Chapter Four.

Chapter Four.In Which Dumps Finds Another Old Friend.One morning, a considerable time after the events narrated in the last chapter, I sat on the sofa waiting for breakfast, and engaged in an interesting conversation with Dumps. The only difference in our mode of communication was that Dumps talked with his eyes, I with my tongue.From what I have already said about my doggie, it will be understood that his eyes—which were brown and speaking eyes—lay behind such a forest of hair that it was only by clearing the dense masses away that I could obtain a full view of his liquid orbs. I am not sure that his ears were much less expressive than his eyes. Their variety of motion, coupled with their rate of action, served greatly to develop the full meaning of what his eyes said.“Mrs Miff seems to have forgotten us this morning, Dumps,” I remarked, pulling out my watch.One ear cocked forward, the other turned back towards the door, and a white gleam under the hair, indicating that the eyes turned in the same direction, said as plainly as there was any occasion for—“No; not quite forgotten us. I hear her coming now.”“Ha! so she is. Now you shall have a feed.” Both ears elevated to the full extent obviously meant “Hurrah!” while a certain motion of his body appeared to imply that, in consequence of his sedentary position, he was vainly attempting to wag the sofa.“If you please, sir,” said my landlady, laying the breakfast tray on the table, “there’s a shoe-black in the kitchen says he wants to see you.”“Ah! young Slidder, I fancy. Well, send him up.”“He says he’s ’ad his breakfast an’ will wait till you have done, sir.”“Very considerate. Send him up nevertheless.”In a few minutes myprotégéstood before me, hat in hand, looking, in the trim costume of the brigade, quite a different being from the ragged creature I had met with in Whitechapel. Dumps instantly assaulted him with loving demonstrations.“How spruce you look, my boy!”“Thanks toyou, sir,” replied Slidder, with a familiar nod; “they do say I’m lookin’ up.”“I hope you like the work. Have you had breakfast? Would a roll do you any good?”“Thankee, I’m primed for the day. I came over, sir, to say that granny seems to me to be out o’ sorts. Since I’ve been allowed to sleep on the rug inside her door, I’ve noticed that she ain’t so lively as she used to was. Shivers a deal w’en it ain’t cold, groans now an’ then, an whimpers a good deal. It strikes me, now—though I ain’t a reg’lar sawbones—that there’s suthin’ wrong with her in’ards.”“I’ll finish breakfast quickly and go over with you to see her,” said I.“Don’t need to ’urry, sir,” returned Slidder; “she ain’t wery bad—not much wuss than or’nary—on’y I’ve bin too anxious about her—poor old thing. I’ll vait below till you’re ready.—Come along, Punch, an’ jine yer old pal in the kitchen till the noo ’un’s ready.”After breakfast we three hurried out and wended our way eastward. As the morning was unusually fine I diverged towards one of the more fashionable localities to deliver a note with which I had been charged. Young Slidder’s spirits were high, and for a considerable time he entertained me with a good deal of the East-end gossip. Among other things, he told me of the great work that was being done there by Dr Barnardo and others of similar spirit, in rescuing waifs like himself from their wretched condition.“Though some on us don’t think it so wretched arter all,” he continued. “There’s the Slogger, now, he won’t go into the ’ome on no consideration; says he wouldn’t give a empty sugar-barrel for all the ’omes in London. But then the Slogger’s a lazy muff. He don’t want to work—that’s about it. He’d sooner starve than work. By consikence he steals, more or less, an finds a ’ome in the ‘stone jug’ pretty frequent. As to his taste for a sugar-barrel, I ain’t so sure that I don’t agree with ’im. It’s big, you know—plenty of room to move, w’ich it ain’t so with a flour-barrel. An’ then the smell! Oh! you’ve no notion! W’y, that’s wuth the price of a night’s lodgin’ itself, to say nothin’ o’ the chance of a knot-hole or a crack full o’ sugar, that the former tenants has failed to diskiver.”While the waif was commenting thus enthusiastically on the bliss of lodging in a sugar-barrel, we were surprised to see Dumps, who chanced to be trotting on in front come to a sudden pause and gaze at a lady who was in the act of ringing the door-bell of an adjoining house.The door was opened by a footman, and the lady was in the act of entering when Dumps gave vent to a series of sounds, made up of a whine, a bark, and a yelp. At the same moment his tail all but twirled him off his legs as he rushed wildly up the stairs and began to dance round the lady in mad excitement.The lady backed against the door in alarm. The footman, anxious apparently about his calves, seized an umbrella and made a wild assault on the dog, and I was confusedly conscious of Slidder exclaiming, “Why, if that ain’tmyyoung lady!” as I sprang up the steps to the rescue.“Down, Dumps, you rascal; down!” I exclaimed, seizing him by the brass collar with which I had invested him.—“Pardon the rudeness of my dog, madam,” I said, looking up; “I never saw him act in this way before. It is quite unaccountable—”“Not quite so unaccountable as you think,” interrupted Slidder, who stood looking calmly on, with his hands in his pockets and a grin on his face.—“It’s your own dog, miss.”“What do you mean, boy?” said the lady, a gaze of surprise chasing away the look of alarm which had covered her pretty face.“I mean ’xactly what I says, miss. The dog’s your own: I sold it to you long ago for five bob!”The girl—for she was little more than sixteen—turned with a startled, doubting look to the dog.“If you don’t b’lieve it, miss, look at the vite spot on the bridge of ’is nose,” said Slidder, with a self-satisfied nod to the lady and a supremely insolent wink to the footman.“Pompey!” exclaimed the girl, holding out a pair of the prettiest little gloved hands imaginable.My doggie broke from my grasp with a shriek of joy, and sprang into her arms. She buried her face in his shaggy neck and absolutely hugged him.I stood aghast. The footman smiled in an imbecile manner.“You’d better not squeeze quite so hard, miss, or he’ll bust!” remarked the waif.Recovering herself, and dropping the dog somewhat hurriedly, she turned to me with a flushed face and said—“Excuse me, sir; this unexpected meeting with my dog—”“Yourdog!” I involuntarily exclaimed, while a sense of unmerited loss began to creep over me.“Well, the dog was mine once, at all events—though I doubt not it is rightfully yours now,” said the young lady, with a smile that at once disarmed me. “It was stolen from me a few months after I had bought it from this boy, who seems strangely altered since then. I’m glad, however, to see that the short time I had the dog was sufficient to prevent its forgetting me. But perhaps,” she added, in a sad tone, “it would have been better if ithadforgotten me.”My mind was made up.“No, madam,” said I, with decision; “it is well that the dog has not forgotten you. I would have been surprised, indeed, if it had. It is yours. I could not think of robbing you of it. I—I—am going to visit a sick woman and cannot delay; forgive me if I ask permission to leave the dog with you until I return in the afternoon to hand it formally over and bid it farewell.”This was said half in jest yet I felt very much in earnest, for the thought of parting from my doggie, even to such a fair mistress, cost me no small amount of pain—much to my surprise, for I had not imagined it possible that I could have formed so strong an attachment to a dumb animal in so short a time. But, you see, being a bachelor of an unsocial spirit, my doggie and I had been thrown much together in the evenings, and had made the most of our time.The young lady half laughed, and hesitatingly thanked me as she went into the house, followed by Dumps,aliasPunch,aliasPompey, who never so much as cast one parting glance on me as I turned to leave. A shout caused me to turn again and look back. I beheld an infant rolling down the drawing-room stairs like a small Alpine boulder. A little girl was vainly attempting to arrest the infant, and three boys, of various sizes, came bounding towards the young lady with shouts of welcome. In the midst of the din my doggie uttered a cry of pain, the Babel of children’s voices was hushed by a bass growl, and the street door closed with a bang!“Yell, thatisa rum go!” exclaimed my little companion, as we walked slowly away. “Don’t it seem to you, now, as if it wor all a dream?”“It does, indeed,” I replied, half inclined to laugh, yet with a feeling of sadness at my heart, for I knew that my doggie and I were parted for ever! Even if the young lady should insist on my keeping the dog, I felt that I could not agree to do so. No! I had committed myself, and the thing was done; for it was clear that, with the mutual affection existing between the lady and the dog, they would not willingly consent to be parted—it would be cruelty even to suggest a separation.“Pshaw!” thought I, “why should the loss of a miserable dog—a mere mass of shapeless hair—affect me so much? Pooh! I will brush the subject away.”So I brushed it away, but back it came again in spite of all my brushing, and insisted on remaining to trouble me.Short though our friendship had been, it had, I found, become very warm and strong. I recalled a good many pleasant evenings when, seated alone in my room with a favourite author, I had read and tickled Dumps under the chin and behind the ears to such an extent that I had thoroughly gained his heart; and as “love begets love,” I had been drawn insensibly yet powerfully towards him. In short, Dumps and I understood each other.While I was meditating on these things my companion, who had walked along in silence, suddenly said—“You needn’t take on so, sir, about Punch.”“How d’you know I’m taking on so?”“’Cause you look so awful solemncholy. An’ there’s no occasion to do so. You can get the critter back again.”“I fear not Slidder, for I have already given it to the young lady, and you have seen how fond she is of it; and the dog evidently likes her better than it likes me.”“Yell, I ain’t surprised atthat. It on’y proves it to be a dog of good taste; but you can get it back for all that.”“How so?” I asked, much amused by the decision and self-sufficiency of the boy’s manner.“Vy, you’ve on’y got to go and marry the young lady, w’en, of course, all her property becomes yours, Punch included, don’t you see?”“True, Slidder; it had not occurred to me in that light,” said I, laughing heartily, as much at the cool and quiet insolence of the waif’s manner as at his suggestion. “But then, you see, there are difficulties in the way. Young ladies who dwell in fine mansions are not fond of marrying penniless doctors.”“Pooh!” replied the urchin; “that ’as nuffin’ to do with it. You’ve on’y got to set up in a ’ouse close alongside, with a big gold mortar over the door an’ a one-’oss broom, an’ you’ll ’ave ’er in six months—or eight if she’s got contrairy parents. Then you’ll want a tiger, of course, to ’old the ’oss; an’ I knows a smart young feller whose name begins with a S, as would just suit. So, you see, you’ve nothing to do but to go in an win.”The precocious waif looked up in my face with such an expression of satisfaction as he finished this audacious speech, that I could not help gazing at him in blank amazement. What I should have replied I know not, for we arrived just then at the abode of old Mrs Willis.The poor old lady was suffering from a severe attack of influenza, which, coupled with age and the depression caused by her heavy sorrow, had reduced her physical powers in an alarming degree. It was obvious that she urgently required good food and careful nursing. I never before felt so keenly my lack of money. My means barely sufficed to keep myself, educational expenses being heavy. I was a shy man, too, and had never made friends—at least among the rich—to whom I could apply on occasions like this.“Dear granny,” I said, “you would get along nicely if you would consent to go to a hospital.”“Never!” said the old lady, in a tone of decision that surprised me.“I assure you, granny, that you would be much better cared for and fed there than you can be here, and it would not be necessary to give up your room. I would look after it until you are better.”Still the old lady shook her head, which was shaking badly enough from age as it was.Going to the corner cupboard, in which Mrs Willis kept her little store of food and physic, I stood there pondering what I should do.“Please, sir,” said Slidder, sidling up to me, “if you wants mutton-chops, or steaks, or port wine, or anythink o’ that sort, just say the word and I’ll get ’em.”“You, boy—how?”“Vy, ain’t the shops full of ’em? I’d go an help myself, spite of all the bobbies that valks in blue.”“Oh, Slidder,” said I, really grieved, for I saw by his earnest face that he meant it, “would you go and steal after all I have said to you about that sin?”“Vell, sir, I wouldn’t prig for myself—indeed I wouldn’t—but I’d do it to make the old ’ooman better.”“That would not change stealing into a virtue. No, my boy, we must try to hit on some other way of providing for her wants.”“The Lord will provide,” said Mrs Willis, from the bed.She had overheard us. I hastened to her side.“Yes, granny, Hewillprovide. Meanwhile He has given me enough money to spare a little for your immediate wants. I will send some things, which your kind neighbour, Mrs Jones, will cook for you. I’ll give her directions as I pass her door. Slidder will go home with me and fetch you the medicines you require. Now, try to sleep till Mrs Jones comes with the food. You must not speak to me. It will make you worse.”“I only want to ask, John, have you any—any news about—”“No, not yet, granny; but don’t be cast down. If you can trust God for food, surely you can trust Him for protection, not only to yourself, but to Edie. Remember the words, ‘Commit thy way unto the Lord, and He will bring it to pass.’”“Thank you, John,” replied the old woman, as she sank back on her pillow with a little sigh.After leaving Mrs Willis I was detained so long with some of my patients that it was late before I could turn my steps westward. The night was very cold, with a keen December wind blowing, and heavy black clouds driving across the dark sky. It was after midnight as I drew near the neighbourhood of the house in which I had left Dumps so hurriedly that morning. In my haste I had neglected to ask the name of the young lady with whom I had left him, or to note the number of the house; but I recollected its position, and resolved to go round by it for the purpose of ascertaining the name on the door.

