“But it’s nonsense,” said Agatha. “I never gave you three half-crowns.”
“Perhaps you mout ‘a’ made a mistake. Pence is summat similar to ‘arfcrowns, and the day were very dark.”
“I couldn’t have,” said Agatha. “Jane had my purse all the earlier part of the week, Miss Wilson, and she can tell you that there was only threepence in it. You know that I get my money on the first of every month. It never lasts longer than a week. The idea of my having seven and sixpence on the sixteenth is ridiculous.”
“But I put it to you, Miss, ain’t it twice as ridiculous for me, a poor laborer, to give up money wot I never got?”
Vague alarm crept upon Agatha as the testimony of her senses was contradicted. “All I know is,” she protested, “that I did not give it to you; so my pennies must have turned into half-crowns in your pocket.”
“Mebbe so,” said Smilash gravely. “I’ve heard, and I know it for a fact, that money grows in the pockets of the rich. Why not in the pockets of the poor as well? Why should you be su’prised at wot ‘appens every day?”
“Had you any money of your own about you at the time?”
“Where could the like of me get money? — asking pardon for making so bold as to catechise your ladyship.”
“I don’t know where you could get it,” said Miss Wilson testily; “I ask you, had you any?”
“Well, lady, I disremember. I will not impose upon you. I disremember.”
“Then you’ve made a mistake,” said Miss Wilson, handing him back his money. “Here. If it is not yours, it is not ours; so you had better keep it.”
“Keep it! Oh, lady, but this is the heighth of nobility! And what shall I do to earn your bounty, lady?”
“It is not my bounty: I give it to you because it does not belong to me, and, I suppose, must belong to you. You seem to be a very simple man.”
“I thank your ladyship; I hope I am. Respecting the day’s work, now, lady; was you thinking of employing a poor man at all?”
“No, thank you; I have no occasion for your services. I have also to give you the shilling I promised you for getting the cabs. Here it is.”
“Another shillin’!” cried Smilash, stupefied.
“Yes,” said Miss Wilson, beginning to feel very angry. “Let me hear no more about it, please. Don’t you understand that you have earned it?”
“I am a common man, and understand next to nothing,” he replied reverently. “But if your ladyship would give me a day’s work to keep me goin’, I could put up all this money in a little wooden savings bank I have at home, and keep it to spend when sickness or odd age shall, in a manner of speaking, lay their ‘ends upon me. I could smooth that grass beautiful; them young ladies ‘ll strain themselves with that heavy roller. If tennis is the word, I can put up nets fit to catch birds of paradise in. If the courts is to be chalked out in white, I can draw a line so straight that you could hardly keep yourself from erecting an equilateral triangle on it. I am honest when well watched, and I can wait at table equal to the Lord Mayor o’ London’s butler.”
“I cannot employ you without a character,” said Miss Wilson, amused by his scrap of Euclid, and wondering where he had picked it up.
“I bear the best of characters, lady. The reverend rector has known me from a boy.”
“I was speaking to him about you yesterday,” said Miss Wilson, looking hard at him, “and he says you are a perfect stranger to him.”
“Gentlemen is so forgetful,” said Smilash sadly. “But I alluded to my native rector — meaning the rector of my native village, Auburn. ‘Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain,’ as the gentleman called it.”
“That was not the name you mentioned to Mr. Fairholme. I do not recollect what name you gave, but it was not Auburn, nor have I ever heard of any such place.”
“Never read of sweet Auburn!”
“Not in any geography or gazetteer. Do you recollect telling me that you have been in prison?”
“Only six times,” pleaded Smilash, his features working convulsively. “Don’t bear too hard on a common man. Only six times, and all through drink. But I have took the pledge, and kep’ it faithful for eighteen months past.”
Miss Wilson now set down the man as one of those keen, half-witted country fellows, contemptuously styled originals, who unintentionally make themselves popular by flattering the sense of sanity in those whose faculties are better adapted to circumstances.
“You have a bad memory, Mr. Smilash,” she said goodhumoredly. “You never give the same account of yourself twice.”
“I am well aware that I do not express myself with exactability. Ladies and gentlemen have that power over words that they can always say what they mean, but a common man like me can’t. Words don’t come natural to him. He has more thoughts than words, and what words he has don’t fit his thoughts. Might I take a turn with the roller, and make myself useful about the place until nightfall, for ninepence?”
Miss Wilson, who was expecting more than her usual Saturday visitors, considered the proposition and assented. “And remember,” she said, “that as you are a stranger here, your character in Lyvern depends upon the use you make of this opportunity.”
“I am grateful to your noble ladyship. May your ladyship’s goodness sew up the hole which is in the pocket where I carry my character, and which has caused me to lose it so frequent. It’s a bad place for men to keep their characters in; but such is the fashion. And so hurray for the glorious nineteenth century!”
He took off his coat, seized the roller, and began to pull it with an energy foreign to the measured millhorse manner of the accustomed laborer. Miss Wilson looked doubtfully at him, but, being in haste, went indoors without further comment. The girls mistrusting his eccentricity, kept aloof. Agatha determined to have another and better look at him. Racket in hand, she walked slowly across the grass and came close to him just as he, unaware of her approach, uttered a groan of exhaustion and sat down to rest.
“Tired already, Mr. Smilash?” she said mockingly.
He looked up deliberately, took off one of his washleather gloves, fanned himself with it, displaying a white and fine hand, and at last replied, in the tone and with the accent of a gentleman:
“Very.”
Agatha recoiled. He fanned himself without the least concern.
“You — you are not a laborer,” she said at last.
“Obviously not.”
“I thought not.”
He nodded.
“Suppose I tell on you,” she said, growing bolder as she recollected that she was not alone with him.
“If you do I shall get out of it just as I got out of the half-crowns, and Miss Wilson will begin to think that you are mad.”
“Then I really did not give you the seven and sixpence,” she said, relieved.
“What is your own opinion?” he answered, taking three pennies from his pocket, jingling them in his palm. “What is your name?”
“I shall not tell you,” said Agatha with dignity.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps you are right,” he said. “I would not tell you mine if you asked me.”
“I have