Volume One—Chapter Seventeen.

Volume One—Chapter Seventeen.Mrs Nimmer’s Successor.There was no very great difficulty in the matter. Jared Pellet, under protest, wrote a note to the Rev. John Gray, the vicar, telling him that a friend—he haggled a great deal over that word “friend”—would be glad to undertake the duties of pew-opener in the place of the defunct Mrs Nimmer; and the vicar mentioned the matter to his friend Mr Timson, churchwarden and tea-dealer, and both agreed that they would be most happy to oblige Mr Jared Pellet in the matter.Then Mr Timson had an interview with Jared, and told him personally he would be glad to give his weight to the matter, if Jared’s friend was a worthy suitable woman.Now there came a hitch in the smoothness, for Jared went home and told his wife that that red-faced old humbug Purkis had played double; and, in fact, he had gone head-dabbing into the presence of the vicar and churchwarden to tell them he should be glad if the post lately occupied by Mrs Nimmer could be conferred upon a friend of his.But explanations followed: the two principal candidates were found to be one and the same; and Mrs Tim Ruggles was duly appointed to a post, for whose proper filling she seemed to have been specially manufactured by Dame Nature.She, that is to say Mrs Tim Ruggles, glided, as it were, into the correct rut upon the very first Sunday—coming to St Runwald’s in a mournful-hued dress—a shot putty and soot, while a tightly-fitting cap crowned her head—a cap like a white sarcenet raised pie, all tiny bows and tuckers—none of your fly-away servant-girl style of headdress, but firmly tied beneath her chin with silken strings. Then, too, a prim-white muslin handkerchief encircled her neck, with ends pinned across, and descending to be hidden away and protected by exceedingly stiff, dark-coloured jean stays, whose presence was manifested to the ear of the world at large by divers creaking cracklings, when, by rare chance, Mrs Ruggles slightly bent her fierce body—to the eye, by a little peephole, afforded where one hook in the back of the dress had an antipathy to its kindred loop.She might have been pew-opener for twenty years from the way in which she performed her duties, even trenching upon Mr Purkis’s dominion by frowning at small boys. It was a sight to see the way in which she performed her task, pouncing upon dubious-looking strangers who stood tasting their hats just inside the doors, and, as she could tell in a moment whether or not they were disposed to be generous, placing them in comfortably cushioned seats, where such miserable sinners could not fail to be eased in their consciences. Sometimes she morally took the poor things into custody, and then, like some savage warder, shut them up in cold wooden cells—in corners where it was dark, in black places just below the galleries, in spots beneath the organ, where they sat with a sensation as of liquid thunder being poured upon their heads, or behind pillars where they could not catch a glimpse of the reading-desk, and had to look round the corner at the pulpit. A select few she treated worse than all the rest, shutting them up in the great churchwarden’s pew, where they were completely out of sight, Mr Timson monopolising all the hassocks so as to peep over the edge.A very moral hedgehog was Mrs Ruggles, treating the congregation as if they were so many little Pines intrusted to her charge, and evidently annoyed that she was not allowed, like Mr Purkis, a cane to usead libitum. Had she been in office at a ritualistic church, brawlers would have paused ere they attempted to desecrate the structure. If you went into the church, she looked at you sidewise, and calculated your value in an instant; when, if you obeyed the glance of her eye, well; if not, she held up a finger at you, as if to say, “Come here, sir!” and then—stay away if you dared.Why! the pew doors never screaked and scrawked when she opened them. She never shut in your coat-tails, or the voluminous folds of a lady’s dress; but she punished you severely if ever you attended St Runwald’s without books; for she would glide along the aisle like a religious ghost, and thrust a dreadful liver-coloured, dog’s-eared, S.P.C.K. prayer-book under your nose, so that you were obliged to take it, and then pay her sixpence as you went out for what you would rather not have had. For, if you had been accustomed all your life to a delicately bound diamond edition, it was not pleasant to stand up in good society holding the sore-edged, workhouse-looking book, while you dared not thrust it out of sight, for she was sure, in that case, to bring you another, to your lasting shame and confusion. It was almost a wonder that people so served ever entered the church again; and the probabilities are that they never would have done so, had not Jared Pellet drawn them thither with his music.The best way to meet Mrs Ruggles was to be prepared with a pocket edition of the liturgy, when, if it were your custom to stand with hands joined and resting upon the pew-edge, under the impression that you were quite at home in the service, down she would come, for a certainty, her crackling stays heralding her approach. Then the plan was to be ready for her, and, as she rigidly made a thrust at you with the most disreputable book in her collection, ward off her attack with one of Jarkins & Potto’s little bijous.The assertion cannot be authenticated, but it was said that Mrs Ruggles, soon after her appointment, went round to the bookstalls in Holywell Street, and bought up the old prayer-books out of the tea-chests, labelled, “All these at twopence;” and these brutal, loose-leaved, mildewed affairs she used to keep in a box in a corner pew ready to hand, making pounds out of them in the course of the year—a sort of private church-rate of her own.It was almost startling to hear her, when it had grown too late for fresh comers, when the church was completely filled, and a portion of the congregation was sitting in aisle and nave upon camp-stools and chairs fetched out of the vestry. She would join then in litany and communion, startling the clerk, and getting right before him, so that the congregation would turn and look at her, in admiration or otherwise, but without ruffling in the least the perfect calm of her demeanour.If a douceur was given to old Purkis, he bent a little, or touched his cocked-hat, or in some way gave you to understand that he was grateful; but not so Mrs Ruggles: she seemed to demand the money of you as a right, and you paid it under protest, feeling somehow obliged to do so, although, when she took it, she seemed to ignore you and your coin at one and the same time. Some people said that she must have paid fees to physicians in her day, and so have learned something of their ways; but how she ever continued to get the sixpences and shillings into her pocket, remains one of the great unsolved mysteries, for she never bent in the slightest degree.Mr Purkis never took to her, for he declared her to be a woman without a soul for music, since she seemed to make a point of leaving all the dust and cobwebs she could about the organ loft, neglecting it shamefully; which the beadle said was not the thing, seeing who had been the means of getting her the post.

There was no very great difficulty in the matter. Jared Pellet, under protest, wrote a note to the Rev. John Gray, the vicar, telling him that a friend—he haggled a great deal over that word “friend”—would be glad to undertake the duties of pew-opener in the place of the defunct Mrs Nimmer; and the vicar mentioned the matter to his friend Mr Timson, churchwarden and tea-dealer, and both agreed that they would be most happy to oblige Mr Jared Pellet in the matter.

Then Mr Timson had an interview with Jared, and told him personally he would be glad to give his weight to the matter, if Jared’s friend was a worthy suitable woman.

Now there came a hitch in the smoothness, for Jared went home and told his wife that that red-faced old humbug Purkis had played double; and, in fact, he had gone head-dabbing into the presence of the vicar and churchwarden to tell them he should be glad if the post lately occupied by Mrs Nimmer could be conferred upon a friend of his.

But explanations followed: the two principal candidates were found to be one and the same; and Mrs Tim Ruggles was duly appointed to a post, for whose proper filling she seemed to have been specially manufactured by Dame Nature.

She, that is to say Mrs Tim Ruggles, glided, as it were, into the correct rut upon the very first Sunday—coming to St Runwald’s in a mournful-hued dress—a shot putty and soot, while a tightly-fitting cap crowned her head—a cap like a white sarcenet raised pie, all tiny bows and tuckers—none of your fly-away servant-girl style of headdress, but firmly tied beneath her chin with silken strings. Then, too, a prim-white muslin handkerchief encircled her neck, with ends pinned across, and descending to be hidden away and protected by exceedingly stiff, dark-coloured jean stays, whose presence was manifested to the ear of the world at large by divers creaking cracklings, when, by rare chance, Mrs Ruggles slightly bent her fierce body—to the eye, by a little peephole, afforded where one hook in the back of the dress had an antipathy to its kindred loop.

She might have been pew-opener for twenty years from the way in which she performed her duties, even trenching upon Mr Purkis’s dominion by frowning at small boys. It was a sight to see the way in which she performed her task, pouncing upon dubious-looking strangers who stood tasting their hats just inside the doors, and, as she could tell in a moment whether or not they were disposed to be generous, placing them in comfortably cushioned seats, where such miserable sinners could not fail to be eased in their consciences. Sometimes she morally took the poor things into custody, and then, like some savage warder, shut them up in cold wooden cells—in corners where it was dark, in black places just below the galleries, in spots beneath the organ, where they sat with a sensation as of liquid thunder being poured upon their heads, or behind pillars where they could not catch a glimpse of the reading-desk, and had to look round the corner at the pulpit. A select few she treated worse than all the rest, shutting them up in the great churchwarden’s pew, where they were completely out of sight, Mr Timson monopolising all the hassocks so as to peep over the edge.

A very moral hedgehog was Mrs Ruggles, treating the congregation as if they were so many little Pines intrusted to her charge, and evidently annoyed that she was not allowed, like Mr Purkis, a cane to usead libitum. Had she been in office at a ritualistic church, brawlers would have paused ere they attempted to desecrate the structure. If you went into the church, she looked at you sidewise, and calculated your value in an instant; when, if you obeyed the glance of her eye, well; if not, she held up a finger at you, as if to say, “Come here, sir!” and then—stay away if you dared.

Why! the pew doors never screaked and scrawked when she opened them. She never shut in your coat-tails, or the voluminous folds of a lady’s dress; but she punished you severely if ever you attended St Runwald’s without books; for she would glide along the aisle like a religious ghost, and thrust a dreadful liver-coloured, dog’s-eared, S.P.C.K. prayer-book under your nose, so that you were obliged to take it, and then pay her sixpence as you went out for what you would rather not have had. For, if you had been accustomed all your life to a delicately bound diamond edition, it was not pleasant to stand up in good society holding the sore-edged, workhouse-looking book, while you dared not thrust it out of sight, for she was sure, in that case, to bring you another, to your lasting shame and confusion. It was almost a wonder that people so served ever entered the church again; and the probabilities are that they never would have done so, had not Jared Pellet drawn them thither with his music.

The best way to meet Mrs Ruggles was to be prepared with a pocket edition of the liturgy, when, if it were your custom to stand with hands joined and resting upon the pew-edge, under the impression that you were quite at home in the service, down she would come, for a certainty, her crackling stays heralding her approach. Then the plan was to be ready for her, and, as she rigidly made a thrust at you with the most disreputable book in her collection, ward off her attack with one of Jarkins & Potto’s little bijous.