One morning, a considerable time after the events narrated in the last chapter, I sat on the sofa waiting for breakfast, and engaged in an interesting conversation with Dumps. The only difference in our mode of communication was that Dumps talked with his eyes, I with my tongue.

From what I have already said about my doggie, it will be understood that his eyes—which were brown and speaking eyes—lay behind such a forest of hair that it was only by clearing the dense masses away that I could obtain a full view of his liquid orbs. I am not sure that his ears were much less expressive than his eyes. Their variety of motion, coupled with their rate of action, served greatly to develop the full meaning of what his eyes said.

“Mrs Miff seems to have forgotten us this morning, Dumps,” I remarked, pulling out my watch.

One ear cocked forward, the other turned back towards the door, and a white gleam under the hair, indicating that the eyes turned in the same direction, said as plainly as there was any occasion for—

“No; not quite forgotten us. I hear her coming now.”

“Ha! so she is. Now you shall have a feed.” Both ears elevated to the full extent obviously meant “Hurrah!” while a certain motion of his body appeared to imply that, in consequence of his sedentary position, he was vainly attempting to wag the sofa.

“If you please, sir,” said my landlady, laying the breakfast tray on the table, “there’s a shoe-black in the kitchen says he wants to see you.”

“Ah! young Slidder, I fancy. Well, send him up.”

“He says he’s ’ad his breakfast an’ will wait till you have done, sir.”

“Very considerate. Send him up nevertheless.”

In a few minutes myprotégéstood before me, hat in hand, looking, in the trim costume of the brigade, quite a different being from the ragged creature I had met with in Whitechapel. Dumps instantly assaulted him with loving demonstrations.

“How spruce you look, my boy!”

“Thanks toyou, sir,” replied Slidder, with a familiar nod; “they do say I’m lookin’ up.”

“I hope you like the work. Have you had breakfast? Would a roll do you any good?”

“Thankee, I’m primed for the day. I came over, sir, to say that granny seems to me to be out o’ sorts. Since I’ve been allowed to sleep on the rug inside her door, I’ve noticed that she ain’t so lively as she used to was. Shivers a deal w’en it ain’t cold, groans now an’ then, an whimpers a good deal. It strikes me, now—though I ain’t a reg’lar sawbones—that there’s suthin’ wrong with her in’ards.”

“I’ll finish breakfast quickly and go over with you to see her,” said I.

“Don’t need to ’urry, sir,” returned Slidder; “she ain’t wery bad—not much wuss than or’nary—on’y I’ve bin too anxious about her—poor old thing. I’ll vait below till you’re ready.—Come along, Punch, an’ jine yer old pal in the kitchen till the noo ’un’s ready.”

After breakfast we three hurried out and wended our way eastward. As the morning was unusually fine I diverged towards one of the more fashionable localities to deliver a note with which I had been charged. Young Slidder’s spirits were high, and for a considerable time he entertained me with a good deal of the East-end gossip. Among other things, he told me of the great work that was being done there by Dr Barnardo and others of similar spirit, in rescuing waifs like himself from their wretched condition.

“Though some on us don’t think it so wretched arter all,” he continued. “There’s the Slogger, now, he won’t go into the ’ome on no consideration; says he wouldn’t give a empty sugar-barrel for all the ’omes in London. But then the Slogger’s a lazy muff. He don’t want to work—that’s about it. He’d sooner starve than work. By consikence he steals, more or less, an finds a ’ome in the ‘stone jug’ pretty frequent. As to his taste for a sugar-barrel, I ain’t so sure that I don’t agree with ’im. It’s big, you know—plenty of room to move, w’ich it ain’t so with a flour-barrel. An’ then the smell! Oh! you’ve no notion! W’y, that’s wuth the price of a night’s lodgin’ itself, to say nothin’ o’ the chance of a knot-hole or a crack full o’ sugar, that the former tenants has failed to diskiver.”

While the waif was commenting thus enthusiastically on the bliss of lodging in a sugar-barrel, we were surprised to see Dumps, who chanced to be trotting on in front come to a sudden pause and gaze at a lady who was in the act of ringing the door-bell of an adjoining house.

The door was opened by a footman, and the lady was in the act of entering when Dumps gave vent to a series of sounds, made up of a whine, a bark, and a yelp. At the same moment his tail all but twirled him off his legs as he rushed wildly up the stairs and began to dance round the lady in mad excitement.

The lady backed against the door in alarm. The footman, anxious apparently about his calves, seized an umbrella and made a wild assault on the dog, and I was confusedly conscious of Slidder exclaiming, “Why, if that ain’tmyyoung lady!” as I sprang up the steps to the rescue.

“Down, Dumps, you rascal; down!” I exclaimed, seizing him by the brass collar with which I had invested him.—“Pardon the rudeness of my dog, madam,” I said, looking up; “I never saw him act in this way before. It is quite unaccountable—”

“Not quite so unaccountable as you think,” interrupted Slidder, who stood looking calmly on, with his hands in his pockets and a grin on his face.—“It’s your own dog, miss.”

“What do you mean, boy?” said the lady, a gaze of surprise chasing away the look of alarm which had covered her pretty face.

“I mean ’xactly what I says, miss. The dog’s your own: I sold it to you long ago for five bob!”

The girl—for she was little more than sixteen—turned with a startled, doubting look to the dog.

“If you don’t b’lieve it, miss, look at the vite spot on the bridge of ’is nose,” said Slidder, with a self-satisfied nod to the lady and a supremely insolent wink to the footman.

“Pompey!” exclaimed the girl, holding out a pair of the prettiest little gloved hands imaginable.

My doggie broke from my grasp with a shriek of joy, and sprang into her arms. She buried her face in his shaggy neck and absolutely hugged him.

I stood aghast. The footman smiled in an imbecile manner.

“You’d better not squeeze quite so hard, miss, or he’ll bust!” remarked the waif.

Recovering herself, and dropping the dog somewhat hurriedly, she turned to me with a flushed face and said—

“Excuse me, sir; this unexpected meeting with my dog—”

“Yourdog!” I involuntarily exclaimed, while a sense of unmerited loss began to creep over me.

“Well, the dog was mine once, at all events—though I doubt not it is rightfully yours now,” said the young lady, with a smile that at once disarmed me. “It was stolen from me a few months after I had bought it from this boy, who seems strangely altered since then. I’m glad, however, to see that the short time I had the dog was sufficient to prevent its forgetting me. But perhaps,” she added, in a sad tone, “it would have been better if ithadforgotten me.”

My mind was made up.

“No, madam,” said I, with decision; “it is well that the dog has not forgotten you. I would have been surprised, indeed, if it had. It is yours. I could not think of robbing you of it. I—I—am going to visit a sick woman and cannot delay; forgive me if I ask permission to leave the dog with you until I return in the afternoon to hand it formally over and bid it farewell.”

This was said half in jest yet I felt very much in earnest, for the thought of parting from my doggie, even to such a fair mistress, cost me no small amount of pain—much to my surprise, for I had not imagined it possible that I could have formed so strong an attachment to a dumb animal in so short a time. But, you see, being a bachelor of an unsocial spirit, my doggie and I had been thrown much together in the evenings, and had made the most of our time.

The young lady half laughed, and hesitatingly thanked me as she went into the house, followed by Dumps,aliasPunch,aliasPompey, who never so much as cast one parting glance on me as I turned to leave. A shout caused me to turn again and look back. I beheld an infant rolling down the drawing-room stairs like a small Alpine boulder. A little girl was vainly attempting to arrest the infant, and three boys, of various sizes, came bounding towards the young lady with shouts of welcome. In the midst of the din my doggie uttered a cry of pain, the Babel of children’s voices was hushed by a bass growl, and the street door closed with a bang!

“Yell, thatisa rum go!” exclaimed my little companion, as we walked slowly away. “Don’t it seem to you, now, as if it wor all a dream?”

“It does, indeed,” I replied, half inclined to laugh, yet with a feeling of sadness at my heart, for I knew that my doggie and I were parted for ever! Even if the young lady should insist on my keeping the dog, I felt that I could not agree to do so. No! I had committed myself, and the thing was done; for it was clear that, with the mutual affection existing between the lady and the dog, they would not willingly consent to be parted—it would be cruelty even to suggest a separation.

“Pshaw!” thought I, “why should the loss of a miserable dog—a mere mass of shapeless hair—affect me so much? Pooh! I will brush the subject away.”

So I brushed it away, but back it came again in spite of all my brushing, and insisted on remaining to trouble me.

Short though our friendship had been, it had, I found, become very warm and strong. I recalled a good many pleasant evenings when, seated alone in my room with a favourite author, I had read and tickled Dumps under the chin and behind the ears to such an extent that I had thoroughly gained his heart; and as “love begets love,” I had been drawn insensibly yet powerfully towards him. In short, Dumps and I understood each other.

While I was meditating on these things my companion, who had walked along in silence, suddenly said—

“You needn’t take on so, sir, about Punch.”

“How d’you know I’m taking on so?”

“’Cause you look so awful solemncholy. An’ there’s no occasion to do so. You can get the critter back again.”

“I fear not Slidder, for I have already given it to the young lady, and you have seen how fond she is of it; and the dog evidently likes her better than it likes me.”

“Yell, I ain’t surprised atthat. It on’y proves it to be a dog of good taste; but you can get it back for all that.”

