Sturdy and Strong Part 11

"I am sure we shall get on well together," Mrs. Andrews went on. "I shall never forget that you were a friend to my boy when he was friendless in London."

"It's all the t'other way, ma'am," Bill said eagerly; "don't you go for to think it. Why, just look what George has done for me! There was I, a-hanging about the Garden, pretty nigh starving, and sure to get quadded sooner or later; and now here I am living decent, and earning a good wage; and he has taught me to read, ma'am, and to know about things, and aint been ashamed of me, though I am so different to what he is. I tell you, ma'am, there aint no saying what a friend he's been to me, and I aint done nothing for him as I can see."

"Well, Bill, you perhaps both owe each other something," Mrs. Andrews said: "and I owe you something as well as my son, for George tells me that it is to your self-denial as well as to his own that I owe this delightful surprise of finding a home ready for me; and now," she went on, seeing how confused and unhappy Bill looked, "I think you two ought to make tea this evening, for you are the hosts, and I am the guest. In future it will be my turn."

"All right, mother! you sit down in this armchair; Bill, you do the rashers, and I will pour the water into the pot and then toast the m.u.f.fins."

Bill was at home now; such culinary efforts as they had hitherto attempted had generally fallen to his share, as he had a greater apt.i.tude for the work than George had, and a dish of bacon fried to a turn was soon upon the table.

Mrs. Andrews had been watching Bill closely, and was pleased with the result of her observation. Bill was indeed greatly improved in appearance since he had first made George's acquaintance. His cheeks had filled out, and his face had lost its hardness of outline; the quick, restless, hunted expression of his eyes had nearly died out, and he no longer looked as if constantly on the watch to dodge an expected cuff; his face had always had a large share of that merriment and love of fun which seem the common portion of the London arabs, and seldom desert them under all their hardships; but it was a happier and brighter spirit now, and had altogether lost its reckless character. A similar change is always observable among the waifs picked up off the streets by the London refuges after they have been a few months on board a training ship.

When all was ready the party sat down to their meal. Mrs. Andrews undertook the pouring out of the tea, saying that although she was a guest, as the only lady present she should naturally preside. George cut the bread, and Bill served the bacon. The m.u.f.fins were piled on a plate in the front of the fire as a second course.

It was perhaps the happiest meal that any of the three had ever sat down to. Mrs. Andrews was not only happy at finding so comfortable a home prepared for her, but was filled with a deep feeling of pride and thankfulness at the evidence of the love, steadiness, and self-sacrifice of her son. George was delighted at having his mother with him again, and at seeing her happiness and contentment at the home he had prepared for her. Bill was delighted because George was so, and he was moreover vastly relieved at finding Mrs. Andrews less terrible than he had depicted her.

After tea was cleared away they talked together for a while, and then Bill--feeling with instinctive delicacy that George and his mother would like to talk together for a time--said he should take a turn for an hour, and on getting outside the house executed so wild a war-dance of satisfaction that it was fortunate it was dark, or Laburnum Villas would have been astonished and scandalized at the spectacle.

"I like your friend Bill very much," Mrs. Andrews said when she was alone with George. "I was sure from what you told me that he must be a good-hearted lad; but brought up as he has been, poor boy, I feared a little that he would scarcely be a desirable companion in point of manners. Of course, as you say, his grammar is a little peculiar; but his manners are wonderfully quiet and nice, considering all."

"Look what an example he's had, mother," George laughed; "but really he has taken great pains ever since he knew that you were coming home. He has been asking me to tell him of anything he does which is not right, especially about eating and that sort of thing. You see he had never used a fork till we came down here, and he made me show him directly how it should be held and what to do with it. It has been quite funny to me to see him watching me at meals, and doing exactly the same."

"And you have taught him to read, George?"

"Yes, mother."

"And something of better things, George?" she asked.

"Yes, mother, as much as I could. He didn't know anything when I met him; but he goes to church with me now regularly, and says his prayers every night, and I can tell you he thinks a lot of it. More, I think, than I ever did," he added honestly.

"Perhaps he has done you as much good as you have done him, George."

"Perhaps he has, mother; yes, I think so. When you see a chap so very earnest for a thing you can't help being earnest yourself; besides, you know, mother," he went on a little shyly, for George had not been accustomed to talk much of these matters with his mother--"you see when one's down in the world and hard up, and not quite sure about the next meal, and without any friend, one seems to think more of these things than one does when one is jolly at school with other fellows."

