The Pride of the Peacock Read Online Free PDF Page B

house and then, in high spirits, I ran down to the bridge. I stood on it looking back. The trees hid the house-hjs house now-but I was picturing him in it, shouting for Banker, laughing because one of the Claverings had become his friend.
    “He’s an adventurer,” I thought, ‘and so am I. “
    I tried to hide my exuberance but Maddy noticed it and commented that she couldn’t make up her mind what I resembled
     
    most-a dog with two tails to wag or a cat who’s stolen the cream.
    Very pleased with ouzself, I’d say,” she added suspiciously.
    “Ifs a lovely day,” I answered blithely.
    Thunder in the air,” she grumbled.
    That made me laugh. Yes indeed, the atmosphere would be decidedly stormy if it was discovered that I had actually spoken to the enemy and arranged another meeting.
    I could scarcely wait to see him again.
    He was there when I arrived. He talked-how he talked and how I loved to listen! He told me about his life when he had been very poor in his early days in London.
    “London 1’ he cried.
    “What a city! I never could forget it, no matter wherever I was. But there were some hard memories too. We were poor-not as poor as some others, there being only one child … me.
    My mother couldn’t have more, which in some ways was a blessing. I went to a dame school, where I learned my letters, and after that to a ragged school, where I learned the ways of the world, and when I’d done with education at the age of twelve, I was ready to fight my battles. By that time my father had dropped dead. He was a drinker so it wasn’t much of a loss, and I started to keep my mother in a degree of comfort to which she had not been accustomed. 8 I wondered why he was telling me all this. He was an actor of a kind, for when he talked of people his voice and his expression would change. When he told me of the baked potato seller, his face would be grizzled and he’d shout:
    “Come, me beauties, all hot and floury. Two a penny hot spuds. Fill your bellies and warm your hands.”
    There, Miss Jessie,” he would go on becoming himself.
    “I’m being a bit vulgar now, you’ll be thinking, but that was the streets of London when I was a nipper. Life! I never saw such life no, never. There it was all over the streets of London. It’s something you don’t take much notice of when you’re there, but you never forget it. It gets in your blood. You get away from it, but you’ll always love it and it’ll always draw you back.”
    Then he would tell me of the orange woman and the sellers of pins and needles.
    “Five sheets a penny, pins,” he sang out;
    “All neat and middlings’; then there were the vendors of what he called ‘green stuff, which was mainly watercress gathered’ in the fields on to which, in those days, the city had not encroached.
     
    “Why there were fields just beyond Portland nace-meadows and woods; and there were market gardens too, so there was plenty of green stuff about. Woorter creases,” he shouted.
    “All fresh and green.
    Funny, when I talk of it, it all comes back fresh to me. Most clear in my memory is Easter time. Good Friday was what I thought of as the Day of the Buns. It was the Just thing I thought of when I got up on Good Friday morning. It was the day of the buns. “
    He began to sing:
    “One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns, If your daughters won’t eat them, give them to your sons.
    If you ain’t got any of those pretty little elves, Then you can’t do better than to eat them up yourselves.
    “We used to go round singing that with our trays of buns on our heads.”
    I was fascinated. I had never met anyone like him. He talked all the time about himself. That didn’t worry me because I wanted to hear and I was getting a glimpse into a world hitherto unknown to me.
    “I was born to make money,” he said. The Midas Touch, that’s what I’ve got. Ever heard of that. Miss Jessie? Everything he touched turned to gold. That was how it was with old Ben