“How so?” I asked, much amused by the decision and self-sufficiency of the boy’s manner.

“Vy, you’ve on’y got to go and marry the young lady, w’en, of course, all her property becomes yours, Punch included, don’t you see?”

“True, Slidder; it had not occurred to me in that light,” said I, laughing heartily, as much at the cool and quiet insolence of the waif’s manner as at his suggestion. “But then, you see, there are difficulties in the way. Young ladies who dwell in fine mansions are not fond of marrying penniless doctors.”

“Pooh!” replied the urchin; “that ’as nuffin’ to do with it. You’ve on’y got to set up in a ’ouse close alongside, with a big gold mortar over the door an’ a one-’oss broom, an’ you’ll ’ave ’er in six months—or eight if she’s got contrairy parents. Then you’ll want a tiger, of course, to ’old the ’oss; an’ I knows a smart young feller whose name begins with a S, as would just suit. So, you see, you’ve nothing to do but to go in an win.”

The precocious waif looked up in my face with such an expression of satisfaction as he finished this audacious speech, that I could not help gazing at him in blank amazement. What I should have replied I know not, for we arrived just then at the abode of old Mrs Willis.

The poor old lady was suffering from a severe attack of influenza, which, coupled with age and the depression caused by her heavy sorrow, had reduced her physical powers in an alarming degree. It was obvious that she urgently required good food and careful nursing. I never before felt so keenly my lack of money. My means barely sufficed to keep myself, educational expenses being heavy. I was a shy man, too, and had never made friends—at least among the rich—to whom I could apply on occasions like this.

“Dear granny,” I said, “you would get along nicely if you would consent to go to a hospital.”

“Never!” said the old lady, in a tone of decision that surprised me.

“I assure you, granny, that you would be much better cared for and fed there than you can be here, and it would not be necessary to give up your room. I would look after it until you are better.”

Still the old lady shook her head, which was shaking badly enough from age as it was.

Going to the corner cupboard, in which Mrs Willis kept her little store of food and physic, I stood there pondering what I should do.

“Please, sir,” said Slidder, sidling up to me, “if you wants mutton-chops, or steaks, or port wine, or anythink o’ that sort, just say the word and I’ll get ’em.”

“You, boy—how?”

“Vy, ain’t the shops full of ’em? I’d go an help myself, spite of all the bobbies that valks in blue.”

“Oh, Slidder,” said I, really grieved, for I saw by his earnest face that he meant it, “would you go and steal after all I have said to you about that sin?”

“Vell, sir, I wouldn’t prig for myself—indeed I wouldn’t—but I’d do it to make the old ’ooman better.”

“That would not change stealing into a virtue. No, my boy, we must try to hit on some other way of providing for her wants.”

“The Lord will provide,” said Mrs Willis, from the bed.

She had overheard us. I hastened to her side.

“Yes, granny, Hewillprovide. Meanwhile He has given me enough money to spare a little for your immediate wants. I will send some things, which your kind neighbour, Mrs Jones, will cook for you. I’ll give her directions as I pass her door. Slidder will go home with me and fetch you the medicines you require. Now, try to sleep till Mrs Jones comes with the food. You must not speak to me. It will make you worse.”

“I only want to ask, John, have you any—any news about—”

“No, not yet, granny; but don’t be cast down. If you can trust God for food, surely you can trust Him for protection, not only to yourself, but to Edie. Remember the words, ‘Commit thy way unto the Lord, and He will bring it to pass.’”

“Thank you, John,” replied the old woman, as she sank back on her pillow with a little sigh.

After leaving Mrs Willis I was detained so long with some of my patients that it was late before I could turn my steps westward. The night was very cold, with a keen December wind blowing, and heavy black clouds driving across the dark sky. It was after midnight as I drew near the neighbourhood of the house in which I had left Dumps so hurriedly that morning. In my haste I had neglected to ask the name of the young lady with whom I had left him, or to note the number of the house; but I recollected its position, and resolved to go round by it for the purpose of ascertaining the name on the door.

