Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

“Begging your pardon: I wish to pay for my food now,” Newman called to the serving girl even before she had brought Miss Wolf her cup of coffee.

“I’ll get your cheque. What’s your hurry?” the girl cheekily replied from across the empty restaurant.

“You’re being smart,” said Miss Wolf to Newman, nodding quickly. Then to the girl: “Forget the coffee. We have to go. I’ll pay for his lunch, though. How much was it?”

“I have money to pay, myself,” protested Newman.

“But I insist,” said Miss Wolf.

“Very well then, and thank you,” said Newman as he rose suddenly from his chair and bowed to the redheaded nurse.

As Ruth Wolf dipped her eyes to look into her leather pocketbook, Newman made his escape. With no less speed and purpose than he had employed to free himself from the Ryersbach house, he made a mad dash to the glazed front door of the diner, threw it open, and disappeared.

By the time the nurse had reached the sidewalk, her temporary ward was too far ahead for her to pursue him, running as fast as his swift legs could take him up the high street of Jersey Shore. She shook her head in frustrated despondence. The jeweller, Phillips, having seen the boy fly past, stepped out onto the sidewalk himself. He and Miss Wolf caught sight of one another and now exchanged looks of hard disappointment that had mixed within them some appreciable measure of fear.

— NOTES—

MONETARY SYSTEM. Serious and early attention was given by the Dingley Dell Petit-Parliament to the development of a serviceable monetary system. An attempt was made in the first three decades of the twentieth century to replicate the Victorian system of farthings and pence and shillings and sovereigns. But it was a needlessly complicated and confusing business, and forever in want of modification and improvement. Consequently, a decimal system of coinage was devised and was put into effect in the year 1929, based upon a proposal posited by the Encyclopædia Britannica (Vol. 7, SEE: “Decimal Coinage: a substitute for the “Quarto-Duodecimo-Vicesimal System”). This new system has worked with great efficiency and to this day is so simple in its arrangement that even young children have had little difficulty learning it. Dinglian tots are nonetheless encouraged to recite the following rhyme to remember the denominations:

Ten mil make a cent,

And if that ain’t spent,

Add another nine

To see a florin shine.

And if nine more florin can be found,

Pat your back. You’ve made a pound!

Barter being the chief mechanism of trade with the Outland, the exchange of commodities between parties within the Dell absent a mutual circulating medium, continues, as well, to receive measurable application.

othing was learnt from Muntle’s trip to the Summit of Exchange. One of the tradesmen had thought at first that he had seen a boy off in the distance standing isolate in a field, but it was merely a scarecrow drest in old, ragged and fluttering clothes, animated by the wind.

This was all that was said.

Muntle had come to deliver his discouraging report to my lodgings above Mrs. Lumbey’s Ladies’ Fine Dress Shop late the previous night and we had reluctantly taken the news to Gus and Charlotte. Each had received it none too well and Charlotte had slipped from the room, nursing another headache, to complete her packing, for she was to spend a few days with a consoling childhood friend in Hungerford. Charlotte had sought Alice’s companionship there as well (hoping for some form of reconciliation between mother and the daughter who now, in all likelihood, constituted Charlotte’s only surviving offspring). Alas, my sister-in-law had received in exchange for her maternal overture to the sulky and stony-faced thirteen-year-old a harsh rebuff, delivered in the girl’s wonted insolent fashion: “Sit for several days betwixt you and your damask-nosed crony Miss Snigsworth? Watch the two of you tossing off your gallipots of grog as if it were some ancient nepenthe? Pardon me if I decline the invitation this week or any other week, Mama, but I would rather have sharp iron nails driven into my skull.”

It was then and there that Alice had decided to spend days commensurate with her mother’s sojourn as guest of her dearest friend Cecilia Pupker. It was a far preferable course of action than being left alone with a “whimpering willow of a father who could hardly be tolerated for a day, let alone a week.”

The hour was late when I finally returned to my rooms to retire for the night.

I slept until nearly nine o’clock next morning and then drest and dragged myself down the stairs for a late breakfast of tea and toast and jam in Mrs. Lumbey’s dining parlour, and then peeped into the showroom of my landlady’s shop where her young apple-faced assistant Miss Casby was modeling a dress that Mrs. Lumbey had just made: a lemon-coloured flannel lackaday frock with a generous number of pockets.

“What do you think, Frederick? It’s a house frock for the woman who wishes to remain in retirement for the day. And then when night is come, the whole outfit reverses to become a flannel sleeping gown.”

“Yes, I see. The flannel on the outside then becomes a flannel lining for the inside.”

“It does indeed!” exclaimed Mrs. Lumbey proudly. “I have created it for the economical young woman of the house who would like to reduce her time at the washboard.”

“It’s really quite ingenious, Estella.”

“And economical,” repeated Mrs. Lumbey, stepping back to give herself the full view of the double-purposed dress.

“But does the flannel not make the dress a little too warm?” I asked of the slightly uncomfortable-looking young woman who was wearing it.

“A little warm, yes,” replied the oppressively shy Miss Casby with a blush (for it was a rarity that she should be directly addressed by her employeress’s arguably good-looking male boarder).

“I should put it directly in the window,” said Mrs. Lumbey, darting a glance at the large display window that overlooked the street, “but I would not wish your friend Miss Bocker to see it and make some ungenerous comment about it.”

“And what sort of comment would that be?”

“That I continue to run a slop shop and here is my newest sartorial abomination. I should not care in the least what she thinks, but I don’t wish to have customers driven away before I’m even able to shew them how a dress magically becomes a sleeping gown.”

I sighed. “I don’t think that my friend Miss Bocker is as disparaging of your shop and of your skills as dressmaker as you make her out to be. You do her a disservice by characterising her in such a fashion.”

Estella Lumbey made no reply. Instead, she turned to her assistant and said, “Run along now, Amy, and change out of the reversible dress. I should like to see you in that new gown of your own making. You told me yesterday that it is nearly finished.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Amy Casby, dropping a complaisant curtsey and betraying with a wide grin her eagerness to show off her latest accomplishment.

After Miss Casby had removed herself from the room, tugging a bit upon the heavy flannel that hotly swaddled her neck and arms, Mrs. Lumbey said, “I will have the last laugh, mark me, Frederick. For once word is out that for a reasonable price my customers will be able to purchase a frock that astounds and amazes, there will be a run upon the shop. You will see. Someday I will put that coarse and offensive woman out of business — or at least out of the dressmaking and millinery line. She can sell all of the candles and stationery and cigars she pleases. I’ll wager she smokes the nasty things herself, like some boorish wash-house laundress.”