The assertion cannot be authenticated, but it was said that Mrs Ruggles, soon after her appointment, went round to the bookstalls in Holywell Street, and bought up the old prayer-books out of the tea-chests, labelled, “All these at twopence;” and these brutal, loose-leaved, mildewed affairs she used to keep in a box in a corner pew ready to hand, making pounds out of them in the course of the year—a sort of private church-rate of her own.

It was almost startling to hear her, when it had grown too late for fresh comers, when the church was completely filled, and a portion of the congregation was sitting in aisle and nave upon camp-stools and chairs fetched out of the vestry. She would join then in litany and communion, startling the clerk, and getting right before him, so that the congregation would turn and look at her, in admiration or otherwise, but without ruffling in the least the perfect calm of her demeanour.

If a douceur was given to old Purkis, he bent a little, or touched his cocked-hat, or in some way gave you to understand that he was grateful; but not so Mrs Ruggles: she seemed to demand the money of you as a right, and you paid it under protest, feeling somehow obliged to do so, although, when she took it, she seemed to ignore you and your coin at one and the same time. Some people said that she must have paid fees to physicians in her day, and so have learned something of their ways; but how she ever continued to get the sixpences and shillings into her pocket, remains one of the great unsolved mysteries, for she never bent in the slightest degree.

Mr Purkis never took to her, for he declared her to be a woman without a soul for music, since she seemed to make a point of leaving all the dust and cobwebs she could about the organ loft, neglecting it shamefully; which the beadle said was not the thing, seeing who had been the means of getting her the post.

Volume One—Chapter Eighteen.Official.“A most valuable woman, Timson,” the vicar said to the churchwarden; “most suitable person. You never see her flurried when a great many people are waiting for seats.”“Never,” said Mr Timson, gruffly.The conversation took place in the vicar’s snuggery, where he and his friend indulged in these unclerical comforts, pipes, gin-and-water, and cribbage.“Very stiff and formal she is certainly,” said the vicar; “but, somehow, she never seems to give offence.”“Yes, she does,” said Mr Timson, gruffly; “she offends me; I don’t like her. Wish Mother Nimmer was alive again.”“Pooh! nonsense! stuff! prejudice!”“Shoo, shoo, shoo, shoo!” ejaculated Mr Timson. “I haven’t a bit of prejudice in my whole body.”“I mean,” said the vicar, taking not the slightest notice of the interruption, “she never seems to give offence about people’s sittings; for her’s is a delicate task, and one not easy to manage. I can assure you that I have not had a single complaint as yet, and they used to be constant in Mrs Nimmer’s time.”“’Fraid of her,” suggested Mr Timson.“I do wish that you would talk rationally, Timson,” said the vicar.“Well, that is rationally,” said Mr Timson.“The church fills uncommonly well now,” observed the vicar, after a pause, so as to start a fresh subject; for Mr Timson was looking red and choleric, and his short hair was standing up all over his head. “The people seem to like those historical sermons. I think I shall continue them.”“I think I should,” said Timson, drily; “perhaps it might be as well, at the same time, to stop some of the music, or give Mr Pellet a holiday.”“Why?” said the vicar, sharply.“Make more room in the church,” said Timson.“There, there! I won’t quarrel with you Timson,” said the vicar, with some asperity; “but I can understand your allusion, though I won’t notice it. But, to return to the subject, don’t you think that Mrs Ruggles’ salary might be a little raised?”“No,” said Mr Timson, stoutly; “I don’t think anything of the kind. Why, what for, pray? when the woman has the same as poor old Mrs Nimmer, who was worth a dozen of her.”“Well, Timson,” said the vicar, quietly, “if you are not disposed to discuss the matter in a liberal spirit, why it had better drop; at least, I think so.”“So do I,” said the illiberal Timson; and consequently the matter did drop, with the advantage to Mrs Ruggles of making her appear an ill-used woman, much persecuted, in the vicar’s eyes.For the old gentleman most thoroughly believed in her, from her conduct being so exemplary. Always the same quiet, prim woman, ready at proper times to do her duty; to arrange hassocks at a christening, or to point out the positions for the actors at a hymeneal sacrifice. The vicar was loud in her praise, so loud, indeed, that when with his crony Timson, Mrs Ruggles grew to be quite a bone—or rather bundle of bones—of contention, over which at times they almost quarrelled, for Mr Timson, either from a spirit of opposition, or from genuine dislike, invariably took part against the woman. So near were they to quarrelling at times, that had they been people of a more secular turn, it might have been said that they quite fell out.The vicar told Timson so more than once, though he would not believe it; for in spite of his friendly feeling and genuine respect for his nominator, the churchwarden could at times be as obstinate as the proverbial pig.In short, there was a division in the church, for and against Mrs Ruggles, and Purkis told his wife in confidence, that he “couldn’t see it at all; and if it hadn’t been for Pellet—he knowed”—What, he did not say; but he shook and nodded his head a great many times, as he concluded by telling Mrs Purkis that if she had been ruled by him, Mrs Ruggles would never have had the post.“And you’d never have had a decent bit of hot dinner o’ Sundays,” retorted his lady.“She’s a deceitful one, that’s what she is,” said Mr Purkis; “and she ain’t going to meddle and interfere with my dooties; so come now!”“I shouldn’t bemean myself to speak to her, if I was you, Joseph,” said his wife.“You might just as well have took the place, and gone comfortable to church with me, and come back with me comfortable,” said Mr Purkis, ignoring his wife’s last remark.“And, as I said before, you never knowing what it was to have hot dinners on Sundays,” retorted Mrs Purkis. “No, not if I know it, Joseph. We’ve been man and wife now turned of thirty year, and never once yet did I give you a cold Sunday-dinner. If I don’t know my duty as a wife by this time it’s a pity.”Mrs Purkis turned very red in the face as she spoke, and, after the fashion of her husband, shook her head and nodded it, till Mr Purkis, who, if he did not make a god of his gastric region, certainly yielded it the deference due to a monarch, owned that there was something in what she said, when her face resumed its natural hue, which was only a warm pink.“But it would have been a deal nicer for some things,” said Mr Purkis, who still hung about the subject.“And a deal nastier for other things, Joseph,” retorted his wife; “and that makes six of one and half-a-dozen of the other.”“Just so, my dear,” said Mr Purkis, making his first and last attempt at a joke—“six of one in pounds, and half-a-dozen of the other in shillings—six guineas a year, and what you could have made besides, and a very nice thing too.”“And you growling and grumbling because your Sunday-dinner was always cold,” said Mrs Purkis, resorting once more to her carnal fortification.“But I don’t know, now, but what that would have been better,” said the beadle, indulging in a habit which he had learned of a stout alderman and magistrate, who believed in its awe-inspiring qualities, and often tried it on small pickpockets, while Mr Purkis was so pleased with it that he always wore it with his beadle’s uniform, and practised it frequently upon Ichabod Gunnis, though with so little effect that the said young gentleman only imitated him as soon as his back was turned, frowning, blowing out his cheeks, and then letting them collapse again. “I don’t know, my dear,” said Mr Purkis, “but what it would have been better than to have had that woman always pottering about in my church.”“And never even had the decency to call in and thank us for the pains we took,” said Mrs Purkis, “or to drop in occasional for a friendly cup o’ tea, and a mossle of toast, as anybody else would; or come in and sit down sociably as poor Mrs Nimmer would, and ready at any time to take up a bit o’ needlework, or a stocking, and have a quiet chat.”“Well,” said Mr Purkis, whose thoughts were evidently running quite as much upon Sunday-dinners as upon pew-openers, “it’s of no use to grumble, for what’s done can’t be undone. But when Christmas comes, if she pushes herself forward so much, I’ll let her know—see if I don’t I’m not going to put up with so much of her interference, I can tell her.”“The more you give way, the more give you may,” said Mrs Purkis, rhythmically.“Why, she’ll want to be beadle next, and clerk too,” said Mr Purkis, indignantly, and growing so warm that he had to wipe inside his shirt-collar as well as dab his head; “says all the Amens now, she does, louder than the poor old gentleman—reg’lar drowns him in the litany, and makes herself that conspickyus that it’s a wonder Mr Gray can’t see through her, instead of taking her into favour. Not that I mind a bit—not I. Mr Timson don’t like her, though; and you see if he gives her a Christmas-box, same as he used Mrs Nimmer—pound o’ best black, and a quarter o’ green—he always give her reg’lar.”“Ah! same as he gives us,” sighed Mrs Purkis, “and as good tea as ever stood on a hob to draw.”

“A most valuable woman, Timson,” the vicar said to the churchwarden; “most suitable person. You never see her flurried when a great many people are waiting for seats.”

“Never,” said Mr Timson, gruffly.

The conversation took place in the vicar’s snuggery, where he and his friend indulged in these unclerical comforts, pipes, gin-and-water, and cribbage.

“Very stiff and formal she is certainly,” said the vicar; “but, somehow, she never seems to give offence.”

“Yes, she does,” said Mr Timson, gruffly; “she offends me; I don’t like her. Wish Mother Nimmer was alive again.”

“Pooh! nonsense! stuff! prejudice!”

“Shoo, shoo, shoo, shoo!” ejaculated Mr Timson. “I haven’t a bit of prejudice in my whole body.”

“I mean,” said the vicar, taking not the slightest notice of the interruption, “she never seems to give offence about people’s sittings; for her’s is a delicate task, and one not easy to manage. I can assure you that I have not had a single complaint as yet, and they used to be constant in Mrs Nimmer’s time.”

“’Fraid of her,” suggested Mr Timson.

“I do wish that you would talk rationally, Timson,” said the vicar.

“Well, that is rationally,” said Mr Timson.

“The church fills uncommonly well now,” observed the vicar, after a pause, so as to start a fresh subject; for Mr Timson was looking red and choleric, and his short hair was standing up all over his head. “The people seem to like those historical sermons. I think I shall continue them.”

“I think I should,” said Timson, drily; “perhaps it might be as well, at the same time, to stop some of the music, or give Mr Pellet a holiday.”

“Why?” said the vicar, sharply.

“Make more room in the church,” said Timson.

“There, there! I won’t quarrel with you Timson,” said the vicar, with some asperity; “but I can understand your allusion, though I won’t notice it. But, to return to the subject, don’t you think that Mrs Ruggles’ salary might be a little raised?”

“No,” said Mr Timson, stoutly; “I don’t think anything of the kind. Why, what for, pray? when the woman has the same as poor old Mrs Nimmer, who was worth a dozen of her.”

“Well, Timson,” said the vicar, quietly, “if you are not disposed to discuss the matter in a liberal spirit, why it had better drop; at least, I think so.”