Chapter Five.Conspiracy and Villainy, Innocence and Tragedy.In one of the dirtiest of the dirty and disreputable dens of London, a man and a boy sat on that same dark December night engaged in earnest conversation.Their seats were stools, their table was an empty flour-barrel, their apartment a cellar. A farthing candle stood awry in the neck of a pint bottle. A broken-lipped jug of gin-and-water hot, and two cracked tea-cups stood between them. The damp of the place was drawn out, rather than abated, by a small fire, which burned in a rusty grate, over which they sought to warm their hands as they conversed. The man was palpably a scoundrel. Not less so was the boy.“Slogger,” said the man, in a growling voice, “we must do it this wery night.”“Vell, Brassey, I’m game,” replied the Slogger, draining his cup with a defiant air.“If it hadn’t bin for that old ’ooman as was care-taker all last summer,” continued the man, as he pricked a refractory tobacco-pipe, “we’d ’ave found the job more difficult; but, you see, she went and lost the key o’ the back door, and the doctor he ’ad to get another. So I goes an’ gets round the old ’ooman, an’ pumps her about the lost key, an’ at last I finds it—d’ye see?”“But,” returned the Slogger, with a knowing frown, “seems to me as how you’d never get two keys into one lock—eh? The noo ’un wouldn’t let the old ’un in, would it?”“Ah, that’s where it is,” replied Mr Brassey, with a leer, as he raised his cup to his large ugly mouth and chuckled. “You see, the doctor’s wife she’s summat timmersome, an’ looks arter the lockin’ up every night herself—wery partikler. Then she ’as all the keys up into her own bedroom o’ nights—so, you see, in consikence of her uncommon care, she keeps all the locks clear for you and me to work upon!”The Slogger was so overcome by this instance of the result of excessive caution, that he laughed heartily for some minutes, and had to apply for relief to the hot gin-and-water.“’Ow ever did you come for to find that hout?” asked the boy.“Servants,” replied the man.“Ha!” exclaimed the boy, with a wink, which would have been knowing if the spirits had not by that time rendered it ridiculous.“Yes, you see,” continued the elder ruffian, blowing a heavy cloud of smoke like a cannon shot from his lips, “servants is wariable in character. Some is good, an’ some is bad. I mostly take up wi’ the bad ’uns. There’s one in the doctor’s ’ouse as is a prime favourite with me, an’ knows all about the locks, she does. But there’s a noo an’ unexpected difficulty sprung up in the way this wery mornin’.”“Wot’s that?” demanded the Slogger, with the air of a man prepared to defy all difficulties.“They’ve bin an’ got a dog—a little dog, too; the very wust kind for kickin’ up a row. ’Owever, it ain’t the fust time you an’ I ’ave met an conkered such a difficulty. You’ll take a bit of cat’s meat in your pocket, you know.”“Hall right!” exclaimed the young housebreaker, with a reckless toss of his shaggy head, as he laid his hand on the jug: but the elder scoundrel laid his stronger hand upon it.“Come, Slogger; no more o’ that. You’ve ’ad too much already. You won’t be fit for dooty if you take more.”“It’s wery ’ard on a cove,” growled the lad, sulkily.Brassey looked narrowly into his face, then took up the forbidden jug, and himself drained it, after which he rose, grasped the boy by his collar, and forced him, struggling, towards a sink full of dirty water, into which he thrust his head, and shook it about roughly for a second or two.“There, that’ll sober you,” said the man, releasing the boy, and sending him into the middle of the room with a kick. “Now, don’t let your monkey rise, Slogger. It’s all for your good. I’ll be back in ’alf an hour. See that you have the tools ready.”So saying the man left the cellar, and the boy, who was much exasperated, though decidedly sobered, by his treatment, proceeded to dry himself with a jack-towel, and make preparations for the intended burglary.The house in regard to which such interesting preparations were being made was buried, at the hour I write of, in profound repose. As its fate and its family have something to do with my tale, I shall describe it somewhat particularly. In the basement there was an offshoot, or scullery, which communicated with the kitchen. This scullery had been set apart that day as the bedroom of my little dog. (Of course I knew nothing of this, and what I am about to relate, at that time. I learned it all afterwards.) Dumps lay sound asleep on a flannel bed, made by loving hands, in the bottom of a soap-box. It lay under the shadow of a beer-cask—the servants’ beer—a fresh cask—which, having arrived late that evening, had not been relegated to the cellar. The only other individual who slept on the basement was the footman.That worthy, being elderly and feeble, though bold as a lion, had been doomed to the lower regions by his mistress, as a sure protection against burglars. He went to bed nightly with a poker and a pistol so disposed that he could clutch them both while in the act of springing from bed. This arrangement was made not to relieve his own fears, but by order of his mistress, with whom he could hold communication at night without rising, by means of a speaking-tube.John—he chanced to bear my own name—had been so long subject to night alarms, partly from cats careering in the back yard, and his mistress demanding to know, through the tube, if he heard them; partly, also, from frequent ringing of the night-bell, by persons who urgently wanted “Dr McTougall,” that he had become callous in his nervous system, and did much of his night-work as a semi-somnambulist.The rooms on the first floor above, consisting of the dining-room, library, and consulting-room, etcetera, were left, as usual, tenantless and dark at night. On the drawing-room floor Mrs McTougall lay in her comfortable bed, sound asleep and dreamless. The poor lady had spent the first part of that night in considerable fear because of the restlessness of Dumps in his new and strange bedroom—her husband being absent because of a sudden call to a country patient. The speaking-tube had been pretty well worked, and John had been lively in consequence—though patient—but at last the drowsy god had calmed the good lady into a state of oblivion.On the floor above, besides various bedrooms, there were the night nursery and the schoolroom. In one of the bedrooms slumbered the young lady who had robbed me of my doggie!In the nursery were four cribs and a cradle. Dr McTougall’s family had come in what I may style annual progression. Six years had he been married, and each year had contributed another annual to the army.The children were now ranged round the walls with mathematical precision—one, two, three, four, and five. The doctor liked them all to be together, and the nursery, being unusually large, permitted of this arrangement. A tall, powerful, sunny-tempered woman of uncertain age officered the army by day and guarded it by night. Jack and Harry and Job and Jenny occupied the cribs, Dolly the cradle. Each of these creatures had been transfixed by sleep in the very midst of some desperate enterprise during the earlier watches of that night, and all had fallen down in more or lessdégagéand reckless attitudes. Here a fat fist, doubled; there a fatter leg, protruded; elsewhere a spread eagle was represented, with the bedclothes in a heap on its stomach; or a complex knot was displayed, made up of legs, sheets, blankets, and arms. Subsequently the tall but faithful guardian had gone round, disentangled the knot, reduced the spread eagle, and straightened them all out. They now lay, stiff and motionless as mummies, roseate as the morn, deceptively innocent, with eyes tight shut and mouths wide open—save in the case of Dolly, whose natural appetite could only be appeased by the nightly sucking of two of her own fingers.In the attics three domestics slumbered in peace. Still higher, a belated cat reposed in the lee of a chimney-stack.It was a restful scene, which none but a heartless monster could have ventured to disturb. Even Brassey and the Slogger had no intention of disturbing it—on the contrary, it was their earnest hope that they might accomplish their designs on the doctor’s plate with as little disturbance as possible. Their motto was a paraphrase, “Get the plate—quietly, if you can, but get the plate!”In the midst of the universal stillness, when no sound was heard save the sighing of the night-wind or the solemn creaking of an unsuccessful smoke-curer, there came a voice of alarm down the tube—“John, do you hear burglars?”“Oh, dear! no, mum, I don’t.”“I’m convinced I hear them at the back of the house!” tubed Mrs McTougall.“Indeed it ain’t, mum,” tubed John in reply. “It’s on’y that little dog as comed this morning and ain’t got used to its noo ’ome yet. It’s a-whinin’, mum; that’s wot it is.”“Oh! do get up, John, and put a light beside him; perhaps he’s afraid of the dark.”“Very well, mum,” said John, obedient but savage.He arose, upset the poker and pistol with a hideous clatter, which was luckily too remote to smite horror into the heart of Mrs McTougall, and groped his way into the servants’ hall. Lighting a paraffin lamp, he went to the scullery, using very unfair and harsh language towards my innocent dog.“Pompey, you brute!”—the footman had already learned his name—“hold your noise. There!”He set the lamp on the head of the beer cask and returned to bed.It is believed that poor perplexed Dumps viewed the midnight apparition with silent surprise, and wagged his tail, being friendly; then gazed at the lamp after the apparition had retired, until obliged to give the subject up, like a difficult conundrum, and finally went to sleep—perchance to dream—of dogs, or me!It was while Dumps was thus engaged that Brassey and the Slogger walked up to the front of the house and surveyed it in silence for a few minutes. They also took particular observations of both ends of the street.“All serene,” said Brassey; “now, you go round to the back and use your key quietly. Give ’im the bit o’ meat quick. He won’t give tongue arter ’e smells it, and one or two barks won’t alarm the ’ouse. So, get along, Slogger. W’en you’ve got him snug, with a rope round ’is neck an’ ’is head in the flannel bag, just caterwaul an’ I’ll come round. Bless the cats! they’re a great help to gentlemen in our procession.”Thus admonished, the Slogger chuckled and melted into the darkness, while Brassey mingled himself with the shadow of a pillar.The key—lost by the care-taker and found by the burglar—fitted into the empty lock even more perfectly than that which Mrs McTougall had conveyed to her mantelpiece some hours before. It was well oiled too, and went round in the wards of the lock without giving a chirp, so that the bolt flew back with one solitary shot. The report, however, was loud. It caused Dumps to return from Dogland and raise his head with a decided growl.Nobody heard the growl except the Slogger, who stood perfectly still for nearly a minute, with his hand on the door-handle. Then he opened the door slowly and softly—so slowly and softly that an alarm-bell attached to it did not ring.A sharp bow! wow! wow! however, greeted him as he entered, but he was prompt. A small piece of meat fell directly under the nose of Dumps, as he stood bristling in front of his box; and, let me add, when Dumps bristled it was a sight to behold!“Good dog—good do–o–og,” said the Slogger, in his softest and most insinuating tone.Dumps reduced his bark to a growl.The footman heard both bark and growl, but, attributing them to the influence of cats, turned on his other side and listened—not for burglars, innocent man, but for the tube.It was silent! Evidently “tired nature” was, in Mrs McTougall’s case, lulled by the “sweet restorer.” Forthwith John betook himself again to the land of Nod.“Have another bit?” said the Slogger in quite a friendly way, after the first bit had been devoured.My too trusting favourite wagged his tail and innocently accepted the bribe.It was good cat’s meat. Dumps liked it. The enormous supper with which he had lain down was by that time nearly assimilated, and appetite had begun to revive. Going down on his knee the young burglar held out a third morsel of temptation in his hand. Dumps meekly advanced and took the meat. It was a sad illustration of the ease with which even a dog descends from bad to worse.While he was engaged with it the Slogger gently patted his head.Suddenly Dumps found his muzzle grasped and held tight in a powerful hand. He tried to bark and yell, but could produce nothing better than a scarcely audible whine. His sides were at the same instant grasped by a pair of powerful knees, while a rope was twisted round his neck, and the process of strangulation began.But strangulation was not the Slogger’s intention. He had been carefully warned not to kill.“Mind, now, you don’t screw ’im up too tight,” Brassey had said, when giving the boy his instructions before starting. “Dogs is vurth munny. Just ’old ’im tight and quiet till you get the flannel bag on ’is head, and then stand by till I’ve sacked the swag.”Accordingly, having effected the bagging of the dog’s head, the young burglar went to the door, holding Dumps tight in his arms, and uttered a pretty loud and life-like caterwaul. Brassey heard it, emerged from the shade of his pillar, and was soon beside his comrade.When Dumps smelt and heard the new-comer, he redoubled his efforts to free his head and yell, but the Slogger was too much for him.Few words were wasted on this occasion. The couple understood their work. Brassey took up the lamp.“Wery considerate of ’em to ’ave a light all ready for us,” he muttered, as he lowered the flame a little, and glided into the kitchen, leaving the Slogger on guard in the scullery. Here he found a variety of gins and snares carefully placed for him—and such as he—by strict orders of Mrs McTougall. Besides a swing-bell on the window shutter—similar to that which had done so little service on the scullery door—there was a coal-scuttle with the kitchen tongs balanced against it and a tin slop-pail in company with the kitchen shovel, and a watering-pan, which—the poker being already engaged to John—was balanced on its own rose and handle, all ready to fail with a touch. These outworks being echelloned along the floor rendered it impossible for an intruder to cross the kitchen in the dark without overturning one or more of them. Thanks to the lamp, Brassey steered his way carefully and with a grim smile.At John Waters’s door he paused and listened. John’s nose revealed his condition.Gliding up the stairs on shoeless feet the burglar entered the dining-room, picked the locks of the sideboard with marvellous celerity, unfolded a canvas bag, and placed therein whatever valuables he could lay hands on. Proceeding next to the drawing-room floor, he began to examine and appropriate the articles ofvertuthat appeared to him most valuable.Not being a perfect judge of such matters, Mr Brassey was naturally puzzled with some of them. One in particular caused him to regard it with frowning attention for nearly a minute before he came to the conclusion that it was “vurth munny.” He placed the lamp on the small table near the window, from which he had lifted the ornament in question, and sat down on a crimson chair with gilded legs to examine it more critically.Meanwhile the Slogger, left in the dark with the still fitfully struggling Dumps, employed his leisure in running over some of the salient events of his past career, and in trying to ascertain, by the very faint light that came from a distant street-lamp, what was the nature of his immediate surroundings. His nose told him that the cask at his elbow was beer. His exploring right hand told him that the tap was in it. His native intelligence suggested a tumbler on the head of the cask, and the exploring hand proved the idea to be correct.“Brassey was wery ’ard on me to-night,” he thought. “I’d like to have a swig.”But Dumps was sadly in the way. To remove his left hand even for an instant from the dog’s muzzle was not to be thought of. In this dilemma he resolved to tie up the said muzzle, and the legs also, even at the risk of causing death. It would not take more than a minute to draw a tumblerful, and any dog worth a straw could hold his wind for a minute. He would try. He did try, and was yet in the act of drawing the beer when my doggie burst his bonds by a frantic effort to be free. Probably the hairy nature of his little body had rendered a firm bond impossible. At all events, he suddenly found his legs loose. Another effort, more frantic than before, set free the muzzle, and then there arose on the still night air a yell so shrill, so loud, so indescribably horrible, that its conception must be left entirely to the reader’s imagination.At the same instant Dumps scurried into the kitchen. The scuttle and tongs went down, the slop-pail and shovel followed suit, also the watering-pan, into which latter Dumps went head foremost as it fell, and from its interior another yell issued with such resonant power that the first yell was a mere chirp by contrast. The Slogger fled from the scene like an evil spirit, while John Waters sprang up and grasped the pistol and poker.The effect on Brassey in the drawing-room cannot be conceived, much less described. He shot, as it were, out of the crimson-gilded chair and overturned the lamp, which burst on the floor. Being half full of paraffin oil it instantly set fire to the gauze window-curtains. The burglar made straight for the stairs. John Waters, observing the light, dashed up the same, and the two met face to face on the landing, breathing hate and glaring defiance!

In one of the dirtiest of the dirty and disreputable dens of London, a man and a boy sat on that same dark December night engaged in earnest conversation.

Their seats were stools, their table was an empty flour-barrel, their apartment a cellar. A farthing candle stood awry in the neck of a pint bottle. A broken-lipped jug of gin-and-water hot, and two cracked tea-cups stood between them. The damp of the place was drawn out, rather than abated, by a small fire, which burned in a rusty grate, over which they sought to warm their hands as they conversed. The man was palpably a scoundrel. Not less so was the boy.

“Slogger,” said the man, in a growling voice, “we must do it this wery night.”

“Vell, Brassey, I’m game,” replied the Slogger, draining his cup with a defiant air.

“If it hadn’t bin for that old ’ooman as was care-taker all last summer,” continued the man, as he pricked a refractory tobacco-pipe, “we’d ’ave found the job more difficult; but, you see, she went and lost the key o’ the back door, and the doctor he ’ad to get another. So I goes an’ gets round the old ’ooman, an’ pumps her about the lost key, an’ at last I finds it—d’ye see?”

“But,” returned the Slogger, with a knowing frown, “seems to me as how you’d never get two keys into one lock—eh? The noo ’un wouldn’t let the old ’un in, would it?”

“Ah, that’s where it is,” replied Mr Brassey, with a leer, as he raised his cup to his large ugly mouth and chuckled. “You see, the doctor’s wife she’s summat timmersome, an’ looks arter the lockin’ up every night herself—wery partikler. Then she ’as all the keys up into her own bedroom o’ nights—so, you see, in consikence of her uncommon care, she keeps all the locks clear for you and me to work upon!”

The Slogger was so overcome by this instance of the result of excessive caution, that he laughed heartily for some minutes, and had to apply for relief to the hot gin-and-water.

“’Ow ever did you come for to find that hout?” asked the boy.

“Servants,” replied the man.

“Ha!” exclaimed the boy, with a wink, which would have been knowing if the spirits had not by that time rendered it ridiculous.

“Yes, you see,” continued the elder ruffian, blowing a heavy cloud of smoke like a cannon shot from his lips, “servants is wariable in character. Some is good, an’ some is bad. I mostly take up wi’ the bad ’uns. There’s one in the doctor’s ’ouse as is a prime favourite with me, an’ knows all about the locks, she does. But there’s a noo an’ unexpected difficulty sprung up in the way this wery mornin’.”

“Wot’s that?” demanded the Slogger, with the air of a man prepared to defy all difficulties.

“They’ve bin an’ got a dog—a little dog, too; the very wust kind for kickin’ up a row. ’Owever, it ain’t the fust time you an’ I ’ave met an conkered such a difficulty. You’ll take a bit of cat’s meat in your pocket, you know.”

“Hall right!” exclaimed the young housebreaker, with a reckless toss of his shaggy head, as he laid his hand on the jug: but the elder scoundrel laid his stronger hand upon it.

“Come, Slogger; no more o’ that. You’ve ’ad too much already. You won’t be fit for dooty if you take more.”

