed a more wonderful and
a more distant dream; every day some forgotten circumstance, some
moment of delight, some long-dead bunch of wildflowers, trifles
all, and daily commonplaces once, had come back to lend one more
touch to the fairy picture her memory made ever more radiant as
the simple facts fell farther into the past. And Johnny,
little burdened with pictures of fancy (for he put his
imagination away from him now, as a childishness unworthy an
engineer), nevertheless thought that as soon as a certain large
job was completed at Maidment and Hurst’s the gaffer would
doubtless let him lose a day. So it was settled. And
when Johnny hurried off to his work, Bob Smallpiece took the
opportunity to leave too; for he must go and see his sister, he
said.</p>
<p>He went, and saw his sister, and took tea with her; and his
sister found him even duller than Nan May had done. For in
truth Bob Smallpiece was in a mire of <SPAN name="page163"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>doubt and hesitation. In a
frame of mind so foreign to his simple habit he grew fretful, and
left things to chance and impulse. With no definite design
in the world, he wandered back to Harbour Lane after tea, and
there met, for the first time, Uncle Isaac and Mr. Butson.
This company proved uncongenial; and indeed the distinguished
Butson was indisposed to be cordial with an Essex bumpkin in a
velveteen uniform. So, though Nan May was all kindness, Bob
Smallpiece soon took himself off to the train, where his savage
moodiness might not be seen. The whole thing was past hope
now; though he might have found it hard to tell precisely what
had occurred since midday to worsen the look of affairs.</p>
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