“So do I,” said the illiberal Timson; and consequently the matter did drop, with the advantage to Mrs Ruggles of making her appear an ill-used woman, much persecuted, in the vicar’s eyes.

For the old gentleman most thoroughly believed in her, from her conduct being so exemplary. Always the same quiet, prim woman, ready at proper times to do her duty; to arrange hassocks at a christening, or to point out the positions for the actors at a hymeneal sacrifice. The vicar was loud in her praise, so loud, indeed, that when with his crony Timson, Mrs Ruggles grew to be quite a bone—or rather bundle of bones—of contention, over which at times they almost quarrelled, for Mr Timson, either from a spirit of opposition, or from genuine dislike, invariably took part against the woman. So near were they to quarrelling at times, that had they been people of a more secular turn, it might have been said that they quite fell out.

The vicar told Timson so more than once, though he would not believe it; for in spite of his friendly feeling and genuine respect for his nominator, the churchwarden could at times be as obstinate as the proverbial pig.

In short, there was a division in the church, for and against Mrs Ruggles, and Purkis told his wife in confidence, that he “couldn’t see it at all; and if it hadn’t been for Pellet—he knowed”—What, he did not say; but he shook and nodded his head a great many times, as he concluded by telling Mrs Purkis that if she had been ruled by him, Mrs Ruggles would never have had the post.

“And you’d never have had a decent bit of hot dinner o’ Sundays,” retorted his lady.

“She’s a deceitful one, that’s what she is,” said Mr Purkis; “and she ain’t going to meddle and interfere with my dooties; so come now!”

“I shouldn’t bemean myself to speak to her, if I was you, Joseph,” said his wife.

“You might just as well have took the place, and gone comfortable to church with me, and come back with me comfortable,” said Mr Purkis, ignoring his wife’s last remark.

“And, as I said before, you never knowing what it was to have hot dinners on Sundays,” retorted Mrs Purkis. “No, not if I know it, Joseph. We’ve been man and wife now turned of thirty year, and never once yet did I give you a cold Sunday-dinner. If I don’t know my duty as a wife by this time it’s a pity.”

Mrs Purkis turned very red in the face as she spoke, and, after the fashion of her husband, shook her head and nodded it, till Mr Purkis, who, if he did not make a god of his gastric region, certainly yielded it the deference due to a monarch, owned that there was something in what she said, when her face resumed its natural hue, which was only a warm pink.

“But it would have been a deal nicer for some things,” said Mr Purkis, who still hung about the subject.

“And a deal nastier for other things, Joseph,” retorted his wife; “and that makes six of one and half-a-dozen of the other.”

“Just so, my dear,” said Mr Purkis, making his first and last attempt at a joke—“six of one in pounds, and half-a-dozen of the other in shillings—six guineas a year, and what you could have made besides, and a very nice thing too.”

“And you growling and grumbling because your Sunday-dinner was always cold,” said Mrs Purkis, resorting once more to her carnal fortification.

“But I don’t know, now, but what that would have been better,” said the beadle, indulging in a habit which he had learned of a stout alderman and magistrate, who believed in its awe-inspiring qualities, and often tried it on small pickpockets, while Mr Purkis was so pleased with it that he always wore it with his beadle’s uniform, and practised it frequently upon Ichabod Gunnis, though with so little effect that the said young gentleman only imitated him as soon as his back was turned, frowning, blowing out his cheeks, and then letting them collapse again. “I don’t know, my dear,” said Mr Purkis, “but what it would have been better than to have had that woman always pottering about in my church.”

“And never even had the decency to call in and thank us for the pains we took,” said Mrs Purkis, “or to drop in occasional for a friendly cup o’ tea, and a mossle of toast, as anybody else would; or come in and sit down sociably as poor Mrs Nimmer would, and ready at any time to take up a bit o’ needlework, or a stocking, and have a quiet chat.”

“Well,” said Mr Purkis, whose thoughts were evidently running quite as much upon Sunday-dinners as upon pew-openers, “it’s of no use to grumble, for what’s done can’t be undone. But when Christmas comes, if she pushes herself forward so much, I’ll let her know—see if I don’t I’m not going to put up with so much of her interference, I can tell her.”

“The more you give way, the more give you may,” said Mrs Purkis, rhythmically.

“Why, she’ll want to be beadle next, and clerk too,” said Mr Purkis, indignantly, and growing so warm that he had to wipe inside his shirt-collar as well as dab his head; “says all the Amens now, she does, louder than the poor old gentleman—reg’lar drowns him in the litany, and makes herself that conspickyus that it’s a wonder Mr Gray can’t see through her, instead of taking her into favour. Not that I mind a bit—not I. Mr Timson don’t like her, though; and you see if he gives her a Christmas-box, same as he used Mrs Nimmer—pound o’ best black, and a quarter o’ green—he always give her reg’lar.”

“Ah! same as he gives us,” sighed Mrs Purkis, “and as good tea as ever stood on a hob to draw.”

Volume One—Chapter Nineteen.Richard’s Secret.Time glided on, and the brothers Pellet did not meet. There was estrangement too between Richard Pellet and his stepson, who came up during his vacations, but only to leave home again in disgust. For the fact was, Richard Pellet looked upon him as being in the way,—a manner he had of considering all those who were not of present use to him in his designs. So Harry Clayton saw but little of Norwood.He made calls in Duplex Street at intervals, but always in vain, for Jared remained inflexible, and received the young man in a way which chilled him, and sent him away declaiming against people’s hard-heartedness. Never once was Patty visible, for she followed out the rôle she had been taught, and had in consequence many a bitter cry in secret.Would she have liked to see Henry Clayton? That, too, she kept secret; and fate seemed to fight on Richard Pellet’s side, for somehow the young people never encountered, in spite of the long hours which Harry loitered about Clerkenwell, till he knew every brass plate by heart in the neighbourhood, without counting the signboards that he read till he was weary.The effect of all these crosses upon Harry Clayton was to quite change the young man’s disposition; from being light-hearted and cheerful, he grew stern and quiet, almost morose. He determined at last, in a fit of anger, after a call at Duplex Street and a vain application to Richard Pellet for money, that he would turn dissipated, and began at once.His first plunge was into billiards, but he gave the game up at the end of a week. Rowing followed, and he almost lived upon the river in gaudy-coloured flannels. But that soon palled upon him, and at the end of a month a cold business-like letter from Richard Pellet, advising him curtly to take to business, for his late father’s settlements would not permit of the expenses of a college life, settled the affair. The consequence was, that. Harry knit his brows, went down to Norwood, and announced his intention of staying up at Cambridge and reading for honours.The result was a quarrel, and Richard Pellet slammed the door as he went out, bound for the city. Mrs Richard kissed her son, and said she hoped he would be a good boy and obey Mr Pellet, who was all that was wise and clever, and then Harry said good-bye, and went off with an aching heart to make a last call at Duplex Street.It was the old story; Jared received him kindly, and shook hands when they parted, but there were no ladies visible.Harry looked sterner, and felt sterner of purpose as he came away, and these troubles were the turning-point in the young man’s career, for henceforward he seemed to cast youth and its frivolities behind, so as to be untrammelled in the firmer purposes of life.He was wandering slowly and thoughtfully along, wondering as to what the future would bring forth. He told himself that he was certainly very fond of Patty, and though she had perhaps never since given to him a thought, yet he would be true to his intentions, and in spite of her humble position, if she proved to be as he believed she would, no difference of station should interfere.“No,” he said, half aloud; “not even if I get to be senior wrangler,”—of which, by the way, there did not seem to be much probability. Then his thoughts turned to Richard Pellet, and it seemed to him that his father’s affairs had somehow got into a state of strange confusion. He could get no satisfactory explanation. One thing was evident, and that was that Richard Pellet had full influence over his wife, and that nothing save recourse to law would enforce a full declaration of how matters stood.“And I can’t do that,” muttered Harry. Then he began going over once more his mother’s marriage, and wondered how she could have been so weak as to marry one so hard, and close, and cold.Just then he saw a Hansom cab stop a short distance from him, out of which stepped Richard Pellet, who paid his driver, and, without seeing his stepson, strode off hastily, making his way through the gloomy streets of Pentonville.Harry hesitated for a while, feeling half tempted to follow, but he turned off the next moment to seek his hotel.Meanwhile Richard Pellet hurried on, his way lying through streets that seemed to be the favourite playgrounds of the roaming children of the neighbourhood. And here he walked as if he felt a peculiar spite against every child he passed. He kicked this one’s top half across the road; he purposely obliterated the chalked-out hopscotch marks with his feet; nearly knocked down a boy carrying a shawl-swathed infant,—not that there was much force needed, for the weight of the shawl-swathed nearly overbalanced its porter; and he ended by treading upon a thin girl’s toes.Another turn or two, and he was in a pleasant street rejoicing in the name of Borton, at whose end there was a pleasing glimpse to be obtained of the great jail with its blank walls, and the low hum of Tullochgorum Road murmured on the ear.Richard stopped at a dingy sleepy-looking house, with its blinds down, and knocked a slinking kind of double knock, as if afraid of its being heard by any one outside the house. It was a double knock certainly, but it had a mean degraded sound about it, beside which a poor man’s single thump would have sounded massive and grand.After waiting for a reasonable space he knocked a second time, when, after fidgeting about upon the door-step, glancing up and down the street, and acting after the fashion of a man troubled with the impression that every one is watching him, he was relieved by the door being opened a very little way, and a sour-looking woman confronting him.Upon seeing who was her visitor, the woman admitted him to stand for a minute or two upon the shabby worn oil-cloth of the badly-lighted passage before ushering him into a damp earthy-smelling parlour, over whose windows were drawn Venetian blinds of a faded sickly green, the bar-like laths giving a prison aspect to the place.“Send her down?” said the woman, shortly, as she removed a handkerchief from her face and looked toothache.“Yes,” was the curt gruff reply; but the woman held her handkerchief to the aching tooth and remained waiting, when Richard Pellet drew out his pocket-book and passed a piece of crisp paper to the woman.The paper was taken, carefully examined, and then seemed to have an anodyne effect upon the toothache of its recipient, who folded it carefully small and then tied it in a knot in one corner of the dingy pocket-handkerchief, after the fashion of elderly ladies from the country who ride in omnibuses, and then seek in such corners for the small coin wherewith to pay the fare. In this case, though, the tying-up was followed by the deposit of the handkerchief in its owner’s bosom, the act been accompanied by a grim nod which said plainly enough, “that’s safe.”The woman left the room; there was the sound of the key being drawn from the front door, pattering of steps on the oil-cloth, and then she re-appeared.“’Taint my fault, you know,” she said, in a hoarse voice; “it’s him—he made me write. I’d keep her to the end, but he says that we won’t have it any more. It’s a fool’s trick, for she never leaves her room.”“It’s plain enough,” said Richard, contemptuously, “you want more money.”The woman smiled grimly. “He says he won’t have it any more,” was all she said.“What reason does he give?” said Richard, sharply.“Oh!” said the woman, “he says that it has got about that we keep a mad woman in the house without having a license; and the neighbours talk, and there will be a summons about it some time or another. He hates to go out, he says—just as if that matters. Don’t you think it might be managed after all? I don’t want to part with her.”“Yes—no,” said Richard Pellet, correcting himself. “You’ve thrown up a good thing, and now I shall make another arrangement.”“Well,” said the woman, in surly tones, “I was obliged to write—he made me. But you’ve no call to complain; she’s been here now best part of nine years, and always well taken care of, and at a lower rate than you would have paid at a private asylum. You ought to have let me have the child as well. No one could have kept her closer.”“What?” said Richard, harshly.“Well, that was only once; and I took precious good care that she did not play me such a trick a second time. She wasn’t away long, though,” said the woman, laughing.“There! send her down,” said Richard Pellet, impatiently.“I don’t mind telling you, now,” said the woman, not heeding the remark, “she’s very little trouble; sits and works all day long without speaking.”“Humph!” ejaculated Richard Pellet; “now that there’s no more money to be made by contrary statements, you can be honest.”“Well,” said the woman, “other people may find out things for themselves. Nobody taught me.”Then she left the room.A few minutes elapsed, and then a pale, dark-haired woman, with a pitiful, almost imploring aspect, entered the room, clasped her hands tightly together, and stood gazing in Richard’s Pellet’s face.“I’m going to take you away from here, Ellen,” he said.For a few moments the pale face lit up as with some show of animation; the woman exclaimed—“To see my child, Richard?”“I’m going to take you away from here,” he replied, coldly; “so be ready to-morrow.”The light faded from the countenance of the woman in an instant, to leave it dull and inanimate. She pressed her hand for an instant upon her side, and winced as if a pain had shot through her. Then slowly drawing a scrap of needlework from her pocket, she began to sew hastily.“I have made arrangements for you to stay at an institution where you will be well cared for,” he continued; “that is, provided that you behave well.”The faint shadow of a sad smile crossed the pale face as the woman glanced at him for a moment, and then sighed and looked down.“Do you hear what I say?” said Richard, roughly.“Yes, Richard,” she said, quietly, and as if quite resigned to her fate; “I never do anything that you would not wish, only when—when—when my head gets hot and strange. I am quite ready, but—”“Well?” said the great city man.“You will let me see my little one before I go, Richard? I won’t let my head get hot. You will not mind that. I will do all that you wish. But why not let us be together? She is not mad; but that would not matter. Let me have her, and go away from here. She is so little, I could carry her; and we would never trouble you again. Indeed, indeed—never, never again!”If he could only have placed faith in those words, what a burden Richard Pellet would have felt to be off his shoulders! But no; he dared not trust her; and in the few moments while she stood with her wild strange eyes gazing appealingly in his face, he saw her coming to his office for help, then down to Norwood, declaring that she was his wedded wife, and trouble, exposure, perhaps punishment, to follow, because, he told himself, he had declined to let this poor helpless maniac stand in the way of his advancement.Richard Pellet’s face grew darker as he turned to leave the room.“But you will let me see her once, Richard—only once before I go? Think how obedient I have been, how I have attended always to your words—always. I know what you mean to do—to shut me up in a dreadful madhouse, and all because—because my poor head grows so hot. It was not so once, Richard.”She dropped her work upon the floor, and elapsed her hands as she stood before him.“Only once, Richard,” she exclaimed again; “only once, for ever so short a time,” and the voice grew more and more plaintive and appealing—the tones seeming to ring prophetically in Richard Pellet’s ears, so that he found himself thinking—“Suppose those words haunt me at my deathbed!”He started the next moment.“Be quiet,” he exclaimed, harshly, as he might have said “Down!” to a dog; when, rightly interpreting his words, the woman uttered a low wail, letting herself sink upon the floor, as she covered her face with her hands, and convulsively sobbed. But the trembling hands fell again as she shook her head with the action of one throwing back thick masses of curling hair, and looking sharply up, she listened, for the sound of a bell fell upon her ear. The cause was plain enough, for Richard Pellet stood before her with the rope in his hand.Then she slowly rose, sighing as she closed her eyes, and stood motionless until the woman of the house came into the room and laid her talon-like hand upon her shoulder. But though the prisoner shivered, she did not move from her place; she only opened her eyes and gazed once more imploringly at Richard, who avoided her look, and, walking to the window, peered through the bar-like blinds.“Ellen!” said the woman, in a harsh voice, which seemed to grate through the room, and then unresistingly a prisoner, for the sake of Richard Pellet’s prosperity, she followed her gaoler from the room, Richard Pellet waiting with knitted brows till the woman came back.A long and somewhat angry conversation ensued, in which Richard Pellet tried very hard to make out whether the woman he had employed for so many years as his wife’s attendant was in earnest concerning the written desire to give up the charge, or whether it was merely a bit of business-fencing to obtain a higher rate of payment. He left at last, boasting of the ease with which he could make fresh arrangements for “Ellen Herrisey’s” reception. “But I will not take any further steps till I hear from you again,” he said, while the woman watched him as he left the room with a strange meaning smile.“Another twenty pounds a year will do it,” said Richard, as he walked away. “He won’t let her give up the money.”“You’re like the ostrich we read about,” muttered the woman, as she watched her visitor down the street. “Do you think I don’t know you’re married again, you brute? Ellen Herrisey, indeed! It shall be fifty pounds a year more, or I’ll know the reason why!”

