way along the High—stopping here to finger a sprigged muslin, there to abuse a bonnet of atrocious design. The day was clear and bright, almost unnaturally so for February, but sharply cold. We were obliged to enter far more shops than we had originally intended, merely to keep warm. When at last we had all but stripped our purses bare, I proposed a bit of refreshment—and was turning for a pastry shop I knew of, tucked into Butchers' Row, when two small figures huddled on a neighbouring doorstep caught my eye. They were dark-haired, rosy-cheeked, and shuddering from the cold: both well-grown boys, not unfamiliar, and decidedly ill-clothed against the penetrating wind.
“Charles Seagrave! And Edward!” I cried. “You shall both of you catch your deaths!”
Charles, the elder, sprang upright like a jack-in-the-box, his grey eyes wide with relief. “It's the lady who called upon Mum in Lombard Street,” he informed his brother. “When Uncle Walter was there. I have forgot your name,” he admitted doubtfully, “though you know mine.”
“Never admit to such an ignorance before a lady, Charles,” I told him briskly. “It is the worst sort of offence a gentleman may bestow. I am Miss Austen, and this is Miss Lloyd. How do you boys come to be abroad, entirely alone, in such cold weather? Where is Nancy? Surely she attended you from Portsmouth?”
“Nancy is in charge of the baby,” retorted Charles, “and good riddance, so cross as she is!”
Little Edward rose to his feet, his bare fingers thrust under his arms, his lips blue and chattering. “Please, m-m-miss, don't be telling our mum about our lark! She's resting after our journey from P-p-portsmouth, which was bang-up jolly if you ask me—four post horses hired from the G-g-george, and everything prime about 'em! How we ratt-tt-ded along! We made the distance in under two hours!”
“Am I to understand that your mother is as yet ignorant of your absence?” I enquired in an awful tone. “That you are both abroad expressly without permission?”
Martha choked upon what I guessed to be a laugh. The brothers quailed. Charles threw his arm about Edward, as though his thin nankeen jacket might supply the want of warmth in the younger boy's own.
“We only meant to have a look around town,” he protested. “It's our first visit to Southampton! We've been down the High to the Quay, and seen all the ships, and poked our noses into the dockyard—though it's a poor thing indeed compared to Portsmouth's,” he concluded contemptuously.
“Not even Nancy knows of your going?”
He shook his head.
“They shall be all in an uproar at the inn,” murmured Martha beside me.
“We intended to return ages ago!” Edward cried. “Only—we could not find the High once we had visited the bathing machines. We are most dreadfully lost.”
I did not have the heart to tell them that the High Street was but a hundred yards away. Both boys were shivering violently now. Edward looked upon the verge of tears.
“Come along,” I said with a sigh. “Miss Lloyd and I shall treat you to hot chocolate and honey cakes in that pastry shop opposite, while I beg some paper and a messenger of the proprietor.”
Crows of delight interrupted my declaration. I endeavoured to look stern.
“We shall send a note to the Dolphin attesting to your whereabouts and safety—but the very moment your last drop of chocolate is drunk, my fine fellows, it is off to the inn with you and no mistake! You require hot water bottles and warm possets, and you do not wish to die of an inflammation of the lungs.”
Suitably subdued, the boys preceded us into the pastry shop, and commenced to eat with a voracity that suggested young wolves. I secured my paper and pen, and began to compose a note for Louisa Seagrave while Martha kept up a stream of nonsense calculated for the boys' amusement. But not all their talk was of spillikins and hoops, or the dashing naval actions recently reported in the Gazette; little Edward must be constantly reverting to the subject foremost in the boys' minds: the judgement hanging over their father's head.
“Charles and I have determined to run away to sea if Father hangs,” he informed us as he tucked into an apple pasty.
“Edward!” his brother hissed in a quelling tone. Possessing eight years to his brother's six, he was necessarily more cautious, and knew the value of discretion. “They will tell Mum straightaway! Only you mustn't,” he added for our benefit, “for it is our only