“It’s wery ’ard on a cove,” growled the lad, sulkily.

Brassey looked narrowly into his face, then took up the forbidden jug, and himself drained it, after which he rose, grasped the boy by his collar, and forced him, struggling, towards a sink full of dirty water, into which he thrust his head, and shook it about roughly for a second or two.

“There, that’ll sober you,” said the man, releasing the boy, and sending him into the middle of the room with a kick. “Now, don’t let your monkey rise, Slogger. It’s all for your good. I’ll be back in ’alf an hour. See that you have the tools ready.”

So saying the man left the cellar, and the boy, who was much exasperated, though decidedly sobered, by his treatment, proceeded to dry himself with a jack-towel, and make preparations for the intended burglary.

The house in regard to which such interesting preparations were being made was buried, at the hour I write of, in profound repose. As its fate and its family have something to do with my tale, I shall describe it somewhat particularly. In the basement there was an offshoot, or scullery, which communicated with the kitchen. This scullery had been set apart that day as the bedroom of my little dog. (Of course I knew nothing of this, and what I am about to relate, at that time. I learned it all afterwards.) Dumps lay sound asleep on a flannel bed, made by loving hands, in the bottom of a soap-box. It lay under the shadow of a beer-cask—the servants’ beer—a fresh cask—which, having arrived late that evening, had not been relegated to the cellar. The only other individual who slept on the basement was the footman.

That worthy, being elderly and feeble, though bold as a lion, had been doomed to the lower regions by his mistress, as a sure protection against burglars. He went to bed nightly with a poker and a pistol so disposed that he could clutch them both while in the act of springing from bed. This arrangement was made not to relieve his own fears, but by order of his mistress, with whom he could hold communication at night without rising, by means of a speaking-tube.

John—he chanced to bear my own name—had been so long subject to night alarms, partly from cats careering in the back yard, and his mistress demanding to know, through the tube, if he heard them; partly, also, from frequent ringing of the night-bell, by persons who urgently wanted “Dr McTougall,” that he had become callous in his nervous system, and did much of his night-work as a semi-somnambulist.

The rooms on the first floor above, consisting of the dining-room, library, and consulting-room, etcetera, were left, as usual, tenantless and dark at night. On the drawing-room floor Mrs McTougall lay in her comfortable bed, sound asleep and dreamless. The poor lady had spent the first part of that night in considerable fear because of the restlessness of Dumps in his new and strange bedroom—her husband being absent because of a sudden call to a country patient. The speaking-tube had been pretty well worked, and John had been lively in consequence—though patient—but at last the drowsy god had calmed the good lady into a state of oblivion.

On the floor above, besides various bedrooms, there were the night nursery and the schoolroom. In one of the bedrooms slumbered the young lady who had robbed me of my doggie!

In the nursery were four cribs and a cradle. Dr McTougall’s family had come in what I may style annual progression. Six years had he been married, and each year had contributed another annual to the army.

The children were now ranged round the walls with mathematical precision—one, two, three, four, and five. The doctor liked them all to be together, and the nursery, being unusually large, permitted of this arrangement. A tall, powerful, sunny-tempered woman of uncertain age officered the army by day and guarded it by night. Jack and Harry and Job and Jenny occupied the cribs, Dolly the cradle. Each of these creatures had been transfixed by sleep in the very midst of some desperate enterprise during the earlier watches of that night, and all had fallen down in more or lessdégagéand reckless attitudes. Here a fat fist, doubled; there a fatter leg, protruded; elsewhere a spread eagle was represented, with the bedclothes in a heap on its stomach; or a complex knot was displayed, made up of legs, sheets, blankets, and arms. Subsequently the tall but faithful guardian had gone round, disentangled the knot, reduced the spread eagle, and straightened them all out. They now lay, stiff and motionless as mummies, roseate as the morn, deceptively innocent, with eyes tight shut and mouths wide open—save in the case of Dolly, whose natural appetite could only be appeased by the nightly sucking of two of her own fingers.

In the attics three domestics slumbered in peace. Still higher, a belated cat reposed in the lee of a chimney-stack.

It was a restful scene, which none but a heartless monster could have ventured to disturb. Even Brassey and the Slogger had no intention of disturbing it—on the contrary, it was their earnest hope that they might accomplish their designs on the doctor’s plate with as little disturbance as possible. Their motto was a paraphrase, “Get the plate—quietly, if you can, but get the plate!”

In the midst of the universal stillness, when no sound was heard save the sighing of the night-wind or the solemn creaking of an unsuccessful smoke-curer, there came a voice of alarm down the tube—

“John, do you hear burglars?”

“Oh, dear! no, mum, I don’t.”

“I’m convinced I hear them at the back of the house!” tubed Mrs McTougall.

“Indeed it ain’t, mum,” tubed John in reply. “It’s on’y that little dog as comed this morning and ain’t got used to its noo ’ome yet. It’s a-whinin’, mum; that’s wot it is.”

“Oh! do get up, John, and put a light beside him; perhaps he’s afraid of the dark.”

“Very well, mum,” said John, obedient but savage.

He arose, upset the poker and pistol with a hideous clatter, which was luckily too remote to smite horror into the heart of Mrs McTougall, and groped his way into the servants’ hall. Lighting a paraffin lamp, he went to the scullery, using very unfair and harsh language towards my innocent dog.

“Pompey, you brute!”—the footman had already learned his name—“hold your noise. There!”

He set the lamp on the head of the beer cask and returned to bed.

It is believed that poor perplexed Dumps viewed the midnight apparition with silent surprise, and wagged his tail, being friendly; then gazed at the lamp after the apparition had retired, until obliged to give the subject up, like a difficult conundrum, and finally went to sleep—perchance to dream—of dogs, or me!

It was while Dumps was thus engaged that Brassey and the Slogger walked up to the front of the house and surveyed it in silence for a few minutes. They also took particular observations of both ends of the street.

“All serene,” said Brassey; “now, you go round to the back and use your key quietly. Give ’im the bit o’ meat quick. He won’t give tongue arter ’e smells it, and one or two barks won’t alarm the ’ouse. So, get along, Slogger. W’en you’ve got him snug, with a rope round ’is neck an’ ’is head in the flannel bag, just caterwaul an’ I’ll come round. Bless the cats! they’re a great help to gentlemen in our procession.”

Thus admonished, the Slogger chuckled and melted into the darkness, while Brassey mingled himself with the shadow of a pillar.

The key—lost by the care-taker and found by the burglar—fitted into the empty lock even more perfectly than that which Mrs McTougall had conveyed to her mantelpiece some hours before. It was well oiled too, and went round in the wards of the lock without giving a chirp, so that the bolt flew back with one solitary shot. The report, however, was loud. It caused Dumps to return from Dogland and raise his head with a decided growl.

Nobody heard the growl except the Slogger, who stood perfectly still for nearly a minute, with his hand on the door-handle. Then he opened the door slowly and softly—so slowly and softly that an alarm-bell attached to it did not ring.

A sharp bow! wow! wow! however, greeted him as he entered, but he was prompt. A small piece of meat fell directly under the nose of Dumps, as he stood bristling in front of his box; and, let me add, when Dumps bristled it was a sight to behold!

“Good dog—good do–o–og,” said the Slogger, in his softest and most insinuating tone.

Dumps reduced his bark to a growl.

The footman heard both bark and growl, but, attributing them to the influence of cats, turned on his other side and listened—not for burglars, innocent man, but for the tube.

It was silent! Evidently “tired nature” was, in Mrs McTougall’s case, lulled by the “sweet restorer.” Forthwith John betook himself again to the land of Nod.

“Have another bit?” said the Slogger in quite a friendly way, after the first bit had been devoured.

My too trusting favourite wagged his tail and innocently accepted the bribe.

It was good cat’s meat. Dumps liked it. The enormous supper with which he had lain down was by that time nearly assimilated, and appetite had begun to revive. Going down on his knee the young burglar held out a third morsel of temptation in his hand. Dumps meekly advanced and took the meat. It was a sad illustration of the ease with which even a dog descends from bad to worse.

While he was engaged with it the Slogger gently patted his head.

Suddenly Dumps found his muzzle grasped and held tight in a powerful hand. He tried to bark and yell, but could produce nothing better than a scarcely audible whine. His sides were at the same instant grasped by a pair of powerful knees, while a rope was twisted round his neck, and the process of strangulation began.

But strangulation was not the Slogger’s intention. He had been carefully warned not to kill.

“Mind, now, you don’t screw ’im up too tight,” Brassey had said, when giving the boy his instructions before starting. “Dogs is vurth munny. Just ’old ’im tight and quiet till you get the flannel bag on ’is head, and then stand by till I’ve sacked the swag.”

Accordingly, having effected the bagging of the dog’s head, the young burglar went to the door, holding Dumps tight in his arms, and uttered a pretty loud and life-like caterwaul. Brassey heard it, emerged from the shade of his pillar, and was soon beside his comrade.

When Dumps smelt and heard the new-comer, he redoubled his efforts to free his head and yell, but the Slogger was too much for him.

Few words were wasted on this occasion. The couple understood their work. Brassey took up the lamp.

“Wery considerate of ’em to ’ave a light all ready for us,” he muttered, as he lowered the flame a little, and glided into the kitchen, leaving the Slogger on guard in the scullery. Here he found a variety of gins and snares carefully placed for him—and such as he—by strict orders of Mrs McTougall. Besides a swing-bell on the window shutter—similar to that which had done so little service on the scullery door—there was a coal-scuttle with the kitchen tongs balanced against it and a tin slop-pail in company with the kitchen shovel, and a watering-pan, which—the poker being already engaged to John—was balanced on its own rose and handle, all ready to fail with a touch. These outworks being echelloned along the floor rendered it impossible for an intruder to cross the kitchen in the dark without overturning one or more of them. Thanks to the lamp, Brassey steered his way carefully and with a grim smile.

At John Waters’s door he paused and listened. John’s nose revealed his condition.

Gliding up the stairs on shoeless feet the burglar entered the dining-room, picked the locks of the sideboard with marvellous celerity, unfolded a canvas bag, and placed therein whatever valuables he could lay hands on. Proceeding next to the drawing-room floor, he began to examine and appropriate the articles ofvertuthat appeared to him most valuable.

Not being a perfect judge of such matters, Mr Brassey was naturally puzzled with some of them. One in particular caused him to regard it with frowning attention for nearly a minute before he came to the conclusion that it was “vurth munny.” He placed the lamp on the small table near the window, from which he had lifted the ornament in question, and sat down on a crimson chair with gilded legs to examine it more critically.

Meanwhile the Slogger, left in the dark with the still fitfully struggling Dumps, employed his leisure in running over some of the salient events of his past career, and in trying to ascertain, by the very faint light that came from a distant street-lamp, what was the nature of his immediate surroundings. His nose told him that the cask at his elbow was beer. His exploring right hand told him that the tap was in it. His native intelligence suggested a tumbler on the head of the cask, and the exploring hand proved the idea to be correct.

“Brassey was wery ’ard on me to-night,” he thought. “I’d like to have a swig.”