Time glided on, and the brothers Pellet did not meet. There was estrangement too between Richard Pellet and his stepson, who came up during his vacations, but only to leave home again in disgust. For the fact was, Richard Pellet looked upon him as being in the way,—a manner he had of considering all those who were not of present use to him in his designs. So Harry Clayton saw but little of Norwood.

He made calls in Duplex Street at intervals, but always in vain, for Jared remained inflexible, and received the young man in a way which chilled him, and sent him away declaiming against people’s hard-heartedness. Never once was Patty visible, for she followed out the rôle she had been taught, and had in consequence many a bitter cry in secret.

Would she have liked to see Henry Clayton? That, too, she kept secret; and fate seemed to fight on Richard Pellet’s side, for somehow the young people never encountered, in spite of the long hours which Harry loitered about Clerkenwell, till he knew every brass plate by heart in the neighbourhood, without counting the signboards that he read till he was weary.

The effect of all these crosses upon Harry Clayton was to quite change the young man’s disposition; from being light-hearted and cheerful, he grew stern and quiet, almost morose. He determined at last, in a fit of anger, after a call at Duplex Street and a vain application to Richard Pellet for money, that he would turn dissipated, and began at once.

His first plunge was into billiards, but he gave the game up at the end of a week. Rowing followed, and he almost lived upon the river in gaudy-coloured flannels. But that soon palled upon him, and at the end of a month a cold business-like letter from Richard Pellet, advising him curtly to take to business, for his late father’s settlements would not permit of the expenses of a college life, settled the affair. The consequence was, that. Harry knit his brows, went down to Norwood, and announced his intention of staying up at Cambridge and reading for honours.

The result was a quarrel, and Richard Pellet slammed the door as he went out, bound for the city. Mrs Richard kissed her son, and said she hoped he would be a good boy and obey Mr Pellet, who was all that was wise and clever, and then Harry said good-bye, and went off with an aching heart to make a last call at Duplex Street.

It was the old story; Jared received him kindly, and shook hands when they parted, but there were no ladies visible.

Harry looked sterner, and felt sterner of purpose as he came away, and these troubles were the turning-point in the young man’s career, for henceforward he seemed to cast youth and its frivolities behind, so as to be untrammelled in the firmer purposes of life.

He was wandering slowly and thoughtfully along, wondering as to what the future would bring forth. He told himself that he was certainly very fond of Patty, and though she had perhaps never since given to him a thought, yet he would be true to his intentions, and in spite of her humble position, if she proved to be as he believed she would, no difference of station should interfere.

“No,” he said, half aloud; “not even if I get to be senior wrangler,”—of which, by the way, there did not seem to be much probability. Then his thoughts turned to Richard Pellet, and it seemed to him that his father’s affairs had somehow got into a state of strange confusion. He could get no satisfactory explanation. One thing was evident, and that was that Richard Pellet had full influence over his wife, and that nothing save recourse to law would enforce a full declaration of how matters stood.

“And I can’t do that,” muttered Harry. Then he began going over once more his mother’s marriage, and wondered how she could have been so weak as to marry one so hard, and close, and cold.

Just then he saw a Hansom cab stop a short distance from him, out of which stepped Richard Pellet, who paid his driver, and, without seeing his stepson, strode off hastily, making his way through the gloomy streets of Pentonville.

Harry hesitated for a while, feeling half tempted to follow, but he turned off the next moment to seek his hotel.

Meanwhile Richard Pellet hurried on, his way lying through streets that seemed to be the favourite playgrounds of the roaming children of the neighbourhood. And here he walked as if he felt a peculiar spite against every child he passed. He kicked this one’s top half across the road; he purposely obliterated the chalked-out hopscotch marks with his feet; nearly knocked down a boy carrying a shawl-swathed infant,—not that there was much force needed, for the weight of the shawl-swathed nearly overbalanced its porter; and he ended by treading upon a thin girl’s toes.

Another turn or two, and he was in a pleasant street rejoicing in the name of Borton, at whose end there was a pleasing glimpse to be obtained of the great jail with its blank walls, and the low hum of Tullochgorum Road murmured on the ear.

Richard stopped at a dingy sleepy-looking house, with its blinds down, and knocked a slinking kind of double knock, as if afraid of its being heard by any one outside the house. It was a double knock certainly, but it had a mean degraded sound about it, beside which a poor man’s single thump would have sounded massive and grand.

After waiting for a reasonable space he knocked a second time, when, after fidgeting about upon the door-step, glancing up and down the street, and acting after the fashion of a man troubled with the impression that every one is watching him, he was relieved by the door being opened a very little way, and a sour-looking woman confronting him.

Upon seeing who was her visitor, the woman admitted him to stand for a minute or two upon the shabby worn oil-cloth of the badly-lighted passage before ushering him into a damp earthy-smelling parlour, over whose windows were drawn Venetian blinds of a faded sickly green, the bar-like laths giving a prison aspect to the place.

“Send her down?” said the woman, shortly, as she removed a handkerchief from her face and looked toothache.

