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Ruby, though she well remembered Mrs Pipkin's threats, was minded to try her chance at her aunt's door. Sir Felix was of opinion that he could make a preferable arrangement for her; and as Ruby was not at once amenable to his arguments he had thought that a little gentle force might avail him. He had therefore dragged Ruby into the passage. The unfortunate one!
She looked up into Mrs Pipkin's face with imploring eyes. Surely on such an occasion as this an aunt would not expect that her niece should be a prisoner and a slave. 'Have it been put in writing, Sir Felix Carbury? demanded Mrs Pipkin with cruel gravity.
Cadge wondered whether she, too, was to have a vacation, after her years of drudgery. Cadge worked furiously, his rage uncooled by the waters of the Catnip which flowed through his shoes. He had discarded coat, vest, and hat, and was hurling rocks with the strength of a maddened giant, clear across the stream. What splendid muscles he had! A tier or two of Mrs. Pipkin's wall was already down.
"Well, I'm back, and it looks like it was for good and all, but I ain't got no money, and I don't see no way to get any unless I rob somebody. And the law won't let me do that. The trouble is that I'm up to my gunwales in debt." "In debt!" To Miss Pipkin's mind there was no greater calamity in the world than to be in debt. She, too, had suffered a like fate many years ago. "Yes. In bad, too.
At length, Maria Lobbs being more strenuously urged by the love-worn little man, turned away her head, and whispered her cousin to say, or at all events Kate did say, that she felt much honoured by Mr. Pipkin's addresses; that her hand and heart were at her father's disposal; but that nobody could be insensible to Mr. Pipkin's merits.
Not until the first star came out and the owls began to hoot along the Catnip did he declare himself satisfied with the day's work and proceed homeward to supper. Widow Pipkin's wall was half finished. Not until Saturday was the patient father able to enlist once more the services of his offspring, for, "What if they are your own kids!" retorted Mrs. Cadge from her wash-board.
'Now that you are going to leave me, Paul, is there any advice you can give me, as to what I shall do next? I have given up every friend in the world for you. I have no home. Mrs Pipkin's room here is more my home than any other spot on the earth. I have all the world to choose from, but no reason whatever for a choice. I have my property. What shall I do with it, Paul?
But on the Tuesday, when Ruby went up to her room to deck herself, a bright idea as to a better precaution struck Mrs Pipkin's mind. Ruby had been careless, had left her lover's scrap of a note in an old pocket when she went out with the children, and Mrs Pipkin knew all about it. It was nine o'clock when Ruby went upstairs, and then Mrs Pipkin locked both the front door and the area gate.
But his own selfish coldness was hateful to him when he thought that there was nothing to be done but to leave her desolate and lonely in Mrs Pipkin's lodgings. During the next three or four days, while the preparations for the dinner and the election were going on, he was busy in respect to the American railway.
Nathaniel Pipkin's retiring disposition, nervous temperament, and most particularly diminutive income, should from this day forth, have dared to aspire to the hand and heart of the only daughter of the fiery old Lobbs of old Lobbs, the great saddler, who could have bought up the whole village at one stroke of his pen, and never felt the outlay old Lobbs, who was well known to have heaps of money, invested in the bank at the nearest market town who was reported to have countless and inexhaustible treasures hoarded up in the little iron safe with the big keyhole, over the chimney-piece in the back parlour and who, it was well known, on festive occasions garnished his board with a real silver teapot, cream-ewer, and sugar-basin, which he was wont, in the pride of his heart, to boast should be his daughter's property when she found a man to her mind.
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