But Dumps was sadly in the way. To remove his left hand even for an instant from the dog’s muzzle was not to be thought of. In this dilemma he resolved to tie up the said muzzle, and the legs also, even at the risk of causing death. It would not take more than a minute to draw a tumblerful, and any dog worth a straw could hold his wind for a minute. He would try. He did try, and was yet in the act of drawing the beer when my doggie burst his bonds by a frantic effort to be free. Probably the hairy nature of his little body had rendered a firm bond impossible. At all events, he suddenly found his legs loose. Another effort, more frantic than before, set free the muzzle, and then there arose on the still night air a yell so shrill, so loud, so indescribably horrible, that its conception must be left entirely to the reader’s imagination.

At the same instant Dumps scurried into the kitchen. The scuttle and tongs went down, the slop-pail and shovel followed suit, also the watering-pan, into which latter Dumps went head foremost as it fell, and from its interior another yell issued with such resonant power that the first yell was a mere chirp by contrast. The Slogger fled from the scene like an evil spirit, while John Waters sprang up and grasped the pistol and poker.

The effect on Brassey in the drawing-room cannot be conceived, much less described. He shot, as it were, out of the crimson-gilded chair and overturned the lamp, which burst on the floor. Being half full of paraffin oil it instantly set fire to the gauze window-curtains. The burglar made straight for the stairs. John Waters, observing the light, dashed up the same, and the two met face to face on the landing, breathing hate and glaring defiance!

Chapter Six.Relates a Stirring Innocent.Now it was at this critical moment that I chanced to come upon the scene.I had just ascertained from the brass plate on the door that Dr McTougall dwelt there, and was thinking what an ugly unromantic name that was for a pretty girl as I descended the steps, when Dumps’s first yell broke upon my astonished ears. I recognised the voice at once, though I must confess that the second yell from the interior of the watering-pan perplexed me not a little, but the hideous clatter with which it was associated, and the sudden bursting out of flames in the drawing-room, drove all thoughts of Dumps instantly away.My first impulse was to rush to the nearest fire-station; but a wild shouting in the lobby of the house arrested me. I rang the bell violently. At the same moment I heard the report of a pistol, and a savage curse, as a bullet came crashing through the door and went close past my head. Then I heard a blow, followed by a groan. This was succeeded by female shrieks overhead, and the violent undoing of the bolts, locks, and chains of the front door.Thought is quick. Burglary flashed into my mind! A villainous-looking fellow leaped out as the door flew open. I recognised him instantly as the man who had sold Dumps to me. I put my foot in front of him. He went over it with a wild pitch, and descended the steps on his nose!I was about to leap on him when a policeman came tearing round the corner, just in time to receive the stunned Brassey with open arms, as he rose and staggered forward.“Just so. Don’t give way too much to your feelings! I’ll take care of you, my poor unfortunate fellow,” said the policeman, as a brother in blue came to his assistance.Already one of those ubiquitous creatures, a street-boy, had flown to the fire-station on the wings of hope and joy, and an engine came careering round the corner as I turned to rush up the stairs, which were already filled with smoke.I dashed in the first door I came to. A lady, partially clothed, stood there pale as death, and motionless.“Quick, madam! descend! the house is on fire!” I gasped in sharp sentences as I seized her. “Where is your—your (she looked young)sister?” I cried, as she resisted my efforts to lead her out.“I’ve no sister!” she shrieked.“Your daughter, then! Quick, direct me!”“Oh! my darling!” she cried, wringing her hands.“Where?” I shouted in desperation, for the smoke was thickening.“Up-stairs,” she screamed, and rushed out, intending evidently to go up.I caught her round the waist and forced her down the stairs, thrust her into the arms of an ascending fireman, and then ran up again, taking three steps at a time. The cry of a child attracted me. I made for a door opposite, and burst it open. The scene that presented itself was striking. Out of four cribs and a cradle arose five cones of bed-clothes, with a pretty little curly head surmounting each cone, and ten eyes blazing with amazement. A tall nurse stood erect in the middle of the floor with outstretched arms, glaring.Instantly I grasped a cone in each arm and bore it from the room. Blinded with smoke, I ran like a thunderbolt into the arms of a gigantic fireman.“Take it easy, sir. You’ll do far more work if you keep cool. Straight on to front room! Fire-escape’s there by this time.”I understood, and darted into a front room, through the window of which the head of the fire-escape entered at the same moment, sending glass in splinters all over us. It was immediately drawn back a little, enabling me to throw up the window-sash and thrust the two children into the arms of another fireman, whose head suddenly emerged from the smoke that rose from the windows below. I could see that the fire was roaring out into the street, and lighting up hundreds of faces below, while the steady clank of engines told that the brigade was busily at work fighting the flames. But I had no time to look or think. Indeed, I felt as if I had no power of volition properly my own, but that I acted under the strong impulse of another spirit within me.Darting back towards the nursery I met the first fireman dragging with his right hand the tall nurse, who seemed unreasonably to struggle against him, while in his left arm he carried two of the children, and the baby by its night-dress in his teeth.I saw at a glance that he had emptied the nursery, and turned to search for another door. During the whole of this scene—which passed in a few minutes—a feeling of desperate anxiety possessed me as to the fate of the young lady to whom I had given up my doggie. I felt persuaded she slept on the same floor with the children, and groped about the passage in search of another door. By this time the smoke was so dense that I was all but suffocated. A minute or two more and it would be too late. I could not see. Suddenly I felt a door and kicked it open. The black smoke entered with me, but it was still clear enough inside for me to perceive the form of a girl lying on the floor. It was she!“Miss McTougall!” I shouted, endeavouring to rouse her; but she had fainted. Not a moment now to lose. A lurid tongue of flame came up the staircase. I rolled a blanket round the girl—head and all. She was very light. In the excitement of the moment I raised her as if she had been a child, and darted back towards the passage, but the few moments I had lost almost cost us our lives. I knew that to breathe the dense smoke would be certain suffocation, and went through it holding my breath like a diver. I felt as if the hot flames were playing round my head, and smelt the singeing of my own hair. Another moment and I had reached the window, where the grim but welcome head of the escape still rested. With a desperate bound I went head first into the shoot, taking my precious bundle along with me.A fireman chanced to be going down the shoot at the time, carefully piloting one of the maids who had been rescued from the attics, and checking his speed with outspread legs. Against him I canonned with tremendous force, and sent him and his charge in a heap to the bottom.This was fortunate, for the pace at which I must have otherwise come down would have probably broken my neck. As it was, I felt so stunned that I nearly lost consciousness. Still I retained my senses sufficiently to observe a stout elderly little man in full evening dress, with his coat slit up behind to his neck, his face half-blackened, and his shaggy hair flying wildly in all directions—chiefly upwards. Amid wild cheering from the crowd I confusedly heard the conversation that followed.“They’re all accounted for now, sir,” said a policeman, who supported me.The elderly gentleman had leaped forward with an exclamation of earnest thankfulness, and unrolled the blanket.“Not hurt! No, thank God. Lift her carefully now. To the same house.—And who are you?” he added, turning and looking full at me as I leaned in a dazed condition on the fireman’s shoulder. I heard the question and saw the speaker, but could not reply.“This is the gen’leman as saved two o’ the child’n an’ the young lady,” said the tall fireman, whom I recognised as the one into whose bosom I had plunged on the upper floor.“Ay, an’ he’s the gen’leman,” said another fireman, “who shoved your missus, sir, into my arms, w’en she was bent on runnin’ up-stairs.”“Is this so?” said the little gentleman, stepping forward and grasping my hand.Still I could not speak. I felt as if the whole affair were a dream, and looked on and listened with a vacant smile.Just at that moment a long, melancholy wail rose above the roaring of the fire and clanking of the engines.The cry restored me at once.“Dumps! my doggie!” I exclaimed; and, bursting through the crowd, rushed towards the now furiously-burning house, but strong hands restrained me.“What dog is it?” asked the elderly gentleman. A man, drenched, blackened, and bloodstained, whom I had not before observed, here said—“A noo dog, sir, Dumps by name, come to us this wery day. We putt ’im in the scullery for the night.”Again I made a desperate effort to return to the burning house, but was restrained as before.“All right, sir,” whispered a fireman in a confidential tone, “I know the scullery. The fire ain’t got down there yet. Your dog can only have bin damaged by water as yet. I’ll save ’im sir, never fear.”He went off with a quiet little nod that did much to comfort me. Meanwhile the elderly gentleman sought to induce me to leave the place and obtain refreshment in the house of a friendly neighbour, who had taken in his family.“You need rest, my dear sir,” he said; “come, I must take you in hand. You have rendered me a service which I can never repay. What? Obstinate! Do you know that I am a doctor, sir, and must be obeyed?”I smiled, but refused to move until the fate of Dumps was ascertained.Presently the fireman returned with my doggie in his arms.Poor Dumps! He was a pitiable sight. Tons of hot water had been pouring on his devoted head, and his shaggy, shapeless coat was so plastered to his long, little body, that he looked more like a drowned weazel than a terrier. He was trembling violently, and whined piteously, as they gave him to me; nevertheless, he attempted to wag his tail and lick my hands. In both attempts he failed. His tail was too wet to wag—but it wriggled.“He’d have saved himself, sir,” said the man who brought him, “only there was a rope round his neck, which had caught on a coal-scuttle and held him. He’s not hurt, sir, though he do seem as if some one had bin tryin’ to choke him.”“My poor doggie!” said I, fondling him.“He won’t want washin’ for some time to come,” observed one of the bystanders.There was a laugh at this.“Come; now the dog is safe you have no reason for refusing to go with me,” said the elderly gentleman, who, I now understood, was the master of the burning house.As we walked away he asked my name and profession, and I thought he smiled with peculiar satisfaction when I said I was a student of medicine.“Oh, indeed!” he said; “well—we shall see. But here we are. This is the house of my good friend Dobson. City man—capital fellow, like all City men—ahem! He has put his house at my disposal at this very trying period of my existence.”“But are you sure, Dr McTougall, thatallthe household is saved?” I asked, becoming more thoroughly awake to the tremendous reality of the scene through which I had just passed.“Sure! my good fellow, d’you think I’d be talking thus quietly to you if I werenotsure? Yes, thanks to you and the firemen, under God, there’s not a hair of their heads injured.”“Are you—I beg pardon—are you quite sure? Have you seen Miss McTougall since she—”“Miss McTougall!” exclaimed the doctor, with a laugh. “D’you mean my little Jenny by that dignified title?”“Well, of course, I did not know her name, and she is notverylarge; but I brought her down the shoot with such violence that—”An explosion of laughter from the doctor stopped me as I entered a large library, the powerful lights of which at first dazzled me.“Here, Dobson, let me introduce you to the man who has saved my whole family, and who has mistaken Miss Blythe for my Jenny!—Why, sir,” he continued, turning to me, “the bundle you brought down so unceremoniously is only my governess. Ah! I’d give twenty thousand pounds down on the spot if she were only my daughter. My Jenny will be a lucky woman if she grows up to be like her.”“I congratulate you, Mr Mellon,” said the City man, shaking me warmly by the hand.“You have acted with admirable promptitude—which is most important at a fire—and they tell me that the header you took into the escape, with Miss Blythe in your arms, was the finest acrobatic feat that has been seen off the stage.”“I say, Dobson, where have you stowed my wife and the children? I want to introduce him to them.”“In the dining-room,” returned the City man. “You see, I thought it would be more agreeable that they should be all together until their nerves are calmed, so I had mattresses, blankets, etcetera, brought down. Being a bachelor, as you know, I could do nothing more than place the wardrobes of my domestics at the disposal of the ladies. The things are not, indeed, a very good fit, but—this way, Mr Mellon.”The City man, who was tall and handsome, ushered his guests into what he styled his hospital, and there, ranged in a row along the wall, were five shakedowns, with a child on each. Seldom have I beheld a finer sight than the sparkling lustre of their ten still glaring eyes! Two pleasant young domestics were engaged in feeding the smaller ones with jam and pudding. We arrange the words advisedly, because the jam was, out of all proportion, too much for the pudding. The elder children were feeding themselves with the same materials, and in the same relative proportions. Mrs McTougall, in a blue cotton gown with white spots, which belonged to the housemaid, reclined on a sofa; she was deadly pale, and the expression of horror was not quite removed from her countenance.Beside her, administering restoratives, sat Miss Blythe, in a chintz dress belonging to the cook, which was ridiculously too large for her. She was dishevelled and flushed, and looked so pleasantly anxious about Mrs McTougall that I almost forgave her having robbed me of my doggie.“Miss Blythe, your deliverer!” cried the little doctor, who seemed to delight in blowing my trumpet with the loudest possible blast; “my dear, your preserver!”I bowed in some confusion, and stammered something incoherently. Mrs McTougall said something else, languidly, and Miss Blythe rose and held out her hand with a pleasant smile.“Well, if this isn’t one of the very jolliest larks I ever had!” exclaimed Master Harry from his corner, between two enormous spoonfuls.“Hah!” exclaimed Master Jack.He could say no more. He was too busy!We all laughed, and, much to my relief, general attention was turned to the little ones.“You young scamps!—the ‘lark’ will cost me some thousands of pounds,” said the doctor.“Never mind, papa. Just go to the bank and they’ll give you as much as you want.”“More pooding!” demanded Master Job. The pleasant-faced domestic hesitated.“Oh! give it him. Act the banker on this occasion, and give him as much as he wants,” said the doctor.“Good papa!” exclaimed the overjoyed Jenny; “how I wis’ we had a house on fire every night!”Even Dolly crowed with delight at this, as if she really appreciated the idea, and continued her own supper with increased fervour.Thus did that remarkable family spend the small hours of that morning, while their home was being burned to ashes.

