“Don’t despair!” said Gilly, much entertained by this ingenuous history. “Perhaps we can contrive that you shall go there.”
An eager face was turned towards him. “Oh, sir, do you think I might indeed? But how?”
“Well, we will think about that presently,” promised the Duke, emerging from the lane on to the Hitchin road. “First, however, we must lay a piece of steak to that eye of yours.”
“Sir, you are a regular Trojan!” Tom said, in a rush of gratitude. “I beg your pardon for not being civil to you at first! I thought you was bound to be like all the rest, jawing and moralizing, but I see you are a bang-up person, and I do not at all mind telling you what my name is! It’s Mamble, Thomas Mamble. Pa is an ironmaster, and we live just outside Kettering. Where do you live, sir?”
“Sometimes in the country, sometimes in London.”
“I wish we did so!” Tom said enviously. “I have never been south of Kettering until they sent me to Worthing. I had the measles, you know, and the doctor said I should go there. I wish it had been Brighton! That would have been something like! Only not with old Snape. You can have no notion what it is like, sir, being Pa’s only son! They will not leave me alone for a minute, nor let me do the least thing I like, and everything is wretched beyond bearing!”
“But I know exactly what it is like,” Gilly said. “If I did not, I suppose I should have been just like all the rest, and should have handed you back to your tutor.”
“You will not!” Tom cried, in swift alarm.
Gilly smiled at him. “No, not quite immediately! But I think you must go back to your father in the end, you know. I daresay he is very much attached to you, and you will not like to cause him too much anxiety.”
“N-no,” agreed Tom rather grudgingly. “Of course I shall have to return, but I won’t do so until I have been to London! That would be worth anything! He will be in one of his grand fusses, I suppose, and I shall catch it when I do go back, but—”
“You might not,” the Duke said.
“You do not know Pa, sir!” replied Tom feelingly. “Or Snape!”
“Very true, but it Is possible that if he knows you have been my guest, and if I meet your papa, and talk to him, he may not, after all, be so very angry with you.”
Tom surveyed him doubtfully. “Well, I think he will be,” he said. “I don’t care, mind you, for I can stand a lick or two, but Pa is the biggest ironmaster in all our set, and as rich as—as Crassus, and he has the deuce of a temper! And he is for ever wanting to bring me up a gentleman, and he won’t have me do anything vulgar and jolly, or know the out-and-out fellows in Kettering, and he is bound to be in a rage over this!”
“Well, that would be very terrible,” said the Duke, in his tranquil way. “Perhaps you had best return to Mr. Snape after all.”
“No, that I won’t do!” declared Tom, with great resolution.
It was not long after this that they reached Baldock, and drove into the yard of the White Horse. Tom, although much revived in spirit, was physically a good deal shaken still, and was glad of the support of the Duke’s arm into the inn. The waiter, whom they encountered in the lobby at the back of the house, stared at them in gloomy surprise, but the Duke paid no attention to his, merely saying: “Desire Mrs. Appleby to step up to my room, please,” and leading Tom to the staircase.
When Mrs. Appleby came sailing into the Pink Parlour a few minutes later, she was not only very curious, but more than half inclined to take exception to Tom’s arrival. The waiter had described his appearance in unflattering terms, and although she had been prompt to snub him, she had been equally prompt to come up and inspect Tom for herself.
She found him sitting in the armchair by the fire, while the Duke bathed his bruised head and face. He certainly looked a disreputable object, and Mrs. Appleby exclaimed in a displeased voice: “Well! And may I ask, sir, what is this?”
The Duke was quite unused to being spoken to in that tone, and he turned his head to look at her in some surprise. Without knowing why she did so, she dropped a slight curtsy, and said very much more mildly: “I understood as you wanted to speak to me, sir.”
“Yes,” the Duke replied. “I want a bedchamber to he prepared for my young friend, if you please. He has had the misfortune to be robbed by a couple of footpads. Sit still, Tom, and hold that wet pad to your eye: Mrs. Appleby will bring you some raw beef to put upon it directly.”
“I didn’t know you was going to bring any young gentleman back with you, sir, I’m sure.”
“No, indeed, how should you?” said the Duke. “I did not know it myself. Have you some objection?”
“Of course, sir, if he is a friend of yours—! Only it seems a queer thing, with you not mentioning it, and him with no baggage, and all!”
“It is a sad fix for him to be in,” agreed the Duke. He smiled at her. “We must do what we can to make him more comfortable.”
“Yes, sir,” said Mrs. Applesby helplessly. Tm sure I would not wish to be unfeeling, but I never heard of a young gentleman trapesing about the country, and no carriage, nor nothing, and seemingly quite by himself!”
“No, it was certainly unwise, but he will know better another time. I expect he would be glad of that hot brick you brought up for me.”
At this, Tom uttered a growling protest, which had the effect of drawing Mrs. Appleby’s attention to him. She now perceived that he was younger than she had at first supposed, and looking extremely wan and battered. Her face softened; she said: “I will see to it, sir. Oh, dearie me, and the way his good clothes are spoilt! I do hope he has not run away from school!”
“No, I have not!” Tom said.
She shook her head, but said: “Do you take him to No. 6, sir: you will find the bed is ready made up. And if he will take off his jacket and his nether-garments I will see what can be done to furbish them up.”
She bustled away, and Tom, asserting that he was quite well, and did not wish to go to bed, allowed himself to be led down the passage to a small room at the back of the house. When upon his feet he was obliged to confess that he still felt as sick as a horse. The Duke said that he would feel very much better when he had swallowed a glass of hartshorn and water, and rested for a little while, and helped him to strip off his mired clothing. Tom then lay down upon the bed in his underlinen, and the Duke covered him with the patchwork quilt.
“I did not think it would be bellows to mend with me so easily!” Tom murmured discontentedly. “But he hit me with a cudgel, after all! I am as dead as a herring! I only hope old Snape is feeling half as bad!”
He closed his eyes on this pious aspiration; and the Duke, wondering a little ruefully into what difficulties his sympathy with a fellow-sufferer might lead him, went away to ask Mrs. Appleby for some hartshorn.
Chapter X
The Duke did not borrow Mrs. Appleby’s gig again until the following afternoon, for the morning was fully taken up with purchasing such articles of apparel and toilet as he considered necessary for his protégé’s comfort and respectability. His notions did not always jump with Tom’s, since he laid what that young gentleman considered to be undue stress on the indispensability of soap and tooth-powder, and other such frivolous luxuries. Nor did Tom perceive the necessity of carrying with him on his travels more than one shirt. But the Duke was firm on these points, and after dealing patiently with a sudden and alarming fit of independence in young Mr. Mamble, in which he was informed that Pa would not like his son and heir to be beholden to anyone, he led him forth on a tour of the Baldock shops, assuring him that he would keep faithful tally of his expenditure, and present Pa with his bill in due course.