The Town Traveller | Page 8

year."
The shop was well stocked, the window well laid out; everything
indicated a flourishing, though as yet a small, business. Mrs. Clover, a
neat, comely, and active woman, with a complexion as clear as that of
her own best china, chatted vivaciously with the visitor, whilst she
superintended the unpacking of a couple of crates by a muscular youth
and a young lady (to use the technical term), her shop assistant.
"Why are you off to-day?" she inquired presently, after moving to the
doorway for more private talk.
Mr. Gammon made his explanation with spirit and humour.
"You're a queer man, if ever there was one," Mrs. Clover remarked
after watching him for a moment and averting her eyes as soon as they
were met by his. "You know your own business best, but I should have
thought--"
It was a habit of hers to imply a weighty opinion by suddenly breaking
off, a form of speech known to the grammarians by a name which
would have astonished Mrs. Clover. Few women of her class are prone
to this kind of emphasis. Her friendly manner had a quietness, a reserve
in its cordiality, which suited well with the frank, pleasant features of a
matron not yet past her prime.
"It's all right," he replied, more submissively than he was wont to speak.
"I shall do better next time; I'm looking out for a permanency."
"So you have been for ten years, to my knowledge."
They laughed together. At this point came an interruption in the shape
of a customer who drove up in a hansom: a loudly-dressed woman,

who, on entering the shop, conversed with Mrs. Clover in the lowest
possible voice, and presently returned to her vehicle with uneasy
glances left and right. Mr. Gammon, who had walked for some twenty
yards, sauntered back to the shop, and his friend met him on the
threshold.
"That's the sort," she whispered with a merry eye. "Eight-roomed 'ouse
near Queen's Road Station. Wants things for an at 'ome--teaspoons as
well--couldn't I make it ninepence the two dozen! That's the kind of
place where there'll be breakages. But they pay well, the breakages do."
"Well, I won't keep you now," said Gammon. "I'm going to have a peep
at the bow-wows. Could I look in after closing?"
Mrs. Clover turned her head away, pretending to observe the muscular
youth within.
"Fact is," he pursued, "I want to speak to you about Polly."
"What about her?"
"Nothing much. I'll tell you this evening."
Without more words he nodded and went off. Mrs. Clover stood for a
moment with an absent expression on her comely face, then turned into
the shop and gave the young man in shirt-sleeves a bit of her mind
about the time he was taking over his work.
She was anything but a bad-tempered woman. Her rating had no malice
in it, and only signified that she could not endure laziness.
"Hot, is it? Of course it's hot. What do you expect in June? You don't
mind the heat when you're playing cricket, I know."
"No, mum," replied the young giant with a grin.
"How many runs did you make last Saturday?"
"Fifty-three, mum, and caught out."
"Then don't go talking to me about the heat. Finish that job and run off
with this filter to Mrs. Gubbins's."
Her life had not lacked variety. Married at eighteen, after a month's
courtship, to a man of whom she knew next to nothing, she lived for a
time in Liverpool, where her husband--older by ten years--pursued
various callings in the neighbourhood of the docks. After the birth of
her only child, a daughter, they migrated to Glasgow, and struggled
with great poverty for several years. This period was closed by the
sudden disappearance of Mr. Clover. He did not actually desert his wife
and child; at regular intervals letters and money arrived from him

addressed to the care of Mrs. Clover's parents, who kept a china shop at
Islington; beyond the postmarks, which indicated constant travel in
England and abroad, these letters (always very affectionate) gave no
information as to the writer's circumstances. When Mrs. Clover had
lived with her parents for about three years she was summoned by her
husband to Dulwich, where the man had somehow established himself
as a cab proprietor; he explained his wanderings as the result of mere
restlessness, and with this cold comfort Mrs. Clover had to be content.
By degrees they settled into a not unhappy life; the girl, Minnie, was
growing up, the business might have been worse, everything seemed to
promise unbroken domestic tranquillity, when one fine day Mr. Clover
was again missing. Again he sent letters and money, the former written
in a strangely mingled mood of grief and hopefulness, the remittance
varying