Now it was at this critical moment that I chanced to come upon the scene.

I had just ascertained from the brass plate on the door that Dr McTougall dwelt there, and was thinking what an ugly unromantic name that was for a pretty girl as I descended the steps, when Dumps’s first yell broke upon my astonished ears. I recognised the voice at once, though I must confess that the second yell from the interior of the watering-pan perplexed me not a little, but the hideous clatter with which it was associated, and the sudden bursting out of flames in the drawing-room, drove all thoughts of Dumps instantly away.

My first impulse was to rush to the nearest fire-station; but a wild shouting in the lobby of the house arrested me. I rang the bell violently. At the same moment I heard the report of a pistol, and a savage curse, as a bullet came crashing through the door and went close past my head. Then I heard a blow, followed by a groan. This was succeeded by female shrieks overhead, and the violent undoing of the bolts, locks, and chains of the front door.

Thought is quick. Burglary flashed into my mind! A villainous-looking fellow leaped out as the door flew open. I recognised him instantly as the man who had sold Dumps to me. I put my foot in front of him. He went over it with a wild pitch, and descended the steps on his nose!

I was about to leap on him when a policeman came tearing round the corner, just in time to receive the stunned Brassey with open arms, as he rose and staggered forward.

“Just so. Don’t give way too much to your feelings! I’ll take care of you, my poor unfortunate fellow,” said the policeman, as a brother in blue came to his assistance.

Already one of those ubiquitous creatures, a street-boy, had flown to the fire-station on the wings of hope and joy, and an engine came careering round the corner as I turned to rush up the stairs, which were already filled with smoke.

I dashed in the first door I came to. A lady, partially clothed, stood there pale as death, and motionless.

“Quick, madam! descend! the house is on fire!” I gasped in sharp sentences as I seized her. “Where is your—your (she looked young)sister?” I cried, as she resisted my efforts to lead her out.

“I’ve no sister!” she shrieked.

“Your daughter, then! Quick, direct me!”

“Oh! my darling!” she cried, wringing her hands.

“Where?” I shouted in desperation, for the smoke was thickening.

“Up-stairs,” she screamed, and rushed out, intending evidently to go up.

I caught her round the waist and forced her down the stairs, thrust her into the arms of an ascending fireman, and then ran up again, taking three steps at a time. The cry of a child attracted me. I made for a door opposite, and burst it open. The scene that presented itself was striking. Out of four cribs and a cradle arose five cones of bed-clothes, with a pretty little curly head surmounting each cone, and ten eyes blazing with amazement. A tall nurse stood erect in the middle of the floor with outstretched arms, glaring.

Instantly I grasped a cone in each arm and bore it from the room. Blinded with smoke, I ran like a thunderbolt into the arms of a gigantic fireman.

“Take it easy, sir. You’ll do far more work if you keep cool. Straight on to front room! Fire-escape’s there by this time.”

I understood, and darted into a front room, through the window of which the head of the fire-escape entered at the same moment, sending glass in splinters all over us. It was immediately drawn back a little, enabling me to throw up the window-sash and thrust the two children into the arms of another fireman, whose head suddenly emerged from the smoke that rose from the windows below. I could see that the fire was roaring out into the street, and lighting up hundreds of faces below, while the steady clank of engines told that the brigade was busily at work fighting the flames. But I had no time to look or think. Indeed, I felt as if I had no power of volition properly my own, but that I acted under the strong impulse of another spirit within me.

Darting back towards the nursery I met the first fireman dragging with his right hand the tall nurse, who seemed unreasonably to struggle against him, while in his left arm he carried two of the children, and the baby by its night-dress in his teeth.

I saw at a glance that he had emptied the nursery, and turned to search for another door. During the whole of this scene—which passed in a few minutes—a feeling of desperate anxiety possessed me as to the fate of the young lady to whom I had given up my doggie. I felt persuaded she slept on the same floor with the children, and groped about the passage in search of another door. By this time the smoke was so dense that I was all but suffocated. A minute or two more and it would be too late. I could not see. Suddenly I felt a door and kicked it open. The black smoke entered with me, but it was still clear enough inside for me to perceive the form of a girl lying on the floor. It was she!

“Miss McTougall!” I shouted, endeavouring to rouse her; but she had fainted. Not a moment now to lose. A lurid tongue of flame came up the staircase. I rolled a blanket round the girl—head and all. She was very light. In the excitement of the moment I raised her as if she had been a child, and darted back towards the passage, but the few moments I had lost almost cost us our lives. I knew that to breathe the dense smoke would be certain suffocation, and went through it holding my breath like a diver. I felt as if the hot flames were playing round my head, and smelt the singeing of my own hair. Another moment and I had reached the window, where the grim but welcome head of the escape still rested. With a desperate bound I went head first into the shoot, taking my precious bundle along with me.

A fireman chanced to be going down the shoot at the time, carefully piloting one of the maids who had been rescued from the attics, and checking his speed with outspread legs. Against him I canonned with tremendous force, and sent him and his charge in a heap to the bottom.

This was fortunate, for the pace at which I must have otherwise come down would have probably broken my neck. As it was, I felt so stunned that I nearly lost consciousness. Still I retained my senses sufficiently to observe a stout elderly little man in full evening dress, with his coat slit up behind to his neck, his face half-blackened, and his shaggy hair flying wildly in all directions—chiefly upwards. Amid wild cheering from the crowd I confusedly heard the conversation that followed.

“They’re all accounted for now, sir,” said a policeman, who supported me.

The elderly gentleman had leaped forward with an exclamation of earnest thankfulness, and unrolled the blanket.

“Not hurt! No, thank God. Lift her carefully now. To the same house.—And who are you?” he added, turning and looking full at me as I leaned in a dazed condition on the fireman’s shoulder. I heard the question and saw the speaker, but could not reply.

“This is the gen’leman as saved two o’ the child’n an’ the young lady,” said the tall fireman, whom I recognised as the one into whose bosom I had plunged on the upper floor.

“Ay, an’ he’s the gen’leman,” said another fireman, “who shoved your missus, sir, into my arms, w’en she was bent on runnin’ up-stairs.”

“Is this so?” said the little gentleman, stepping forward and grasping my hand.

Still I could not speak. I felt as if the whole affair were a dream, and looked on and listened with a vacant smile.

Just at that moment a long, melancholy wail rose above the roaring of the fire and clanking of the engines.

The cry restored me at once.

“Dumps! my doggie!” I exclaimed; and, bursting through the crowd, rushed towards the now furiously-burning house, but strong hands restrained me.

“What dog is it?” asked the elderly gentleman. A man, drenched, blackened, and bloodstained, whom I had not before observed, here said—

“A noo dog, sir, Dumps by name, come to us this wery day. We putt ’im in the scullery for the night.”

Again I made a desperate effort to return to the burning house, but was restrained as before.

“All right, sir,” whispered a fireman in a confidential tone, “I know the scullery. The fire ain’t got down there yet. Your dog can only have bin damaged by water as yet. I’ll save ’im sir, never fear.”

He went off with a quiet little nod that did much to comfort me. Meanwhile the elderly gentleman sought to induce me to leave the place and obtain refreshment in the house of a friendly neighbour, who had taken in his family.

“You need rest, my dear sir,” he said; “come, I must take you in hand. You have rendered me a service which I can never repay. What? Obstinate! Do you know that I am a doctor, sir, and must be obeyed?”

I smiled, but refused to move until the fate of Dumps was ascertained.

Presently the fireman returned with my doggie in his arms.

Poor Dumps! He was a pitiable sight. Tons of hot water had been pouring on his devoted head, and his shaggy, shapeless coat was so plastered to his long, little body, that he looked more like a drowned weazel than a terrier. He was trembling violently, and whined piteously, as they gave him to me; nevertheless, he attempted to wag his tail and lick my hands. In both attempts he failed. His tail was too wet to wag—but it wriggled.

“He’d have saved himself, sir,” said the man who brought him, “only there was a rope round his neck, which had caught on a coal-scuttle and held him. He’s not hurt, sir, though he do seem as if some one had bin tryin’ to choke him.”

“My poor doggie!” said I, fondling him.

“He won’t want washin’ for some time to come,” observed one of the bystanders.

There was a laugh at this.

“Come; now the dog is safe you have no reason for refusing to go with me,” said the elderly gentleman, who, I now understood, was the master of the burning house.

As we walked away he asked my name and profession, and I thought he smiled with peculiar satisfaction when I said I was a student of medicine.

“Oh, indeed!” he said; “well—we shall see. But here we are. This is the house of my good friend Dobson. City man—capital fellow, like all City men—ahem! He has put his house at my disposal at this very trying period of my existence.”

“But are you sure, Dr McTougall, thatallthe household is saved?” I asked, becoming more thoroughly awake to the tremendous reality of the scene through which I had just passed.

