Chapter VIII: Part 8

Mrs. Dobb had just locked the little shop for the night, and Mr. Dobb, upstairs, was feeling a consequent measure of relief, when the private bell rang. Mr. Dobb, as though pulled by the same wire, at once listened at the top of the stairs. Hearing only the voices of his wife and Mr. Lock, Mr. Dobb summoned the callers upstairs.

“Thought you’d like to know,” said Mr. Lock, entering the room and carefully closing the door, “me and Looie have fixed it all up this very afternoon.”

“No!” cried Mr. Dobb, joyously. “Well, there’s quick work!”

“I see I was wrong now to suggest about that fifty quid to you, ’Orace,” said Mr. Lock, penitently.

“Don’t mention it!” begged Mr. Dobb. “I never give it another thought.”

“Yes, I know now I was wrong,” repeated Mr. Lock. “Looie pointed it out to me soon as ever I told ’er.”

“Ah, a nice, sensible, right-minded girl!”

“Yes; as she says, if we wants money to set up housekeeping with, let’s wait till after—”

“After what?” asked Mr. Dobb, as Mr. Lock stopped.

“Why, till after she’s got her breach of promise damages out of you. She reckons on at least a hundred and fifty.”

“But—but now she’s hengaged to you she’s got no claim on _me_!”

“They’ll only have your word at the court that she’s hengaged to me, ’Orace. We ain’t told no one else yet,” observed Mr. Lock, happily. “By the way, I’m bringing her round to see you to-morrow.”

“She’ll never get a hundred and fifty pounds out of _me_!”

“No; but she’ll have a jolly good try to! In any case, I bet she don’t get less than a clear fifty, so we shan’t be no worse off,” said Mr. Lock. “And on the other hand, your missis—”

Mr. Dobb, with his hands clasped at the back of that garment he euphemistically described as a dressing-gown, stalked moodily about the bedroom for a few moments. The voice of Mrs. Dobb, engaged in a trifling dispute with a neighbour, came shrilly up to him and he shivered.

“All right, I’m beat!” he yielded. “Talk about nourishing a viper!”

“I’ll call round to-morrow morning and go to the bank with you, ’Orace,” said Mr. Lock.

And it was so.

In rather less than six weeks’ time the wedding of Mr. Peter Lock and Miss Louise Radling was solemnized.

The occurrence is still remembered in Shorehaven, very largely on account of the extreme height and niggardly circumference of Mr. Samuel Clark’s top-hat, and for the remarkable exhibition of agility given by the best man, Mr. Joseph Tridge, out in the High Street, towards the close of the festivities.

Mr. Horace Dobb, an old friend of the bridegroom and bride, attended the ceremony, in company with Mrs. Horace Dobb. Many people subsequently expressed the opinion that Mr. Dobb took the affair far too seriously for a mere guest.

It was just before Mr. and Mrs. Peter Lock were setting forth on their honeymoon that the newly fledged husband summoned Mr. Dobb aside.

“You must be sure to come and see us in our little ’ome when we come back, ’Orace,” said Mr. Lock, fondly. “I’m sure no one’s got a better right among our pals to sit on them tables and chairs—”

“All right!” growled Mr. Dobb. “Don’t rub it in!”

“I just want to tell you something, though. You know that motto of yours what you’ve got painted on a board hanging in your shop? ‘Strictly business,’ it says, don’t it? Well, mottoes is like curses—they come home to roost sometimes!”

“Meaning?” loftily queried Mr. Dobb.

“Why, I felt so sorry for Looie when she come down to the old ‘Jane Gladys’ to ask for you, and you’d jilted her, that I—I got sort of writing to her to cheer her up; and before long we got engaged. Oh, four or five months ago it must have been, though we didn’t tell anybody! You see, I’d got an idea up my sleeve, and I was only waiting till my wages was raised.”

“Then—then—then really she was hengaged to you when she come to Shore’aven?” queried Mr. Dobb, in a stifled voice.

“She was. Why, it was me who managed the whole thing. It was me who wrote and told her to come to Shore’aven. It was me who told her what to say to Sam and Joe.”

“You—you—you—” breathed Mr. Dobb, irately; and then became aware of the approach of Mrs. Dobb. “You mind you don’t miss your train,” he finished, lamely.

Late that same evening Mr. Dobb took a small lettered board off a nail in his shop. In grim silence he surveyed its legend of “Strictly Business!” . . .

Mrs. Dobb, coming down next morning to light the kitchen fire, found that self-same panel, neatly chopped into very small pieces, lying ready to her hand in the fender.

THE END