"Perhaps so, George, though I do not know why it should be so, for the more blessings one has the more reason for love and grat.i.tude to the giver. However, dear, I think we have both reason to be grateful now, have we not?"

"That we have, mother. Only think of the difference since we said good-by to each other last summer! Now here you are strong and well again, and we are together and don't mean to be separated, and I have got a place I like and have a good chance of getting on in, and we have got a pretty little house all to ourselves, and you will be able to live a little like a lady again,--I mean as you were accustomed to,--and everything is so nice. Oh, mother, I am sure we have every reason to be grateful!"

"We have indeed, George, and I even more than you, in the proofs you have given me that my son is likely to turn out all that even I could wish him."

Bill's hour was a very long one.

"You must not go out of an evening, Bill, to get out of our way," Mrs.

Andrews said when he returned, "else I shall think that I am in your way. It was kind of you to think of it the first evening, and George and I are glad to have had a long talk together, but in future I hope you won't do it. You see there will be lots to do of an evening. There will be your lessons and George's, for I hope now that he's settled he will give up an hour or two every evening to study. Not Latin and Greek, George," she added, smiling, seeing a look of something like dismay in George's face, "that will be only a waste of time to you now, but a study of such things as may be useful to you in your present work and in your future life, and a steady course of reading really good books by good authors. Then perhaps when you have both done your work, you will take it by turns to read out loud while I do my sewing. Then perhaps some day, who knows, if we get on very flourishingly, after we have furnished our sitting room, we may be able to indulge in the luxury of a piano again and have a little music of an evening."

"That will be jolly, mother. Why, it will be really like old times, when you used to sing to me!"

Mrs. Andrews' eyes filled with tears at the thought of the old times, but she kept them back bravely, so as not to mar, even for a moment, the happiness of this first evening. So they chatted till nine o'clock, when they had supper. After it was over Mrs. Andrews left the room for a minute and went upstairs and opened her box, and returned with a Bible in her hand.

"I think, boys," she said, "we ought to end this first happy evening in our new home by thanking G.o.d together for his blessings."

"I am sure we ought, mother," George said, and Bill's face expressed his approval.

So Mrs. Andrews read a chapter, and then they knelt and thanked G.o.d for his blessings, and the custom thus begun was continued henceforth in No. 8 Laburnum Villas.

Hitherto George and his companion had found things much more pleasant at the works than they had expected. They had, of course, had princ.i.p.ally to do with Bob Grimstone; still there were many other men in the shop, and at times, when his bench was standing idle while some slight alterations or adjustment of machinery were made, they were set to work with others. Men are quick to see when boys are doing their best, and, finding the lads intent upon their work and given neither to idleness nor skylarking, they seldom had a sharp word addressed to them. But after Mrs. Andrews had come home they found themselves addressed in a warmer and more kindly manner by the men. Bob Grimstone had told two or three of his mates of the sacrifices the boys had made to save up money to make a home for the mother of one of them when she came out of hospital. They were not less impressed than he had been, and the story went the round of the workshops and even came to the ears of the foreman, and there was not a man there but expressed himself in warm terms of surprise and admiration that two lads should for six months have stinted themselves of food in order to lay by half their pay for such a purpose.

"There's precious few would have done such a thing," one of the older workmen said, "not one in a thousand; why, not one chap in a hundred, even when he's going to be married, will stint himself like that to make a home for the gal he is going to make his wife, so as to start housekeeping out of debt; and as to doing it for a mother, where will you find 'em? In course a man ought to do as much for his mother as for the gal who is agoing to be his wife, seeing how much he owes her; but how many does it, that's what I says, how many does it?"

So after that the boys were surprised to find how many of the men, when they met them at the gate, would give them a kindly nod or a hearty, "Good-morning, young chaps!"

A day or two after Mrs. Andrews had settled in Laburnum Villas she went up to town and called upon a number of shops, asking for work. As she was able to give an excellent reference to the firm for whom she had worked at Croydon she succeeded before the end of the week in obtaining millinery work for a firm in St. Paul's Churchyard, and as she had excellent taste and was very quick at her needle she was soon able to earn considerably more than she had done at Croydon.

