Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/226

222 wrong in the last bill, Mrs. Mellflower says. Ask him to come down and correctify it, will you, Liza?"

Liza ascends the area steps and parleys with the milkman; presently he comes jingling down, with his pails swinging against the railings; he is rather awkward with his pails, this milkman, and I'm afraid he must spill more milk than he sells, as the Park Lane pavements testify.

"It isn't Bugden," says Liza, explanatory, as she ushers him into the kitchen. "Bugden 'as 'urt his leg, a-milkin' a cow wot kicks when the flies worrits, and 'as sent this young man, as is rather new to the business, but is anxious to do his best."

The new milkman enters the kitchen as she concludes her speech, and releasing himself from the pails, expresses his readiness to settle any mistake in the weekly bill.

He is rather a good-looking fellow, this milkman, and he has a very curly head of flaxen hair, preposterously light eyebrows, and dark hazel eyes, which form rather a piquant contrast. I don't suppose Mrs. Moper and Liza think him bad-looking, for they beg him to sit down, and the scullerymaid thrusts the black stocking, on which she was heretofore engaged, into a table-drawer, and gives her hair a rapid extemporary smoothing with the palms of her hands. Mr. Bugden's man seems by no means disinclined for a little friendly chat: he tells them how new he is to the business; how he thinks he should scarcely have chosen cowkeeping for his way of life, if he'd known as much about it as he does now; how there's many things in the milk business, such as horses' brains, warm water and treacle, and such-like, as goes against his conscience; how he's quite new to London and London ways, having come up only lately from the country.

"Whereabouts in the country?" Mrs. Moper asks.

"Berkshire," the young man replies.

"Lor'," Mrs. Moper says, "never was any thing so remarkable. Poor Moper come from Berkshire, and knowed every inch of the country, and so I think do I, pretty well. What part of Berkshire, Mr.— Mr.?"

"Volpes," suggested the young man.

"What part of Berkshire, Mr. Volpes?"

Mr. Volpes looks, strange to say, rather at a loss to answer this very natural and simple inquiry. He looks at Mrs. Moper, then at Liza, and lastly at the pails. The pails seem to assist his memory, for he says, very distinctly, "Burley Scuffers."

It is Mrs. Moper's turn to look puzzled now, and she exclaims "Burley"

"Scuffers," replies the young man. "Burley Scuffers, market town, fourteen miles on this side of Reading. The 'Chicories,' Sir Yorrick Tristram's place, is a mile and a half out of the town."