He did not relish doing anything for people of whom he disapproved, even for Margaret. The cottage at Cullingdon was a week-end cottage used by him in the summer when busily employed at the Works. It was a pleasant place, made of two improved cottages, knocked into one; it stood in a little apple orchard about half a mile from the village. He had hardly used it for the past two years; all his spare time had been given to travelling.
“Do, do this, to please me, Fram,” she pleaded. “You said you weren’t doing anything with Cullingdon.”
“Very well,” he said, not very graciously. “They can go to Cullingdon when they quit
“Oh, thank you, Fram,” she said. “I can’t tell you how happy that makes me.”
“I don’t think for a moment,” he said, “that they’ll like taking a favour from me, so will you go and offer them Cullingdon?”
“Let us do it together, Fram,” she said. “Let’s go over tomorrow and offer it to them; and then, mayn’t we help them over the move? for they are as nearly ruined as two souls can be, and what they spend in moving will have to be paid for out of their food, and I can’t bear the thought of it.”
He could have borne the thought of it very well, but Margaret was very gentle and winning; in his rough way he was very fond of her; he was going to be married, and he was in a good mood at getting
“I don’t know whether what I have to say will interest you. I have a place in Essex, called Cullingdon. It is this place in these photographs. We were wondering whether you would like to come over with us to look at it? If you like it, when you have seen it, we wonder whether you would care to stay there for a time, till you find something better; it needs some keeping up, but not much, and if you would do that for us, you would have to let us pay you some small sum. It is easy to get stores there, and the garden is very fruitful. Of course, if you liked the idea, we should undertake the getting you there and settling you in.”
He felt, in his own phrase, that he had done them proud, and expected a recognition of the fact, which did not come. He found the father obtuse and inclined to boggle.
“I see,” he said, “you keep to your one idea, of getting us out of this.”
The daughter said nothing, but looked at him in a peculiar way, as though she would like to cut his throat.
“Well, turn it over in your minds,” he said. “I must just get the measure of the room at the end.”
He went out into the garden, fuming. He walked up and down, saying he had cast pearls, and the swine had trodden them. But as they drove away, when he burst out against the couple, Margaret told him, that the woman had broken down, and been quite unable to thank him.
“She said that she had not known where to turn nor what to do. She had no relations and, of course, no friends, and now this plan was just salvation.”
She herself was weeping as she spoke. “Fram,” she said, “I do thank you for saving these people. I couldn’t have borne to live at
“It’s up to them now,” he said. “I’ve done what I can for them. But my belief is, that when a chap or a family starts to go down, it’s a lot better to let ’em go. If I ever get into the feckless state that chap’s got into, I hope you’ll store me in the petrol cellar and give me plenty of matches.”
“I’ll make a note of that,” she said. “But you don’t know how you’ve pleased me.”
Before Christmas Day, the couple were out of
On the day on which they gave up Mullples, Frampton took Margaret to the old house and walked over it with her. A cricket chirped by the not quite dead fire, in which, as they could see, a lot of old papers had been burned. One half-burned sheet of notepaper had fallen from the grate. It was dated the 7th July, 1852, from Something—wick Castle. The family had been prosperous then.
“This is to be our home,” Frampton said. “I hope I may make it a happy one for you, my Peggy.”
“I’ve no doubt you will,” she said.