The three were equally determined that they would live as closely as possible until the sitting-rooms were furnished, and by strict management they kept within the boys' pay, Mrs. Andrews' earnings being devoted to the grand purpose. The small articles were bought first, and each week there was great congratulation and pleasure as some new article was placed in the rooms. Then there was a pause for some time, then came the chairs, then after an interval a table, and lastly the carpet. This crowning glory was not attained until the end of July. After this they moved solemnly into the sitting-room, agreeing that the looking-gla.s.s, chiffonier, and sofa could be added at a more gradual rate, and that the whole of Mrs. Andrews' earnings need no longer be devoted.

"Now, boys," Mrs. Andrews said on that memorable evening, "I want you in future, when you come in, to change your working clothes before you come in here to your teas. So long as we lived in the kitchen I have let things go on, but I think there's something in the old saying, 'Company clothes, company manners,' and I think it is good when boys come in that they should lay aside their heavy-nailed shoes and their working clothes. Certainly such boots and clothes are apt to render people clumsy in their movements, and the difference of walk which you observe between men of different cla.s.ses arises very greatly from the clumsy, heavy boots which workingmen must wear."

"But what does it matter, mother?" George urged, for it seemed to him that it would be rather a trouble to change his clothes every day.

"These little things don't make any real difference to a man."

"Not any vital difference, George, but a real difference for all that. Manners make the man, you know! that is, they influence strangers and people who only know him in connection with business. If two men apply together for a place the chances are strongly in favor of the man with the best manners getting it. Besides, my boy, I think the observance of little courtesies of this kind make home pleasanter and brighter. You see I always change my dress before tea, and I am sure you prefer my sitting down to the table tidy and neat with a fresh collar and cuffs, to my taking my place in my working dress with odds and ends of threads and litter clinging to it."

"Of course I do, mother, and I see what you mean now. Certainly I will change my things in future. You don't mind, do you, Bill?"

Bill would not have minded in the least any amount of trouble by which he could give the slightest satisfaction to Mrs. Andrews, who had now a place in his affections closely approximating to that which George occupied.

During the summer months the programme for the evening was not carried out as arranged, for at the end of April Mrs. Andrews herself declared that there must be a change.

"The evenings are getting light enough now for a walk after tea, boys, and you must therefore cut short our reading and studies till the days close in again in the autumn. It would do you good to get out in the air a bit."

"But will you come with us, mother?"

"No, George. Sometimes as evenings get longer we may make little excursions together: go across the river to Greenwich and spend two or three hours in the park, or take a steamer and go up the river to Kew; but as a general thing you had better take your rambles together. I have my front garden to look after, the vegetables are your work, you know, and if I like I can go out and do whatever shopping I have to do while you two are away."

So the boys took to going out walks, which got longer and longer as the evenings drew out, and when they were not disposed for a long ramble they would go down to a disused wharf and sit there and watch the barges drifting down the river or tacking backwards and forwards, if there was a wind, with their great brown and yellow sails hauled tautly in, and the great steamers dropping quietly down the river, and the little busy tugs dragging great ships after them. There was an endless source of amus.e.m.e.nt in wondering from what ports the various craft had come or what was their destination.

"What seems most wonderful to me, George," Bill said one day, "when one looks at them big steamers----"

"Those," George corrected.

"Thank ye--at those big steamers, is to think that they can be tossed about, and the sea go over them, as one reads about, just the same way as the wave they make when they goes down----"

"Go down, Bill."

"Thank ye--go down the river, tosses the little boats about; it don't seem possible that water can toss itself about so high as that, does it?"

"It does seem extraordinary, Bill; we know that it is so because there are constantly wrecks; but looking at the water it does not seem possible that it should rise up into waves large enough to knock one of those great steamers in pieces. Some day, Bill, not this year, of course, because the house isn't finished, but next year, I hope we shall be able all of us to go down for a trip to the sea. I have seen it stuck up you can go to Margate and back for three or four shillings; and though Bob Grimstone says that isn't regular sea, it would be enough to show us something of what it's like."

The garden occupied a good deal of the boys' time. Bill's long experience in the market had given him an interest in vegetables, and he was always ready for an hour's work in the garden after tea. The results of much labor and plenty of manure were not unsatisfactory, and Mrs. Andrews was delighted with her regular supply of fresh vegetables. Bill's antic.i.p.ation, however, of the amount that could be grown in a limited s.p.a.ce were by no means fulfilled, and seeing the small amount which could be daily gathered, and recalling the countless piled-up wagons which he had been accustomed to see in Covent Garden, he was continually expressing his astonishment at the enormous quant.i.ty of ground which must be employed in keeping up the supply of the market.