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At the first movement, while the rest were yawning and stretching themselves, and thinking that battle was not altogether so desirable a thing on a cold morning as it was overnight, Major Buckley was by Charles Hawker's bedside, and, reminding him of his promise, got him out unperceived, helped him to saddle his horse, and started him off to his mother with a note.
It did not appear that Hawker's tongue could wag to his purpose. The girl seemed in her mind to be frantically shuffling her pack of social receipts and finding none of them made to meet this situation. Finally, Hawker said that he thought Hearts at War was a very good play. "Did you?" she said in surprise. "I thought it much like the others."
Independent America is still the cross of my existence; I cannot think of Farmer George without abhorrence; and I never feel more warmly to my own land than when I see the Stars and Stripes, and remember what our empire might have been. The hawker's little book, which I purchased, was a curious mixture.
In the shadows Hawker's expression seemed assassinlike. He glanced furtively down the stage. She was apparently deep in talk with the mother of the children. When Hawker pushed at the old gate, it hesitated because of a broken hinge. A dog barked with loud ferocity and came headlong over the grass. "Hello, Stanley, old man!" cried Hawker.
However resentful he may have been at the time, he got over it in consequence of the reiterated marks of interest shown by his neighbours and all the quarter on account of his supposed ruin, and the hawker's attack passed out of his mind, or probably she might have paid for her boldness with her life.
He had dreaded to hear worse than this. They had kept from him all knowledge of Hawker's forgery on his father, which had been communicated to them by Major Buckley. So that he began to prepare his mind for the reception of George Hawker as a son-in-law, and to force himself to like him. So with shaking palsied hand he wrote:
The last three miles were done as quickly as any part of the journey, and the lawyer rejoiced to find himself before the white gate that led up to Hawker's house. It was not long before they drew up to the door. The storm seemed worse than ever. There was a light in the kitchen, and when Hawker had halloed once or twice, a young man ran out to take the horse. "Is that you, my boy?" said Hawker.
Could you tell me his name, sir?" "Aw, yes, I think I can," was the drawling reply. "He's an artist chap, don't you know! Name of Vernon." "Might it be John Vernon?" "That's it, my man." The name rang in Noah Hawker's ears, and he repeated it to himself as he stumbled downstairs. He was in such a brown study that he forgot to tip the door-keeper who let him into the street.
We examined them, and found them to consist of a hawker's licence, a receipt for the payment for a barrow and donkey, a post-office savings bank book, showing a balance of twenty-six pounds four shillings, and several letters from a correspondent unsigned. They were type-written, in order that the handwriting should not be betrayed, and upon that flimsy paper used in commercial offices.
Just to stimulate the spirit of good fellowship, one man had dexterously annexed a couple of bottles of Pain-killer from a hawker's waggon he stumbled across, and those who were in his vicinity toasted one another and the general run of the diggings in nobblers of it; but it was not a success, and the festive season was even less exhilarating to the revellers than it was to those who had not participated in the "find."
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