“Yes,” was the curt gruff reply; but the woman held her handkerchief to the aching tooth and remained waiting, when Richard Pellet drew out his pocket-book and passed a piece of crisp paper to the woman.

The paper was taken, carefully examined, and then seemed to have an anodyne effect upon the toothache of its recipient, who folded it carefully small and then tied it in a knot in one corner of the dingy pocket-handkerchief, after the fashion of elderly ladies from the country who ride in omnibuses, and then seek in such corners for the small coin wherewith to pay the fare. In this case, though, the tying-up was followed by the deposit of the handkerchief in its owner’s bosom, the act been accompanied by a grim nod which said plainly enough, “that’s safe.”

The woman left the room; there was the sound of the key being drawn from the front door, pattering of steps on the oil-cloth, and then she re-appeared.

“’Taint my fault, you know,” she said, in a hoarse voice; “it’s him—he made me write. I’d keep her to the end, but he says that we won’t have it any more. It’s a fool’s trick, for she never leaves her room.”

“It’s plain enough,” said Richard, contemptuously, “you want more money.”

The woman smiled grimly. “He says he won’t have it any more,” was all she said.

“What reason does he give?” said Richard, sharply.

“Oh!” said the woman, “he says that it has got about that we keep a mad woman in the house without having a license; and the neighbours talk, and there will be a summons about it some time or another. He hates to go out, he says—just as if that matters. Don’t you think it might be managed after all? I don’t want to part with her.”

“Yes—no,” said Richard Pellet, correcting himself. “You’ve thrown up a good thing, and now I shall make another arrangement.”

“Well,” said the woman, in surly tones, “I was obliged to write—he made me. But you’ve no call to complain; she’s been here now best part of nine years, and always well taken care of, and at a lower rate than you would have paid at a private asylum. You ought to have let me have the child as well. No one could have kept her closer.”

“What?” said Richard, harshly.

“Well, that was only once; and I took precious good care that she did not play me such a trick a second time. She wasn’t away long, though,” said the woman, laughing.

“There! send her down,” said Richard Pellet, impatiently.

“I don’t mind telling you, now,” said the woman, not heeding the remark, “she’s very little trouble; sits and works all day long without speaking.”

“Humph!” ejaculated Richard Pellet; “now that there’s no more money to be made by contrary statements, you can be honest.”

“Well,” said the woman, “other people may find out things for themselves. Nobody taught me.”

Then she left the room.

A few minutes elapsed, and then a pale, dark-haired woman, with a pitiful, almost imploring aspect, entered the room, clasped her hands tightly together, and stood gazing in Richard’s Pellet’s face.

“I’m going to take you away from here, Ellen,” he said.

For a few moments the pale face lit up as with some show of animation; the woman exclaimed—“To see my child, Richard?”

“I’m going to take you away from here,” he replied, coldly; “so be ready to-morrow.”

The light faded from the countenance of the woman in an instant, to leave it dull and inanimate. She pressed her hand for an instant upon her side, and winced as if a pain had shot through her. Then slowly drawing a scrap of needlework from her pocket, she began to sew hastily.

“I have made arrangements for you to stay at an institution where you will be well cared for,” he continued; “that is, provided that you behave well.”

The faint shadow of a sad smile crossed the pale face as the woman glanced at him for a moment, and then sighed and looked down.

“Do you hear what I say?” said Richard, roughly.

“Yes, Richard,” she said, quietly, and as if quite resigned to her fate; “I never do anything that you would not wish, only when—when—when my head gets hot and strange. I am quite ready, but—”

“Well?” said the great city man.

“You will let me see my little one before I go, Richard? I won’t let my head get hot. You will not mind that. I will do all that you wish. But why not let us be together? She is not mad; but that would not matter. Let me have her, and go away from here. She is so little, I could carry her; and we would never trouble you again. Indeed, indeed—never, never again!”

If he could only have placed faith in those words, what a burden Richard Pellet would have felt to be off his shoulders! But no; he dared not trust her; and in the few moments while she stood with her wild strange eyes gazing appealingly in his face, he saw her coming to his office for help, then down to Norwood, declaring that she was his wedded wife, and trouble, exposure, perhaps punishment, to follow, because, he told himself, he had declined to let this poor helpless maniac stand in the way of his advancement.

Richard Pellet’s face grew darker as he turned to leave the room.

“But you will let me see her once, Richard—only once before I go? Think how obedient I have been, how I have attended always to your words—always. I know what you mean to do—to shut me up in a dreadful madhouse, and all because—because my poor head grows so hot. It was not so once, Richard.”

She dropped her work upon the floor, and elapsed her hands as she stood before him.

“Only once, Richard,” she exclaimed again; “only once, for ever so short a time,” and the voice grew more and more plaintive and appealing—the tones seeming to ring prophetically in Richard Pellet’s ears, so that he found himself thinking—“Suppose those words haunt me at my deathbed!”

He started the next moment.

“Be quiet,” he exclaimed, harshly, as he might have said “Down!” to a dog; when, rightly interpreting his words, the woman uttered a low wail, letting herself sink upon the floor, as she covered her face with her hands, and convulsively sobbed. But the trembling hands fell again as she shook her head with the action of one throwing back thick masses of curling hair, and looking sharply up, she listened, for the sound of a bell fell upon her ear. The cause was plain enough, for Richard Pellet stood before her with the rope in his hand.

Then she slowly rose, sighing as she closed her eyes, and stood motionless until the woman of the house came into the room and laid her talon-like hand upon her shoulder. But though the prisoner shivered, she did not move from her place; she only opened her eyes and gazed once more imploringly at Richard, who avoided her look, and, walking to the window, peered through the bar-like blinds.

“Ellen!” said the woman, in a harsh voice, which seemed to grate through the room, and then unresistingly a prisoner, for the sake of Richard Pellet’s prosperity, she followed her gaoler from the room, Richard Pellet waiting with knitted brows till the woman came back.

A long and somewhat angry conversation ensued, in which Richard Pellet tried very hard to make out whether the woman he had employed for so many years as his wife’s attendant was in earnest concerning the written desire to give up the charge, or whether it was merely a bit of business-fencing to obtain a higher rate of payment. He left at last, boasting of the ease with which he could make fresh arrangements for “Ellen Herrisey’s” reception. “But I will not take any further steps till I hear from you again,” he said, while the woman watched him as he left the room with a strange meaning smile.

“Another twenty pounds a year will do it,” said Richard, as he walked away. “He won’t let her give up the money.”

“You’re like the ostrich we read about,” muttered the woman, as she watched her visitor down the street. “Do you think I don’t know you’re married again, you brute? Ellen Herrisey, indeed! It shall be fifty pounds a year more, or I’ll know the reason why!”

