Lady Frances eluded some dowagers who were bearing down upon her, and came to him; she took an envelope from a pretty hiding place. “My uncle particularly begged me to give you this. You were so good, Mr. Barnes. (Don’t open it until you get home.) Your speech was just what one wanted. You quite cleared the air.” “Afraid I should clear the ’All.” Lady Frances seemed not to comprehend, and the knowledge came to Erb that he had missed an aspirate. “My uncle will be so pleased. I shall be down at Bermondsey next week, and I can bring any message my uncle wishes to send. I don’t bother you, Mr. Barnes?” “Need you ask?” replied Erb. “You’re not going?” with her gloved hand held out. Erb took the hint and made his exit with difficulty, because several ladies buzzed around him, humming pleasant words. The spectacled man walked with him along Piccadilly, talking busily, and expressed a desire to take Erb into the club for coffee. “Only that my place is so deucedly uncivil to visitors.” He contented himself with a threat that Erb should most certainly hear from him again. “I shan’t lose your address,” said the spectacled person. It was not until the Committee Meeting of the R.C.S. had nearly finished one evening that Erb, in searching for a letter which some members desired to see, found the note from Lady Frances’s uncle. He tore the flap casually, and, recognising it, placed the opened envelope aside, and pursued his searches for the required document. Spanswick, with a busy air of giving assistance, looked through the letters, and opened the communication which Lady Frances had brought. “Pardon, old man,” whispered Spanswick confidentially. “Didn’t know I was interfering with money matters.” CHAPTER X IT is the ingenious habit of Kentish railways directly that hop-picking is over and pay-day is done, to advertise excursions to London at a fare so cheap that not to take advantage of it were to discourage Providence in its attempts to make the world pleasant. Country folk, who make but one visit a year to town, seize this September opportunity; some avail themselves not only of this but of the Cattle Show trip later on; a few also take the pantomime excursion in February, and these are counted in quiet villages as being, by frequent contact with town, blades of the finest temper, to whom (if they would but be candid) no mysteries of the great town are unknown. Erb’s Aunt Emma, giving herself reward for a month’s hard work in the hop-garden, came up every year by the September excursion. It happened on this occasion that the day could not have made a more awkward attempt to fit in with Erb’s convenience. “Well,” said Aunt Emma, in the ’bus, desolately, “I’m not surprised! It’s what comes of looking forward to anything. When I heerd as you may say, you’d left the railway, I said to the party that comes in on Mondays to help me do my week’s washing, ‘I don’t know,’ I says, ‘what to think ’bout all this.’”