They were eager to hear all about it. Amaryllis was at first very shy to tell, knowing that her father was a thick Tory and an upholder of the Pamments, and fearing his displeasure. But for various reasons both father and mother grew warmer in delight at every fresh incident of her story.
Mrs. Flamma Iden—revolutionary Flamma—detested the Pamments enthusiastically, on principle first, and next, because the grandfather paid them such court.
Iden was indeed an extra thick Tory, quite opaque, and had voted in the Pamment interest these thirty years, yet he had his secret reasons for disliking them personally.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Iden agreed in their scorn of the grandfather’s pottering about the grounds and in and out the conservatories, as if that was the highest honour on earth. Yet Mrs. Iden used often to accuse her husband of a desire to do the very same thing: “You’re just as stupid,” she would say; “you’d think it wonderful to have a private key—you’re every bit as silly really, only you haven’t got the chance.”
However, from a variety of causes they agreed in looking on Amaryllis’ disgrace as a high triumph and glory.
So she was petted all the morning by both parties—a rare thing—and in the afternoon Iden gave her the sovereign she had brought home, to buy her some new boots, and to spend the rest as she chose on herself.
Away went Amaryllis to the town, happy and yet not without regret that she had increased the disagreement between her father and grandfather. She met the vans and gipsies slowly leaving the site of the fair, the children running along with bare brown feet. She went under the archaeologically interesting gateway, and knocked at the door of Tiras Wise, shoemaker, “established 200 years.”
Tiras Wise of the present generation was thin and nervous, weary of the centuries, worn out, and miserable-looking. Amaryllis, strong in the possession of a golden sovereign, attacked him sharply for his perfidious promises; her boots promised at Christmas were not mended yet.
Tiras, twiddling a lady’s boot in one hand, and his foot measure in the other, very humbly and deprecatingly excused himself; there had been so much trouble with the workmen, some were so tipsy, and some would not work; they were always demanding higher wages, and just as he had a job in hand going off and leaving it half finished—shoemaker’s tricks these. Sometimes, indeed, he could not get a workman, and then there was the competition of the ready-made boot from Northampton; really, it was most trying—it really was.
“Well, and when am I going to have the boots?” said Amaryllis, amused at the poor fellow’s distress. “When are they going to be finished?”
“You see, Miss Iden,” said the shoemaker’s mother, coming to help her son, “the fact is, he’s just worried out of his life with his men—and really—”
“You don’t seem to get on very well with your shoemaking, Mr. Wise,” said the customer, smiling.
“The fact is,” said poor Wise, in his most melancholy manner, with a deep sigh, “the fact is, the men don’t know their work as they used to, they spoil the leather and cut it wrong, and leave jobs half done, and they’re always drinking; the leather isn’t so good as it used to be; the fact is,” with a still deeper sigh, “we can’t make a boot.”
At which Amaryllis laughed outright, to think that people should have been in business two hundred years as shoemakers, and yet could not make a boot!
Her experience of life as yet was short, and she saw things in their first aspect; it is not till much later we observe that the longer people do one thing, the worse they do it, till in the end they cannot do it at all.
She presently selected a pair for herself, 9s., and another pair for her mother, 10s. 6d., leaving sixpence over; add sixpence discount for ready-money, and she was still rich with a shilling. Carrying the parcel, she went up the street and passed old Iden’s door on elate instep, happy that she had not got to cross his threshold that day, happy to think she had the boots for her mother. Looking in at two or three dingy little shops, she fixed at last on one, and bought half-a-dozen of the very finest mild bloaters, of which Mrs. Iden was so fond. This finished the savings, and she turned quickly for home. The bloaters being merely bound round with one thin sheet of newspaper, soon imparted their odour to her hand.
A lady whose hand smells of bloaters is not, I hope, too ideal; I hope you will see now that I am not imaginative, or given to the heroinesque. Amaryllis, I can tell you, was quite absorbed in the bloaters and the boots; a very sweet, true, and loving hand it was, in spite of the bloaters—one to kiss fervently.
They soon had the bloaters on over a clear fire of wood-coals, and while they cooked the mother tried her new boots, naturally not a little pleased with the thoughtful present. The Flamma blood surged with gratitude; she would have given her girl the world at that moment. That she should have remembered her mother showed such a good disposition; there was no one like Amaryllis.
“Pah!” said Iden, just then entering, “pah!” with a gasp; and holding his handkerchief to his nose, he rushed out faster than he came in, for the smell of bloaters was the pestilence to him.
They only laughed all the merrier over their supper.
XX
Right at the top of the house there was a large, unfurnished room, which Amaryllis had taken as her own long since. It was her study, her thinking-room,
