“Oh, I quite agree with Arthur, Frank. I don’t want to go away and never see our friends again.”
“Very well,” Frank said, “then that’s settled; hurrah for railroads!”
In another week the sale took place at the Maynards. A sale is not a picturesque sight, with its dirty Jew brokers, its unwashed hangers-on, its close, crowded atmosphere, its voluble auctioneer, and its eager bidders. But it is a sad business for those who look in the slightest degree below the surface. Here are the ruins of a household. Almost every one of the articles so carelessly examined, so slightingly looked at, so jeeringly commented upon, has its own little history, its reminiscences, which make it sacred to those who have to part with it. The little child’s chair, the water-colour drawing which your wife gave you ere yet she was your wife, the chair she always sat in—these and a hundred other things are sacred relics to you, while they are caviare to the world around.
Frank and Kate had gone into lodgings upon the previous day, having paid off the servants and handed over the house to the broker. With one of their followers only had they not parted. Frank had called Evan in and said,—
“Evan, here are your wages up to next week. That will make the month from the time I gave you notice. I am sorry to part with you, lad, but of course it can’t be helped. Whenever you want a character, you have only to refer to me.”
Evan made no sign of taking up the money. “Please, Mr. Maynard,” he said, “I’m not going.”
“But you must go, Evan. I am a poor man, and can’t keep a servant any longer. I am going down to work on a railway.”
“Well, Mr. Maynard, I shall go down too. I can get some work on the line, I dare say, and I can come in to help of an evening. After what you have done for me, sir, after what you did for Aunt Bessy, I’m not going to leave you now. Lor, sir, mother won’t take me in if I was to go home and tell her I’d left you. No, sir, where you go, I go. If I can’t be your servant, I can do a few odd jobs, and make myself useful between times.”
And so, as Evan positively refused to be separated from his old master, it was arranged that he should go down and work on the line. A fortnight afterwards Frank and his wife started for Yorkshire.