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Updated: May 14, 2025
"Yes, he did; and he had them all before that one," said the girl, pointing to the letter from Reginald. "But he's never been for these, and I didn't dare not to keep them for him. Please, sir, look over it this time." Horace was too agitated to heed her tears or entreaties. He rushed from the house with the letters in his hand, and made straight for the Shucklefords' door.
The Shucklefords such was the name of this amiable family were comparatively recent sojourners in Dull Street. They had come there six years previously, on the death of Mr Shuckleford, a respectable wharfinger, who had saved up money enough to leave his wife a small annuity.
Mrs Cruden looked at Reginald, Horace looked at Reginald, but Reginald looked straight before him and bit his lips and breathed hard. Whereupon Horace rose and said, "We think it very kind of you to drink our healths; and I am sure we are much obliged to you all for doing so." Which said, the Shucklefords' party broke up, and the Crudens went home.
"It'll only be one this winter, I'm afraid," said Waterford, "as the Megsons have gone. It's a Miss Crisp, Cruden, a friend of Booms's, who " "Whom I met the other night at the Shucklefords'?" said Horace. Booms answered the question with such an agonised sigh that both his companions burst out laughing. "Dear old Booms can tell you more about her than I can," said Waterford.
It was like a snatch of the old life to find his fingers once more laid caressingly on the notes of a piano; and as he touched them and began to play, the Shucklefords, the Rocket, "Omega," all faded from his thoughts, and he was lost in his music. What a piano it was! Tinny and cracked and out of tune. The music was in the boy's soul, and it mattered comparatively little.
"Was it to some old schoolfellow?" "No, mother," said Reginald, in a tone which meant, "I would rather you did not ask me." And Mrs Cruden did not ask. "I think," said she, as they stopped at their door "I almost think, boys, we ought to return the Shucklefords' call. It's only nine o'clock. We might go in for a few minutes. I know you don't care about it; but we must not be rude, you know.
The tinkle of a piano upstairs, and the sound of Sam's voice, audible even in the street, announced only too unmistakably that the family was at home, and a collection of pot hats and shawls in the hall betrayed the appalling fact, when it was too late to retreat, that the Shucklefords had visitors! Mrs Shuckleford came out and received them with open arms.
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