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"I tell you what will make him sick, though, and that is your having milled with Rand-Brown. It's a job he'd have liked to have taken on himself." Into the story at this point comes the narrative of Charles Mereweather Cook, aged fourteen, a day-boy. Cook arrived at the school on the tenth of March, at precisely nine o'clock, in a state of excitement. He said there was a row on in the town.
The cook on her part had taken such a fancy to Clare that she did not want him set to garden-work; she would have him at once into the house, and begin training him for a page. Now Miss Tempest was greatly desiring the same thing, but in dread of what the cook would say, and was delighted, therefore, when the first suggestion of it came from Mrs. Mereweather herself.
The only obstacle in the cook's eyes was that same long, spectral dog. The boy could not be such a fool, however, she said, not being a lover of animals as let a wretched beast like that come betwixt him and a good situation! "It's all right, Clare," said Mrs. Mereweather, entering her queendom so radiant within that she could not repress the outshine of her pleasure.
Better clothes make not a few seem commoner. When Mrs. Mereweather came back from the town the first day, she found that the ragged boy had got her kitchen and scullery as nice and clean, and everything as ready to her hand, as if she had got her work done before she went, which the omnibus would not permit.
William Fowler, a banker, accepted the task of handing over the representation of a Liberal and Radical borough to a Tory, and duly succeeded in giving the seat to Mr. Mereweather, a very reputable Tory lawyer. Mr. Bradlaugh polled 1,766, thus adding another 133 voters to those who had polled for him in the previous February.
Mereweather had all this time been turning over the question of what was to be done with the strange boy. They agreed it was too bad that anyone willing to work should be prevented from earning even a day's victuals by the bad temper of a gardener. But his mistress did not want to send the man away. She had found him scrupulously honest, as is many a bad-tempered man, and she did not like changes.
But when about a thing, he forgot even his obligation to do it, in the glad endeavour to do it well. As the days went on, Mrs. Mereweather was not once disappointed in him. He did everything with such a will that both she and the housemaid were always ready to spare and help him.
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