Deaf women -- Fiction; Father figures -- Fiction; Painters -- Fiction; Psychological fiction; Young men -- Fiction
Mat found it no very easy business to reach Rubbleford. He had to go
back a little way on the Dibbledean line, then to diverge by a branch
line, and then to get upon another main line, and travel along it some
distance before he reached his destination. It was dark by the time
he reached Rubbleford. However, by inquiring of one or two people, he
easily found the dairy and muffin-shop when he was once in the town;
and saw, to his great delight, that it was not shut up for the night. He
looked in at the window, under a plaster cast of a cow, and observed
by the light of one tallow candle burning inside, a chubby, buxom girl
sitting at the counter, and either drawing or writing something on a
slate. Entering the shop, after a moment or two of hesitation, he asked
if he could see Mrs. Peckover.
“Mother went away, sir, three days ago, to nurse uncle Bob at Bangbury,”
answered the girl.
(Here was a second check--a second obstacle to defer the tracing of
Arthur Carr! It seemed like a fatality!)
“When do you expect her back?” asked Mat.
“Not for a week or ten days, sir,” answered the girl. “Mother said she
wouldn’t have gone, but for uncle Bob being her only brother, and not
having wife or child to look after him at Bangbury.”
_(Bangbury!_--Where had he heard that name before?)
“Father’s up at the rectory, sir,” continued the girl, observing that
the stranger looked both disappointed and puzzled. “If it’s dairy
business you come upon, I can attend to it; but it’s anything about
accounts to settle, mother said they were to be sent on to her.”
“Maybe I shall have a letter to send your mother,” said Mat, after a
moment’s consideration. “Can you write me down on a bit of paper where
she is?”
“Oh, yes, sir.” And the girl very civilly and readily wrote in her best
round hand, on a slip of bill-paper, this address:--“Martha Peckover, at
Rob: Randle, 2 Dawson’s Buildings, Bangbury.”
Mat absently took the slip of paper from her, and put it into his
pocket; then thanked the girl, and went out. While he was inside the
shop, he had been trying in vain to call to mind where he had heard
the name of Bangbury before: the moment he was in the street, the lost
remembrance came back to him. Surely, Bangbury was the place where
Joanna Grice had told him that Mary was buried!
After walking a few paces, he came to a large linen-draper’s shop, with
plenty of light in the window. Stopping here, he hastily drew from his
pocket the manuscript containing the old woman’s “Justification” of
her conduct; for he wished to be certain about the accuracy of his
recollection, and he had an idea that the part of the Narrative which
mentioned Mary’s death would help to decide him in his present doubt.
Yes! on turning to the last page, there it was written in so many
words: “I sent, by a person I could depend on, money enough to bury her
decently in Bangbury churchyard.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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