PAGE 9
Plain Fin–Paper-Hanger
by
Or he launches forth into an account of how he helped to rescue a woman’s child from the clutches of her brutal husband; and of the race out King’s Road followed by the husband in a hansom, and of the watchful bobbie who, to relieve a threatened block in the street, held up the pursuing hansom at the critical moment, thus saving the escaping child, half-smothered in a blanket, tight locked in its mother’s arms, and earning for Fin the biggest fare he ever got in his life.
“Think of it, sor! Fifteen bob for goin’ a mile, she a-hollerin’ all the time that she’d double the fare if I kep’ ahead. But, Lord love ye, sor, she needn’t ‘a’ worried; me old plug had run in the Derby wance, and for a short spurt like that he was game back to the stump of his tail.”
* * * * *
When the last morning of his enforced exile arrived and Fin, before I was half-dressed, presented himself outside my bedroom door, an open letter in his hand, not a trace of the punt-poling Irishman was visible in his make-up!
He wore a glazed white tile, a yellow-brown coat with three capes, cut pen-wiper fashion, and a pair of corduroy trousers whose fulness concealed in part the ellipse of his legs.
“Here’s a letter from me boss, sor,” he blurted out, holding it toward me. “He says I kin go to work in the mornin’. Ye don’t mind, do ye, sor?”
“Of course I mind, Fin; I’ll have trouble to fill your place. Are you sorry to leave?”
“Am I sorry, sor? No!–savin’ yer presence, I’m glad. What’s the good of the country, anyhow, sor, except to make picters in? Of course, it’s different wid you, sor, not knowin’ the city, but for me–why God rest yer soul, sor, I wouldn’t give one cobble of the Strand no bigger’n me fist for the best farm in Surrey.
“Call me, sor, next time ye’re passin’ my rank–any time after twelve at night, and I’ll show ye fun enough to last ye yer life.”
Something dropped out of the landscape that day–something of its brilliancy, color, and charm. The water seemed sluggish, the sky-tones dull, the meadows flat and commonplace.
It must have been Fin’s laugh!