Bram heard the key turn in the lock and a loud chuckle beyond the closed door. Then he heard the sound of his father’s voice raised in anger. Bram paused. Surely he would not strike grandmamma. He listened a moment at the keyhole, smiled at what he heard his father being called, and, blowing back a kiss to reach through the closed door the old lady’s heart, hurried up to his room. But not to wait there for his father to come with the blackthorn. No, just to throw a few clothes into an old carpet-bag and a minute or two later to go swinging out of Lebanon House for ever. On his way down the drive he remembered that he had not licked Caleb for peaching. It was a pity to let the little brute escape like that. He hesitated, decided that it was not worth while to run the risk of being caught merely in order to lick Caleb, and swung on down the drive. He had no plans, but he had twenty-five shillings in his pocket, and there was a train to Liverpool in half-an-hour. As a dissipation he had sometimes watched its departure on the Sunday afternoons when he managed to escape from Lebanon House and Bible readings, which was not often. Of course, there would be plenty of people to tell his father where he had gone. But Liverpool was a larger place than Brigham, and, if he could not get taken on by the captain of an outward-bounder, he would be a stowaway. Something would turn up. Bram hurried on. It was a good mile from Lebanon House to the railway station. The booking-clerk stared through his pigeon-hole when Bram asked for a single to Liverpool. The idlers on the platform stared when they saw Bram Fuller, the grandson of the great Caleb, shoulder his carpet-bag and enter the Liverpool train. But Bram himself stared hardest of all when he found himself in a compartment with Mr. Blundell of Blundell’s Diorama and the Sisters Garibaldi. CHAPTER VI THE DIORAMA Mr. Blundell did not believe in allowing the public to suffer in ignorance of who he was. This was not merely due to a desire to advertise himself and his goods. He was genuinely anxious to give the public a treat, and his progress from town to town was a kind of unlimited extension of the free-list. There he sat opposite Bram as if the wooden seat of the third-class compartment were a Mexican saddle, the train a bronco. On the other hand, the Sisters Garibaldi had lost most of their exotic charm now that they were dressed like other women in panniers and bustles instead of the ribbons and sequins of Southern romance. What was left of it vanished for Bram when he heard one of them say to the other in an unmistakably cockney accent: “Did that masher in front send you the chocolates he promised, dear?” “No, he didn’t, the wretch.” “I told you he’d have to pawn his trousers before you ever saw those chocolates, didn’t I, dear?”