Domestic fiction; England -- Fiction; Mothers and sons -- Fiction; Unmarried mothers -- Fiction; Women household employees -- Fiction
"So they spends the summer at Woodview and goes to foreign parts for the
winter?"
"Yes, that's it. Most of the estate was sold; but Mrs. Barfield, the
Saint--you remember we used to call her the Saint--well, she has her
fortune, about five hundred a year, and they just manage to live there in
a sort of hole-and-corner sort of way. They can't afford to keep a trap,
and towards the end of October they go off and don't return till the
beginning of May. Woodview ain't what it was. You remember the stables
they were putting up when Silver Braid won the two cups? Well, they are
just as when you last saw them--rafters and walls."
"Racing don't seem to bring no luck to any one. It ain't my affair, but if
I was you I'd give it up and get to some honest work."
"Racing has been a good friend to me. I don't know where I should be
without it to-day."
"So all the servants have left Woodview? I wonder what has become of
them."
"You remember my mother, the cook? She died a couple of years ago."
"Mrs. Latch! Oh, I'm so sorry."
"She was an old woman. You remember John Randal, the butler? He's in a
situation in Cumberland Place, near the Marble Arch. He sometimes comes
round and has a glass in the 'King's Head.' Sarah Tucker--she's in a
situation somewhere in town. I don't know what has become of Margaret
Gale."
"I met her one day in the Strand. I'd had nothing to eat all day. I was
almost fainting, and she took me into a public-house and gave me a
sausage."
The train began to slacken speed, and William said, "This is Peckham."
They handed up their tickets, and passed into the air of an irregular
little street--low disjointed shops and houses, where the tramcars tinkled
through a slacker tide of humanity than the Londoners were accustomed to.
"This way," said Esther. "This is the way to the Rye."
"Then Jackie lives at the Rye?"
"Not far from the Rye. Do you know East Dulwich?"
"No, I never was here before."
"Mrs. Lewis (that's the woman who looks after him) lives at East Dulwich,
but it ain't very far. I always gets out here. I suppose you don't mind a
quarter of an hour's walk."
"Not when I'm with you," William replied gallantly, and he followed her
through the passers-by.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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