W. Pett Ridge

“ William Finnis had just enough to enable him to be entirely inoffensive.
'’Ullo!' he said casually, 'you two 'ere? How'd it be for us all to travel all together? We shall be nice company for each other.'
A proud little woman was Caroline Bateson that early morning. Instructing her husband where to look for the Barnstaple carriage, knowing exactly which way the train would go, talking Devonshire to dazed, perplexed excursionists, and feeling evidently that she was responsible for all that part of England west of Paddington. Pleasant to see her admiration for her husband ”

“ Once the play began, however, she felt amazed and gratified to see that everything wicked and vicious received full condemnation both on the stage and from the pit and gallery, so that when, in the second act, the cruel, unkind man said contemptuously, 'A fig for all your moral and social laws!' not only did the women around her shake their heads and whisper to each other satirically, 'There's a pretty beauty for you! ”

“ And, indeed, when Paddington Station woke up rather sulkily at an unusually early hour on the morning of the following Sunday, it received in the crowd of West-Country excursionists, not only Alfred (with a brown-paper parcel) and Caroline, but the stolid, ever-present Finnis. A third person with more of tact than William Finnis possessed would have been a tiresome third person ”

“ He changed his room that evening and went to live in a brand-new street off Lower Road; this enabled him for some time to evade meeting Mr. or Miss Ladd or any of their friends. The banns being published, for three Sundays church-goers were challenged to produce any good reason why Alfred Bateson and Caroline Hooper should not be bound together in the bonds of holy matrimony. ”