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Updated: May 13, 2025
'Clarence! whispered a voice from the sofa. 'Yes, father? The silver-haired old man gasped for utterance. 'I've lost my little veto, he said, brokenly, at length. 'Where did you see it last? asked Clarence, ever practical. 'It's that fellow Rackstraw! cried the old man, in feeble rage. 'That bounder Rackstraw! He's the man behind it all. The robber! 'Clarence! It was his mother who spoke.
Where Mr Lloyd George referred to the House of Lords as blithering backwoodsmen and asinine anachronisms, Mr Rackstraw scorned to be so guarded in his speech. He did not mince his words. His attitude towards a member of the peerage was that of the terrier to the perambulating cat. It was at a charity bazaar that Isabel and Clarence first met.
It all takes so long to tell. The omission of half would shorten the tale and spare the reader so much. What a very small book the History of the World would be if all the events were left out! It was a fine Sunday morning in Sapps Court, and our young friend Michael Rackstraw was not attending public worship. Not that it was his custom to do so.
They wallow in the last with joy, and practise the first with impunity. If they can get a chance to run over you, they'll do it! Trust them for that! Nevertheless, so hopeless would this butcher's case be if his victim went to a lawyer, that it was worth having a try at it afore he done that so Mr. Rackstraw put it, later.
Sir Joseph Porter was personated by Aleck McCormick, a son of Commissioner McCormick, aged twelve; Miss Betty Ordway, aged eleven, was Josephine; Miss Mary Wilson, aged ten, was charming as Little Buttercup; Willie Wilson, aged eleven, was Captain Corcoran; Dick Wallack, aged eleven, was a good Ralph Rackstraw, and Daisy Ricketts, demurely attired as Aunt Ophelia, was primly "splendid."
Everything depends on you. With you keeping goal like mother used to make it, Houndsditch are safe. Otherwise they are completely in the bouillon. It's one thing or the other. It's all up to you. Win, and there's four thousand pounds waiting for you above what you share with the others. Clarence waved his hand deprecatingly. 'Mr Rackstraw, he said, 'keep your dross. I care nothing for money.
Now, this old lady, though she was but a charwoman depending for professional engagements rather on the goodwill for auld lang syne of one or two families in Chiswick, of prodigious opulence in her eyes, yet was regarded by Sapps Court, when she visited her niece, Mrs. Rackstraw, or Ragstroar, Michael's mother, as distinctly superior.
In fact, had her niece Ann never married Daniel Rackstraw, she and her Ann, that is would have done much better by Michael and his sisters.
She was struck, not with any truth in what he said, but with the evident truthfulness of the man himself. Right or wrong, there was that about him a certain radiance of conviction which certainly was not about Mr. Rackstraw.
Little remains to be said, but I am going to say it, if it snows. I am at my best in these tender scenes of idyllic domesticity. Four years have passed. Once more we are in the Rackstraw home. A lady is coming down the stairs, leading by the hand her little son. It is Isabel. The years have dealt lightly with her.
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