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He departed, nodding. The baby’s extraordinary noise incommoded him and seemed somehow to make him blush if he stood near it.

Mr Peel did not gasp. It is at least two centuries since men gasped from astonishment. Nevertheless, Mr Duncalf with those careless words had simply knocked the breath out of him. Never, never would he have guessed, even in the wildest surmise, that Mary and her husband and child would sleep at the Tiger! The thought unmanned him. What! A baby at the Tiger!

Let it not be imagined for a moment that the Tiger is not an utterly respectable hotel. It is, always was, always will be. Not the faintest slur had ever been cast upon its licence. Still, it had a bar and a barmaid, and indubitably people drank at the bar. When a prominent man took to drink (as prominent men sometimes did), people would say, “He’s always nipping into the Tiger!” Or, “You’ll see him at the Tiger before eleven o’clock in the morning!” Hence to Samuel Peel, total abstainer and temperance reformer, the Tiger, despite its vast respectability and the reputation of its eighteen-penny ordinary, was a place of sin, a place of contamination; briefly, a “gin palace,” if not a “gaming-saloon.” On principle, Samuel Peel (as his niece suspected) had never set foot in the Tiger. The thought that his great-nephew and his niece had actually slept there horrified him.

And further and worse; what would people say about Samuel Peel’s relatives having to stop at the Tiger, while Samuel Peel’s large house up at Hillport was practically empty? Would they not deduce family quarrels, feuds, scandals? The situation was appalling.

He glanced about, but he did not look high enough to see that George was watching him from a second-floor window of the Tiger, and he could not hear Mary imploring George: “Do for goodness sake go back to him.” Ladies passed along the pavement, stifling their curiosity. At the back of the Town Hall there began to collect the usual crowd of idlers who interest themselves in the sittings of the police-court.

Then Georgie, bored with weeping, dropped off into slumber. Samuel Peel saw that he could not, with dignity, lift the perambulator up the steps into the porch of the Tiger, and so he began to wheel it cautiously down the side-entrance into the Tiger yard. And in the yard he met George, just emerging from the side-door on whose lamp is written the word “Billiards.”

“So sorry to have troubled you, uncle. But the wife’s unwell, and I’d forgotten something. Asleep, is he?”

George spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, with no hint whatever that he bore ill-will against Samuel Peel for having robbed him of two hundred a year. And Samuel felt as though he had robbed George of two hundred a year.

“But–but,” asked Samuel, “what are you doing here?”

“We’re stopping here,” said George. “I’ve come down to look out for some work–modelling, or anything I can get hold of. I shall begin a round of the manufacturers this afternoon. We shall stay here till I can find furnished rooms, or a cheap house. It’s all up with sculpture now, you know.”

“Why! I thought you were doing excellently. That medal–“

“Yes. In reputation. But it was just now that I wanted money for a big job, and–and–well, I couldn’t have it. So there you are. Seven years wasted. But, of course, it was better to cut the loss. I never pretend that things aren’t what they are. Mind you, I’m not blaming you, uncle. You’re no doubt hard up like other people.”

“But–but,” Samuel began stammering again. “Why didn’t you come straight to me–instead of here?”

George put on a confidential look.

“The fact is,” said he, “Mary wouldn’t. She’s vexed. You know how women are. They never understand things–especially money.”

“Vexed with me?”

“Yes.”

“But why?” Again Samuel felt like a culprit.

“I fancy it must be something you said in your letter concerning champagne.”

“It was only what I read about you in a paper.”

“I suppose so. But she thinks you meant it to insult her. She thinks you must have known perfectly well that we simply asked the reporter to put champagne in because it looks well–seems very flourishing, you know.”

“I must see Mary,” said Samuel. “Of course the idea of you staying on here is perfectly ridiculous, perfectly ridiculous. What do you suppose people will say?”

“I’d like you-to-see her,” said George. “I wish you would. You may be able to do what I can’t. You’ll find her in Room 14. She’s all dressed. But I warn you she’s in a fine state.”

“You’d better come too,” said Samuel.

George lifted Georgie out of the perambulator.

“Here,” said George. “Suppose you carry him to her.”

Samuel hesitated, and yielded. And the strange procession started upstairs.

In two hours a cab was taking all the Peels to Hillport.

In two days George and his family were returning to London, sure of the continuance of five hundred a year, and with a gift of two hundred supplementary cash.

But it was long before Bursley ceased to talk of George Peel and his family putting up at the Tiger. And it was still longer before the barmaid ceased to describe to her favourite customers the incredible spectacle of Samuel Peel, J.P., stumbling up the stairs of the Tiger with an infant in his arms.