Preparation and precaution were,however,the natural flowers of Mr.Mudge's mind,and in proportion as these things declined in one quarter they inevitably bloomed elsewhere.He could always,at the worst,have on Tuesday the project of their taking the Swanage boat on Thursday,and on Thursday that of their ordering minced kidneys on Saturday.He had moreover a constant gift of inexorable enquiry as to where and what they should have gone and have done if they hadn't been exactly as they were.He had in short his resources,and his mistress had never been so conscious of them;on the other hand they never interfered so little with her own.She liked to be as she was--if it could only have lasted.She could accept even without bitterness a rigour of economy so great that the little fee they paid for admission to the pier had to be balanced against other delights.The people at Ladle's and at Thrupp's had THEIRways of amusing themselves,whereas she had to sit and hear Mr.
Mudge talk of what he might do if he didn't take a bath,or of the bath he might take if he only hadn't taken something else.He was always with her now,of course,always beside her;she saw him more than "hourly,"more than ever yet,more even than he had planned she should do at Chalk Farm.She preferred to sit at the far end,away from the band and the crowd;as to which she had frequent differences with her friend,who reminded her often that they could have only in the thick of it the sense of the money they were getting back.That had little effect on her,for she got back her money by seeing many things,the things of the past year,fall together and connect themselves,undergo the happy relegation that transforms melancholy and misery,passion and effort,into experience and knowledge.
She liked having done with them,as she assured herself she had practically done,and the strange thing was that she neither missed the procession now nor wished to keep her place for it.It had become there,in the sun and the breeze and the sea-smell,a far-away story,a picture of another life.If Mr.Mudge himself liked processions,liked them at Bournemouth and on the pier quite as much as at Chalk Farm or anywhere,she learned after a little not to be worried by his perpetual counting of the figures that made them up.There were dreadful women in particular,usually fat and in men's caps and write shoes,whom he could never let alone--not that she cared;it was not the great world,the world of Cocker's and Ladle's and Thrupp's,but it offered an endless field to his faculties of memory,philosophy,and frolic.She had never accepted him so much,never arranged so successfully for making him chatter while she carried on secret conversations.This separate commerce was with herself;and if they both practised a great thrift she had quite mastered that of merely spending words enough to keep him imperturbably and continuously going.
He was charmed with the panorama,not knowing--or at any rate not at all showing that he knew--what far other images peopled her mind than the women in the navy caps and the shop-boys in the blazers.
His observations on these types,his general interpretation of the show,brought home to her the prospect of Chalk Farm.She wondered sometimes that he should have derived so little illumination,during his period,from the society at Cocker's.But one evening while their holiday cloudlessly waned he gave her such a proof of his quality as might have made her ashamed of her many suppressions.He brought out something that,in all his overflow,he had been able to keep back till other matters were disposed of.
It was the announcement that he was at last ready to marry--that he saw his way.A rise at Chalk Farm had been offered him;he was to be taken into the business,bringing with him a capital the estimation of which by other parties constituted the handsomest recognition yet made of the head on his shoulders.Therefore their waiting was over--it could be a question of a near date.They would settle this date before going back,and he meanwhile had his eye on a sweet little home.He would take her to see it on their first Sunday.
