In those days slumming proper had not set in, and the East End was only known geographically, except, no doubt, to a few enthusiasts--the sort that antedates first discovery after the fact, and takes a vicious pleasure in precursing its successors. But unassuming benefactresses occurred at intervals whom outsiders knew broadly as Sisters of Charity. Such a one was this lady, between whom and Aunt M'riar a sympathetic friendship grew up before the latter discovered that Dave's hospital friend was an Earl's niece, which not unnaturally made her rather standoffish for a time. However, a remark of Mr. Alibone's--who seemed to know--that the lady's uncle was a belted Earl, and no mistake, palliated the Earldom and abated class prejudice. The Earl naturally went up in the esteem of the old prizefighter when it transpired that he was belted. What more could the most exacting ask?
But it was in the days when this lady was only "that party from the Hospital," that she took root at No. 7, Sapps Court. No. 7 was content that she should remain nameless; but when she said, in some affair of a message to be given at the Hospital, that its bearer was to ask for Sister Nora, it became impossible to ignore the name, although certainly it was a name that complicated matters. She remained, however, plain Sister Nora, without suspicion of any doubtful connections, until a scheme of a daring character took form--nothing less than that Dave should be taken into the country for change of air.
Uncle Mo was uneasy at the idea of Dave going away. Besides, he had always cherished the idea that the air of Sapps Court was equal to that of San Moritz, for instance. Look at what it was only a few years before Dave's father and mother first moved in, when it was all fields along the New Road--which has since been absurdly named Euston and Marylebone Road! Nothing ever come to change the air in Sapps Court that Uncle Mo knew of. And look at the wallflowers growing out in front the same as ever!
Uncle Mo, however, was not the man to allow his old-fashioned prejudices to stand in the way of the patient's convalescence, and an arrangement was made by Sister Nora that Dave should be taken charge of, for a while, by an old and trustworthy inhabitant of the Rocestershire village of which her uncle, the belted Earl, was the feudal lord and master, or slave and servant, according as you look at it. It was during the arrangement of this plan that his Earldom leaked out, creating serious misgivings in the minds of Uncle Mo and Aunt M'riar that they would be ill-advised if they allowed themselves to get mixed up with that sort of people.