Love stories; Nobility -- Great Britain -- Fiction; Switzerland -- Fiction
“I think so, too, for myself, I mean. But, look here, my boy, I only
stopped on looking after this dratted pack of young gentlemen because
you were coming home again. But, as you ain’t, I’m out of it; yes,
when the door shuts on you I give my month’s notice, which perhaps
will mean that I leave to-morrow, for he won’t be able to abide the
sight of me after that.”
“But how will you live, Nurse, till I can help you?”
“Lord bless you, dear, that’s all right. I’ve been a careful
woman all my life, and have hard on £500 put away in the Savings Bank,
to say nothing of a bit of Stock. Also, my old brother, who was a
builder, died last year and left me with a nice little house down in
Hampstead, which he built to live in himself, but never did, poor man,
bit by bit when he was short of business, very comfortable and in a
good neighbourhood, with first-rate furniture and real silver plate, to
say nothing of some more Stock, yes, for £1,000 or more. I let it
furnished by the month, but the tenant is going away, so I shall just
move into it myself, and perhaps take in a lodger or two to keep me
from being idle.”
“That’s capital!” said Godfrey, delighted.
“Yes, and I tell you what would be capitaller. Mayhap you will have to
live in London for a bit, and, if so, you are just the kind of lodger I
should like, and I don’t think we should quarrel about terms. I’ll
write you down the address of that house, the Grove as it is called,
though why, I don’t know, seeing there isn’t a tree within half a
mile, which I don’t mind, as there are too many about here, making so
much damp. And you’ll write and let me know what you are going to do,
won’t you?”
“Of course I will.”
“And now, look here. Likely you will want a little money till you
square up things with your trustee people that the master hates so
much.”
“Well, I had forgotten it, but, as a matter of fact, I have only ten
shillings left, and that isn’t much when one is going to London,”
confessed Godfrey.
“I thought so; you never were one to think much of such things, and so
it’s probable that you’ll get plenty of them, for it’s what
we care about we are starved in, just to make it hot for us poor humans.
Take your father, for instance; he loves power, he does; he’d like to
be a bishop of the old Roman sort what could torture people who
didn’t agree with them. And what is he? The parson of a potty parish
of a couple of hundred people, counting the babies and the softies, and
half of them Dissenters or Salvation Army. Moreover, they can’t be
bullied, because if they were they’d just walk into the next chapel
door. Of course, there’s the young gentlemen, and he takes it out of
them, but, Lord bless us! that’s like kicking a wool sack, of which
any man of spirit soon gets tired. So, you see, he is sick-hearted, and
will be more so now that you have stood up to him; and, in this way or
that, it’s the same with everyone, none of us gets what we want,
while of what we don’t want there’s always plenty.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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