my dear, I dare anything. Fifteen years of being compared to Brown, Jones and Robinson and Hardy is enough, madam. The men you have thrown in my face are worms, Charlotte, worms. I dare anything," he repeated, and walked round the table and recovered the jug.
"Now listen, Charlotte," he went on more quietly, when he had reseated himself. "I said that uncle is coming to us on Monday, and that Kyser goes to Switzerland or Sweden, or somewhere to-morrow."
Mrs. Povey was leaning back in her chair, her eyes closed to denote that to her at least the proceedings had lost all interest. Something, however, in the tone of her husband's voice brought her sharply to herself.
"Bushey is a fine place, nice and high, and healthy, Charlotte, and will suit uncle down to the ground. He'll find us living there in style—it'll impress him—and——"
"Edward! are you mad? Bushey—we don't live at Bushey."
Her husband smiled sarcastically.
"Don't we, my dear? really you surprise me—but we're going to, Charlotte, we're going to—for two nights only, as the play-bills say. We are going to borrow Adderbury Cottage. The firm owes me a bit, and I'll take it out in Adderbury Cottages."
Charlotte was fully roused now.
"Edward Povey, I'll not do it."
Her husband brought his fist down on the table with a thump that rattled the crockery and even infused a little flickering life into the surface of the glass of dull supper beer.
"You'll do as I say, Charlotte; I'm master here now, and new brooms sweep clean, you know. Now, put some more coals on, and go to bed."
With a strange sense of awe Mrs. Povey, for the first time in her married life, did as she was bid, and, with a look of wonderment on her vacant face, glided slowly from the room. For perhaps another hour Edward sat over the replenished fire elaborating his scheme. Really it was absurdly simple; of risk there was none. A kind fate had shown them a simple way out of their difficulties, and it would be criminal to ignore it. He knew Uncle Jasper far too well to think of admitting to him that he was a failure in the world. He knew, too, that the old man held him in some little contempt, and he welcomed this chance of showing him his mistake. As for Charlotte, she had evidently committed herself pretty deeply in her correspondence with Aunt Eliza, and Edward anticipated no sustained opposition from that quarter.
It was past midnight when Edward rose and opened the little fumed oak bureau that stood in the recess by the fire-place, and taking a sheet of the notepaper of Messrs. Kyser, Schultz & Company, wrote to Mr. Jasper Jarman telling him how glad Charlotte and himself were to hear that he proposed paying them a visit. He said that the firm for which he had the honour to work had at last awakened to the value of his services, and that a substantial increase of salary had given him the opportunity to receive his dear wife's uncle in a manner more fitted to his position, and that he remained with all good wishes, his uncle's most affectionate nephew, Edward Povey.
The little iron gate creaked again that night, and as Edward dropped the letter into the box at the corner of the terrace he told himself that his new life promised infinitely more possibilities than that to which he had been accustomed for the past fifteen years.
CHAPTER III
BORROWED PLUMAGE
The word phew may have a somewhat indefinite position in the English language, but there was no mistaking the tone in which Mr. Edward Povey said it as he sank wearily into the depths of one of the handsome green leather chairs that stood on either side of the fireplace in the dining-room at Adderbury Cottage, Bushey Heath. The tone of the ejaculation plainly indicated escape, or at any rate temporary relief from a severe nerve-racking strain.
At the further side of the table beneath the great crimson shaded lamp sat Charlotte, her fingers drumming a nervous tattoo upon the polished black oak beneath them. She, too, like her husband showed signs of severe nervous prostration. She raised her head as though about to answer Edward's ejaculation but sighed instead and fell again to her incessant tapping.
"Do stop that infernal row, Charlotte; you sit there and tap, tap, tap, as though—as though—well, give it a rest, it's getting nervy," then after a pause, "where have you put them?"
"Them?"
"Yes,—our honoured guests—making themselves at home, aren't they? Have you noticed, Charlotte, that there's been no mention of how long they're going to stay?"
"I've put them in the room above this. I expect it's old Kyser's room when he's at home here, all chintz and Sheraton."
Edward Povey sat silent for a few moments, gazing stolidly into the fire that was burning brightly in the old-fashioned fire-place. Then he got up and with hands thrust deep in his pockets strode up and down the room, his steps making no sound on the rich turkey carpet.
"It's going to be rather a harder job than I thought, Charlotte," he said at length, pausing in his walk and staring gloomily down at his wife, "so many things have turned out differently to what we thought. Why couldn't the old fool have said he was bringing Aunt Eliza? she's never come before when he's paid us a visit. I thought I should have fainted dead off just now when the old fellow asked me to show him which was the bath-room—he takes a cold tub every morning. Fancy not knowing where the bath-room is in one's own house. I had to open every door I came to and call out 'puss'—said I was looking for a kitten we'd lost—until I came to the right one, the fifth door I opened I think it was."
Edward passed his handkerchief over his forehead, then resumed.
"I blame you, Charlotte, for the unfortunate affair of the photo album. You should have put the book out of sight like you did the framed photos. I can't understand old Kyser keeping such a book full of crocks anyway, I'd be frightened to death of blackmail. You ought to have known that albums are Aunt Eliza's special weakness. She got hold of it at once and made me go through all the lot and tell her who they were and all about them." Edward grew hot at the remembrance. "It isn't easy to invent names and plausible histories for an assorted lot like that at a moment's notice—ugly lot of devils, too."
"The whole idea is yours remember, Edward."
"I know that, woman. Do you think it makes it any easier for me?—you shouldn't have let me—you——"
"You forget, Edward, you said that you were to be master in your own house."
"This isn't my own house, is it? But look here, Charlotte, it's not the least bit of good our arguing how we came to be here. We are here, and here we've got to stay and make the best of a bad job. All we need is a little bit of coaching in some of the minor details. Come over here."
Edward took up a richly chased candelabra and led the way to the fire-place. He removed the little paper shades and let the light fall full upon the portrait of an aged and benevolent-looking gentleman in a splendid old English gilt frame.
"See him, Charlotte; I thought all dinner time your uncle was going to ask who he was. He's sure to ask to-morrow, inquisitive old idiot, and we've got to be prepared. Listen. This old chap here is a Mr. Tobias Kenwick—that doesn't sound
