"There's some one upstairs with mama," she told him, anxiously smiling upon him, her grey-green eyes glinting with pleasure. "The Mr. Boult, you know, who helps her with her books and things when she'll let him. You won't mind?"
"Happy, I'm sure. You're all alone, week-days," he said as he mounted the stairs behind her--stairs very dark and very steep, starting from the almost unmitigated blackness of the hall upon which the front door opened. "I thought if I looked in on the Sunday afternoons I should find the others as well, perhaps."
"You'll find mama," Bessie said, wondering a little at his concern for the proprieties. "Here is Reggie, mama," she said. And Mrs. Day, her heart full of her own unhappy boy, went forward with a weary step, and smilelessly held out a welcoming hand.
"You are very kind to come, Reggie," she said. "This is our good friend, Mr. George Boult; Mr. Reginald Forcus."
"I take it young Mr. Forcus and I don't need any introduction," the draper said.
The Forcus family did not deal at his shop; the deference therefore which the draper never failed to pay his customers was not needed here. He shook poor Reggie's hand mercilessly, and inquired after Sir Francis. Mr. George Boult had recently been made a magistrate; Sir Francis and he sat on the same bench.
"You are extremely well known to me by sight," he went on, still exercising the visitor's hand. "I should say there are few people in Brockenham better known to me by sight."
"I go past your place pretty often," Reggie admitted.
"You'd see me four or five times a day if you were looking out."
"Oh, I'm not always behind my own shop window," Mr. Boult said, not too well pleased. When he was not talking to a customer why should he be reminded of the shop? Since he had been able to write J.P. after his name, he had more than once been secretly desirous of temporarily forgetting the successful drapery establishment.
He was always disposed to lose himself in wonder at his own marvellous achievements. Time was when the members of the great brewery firm were as far above his head as the stars of heaven above the pebbles of the street. Yet here he was now, to all intents and purposes on a par with them. Where was the difference? A successful business man, he was--what more were they? Still, since Sir Francis had taken to addressing him as "Boult" without any prefix to the name, when they met in the magisterial room, the desire to ingratiate himself with any member of the Forcus family was very warm within him.