Now, the window of Uncle James's little room was a little window that
lived modestly between the double pillars of the portico and the first
window of the great dining-room. Resting from his labours of sorting and
placing, he gazed forth at his domain, and mechanically calculated what
profit would accrue to him if he cut off a slip a hundred and fifty feet
deep along by the Oldcastle-road, and sold it in lots for villas, or
built villas and sold them on ninety-nine-year leases. He was engaged in
his happy exercise of mental arithmetic when he heard footsteps
crunching the gravel, and then a figure, which had evidently come round
by the north side from the back of the Hall, passed across the field of
James's vision. This figure was a walking baptism to the ground it trod.
It dripped water plenteously. It was, in a word, soaked, and its
garments clung to it. Its yellow chamois gloves clung to its hands. It
had no hat. It hesitated in front of the entrance.
Uncle James pushed up his window. "What's amiss, lad?" he inquired, with
a certain blandness of satisfaction.
"I fell into the Water," said Emanuel, feebly, meaning the sheet known
as Wilbraham Water, which diversified the park-like splendours of
Wilbraham Hall.
"How didst manage that?"
"The path is very muddy and slippery just there," said Emanuel.
"Hadn't you better run home as quick as may be?" James suggested.
"I can't," said Emanuel.
"Why not?"
"I've got no hat, and I'm all wet. And everybody in Oldcastle-road will
see me. Can you lend me a hat and coat?"
And all the while he was steadily baptising the gravel.
Uncle James's head disappeared for a moment, and then he threw out of
the window a stiff yellow mackintosh of great age. It was his
rent-collecting mackintosh. It had the excellent quality of matching the
chamois gloves.
Emanuel thankfully took it. "And what about a cap or something?" he
plaintively asked.
"Tak' this," said Uncle James, with remarkable generosity whipping the
Turkish cap from his own head, and handing it to Emanuel.
Emanuel hesitated, then accepted; and, thus uniquely attired, sped away,
still baptising.
At tea (tea proper) James recounted this episode to a somewhat taciturn
and preoccupied Helen.
"He didn't fall into the Water," said Helen, curtly. "Andrew Dean pushed
him in."
"How dost know that?"
"Georgiana and I saw it from my bedroom window. It was she who first saw
them fighting, or at any rate arguing. Then Andrew Dean 'charged' him
in, as if they were playing football, and walked on; and Emanuel
Prockter scrambled out."
"H'm!" reflected James. "Well, if ye ask me, lass, Emanuel brought that
on himsen. I never seed a man look a bigger foo' than Emanuel looked
when he went off in my mackintosh and Turkish cap."
"Your Turkish cap?"
"One of 'em."
"With the tassel?"
"Ay!"
"It's a great shame! That's what it is! I'm sure he didn't look a fool!
He's been very badly treated, and I'll--"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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