Cakes and Ale

VI

I HAD quite made up my mind that I was going out with the Driffields next morning, but knew that it was no good asking my uncle if I might. If he found out that I had been and made a row it couldn’t be helped, and if Ted Driffield asked me whether I had got my uncle’s permission I was quite prepared to say I had. But I had after all no need to lie. In the afternoon, the tide being high, I walked down to the beach to bathe and my uncle, having something to do in the town, walked part of the way with me. Just as we were passing the Bear and Key, Ted Driffield stepped out of it. He saw us and came straight up to my uncle. I was startled at his coolness.

“Good afternoon, Vicar,” he said. “I wonder if you remember me. I used to sing in the choir when I was a boy. Ted Driffield. My old governor was Miss Wolfe’s bailiff.”

My uncle was a very timid man, and he was taken aback.

“Oh, yes, how do you do? I was sorry to hear your father died.”

“I’ve made the acquaintance of your young nephew. I was wondering if you’d let him come for a ride with me to-morrow. It’s rather dull for him riding alone, and I’m going to do a rubbing of one of the brasses at Ferne Church.”

“It’s very kind of you, but——”

My uncle was going to refuse, but Driffield interrupted him.

“I’ll see he doesn’t get up to any mischief. I thought he might like to make a rubbing himself. It would be an interest for him. I’ll give him some paper and wax so that it won’t cost him anything.”

My uncle had not a consecutive mind and the suggestion that Ted Driffield should pay for my paper and wax offended him so much that he quite forgot his intention to forbid me to go at all.

“He can quite well get his own paper and wax,” he said. “He has plenty of pocket money, and he’d much better spend it on something like that than on sweets and make himself sick.”

“Well, if he goes to Hayward, the stationer’s, and says he wants the same paper as I got and the wax they’ll let him have it.”

“I’ll go now,” I said, and to prevent any change of mind on my uncle’s part dashed across the road.