’I beg you to call on me, if I do not see you this evening.  It is urgent; you will excuse me when I explain.  Not late to-morrow.  I am sure you will not fail to come.  I could write what would be certain to bring you.  I dare not trust any names to paper.’

The signature was, Judith Marsett.

CHAPTER XXXI

Shows how the squires in A conqueror’s service have at times to do knightly conquest of themselves

By the very earliest of the trains shot away to light and briny air from London’s November gloom, which knows the morning through increase of gasjets, little Skepsey was hurried over suburban chimneys, in his friendly third-class carriage; where we have reminders of ancient pastoral times peculiar to our country, as it may chance; but where a man may speak to his neighbour right off without being deemed offensive.  That is homely.  A social fellow knitting closely to his fellows when he meets them, enjoys it, even at the cost of uncushioned seats he can, if imps are in him, merryandrew as much as he pleases; detested punctilio does not reign there; he can proselytize for the soul’s welfare; decry or uphold the national drink; advertize a commercial Firm deriving prosperity from the favour of the multitude; exhort to patriotism.  All is accepted.  Politeness is the rule, according to Skepsey’s experience of the Southern part of the third-class kingdom.  And it is as well to mark the divisions, for the better knowledge of our countrymen.  The North requires volumes to itself.

The hard-grained old pirate-stock Northward has built the land, and is to the front when we are at our epic work.  Meanwhile it gets us a blowzy character, by shouldering roughly among the children of civilization.  Skepsey, journeying one late afternoon up a Kentish line, had, in both senses of the word, encountered a long-limbed navvy; an intoxicated, he was compelled by his manly modesty to desire to think; whose loathly talk, forced upon the hearing of a decent old woman opposite him, passed baboonish behaviour; so much so, that Skepsey civilly intervened; subsequently inviting him to leave the carriage and receive a lesson at the station they were nearing.  Upon his promising faithfully, that it should be a true and telling lesson, the navvy requested this pygmy spark to flick his cheek, merely to show he meant war in due sincerity; and he as faithfully, all honour, promising not to let it bring about a breakage of the laws of the Company, Skepsey promptly did the deed.  So they went forth.

Skepsey alluded to the incident, for an example of the lamentable deficiency in science betrayed by most of our strong men when put to it; and the bitter thought, that he could count well nigh to a certainty on the total absence of science in the long-armed navvy, whose fist on his nose might have been as the magnet of a pin, was chief among his reminiscences after the bout, destroying pleasure for the lover of Old England’s might.  One blow would have sent Skepsey travelling.  He was not seriously struck once.  They parted, shaking hands; the navvy confessing himself to have ‘drunk a drop’; and that perhaps accounted for his having been ‘topped by a dot on him.’