Volume One—Chapter Twenty.Startling.Mr Richard Pellet was back at Norwood Station at about the same time as his stepson reached the terminus at Shoreditch, where he caught the express, and ran back to Cambridge, to find a letter which made considerable alterations in his arrangements, of which more after a while. As for Richard Pellet, he had all the cares upon him that night of a great dinner-party, for Mrs Richard, in happy ignorance of all that might work to her mortification, had, in obedience to Richard’s commands, issued her cards to a select circle of city magnates, of course including their wives and daughters—men who matched well with Richard Pellet, some of them worth a plum—golden drop, no doubt.The stout butler and the men in coach-lace were hard-worked that evening, for the best dinner-service was in use, the choice plate, too, had been taken out of green baize bags, from green baize-lined boxes; the three extra dark-hued leaves had been fitted into the dining-table; the large epergne was filled with flowers and waxlights. Bokes the butler had turned eighteen damask dinner-napkins into as many cocked-hats, all crimp, crease, and pucker; prepared his salad—a point which he never yielded—and decanted his wines. Two men in white had been down all day from Gunter’s, driving cook and kitchenmaid out of their senses, as they declared again and again that there was nothing in the kitchen fit for use, and that it was quite impossible for a decent dinner to be prepared. They vowed that the great prize kitchener was a sham; the patent hot-plate good for nothing; the charcoal stove and warm cupboard, abominations both; stew-pans, saucepans, and kitchen fittings generally, a set of rubbish; and ended by asking how they were to be expected to work without stock. There would have been no dinner if Mrs Richard, upon hearing the twentieth complaint, had not taken the butler into her counsel, and urged him to allay the disorder. The consequence was that Mr Bokes went into his pantry, and from thence into his kitchen, which was hotter, morally, than ever. Then he mysteriously signalled with his thumb to the two men in white, and shortly after installed them in a couple of chairs in the cool shades of the pantry.As if performing some mysterious ceremony, Mr Bokes made the cork of a port-wine bottle “skreel” as he tortured it by forcing in a screw, and then brought it forth with a loud “fop,” holding it out, wet and blood-stained—grape—for the senior Gunterian to sniff at, and afterwards to the lieutenant, when the following solemn dialogue took place:—“Twenty!” whispered Mr Bokes, solemnly.“Twenty!” exclaimed the Gunterians, in duet.“Twenty!” repeated Mr Bokes, with additional solemnity; and then he added, “Five bin.”Speech ceased for a few moments, while Mr Bokes armed his guests with large claret-glasses, afterwards tenderly pouring forth the deep-hued generous mixture.“Seeing as you’re both gentlemen,” said Mr Bokes, confidentially, “as goes into the best of society, I thought I should like to hear your opinions.”“But you’ll join us?” said Gunter One to the speaker.“Well, raylly, gentlemen,” hesitated Mr Bokes.Gunter One set down his glass and pursed up his mouth, looking at Gunter Two, who also set down his untasted glass, folded his arms, and looked fiercely at the butler.“Well, raylly, gentlemen,” said Mr Bokes, “if that’s it, I suppose I must;” and helping himself to a glass, the three took wine together, after the most approved fashion, but perhaps with an additional dignity.Gunter One thought it a tolerably fruity wine.Gunter Two considered that it wanted more age.“Well, I don’t know,” said Gunter One; “for a light-bodied tawny wine, it’s fairish.”“I think I’ll take another glass,” Mr Bokes, said Gunter Two, Gunter One following his example; and the butler filled their glasses, not forgetting his own; after which there was a discussion upon crust, and bees-wing, and vine-disease, when Mr Bokes dropt a hint about the finest glass of Madeira to be had in or out of London being likely to be on the way when the dinner was over.The conversation was stopped by the ringing of a bell, and as James, footman, and Thomas, under-butler, were busy over other matters, Mr Bokes went to respond to the summons.Five minutes had elapsed before the butler returned, in time to find the bottle perfectly empty, and the Gunters smacking their lips over the last drops in their glasses; when, no more being forthcoming, the gentlemen in white returned to the kitchen, sufficiently good-humoured for Number One to smile affably upon the cook, and Number Two to address the kitchenmaid as “My dear,” in asking for a wooden spoon.The full resources of the Norwood establishment were brought out that night, and Jared Pellet of Duplex Street would have looked less dreamy, and rubbed his eyes, as he turned from the duet he was having with Monsieur Canau, with Janet, little Pine, and Patty for audience, could he have seen the dinner served in a dining-room that sparkled with candles, plate, and glass. Even the most ill-disposed of the guests acknowledged the repast to be a success, that is, as far as appearances went. There was only one failure—the smash made by one of the men of a dish of meringues, leaving a blank place upon the table. Wines, ices, attendance, all were good. There could not be a doubt of Mr Richard Pellet’s wealth, nor of the high position he occupied, not only in the city, but in the pleasant suburban district of Norwood.The ladies had risen, and, amidst a pleasant rustling of silks, swept up-stairs; the gentlemen had drawn their chairs nearer together for the convenient passage of port-decanter and claret-jug, when Mr Bokes, the Norwood Pharaoh’s chief butler, whispered to his master that he was wanted.“Indeed,” said Mr Richard Pellet, loudly, for he was delivering his opinion upon City affairs, “unless a similar crisis should arise, I give you my word of honour that it must be—Now, Bokes,” in an undertone, “what is it? What the deuce do you mean—at such a time? Who wants me?”“Tall, stout woman, sir.”“Lady?”“No, not lady—woman, sir. Says she must see you, sir.”“Must!” exclaimed Richard, scowling.“Yes, sir, and will.”“Tell her to call to-morrow; I’m engaged.”Mr Bokes bowed and left the room, and his master continued—“Limited liability companies generally, gentlemen, are becoming the ruin of our land. I don’t believe in them. You never see my name down anywhere as a director. Why, I’ve had no less than four applications—no less than four, gentlemen—to sell my little bit of a business, so that it may be formed into a company, with your humble servant to act as manager, with a noble price, a noble salary, and no end of shares into the bargain. But no, gentlemen; I am determined—Now, Bokes,” impatiently, “what is it?”“Woman, sir—will see you, sir,” whispered the butler; “says I was to say ‘Borton Street,’ sir, and ‘Gone!’”So strange a pallor overspread Richard Pellet’s face that it was observed by all his guests, as, rising with a forced attempt at a smile, he asked them to excuse him for five minutes.“If she should only have made her way here to-night!” ejaculated Richard Pellet, as he passed the dining-room door, perspiring profusely the while. “If she were but dead—if she were but dead!”“What’s wrong?” whispered Alderman Espicier to his neighbour. “Pellet’s bank gone to the bad?”“Writ, more likely,” said the other, charitably; and then they made a few pleasant comments upon the wine they were drinking, calculated its cost per dozen, wondered whether the epergne and ice-pails were silver or electro, but hardly liked to seek for the hall-marks, in case the host should return and find them so engaged. In short, during Richard Pellet’s absence, they looked upon everything in a truly commercial spirit, that might not have been quite agreeable to their host had he been aware of the proceedings.Meanwhile, taking up a chamber candlestick, Richard Pellet had hurried into the library, where he found Mrs Walls, the woman from the Borton Street house—Ellen’s gaoler.“Now!” he harshly exclaimed, “what is it?”“Gone!” said the woman, abruptly.“Who—what—Ellen?” stammered Richard, for he had clung to the doubt. “How?—when?”“Do you want all that answered at once?” said the woman, in a cool insolent tone—the voice of one who might have taken her last cheque from her employer, or felt herself safe of her position.“There! speak out; I’m busy—company,” exclaimed Richard, excitedly.“Well,” said the woman, “I’ve nothing more to tell you, only that she is gone, and I don’t know how she managed it. Of course, my responsibility was at an end after the notice I had given you, and I considered that she was only staying to oblige you. But I never thought she would slip away, or I’d have watched her. P’raps she’s off again to see the little one—she has been talking to herself about it a good deal lately.”“And you never watched her!” hissed Richard, standing with knitted brows and clenched fists before the woman.“No,” she replied, coolly. “You took care only to pay me up to this morning, so it’s your affair now,Mr Herrisey.”The last word was said with a meaning emphasis, which made Richard wince.“How did you know I was staying here?” he said, more quietly.“How did I know that you lived here!” laughed the woman; “you told me—at least, you took care to drop one of your cards one day, and to sign the cheque one day as Richard Pellet. Of course, when it was money, I wanted to know which was right—Herrisey or Pellet. It didn’t much matter to me, but I thought I’d know while I was about it. You may call yourself Smith if you like.”Richard Pellet glared at the woman, as he thought of the trouble he had been at to keep a little separate banking account solely for this purpose, and then, unknown to himself, force of habit had made him make one payment according to custom. He was at the woman’s mercy, in spite of the precautions he thought he had taken, and no doubt she knew the whole of his affairs. Well, money would buy her, he thought; and then he was brought back from his short musing by the woman’s hard voice.“If you choose to be mean, you must put up with the consequences; and what’s more, you ought to thank and pay me for coming to put you on your guard.”“Do you think she—she knows that I live here?” said Richard, in a hoarse whisper.The woman smiled contemptuously, as she replied—“No, she don’t know it, poor mad thing! at least, I don’t think so. She kept to the name, too, right enough, and wouldn’t answer to the name of Pellet.”“Of course not,” exclaimed Richard, fiercely; and then the two stood gazing in each other’s eyes for a minute before the woman spoke, saying, maliciously—“Perhaps she may find her way here though, after all; these mad folks are very cunning when they are after anything.”“Here! go now,” exclaimed Richard, hurriedly thrusting some money into the woman’s hands. “You must not give her up, Mrs Walls. We’ll make a fresh settlement, and—and we’ll talk it over to-morrow when I come.”The woman smiled as she made her way out of the library, and Richard Pellet stood for a few moments wiping the cold dew from his forehead, before rejoining his guests.The city gentlemen heard no more that night respecting limited liability companies, when, after giving the strictest orders that, if anybody else should come,shewas to be shown into the library, Richard Pellet returned to the assembled company, and took coffee, unaware that the two gentlemen in coach-lace had thrust their tongues into their cheeks at one another, after a fashion meant to express the extreme of derision; and then, as soon as they were at liberty, went and related the affair in large text, with redundant flourishes, in the servants’ hall.“If she had chosen any other day it would not so much have mattered,” said Richard Pellet to himself, as he probed a lump of sugar at the bottom of his half-cold coffee: “but to have come to-day!”It was no wonder that, until the last guest departed, Richard Pellet’s eyes were turned anxiously towards the door every time it opened, when, Nemesis-like, he expected to see enter the tall, pale figure he had looked upon that day in Borton Street, his heart too much crusted with gold to allow of a single tender thought for the afflicted woman, who was sure enough to clasp her hands and ask that she might be with her child.

Mr Richard Pellet was back at Norwood Station at about the same time as his stepson reached the terminus at Shoreditch, where he caught the express, and ran back to Cambridge, to find a letter which made considerable alterations in his arrangements, of which more after a while. As for Richard Pellet, he had all the cares upon him that night of a great dinner-party, for Mrs Richard, in happy ignorance of all that might work to her mortification, had, in obedience to Richard’s commands, issued her cards to a select circle of city magnates, of course including their wives and daughters—men who matched well with Richard Pellet, some of them worth a plum—golden drop, no doubt.

The stout butler and the men in coach-lace were hard-worked that evening, for the best dinner-service was in use, the choice plate, too, had been taken out of green baize bags, from green baize-lined boxes; the three extra dark-hued leaves had been fitted into the dining-table; the large epergne was filled with flowers and waxlights. Bokes the butler had turned eighteen damask dinner-napkins into as many cocked-hats, all crimp, crease, and pucker; prepared his salad—a point which he never yielded—and decanted his wines. Two men in white had been down all day from Gunter’s, driving cook and kitchenmaid out of their senses, as they declared again and again that there was nothing in the kitchen fit for use, and that it was quite impossible for a decent dinner to be prepared. They vowed that the great prize kitchener was a sham; the patent hot-plate good for nothing; the charcoal stove and warm cupboard, abominations both; stew-pans, saucepans, and kitchen fittings generally, a set of rubbish; and ended by asking how they were to be expected to work without stock. There would have been no dinner if Mrs Richard, upon hearing the twentieth complaint, had not taken the butler into her counsel, and urged him to allay the disorder. The consequence was that Mr Bokes went into his pantry, and from thence into his kitchen, which was hotter, morally, than ever. Then he mysteriously signalled with his thumb to the two men in white, and shortly after installed them in a couple of chairs in the cool shades of the pantry.

As if performing some mysterious ceremony, Mr Bokes made the cork of a port-wine bottle “skreel” as he tortured it by forcing in a screw, and then brought it forth with a loud “fop,” holding it out, wet and blood-stained—grape—for the senior Gunterian to sniff at, and afterwards to the lieutenant, when the following solemn dialogue took place:—

“Twenty!” whispered Mr Bokes, solemnly.

“Twenty!” exclaimed the Gunterians, in duet.

“Twenty!” repeated Mr Bokes, with additional solemnity; and then he added, “Five bin.”

Speech ceased for a few moments, while Mr Bokes armed his guests with large claret-glasses, afterwards tenderly pouring forth the deep-hued generous mixture.

“Seeing as you’re both gentlemen,” said Mr Bokes, confidentially, “as goes into the best of society, I thought I should like to hear your opinions.”

“But you’ll join us?” said Gunter One to the speaker.

“Well, raylly, gentlemen,” hesitated Mr Bokes.

Gunter One set down his glass and pursed up his mouth, looking at Gunter Two, who also set down his untasted glass, folded his arms, and looked fiercely at the butler.

“Well, raylly, gentlemen,” said Mr Bokes, “if that’s it, I suppose I must;” and helping himself to a glass, the three took wine together, after the most approved fashion, but perhaps with an additional dignity.

Gunter One thought it a tolerably fruity wine.

Gunter Two considered that it wanted more age.

“Well, I don’t know,” said Gunter One; “for a light-bodied tawny wine, it’s fairish.”

“I think I’ll take another glass,” Mr Bokes, said Gunter Two, Gunter One following his example; and the butler filled their glasses, not forgetting his own; after which there was a discussion upon crust, and bees-wing, and vine-disease, when Mr Bokes dropt a hint about the finest glass of Madeira to be had in or out of London being likely to be on the way when the dinner was over.

The conversation was stopped by the ringing of a bell, and as James, footman, and Thomas, under-butler, were busy over other matters, Mr Bokes went to respond to the summons.

