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"So you see you'll have to give your hundred," Mrs Lovatt continued. "You can't do otherwise after that." There was a pause. "I won't give it," said Peake. "I've said I won't, and I won't." He could think of no argument. To repeat that Eardley's bankruptcy would cost him dear seemed trivial. Nevertheless, the absence of any plausible argument served only to steel his resolution.
"I do like a bit of good music at service, and Best himself couldn't make anything of that old wheezer we've got now." "Is that the reason we see you so seldom at chapel?" Mrs Lovatt asked tartly. "I was there last Sunday morning." "And before that, Uncle Peake?" She smiled sweetly on him.
Enoch Lovatt treated her with the respect due to an equal who had more than once proved herself capable of insisting on independence and equal rights in the most pugnacious manner. "Well, auntie," said Peake, "I've won eleven and fourpence to-night, and my wife's collared it all from me." He laughed with glee.
"Glad to see you, Mr Blackhurst," he began, a little awkwardly. "You know, I suppose, what I've come for, Mr Peake," said the old man, in that rich, deep, oily voice of which Mrs Lovatt, in one of those graphic phrases that came to her sometimes, had once remarked that it must have been "well basted in the cooking." "I suppose I do," Peake answered diffidently.
"Eh, you should be ashamed!" said Mrs Lovatt, embracing the company in a glance of reproof which rested last on Enoch Lovatt. She was a Methodist of the strictest, and her husband happened to be chapel steward. "If I had my way with those cards I'd soon play with them; I'd play with them at the back of the fire. Now you were asking for news when I came in, Uncle Peake.
I think that was just splendid!" "Well, well!" exclaimed Peake, genuinely amazed at this proof of religious vitality. "Who are the subscribers?" "I'm one," said Enoch Lovatt, quietly, but with unconcealed pride. "And I'm another," said Mrs Lovatt. "Bless you, I should have been ashamed of myself if I hadn't responded to such an appeal.
They were a' dark fearsome men in their loves and hates. This man married late in life, he had two sons, Angus of Prince Albert an' your Donald here. He never saw his father alive. The Lovatt estates have been restored by law; but the line is bred out, down to a little old lady whose waitin' me up at my Mission on Saskatchewan. She came huntin' heirs.
And the curious thing was that Alderman Keats never again mentioned his gout. James Peake and his wife, and Enoch Lovatt, his wife's half-sister's husband, and Randolph Sneyd, the architect, were just finishing the usual Saturday night game of solo whist in the drawing-room of Peake's large new residence at Hillport, that unique suburb of Bursley.
"'Tis long since his lordship favoured us with messages. Where is Sir Jeoffry, Lovatt?" "In the dining-hall," answered the servant. "He went there but a moment past, Mistress." The chaplain gave such a start as made him drop his shovel hat. "Mistress!"
She shook hands with him warmly, her face beaming goodwill, and then she kissed her half-sister and Ella, and told Sneyd that she had seen him that morning in the market-place. Mrs Peake and Mrs Lovatt differed remarkably in character and appearance, though this did not prevent them from being passionately attached to one another.
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