Five minutes had elapsed before the butler returned, in time to find the bottle perfectly empty, and the Gunters smacking their lips over the last drops in their glasses; when, no more being forthcoming, the gentlemen in white returned to the kitchen, sufficiently good-humoured for Number One to smile affably upon the cook, and Number Two to address the kitchenmaid as “My dear,” in asking for a wooden spoon.

The full resources of the Norwood establishment were brought out that night, and Jared Pellet of Duplex Street would have looked less dreamy, and rubbed his eyes, as he turned from the duet he was having with Monsieur Canau, with Janet, little Pine, and Patty for audience, could he have seen the dinner served in a dining-room that sparkled with candles, plate, and glass. Even the most ill-disposed of the guests acknowledged the repast to be a success, that is, as far as appearances went. There was only one failure—the smash made by one of the men of a dish of meringues, leaving a blank place upon the table. Wines, ices, attendance, all were good. There could not be a doubt of Mr Richard Pellet’s wealth, nor of the high position he occupied, not only in the city, but in the pleasant suburban district of Norwood.

The ladies had risen, and, amidst a pleasant rustling of silks, swept up-stairs; the gentlemen had drawn their chairs nearer together for the convenient passage of port-decanter and claret-jug, when Mr Bokes, the Norwood Pharaoh’s chief butler, whispered to his master that he was wanted.

“Indeed,” said Mr Richard Pellet, loudly, for he was delivering his opinion upon City affairs, “unless a similar crisis should arise, I give you my word of honour that it must be—Now, Bokes,” in an undertone, “what is it? What the deuce do you mean—at such a time? Who wants me?”

“Tall, stout woman, sir.”

“Lady?”

“No, not lady—woman, sir. Says she must see you, sir.”

“Must!” exclaimed Richard, scowling.

“Yes, sir, and will.”

“Tell her to call to-morrow; I’m engaged.”

Mr Bokes bowed and left the room, and his master continued—

“Limited liability companies generally, gentlemen, are becoming the ruin of our land. I don’t believe in them. You never see my name down anywhere as a director. Why, I’ve had no less than four applications—no less than four, gentlemen—to sell my little bit of a business, so that it may be formed into a company, with your humble servant to act as manager, with a noble price, a noble salary, and no end of shares into the bargain. But no, gentlemen; I am determined—Now, Bokes,” impatiently, “what is it?”

“Woman, sir—will see you, sir,” whispered the butler; “says I was to say ‘Borton Street,’ sir, and ‘Gone!’”

So strange a pallor overspread Richard Pellet’s face that it was observed by all his guests, as, rising with a forced attempt at a smile, he asked them to excuse him for five minutes.

“If she should only have made her way here to-night!” ejaculated Richard Pellet, as he passed the dining-room door, perspiring profusely the while. “If she were but dead—if she were but dead!”

“What’s wrong?” whispered Alderman Espicier to his neighbour. “Pellet’s bank gone to the bad?”

“Writ, more likely,” said the other, charitably; and then they made a few pleasant comments upon the wine they were drinking, calculated its cost per dozen, wondered whether the epergne and ice-pails were silver or electro, but hardly liked to seek for the hall-marks, in case the host should return and find them so engaged. In short, during Richard Pellet’s absence, they looked upon everything in a truly commercial spirit, that might not have been quite agreeable to their host had he been aware of the proceedings.

Meanwhile, taking up a chamber candlestick, Richard Pellet had hurried into the library, where he found Mrs Walls, the woman from the Borton Street house—Ellen’s gaoler.

“Now!” he harshly exclaimed, “what is it?”

“Gone!” said the woman, abruptly.

“Who—what—Ellen?” stammered Richard, for he had clung to the doubt. “How?—when?”

“Do you want all that answered at once?” said the woman, in a cool insolent tone—the voice of one who might have taken her last cheque from her employer, or felt herself safe of her position.

“There! speak out; I’m busy—company,” exclaimed Richard, excitedly.

“Well,” said the woman, “I’ve nothing more to tell you, only that she is gone, and I don’t know how she managed it. Of course, my responsibility was at an end after the notice I had given you, and I considered that she was only staying to oblige you. But I never thought she would slip away, or I’d have watched her. P’raps she’s off again to see the little one—she has been talking to herself about it a good deal lately.”

“And you never watched her!” hissed Richard, standing with knitted brows and clenched fists before the woman.

“No,” she replied, coolly. “You took care only to pay me up to this morning, so it’s your affair now,Mr Herrisey.”

The last word was said with a meaning emphasis, which made Richard wince.

“How did you know I was staying here?” he said, more quietly.

“How did I know that you lived here!” laughed the woman; “you told me—at least, you took care to drop one of your cards one day, and to sign the cheque one day as Richard Pellet. Of course, when it was money, I wanted to know which was right—Herrisey or Pellet. It didn’t much matter to me, but I thought I’d know while I was about it. You may call yourself Smith if you like.”

Richard Pellet glared at the woman, as he thought of the trouble he had been at to keep a little separate banking account solely for this purpose, and then, unknown to himself, force of habit had made him make one payment according to custom. He was at the woman’s mercy, in spite of the precautions he thought he had taken, and no doubt she knew the whole of his affairs. Well, money would buy her, he thought; and then he was brought back from his short musing by the woman’s hard voice.

“If you choose to be mean, you must put up with the consequences; and what’s more, you ought to thank and pay me for coming to put you on your guard.”

“Do you think she—she knows that I live here?” said Richard, in a hoarse whisper.

The woman smiled contemptuously, as she replied—

“No, she don’t know it, poor mad thing! at least, I don’t think so. She kept to the name, too, right enough, and wouldn’t answer to the name of Pellet.”

“Of course not,” exclaimed Richard, fiercely; and then the two stood gazing in each other’s eyes for a minute before the woman spoke, saying, maliciously—

“Perhaps she may find her way here though, after all; these mad folks are very cunning when they are after anything.”

“Here! go now,” exclaimed Richard, hurriedly thrusting some money into the woman’s hands. “You must not give her up, Mrs Walls. We’ll make a fresh settlement, and—and we’ll talk it over to-morrow when I come.”

The woman smiled as she made her way out of the library, and Richard Pellet stood for a few moments wiping the cold dew from his forehead, before rejoining his guests.

The city gentlemen heard no more that night respecting limited liability companies, when, after giving the strictest orders that, if anybody else should come,shewas to be shown into the library, Richard Pellet returned to the assembled company, and took coffee, unaware that the two gentlemen in coach-lace had thrust their tongues into their cheeks at one another, after a fashion meant to express the extreme of derision; and then, as soon as they were at liberty, went and related the affair in large text, with redundant flourishes, in the servants’ hall.

“If she had chosen any other day it would not so much have mattered,” said Richard Pellet to himself, as he probed a lump of sugar at the bottom of his half-cold coffee: “but to have come to-day!”

It was no wonder that, until the last guest departed, Richard Pellet’s eyes were turned anxiously towards the door every time it opened, when, Nemesis-like, he expected to see enter the tall, pale figure he had looked upon that day in Borton Street, his heart too much crusted with gold to allow of a single tender thought for the afflicted woman, who was sure enough to clasp her hands and ask that she might be with her child.

Volume One—Chapter Twenty One.Trimming the Lamp.“There you are,” said Tim Ruggles, shaking up a bottle, and carefully pouring out a dessert-spoonful of cod-liver oil into a wineglass, previously well wetted round with the thin blue fluid which the Carnaby Street people bought under the impression that it was milk. “There you are,” said Tim, as he sat cross-legged upon his board; “and now look sharp, and get a lump of sugar out of the basin, and take your oil before she comes back.”“Brayvo! capital! and never made one ugly face,” exclaimed Tim, as little Pine drank the contents of the glass, but not without a slight shudder. “That’s the thing to bring you round, little one—bring you round and turn you round, and make you round as a little tub. Oil turns into fat, you know, and fat keeps you warm in winter. Fat’s Nature’s greatcoat, you know, for quilting and padding people’s ribs, and wants no stitching on, nor pressing down. That’s the way to—scissors—thank you, my pet—the way to trim the—trim the—now my twist and a short needle—that’s him—to trim the lamp of life, that is; and you only want to swallow a long skein of cotton and light one end, and then you’d burn. My eye! what a go it would be for her to come home and find you burning! But come, I say, put that bottle away before she comes back.”Tim was very particular that the cod-liver oil bottle should be put away before Mrs Ruggles’ return from marketing; for though the dispensary doctor had ordered that medicine twice a day for the child’s cough, and a reasonable quantity was supplied, Tim had an idea of his own that if it were taken twice as often, it would act with double rapidity. So he used to invest all his very spare cash in the purchase of more of the nauseous medicine, and kept a private stock, out of which he replenished the bottle in the cupboard, so that it should not appear in Mrs Ruggles’ eyes to disappear too quickly.“Does seem such a thing,” said Tim to himself, “to see any one suffering when you can’t do anything to help them. There’s her poor little cough getting worse and worse, and them fits coming on, and I can’t help her a bit. It’s dreadful, that it is. If one has to rub, or hold, or lift, or do something, it don’t seem half so bad; but to stand and do nothing but look on is the worst itself. Never saw such a child as she is, though; and it makes me shiver when she gets looking in that far-off way of hers, as if she could see more than any one else. Takes her stuff without a word; but I’d sooner see her kick and cry out, and then have a good laugh after, when I talk rubbish about trimming the lamp. I don’t know what it’s a coming to—for she ain’t like no other child—ain’t like a child at all, that she ain’t.”It was not once that Tim would mutter in that fashion over his work, but often and often; and in spite of his words, he did know in his heart what was coming, though, stitching away there upon his board, early and late, he tried to shut his eyes to the ray of light that fell upon them—a ray of pale wondrous light, as from another world; light which shone with a cold lustre in upon his heart, to tell him that something must soon come to pass.For little Pine had of late grown quieter day by day; dull and heavy, too, at times, falling asleep in her chair, and more than once upon the bare floor, where Tim had found her, and gently raised her head to place beneath it the list-tied roll of newly-cut cloth for a pair of trousers, and then covered her with his coat.As the days lengthened, a hectic red settled in her little cheeks, and a cough came on to rack her chest; when, night after night, would Tim creep out of bed to give her lozenges and various infallible sweets which he had purchased to allay the irritating tickle that kept her awake hour after hour.“’Pon my word,” Tim would say, “I don’t think I should take more notice of that child if she was my very own; but somehow I can’t help this here.”And it was plain enough that Tim could not help “this here;” and, intent as he seemed upon his work by day, his thoughts were fixed upon the poor child, whom he watched hour after hour unnoticed by his domestic tyrant.“I don’t like it,” muttered Tim; “it’s all rules of contrary. That there cough ought to make her pale and poorly, and it don’t, for it makes her little cheeks red, and her eyes bright; and it ain’t nat’ral for her to not eat nothing one time, and to eat savage another; and I’m ’most afraid to say anything to her, because she’s so old and deep.”“Am I going to die?” said the child one day, suddenly, as she left off work to gaze up earnestly in Tim’s face.“Eh! what? Going to which?” exclaimed Tim, startled.“Am I going to die, and go away?” said the child again.“I’m blessed!” muttered Tim; “who’s agoing to answer questions like that? Why, we’re all of us going to die some day, my pretty,” said Tim, aloud, and in quite a cheery voice, whose fire he directly after damped by singing, in a peculiar reedy, cracked voice—“Oh! that’ll be joyful!Joyful, joy-yoy-ful, joy-hoy-ful!”but in so melancholy a fashion that it was evident that Tim Ruggles did not look forward to the joyful event with much pleasure.“Yes, I know that,” said little Pine, dreamily; “but am I going to die soon, and go to my own mother? Mrs Johnson, who lived up-stairs, used to take cod-liver oil, and she soon died.”“Bother Mrs Johnson!” exclaimed Tim, fiercely. “I say, you know, you mustn’t talk like that, my pet; it makes one feel just as if cold water was running all down one’s back. You ain’t Mrs Johnson, and you’re taking that there stuff to make you strong and well. Now, come on, and let’s say catechism.”“No, please, not this morning,” little Pine would say; “my head does ache so, so much, and catechism makes me cough;” and then the sharp little elbow would rest upon the thin knee, and the child lay her head upon her hand, and listen to the tailor as he tried to tell her stories raked up piecemeal out of his memory, where they had rested for so many years that they had grown rusty, and hardly recognisable. Puss would somehow manage to get into the wrong boots, and perform wonders in the famed seven-league pair; a sensational story would be compiled out of the exploits of Jack the Giant-killer, Jack Sprat, and the hero of the bean-stalk; while to make out from Tim’s description where Robinson Crusoe’s adventures began, and Sinbad the Sailor’s ended, would have puzzled the most learned.For, after the fashion of his craft, Tim would baste one piece on to another, and fit in here, and fit in there, according to the circumstances of the case; the invariable result being that little Pine would begin to nod; when Tim would steal softly off his board, and closer and closer to her till he could let the weary little head rest against his breast, kneeling there in some horribly uncomfortable position until the short dose was over, and the child would once more start into wakefulness, to gaze up in a frightened way in his face. Then, seeing who held her, she would smile, and close her heavy eyelids, nestling down closer and closer, within the open waistcoat, the little thin arms trying to clasp her protector tightly; Tim anxiously watching the while, with contracted brows, the painful catching of the child’s breath, and the spasms of pain that contracted her little features.The church duties took Mrs Ruggles much away now, to the softening of these latter days of the poor child’s life; and many and many an hour would Tim spend in the way described—hours which he had to work far into the night to redeem, when others were sleeping; so that the item of paraffin became so heavy in the domestic economy that Tim had to replenish the can on the sly, after the manner of the cod-liver oil bottle; and the consequence was, that his ordinary moderate amount of beer-money seldom found its way to the publican’s.How swiftly sped those minutes spent with poor little Pine! and how slowly would the hours crawl on, when, with his shaded lamp throwing its glow upon his work, Tim would sit stitching patiently away like what he was—a little, shrunken, shrivelled tailor!

“There you are,” said Tim Ruggles, shaking up a bottle, and carefully pouring out a dessert-spoonful of cod-liver oil into a wineglass, previously well wetted round with the thin blue fluid which the Carnaby Street people bought under the impression that it was milk. “There you are,” said Tim, as he sat cross-legged upon his board; “and now look sharp, and get a lump of sugar out of the basin, and take your oil before she comes back.”

“Brayvo! capital! and never made one ugly face,” exclaimed Tim, as little Pine drank the contents of the glass, but not without a slight shudder. “That’s the thing to bring you round, little one—bring you round and turn you round, and make you round as a little tub. Oil turns into fat, you know, and fat keeps you warm in winter. Fat’s Nature’s greatcoat, you know, for quilting and padding people’s ribs, and wants no stitching on, nor pressing down. That’s the way to—scissors—thank you, my pet—the way to trim the—trim the—now my twist and a short needle—that’s him—to trim the lamp of life, that is; and you only want to swallow a long skein of cotton and light one end, and then you’d burn. My eye! what a go it would be for her to come home and find you burning! But come, I say, put that bottle away before she comes back.”

Tim was very particular that the cod-liver oil bottle should be put away before Mrs Ruggles’ return from marketing; for though the dispensary doctor had ordered that medicine twice a day for the child’s cough, and a reasonable quantity was supplied, Tim had an idea of his own that if it were taken twice as often, it would act with double rapidity. So he used to invest all his very spare cash in the purchase of more of the nauseous medicine, and kept a private stock, out of which he replenished the bottle in the cupboard, so that it should not appear in Mrs Ruggles’ eyes to disappear too quickly.

“Does seem such a thing,” said Tim to himself, “to see any one suffering when you can’t do anything to help them. There’s her poor little cough getting worse and worse, and them fits coming on, and I can’t help her a bit. It’s dreadful, that it is. If one has to rub, or hold, or lift, or do something, it don’t seem half so bad; but to stand and do nothing but look on is the worst itself. Never saw such a child as she is, though; and it makes me shiver when she gets looking in that far-off way of hers, as if she could see more than any one else. Takes her stuff without a word; but I’d sooner see her kick and cry out, and then have a good laugh after, when I talk rubbish about trimming the lamp. I don’t know what it’s a coming to—for she ain’t like no other child—ain’t like a child at all, that she ain’t.”

It was not once that Tim would mutter in that fashion over his work, but often and often; and in spite of his words, he did know in his heart what was coming, though, stitching away there upon his board, early and late, he tried to shut his eyes to the ray of light that fell upon them—a ray of pale wondrous light, as from another world; light which shone with a cold lustre in upon his heart, to tell him that something must soon come to pass.

For little Pine had of late grown quieter day by day; dull and heavy, too, at times, falling asleep in her chair, and more than once upon the bare floor, where Tim had found her, and gently raised her head to place beneath it the list-tied roll of newly-cut cloth for a pair of trousers, and then covered her with his coat.

As the days lengthened, a hectic red settled in her little cheeks, and a cough came on to rack her chest; when, night after night, would Tim creep out of bed to give her lozenges and various infallible sweets which he had purchased to allay the irritating tickle that kept her awake hour after hour.

“’Pon my word,” Tim would say, “I don’t think I should take more notice of that child if she was my very own; but somehow I can’t help this here.”

And it was plain enough that Tim could not help “this here;” and, intent as he seemed upon his work by day, his thoughts were fixed upon the poor child, whom he watched hour after hour unnoticed by his domestic tyrant.

“I don’t like it,” muttered Tim; “it’s all rules of contrary. That there cough ought to make her pale and poorly, and it don’t, for it makes her little cheeks red, and her eyes bright; and it ain’t nat’ral for her to not eat nothing one time, and to eat savage another; and I’m ’most afraid to say anything to her, because she’s so old and deep.”

“Am I going to die?” said the child one day, suddenly, as she left off work to gaze up earnestly in Tim’s face.

“Eh! what? Going to which?” exclaimed Tim, startled.

“Am I going to die, and go away?” said the child again.

“I’m blessed!” muttered Tim; “who’s agoing to answer questions like that? Why, we’re all of us going to die some day, my pretty,” said Tim, aloud, and in quite a cheery voice, whose fire he directly after damped by singing, in a peculiar reedy, cracked voice—

“Oh! that’ll be joyful!Joyful, joy-yoy-ful, joy-hoy-ful!”

“Oh! that’ll be joyful!Joyful, joy-yoy-ful, joy-hoy-ful!”

but in so melancholy a fashion that it was evident that Tim Ruggles did not look forward to the joyful event with much pleasure.

“Yes, I know that,” said little Pine, dreamily; “but am I going to die soon, and go to my own mother? Mrs Johnson, who lived up-stairs, used to take cod-liver oil, and she soon died.”

“Bother Mrs Johnson!” exclaimed Tim, fiercely. “I say, you know, you mustn’t talk like that, my pet; it makes one feel just as if cold water was running all down one’s back. You ain’t Mrs Johnson, and you’re taking that there stuff to make you strong and well. Now, come on, and let’s say catechism.”

“No, please, not this morning,” little Pine would say; “my head does ache so, so much, and catechism makes me cough;” and then the sharp little elbow would rest upon the thin knee, and the child lay her head upon her hand, and listen to the tailor as he tried to tell her stories raked up piecemeal out of his memory, where they had rested for so many years that they had grown rusty, and hardly recognisable. Puss would somehow manage to get into the wrong boots, and perform wonders in the famed seven-league pair; a sensational story would be compiled out of the exploits of Jack the Giant-killer, Jack Sprat, and the hero of the bean-stalk; while to make out from Tim’s description where Robinson Crusoe’s adventures began, and Sinbad the Sailor’s ended, would have puzzled the most learned.

For, after the fashion of his craft, Tim would baste one piece on to another, and fit in here, and fit in there, according to the circumstances of the case; the invariable result being that little Pine would begin to nod; when Tim would steal softly off his board, and closer and closer to her till he could let the weary little head rest against his breast, kneeling there in some horribly uncomfortable position until the short dose was over, and the child would once more start into wakefulness, to gaze up in a frightened way in his face. Then, seeing who held her, she would smile, and close her heavy eyelids, nestling down closer and closer, within the open waistcoat, the little thin arms trying to clasp her protector tightly; Tim anxiously watching the while, with contracted brows, the painful catching of the child’s breath, and the spasms of pain that contracted her little features.

The church duties took Mrs Ruggles much away now, to the softening of these latter days of the poor child’s life; and many and many an hour would Tim spend in the way described—hours which he had to work far into the night to redeem, when others were sleeping; so that the item of paraffin became so heavy in the domestic economy that Tim had to replenish the can on the sly, after the manner of the cod-liver oil bottle; and the consequence was, that his ordinary moderate amount of beer-money seldom found its way to the publican’s.

How swiftly sped those minutes spent with poor little Pine! and how slowly would the hours crawl on, when, with his shaded lamp throwing its glow upon his work, Tim would sit stitching patiently away like what he was—a little, shrunken, shrivelled tailor!

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