“Sure! my good fellow, d’you think I’d be talking thus quietly to you if I werenotsure? Yes, thanks to you and the firemen, under God, there’s not a hair of their heads injured.”

“Are you—I beg pardon—are you quite sure? Have you seen Miss McTougall since she—”

“Miss McTougall!” exclaimed the doctor, with a laugh. “D’you mean my little Jenny by that dignified title?”

“Well, of course, I did not know her name, and she is notverylarge; but I brought her down the shoot with such violence that—”

An explosion of laughter from the doctor stopped me as I entered a large library, the powerful lights of which at first dazzled me.

“Here, Dobson, let me introduce you to the man who has saved my whole family, and who has mistaken Miss Blythe for my Jenny!—Why, sir,” he continued, turning to me, “the bundle you brought down so unceremoniously is only my governess. Ah! I’d give twenty thousand pounds down on the spot if she were only my daughter. My Jenny will be a lucky woman if she grows up to be like her.”

“I congratulate you, Mr Mellon,” said the City man, shaking me warmly by the hand.

“You have acted with admirable promptitude—which is most important at a fire—and they tell me that the header you took into the escape, with Miss Blythe in your arms, was the finest acrobatic feat that has been seen off the stage.”

“I say, Dobson, where have you stowed my wife and the children? I want to introduce him to them.”

“In the dining-room,” returned the City man. “You see, I thought it would be more agreeable that they should be all together until their nerves are calmed, so I had mattresses, blankets, etcetera, brought down. Being a bachelor, as you know, I could do nothing more than place the wardrobes of my domestics at the disposal of the ladies. The things are not, indeed, a very good fit, but—this way, Mr Mellon.”

The City man, who was tall and handsome, ushered his guests into what he styled his hospital, and there, ranged in a row along the wall, were five shakedowns, with a child on each. Seldom have I beheld a finer sight than the sparkling lustre of their ten still glaring eyes! Two pleasant young domestics were engaged in feeding the smaller ones with jam and pudding. We arrange the words advisedly, because the jam was, out of all proportion, too much for the pudding. The elder children were feeding themselves with the same materials, and in the same relative proportions. Mrs McTougall, in a blue cotton gown with white spots, which belonged to the housemaid, reclined on a sofa; she was deadly pale, and the expression of horror was not quite removed from her countenance.

Beside her, administering restoratives, sat Miss Blythe, in a chintz dress belonging to the cook, which was ridiculously too large for her. She was dishevelled and flushed, and looked so pleasantly anxious about Mrs McTougall that I almost forgave her having robbed me of my doggie.

“Miss Blythe, your deliverer!” cried the little doctor, who seemed to delight in blowing my trumpet with the loudest possible blast; “my dear, your preserver!”

I bowed in some confusion, and stammered something incoherently. Mrs McTougall said something else, languidly, and Miss Blythe rose and held out her hand with a pleasant smile.

“Well, if this isn’t one of the very jolliest larks I ever had!” exclaimed Master Harry from his corner, between two enormous spoonfuls.

“Hah!” exclaimed Master Jack.

He could say no more. He was too busy!

We all laughed, and, much to my relief, general attention was turned to the little ones.

“You young scamps!—the ‘lark’ will cost me some thousands of pounds,” said the doctor.

“Never mind, papa. Just go to the bank and they’ll give you as much as you want.”

“More pooding!” demanded Master Job. The pleasant-faced domestic hesitated.

“Oh! give it him. Act the banker on this occasion, and give him as much as he wants,” said the doctor.

“Good papa!” exclaimed the overjoyed Jenny; “how I wis’ we had a house on fire every night!”

Even Dolly crowed with delight at this, as if she really appreciated the idea, and continued her own supper with increased fervour.

Thus did that remarkable family spend the small hours of that morning, while their home was being burned to ashes.

Chapter Seven.My Circumstances begin to Brighten.“Robin,” said old Mrs Willis from her bed, in the wheeziest of voices.“Who’s Robin, granny?” demanded young Slidder, in some surprise, looking over his shoulder as he stooped at the fire to stir a pan of gruel.“You are Robin,” returned the old lady following up the remark with a feeble sneeze. “I can’t stand Slidder. It is such an ugly name. Besides, you ought to have a Christian name, child. Don’t you like Robin?”The boy chuckled a little as he stirred the gruel.“Vell, I ain’t had it long enough to ’ave made up my mind on the p’int, but you may call me wot you please, granny, s’long as you don’t swear. I’ll answer to Robin, or Bobin, or Dobin, or Nobin, or Flogin—no, by the way, I won’t answer to Flogin. I don’t like that. But why call me Robin?”“Ah!” sighed the old woman, “because I once had a dear little son so named. He died when he was about your age, and your kindly ways are so like his that—”“Hallo, granny!” interrupted Slidder, standing up with a look of intense surprise, “are you took bad?”“No. Why?”“’Cause you said suthin’ aboutmy waysthat looks suspicious.”“Did I, Robin? I didn’t mean to. But as I was saying, I’d like to call you Robin because it reminds me of my little darling who is now in heaven. Ah! Robin was so gentle, and loving, and tender, and true, and kind. Hewasa good boy!”A wheezing, which culminated in another feeble sneeze, here silenced the poor old thing.For some minutes after that Slidder devoted himself to vigorous stirring of the gruel, and to repressed laughter, which latter made him very red in the face, and caused his shoulders to heave convulsively. At last he sought relief in occasional mutterings.“On’y think!” he said, quoting Mrs Willis’s words, in a scarcely audible whisper, “‘so gentle, an’ lovin’, an’ tender, an’ true, an’ kind’—an’ sitch a good boy too—an’mykindly ways is likehis, are they? Well, well, Mrs W, it’s quite clear that a loo-natic asylum must be your native ’ome arter this.”“What are you muttering about, Robin?”“Nuffin’ partikler, granny. On’y suthin’ about your futur’ prospec’s. The gruel’s ready, I think. Will you ’ave it now, or vait till you get it?”“There—even in your little touches of humour you’re so like him!” said the old woman, with a mingled smile and sneeze, as she slowly rose to a sitting posture, making a cone of the bedclothes with her knees, on which she laid her thin hands.“Come now, old ’ooman,” said Slidder seriously, “if you go on jokin’ like that you’ll make me larf and spill your gruel—p’raps let it fall bash on the floor. There! Don’t let it tumble off your knees, now; I’d adwise you to lower ’em for the time bein’. Here’s the spoon; it ain’t as bright as I could wish, but you can’t expect much of pewter; an’ the napkin—that’s your sort; an’ the bit of bread—which it isn’t too much for a ’ealthy happetite. Now then, granny, go in and win!”“Solike,” murmured the old woman, as she gazed in Slidder’s face. “And it is so good of you to give up your play and come to look after a helpless old creature like me.”“Yes, itiswery good of me,” assented the boy, with an air of profound gravity; “I was used to sleep under a damp archway or in a wet cask,nowI slumbers in a ’ouse by a fire, under a blankit. Vunce on a time I got wittles any’ow—sometimes didn’t get ’em at all;nowI ’ave ’em riglar, as well as good, an’ ’ot. In wot poets call ‘the days gone by’—an’ nights too, let me tell you—I wos kicked an’ cuffed by everybody, an’ ’unted to death by bobbies.NowI’m—let alone! ’Eavenly condition—letalone! sometimes even complimented with such pleasant greetings as ‘Go it, Ginger!’ or ‘Does your mother know you’re out?’ Oh yes, granny! I made great sacrifices, I did, w’en I come ’ere to look arteryou!”Mrs Willis smiled, sneezed, and began her gruel. Slidder, who looked at her with deep interest, was called away by a knock at the door. Opening it he beheld a tall footman, with a parcel in his hand.“Does a Mrs Willis live here?” he asked.“No,” replied Slidder; “a Mrs Willis don’t live here, buttheMrs Willis—the on’y one vurth speakin’ of—does.”“Ah!” replied the man, with a smile—for he was an amiable footman—“and I suppose you are young Slidder?”“I amMisterSlidder, sir! And I would ’ave you remember,” said the urchin, with dignity, “that every Englishman’s ’ouse is his castle, and that neither imperence nor flunkies ’as a right to enter.”“Indeed!” exclaimed the man, with affected surprise, “then I’m afraid this castle can’t be a strong one, or it ain’t well guarded, for ‘Imperence’ got into it somehow whenyouentered.”“Good, good!” returned the boy, with the air of a connoisseur; “that’s worthy of the East End. You should ’ave bin one of us.—Now then, old six-foot! wot’s your business?”“To deliver this parcel.”“’And it over, then.”“But I am also to see Mrs Willis, and ask how she is.”“Walk in, then, an’ wipe your feet. We ain’t got a door-mat to-day. It’s a-comin’, like Christmas; but you may use the boards in the meantime.”The footman turned out to be a pleasant, gossipy man, and soon won the hearts of old Mrs Willis and her young guardian. He had been sent, he said, by a Dr McTougall with a parcel containing wine, tea, sugar, rice, and a few other articles of food, and with a message that the doctor would call and see Mrs Willis that afternoon.“Deary me, that’s very kind,” said the old woman; “but I wonder why he sent such things to me, and who told him I was in want of ’em?”“It was a young gentleman who rescued most of the doctor’s family from a fire last night. His name, I believe, is Mellon—”“Wot! Doctor John Mellon?” exclaimed Slidder, with widening eyes.“Whether he’s John or doctor I cannot tell. All I know is that he’sMisterMellon, and he’s bin rather knocked up by— But, bless me, I forgot: I was to say nothing about the—the fire till Dr McTougall had seen you. How stoopid of me; but thingswillslip out!”He stopped abruptly, and placed his brown paper parcel on the bed.“Now, I say, look here, Mister Six-foot or wotever’s your name,” said Slidder, with intense eagerness. “It’s of no use your tyin’ up the mouth o’ the bag now. The cat’s got out an’ can’t be got in again by no manner o’ means. Just make a clean breast of it, an’ tell it all out like a man,—there’s a good feller! If you don’t, I’ll tell Dr McTougall that you gave me an’ the old lady a full, true, an’ partikler account o’ the whole affair, from the fust bustin’ out o’ the flames, an’ the calling o’ theingines, to the last crash o’ the fallin’ roof, and the roastin’ alive of the ’ousehold cat. I will, as sure as you’re a six-foot flunkey!”Thus adjured and threatened, the gossipy footman made a clean breast of it. He told them how that I had acted like a hero at the fire, and then, after giving, in minute detail, an account of all that the reader already knows, he went on to say that the whole family, except Dr McTougall, was laid up with colds; that the governess was in a high fever; that the maid-servants, having been rescued on the shoulders of firemen from the attics, were completely broken down in their nerves; and that I had received an injury to my right leg, which, although I had said nothing about it on the night of the fire, had become so much worse in the morning that I could scarcely walk across the room. In these circumstances, he added, Dr McTougall had agreed to visit my poor people for me until I should recover.“You see,” continued the footman, “I only heard a little of their conversation. Dr McTougall was saying when I come into the room: ‘Well, Mr Mellon,’ he said, ‘you must of necessity remain where you are, and you could not, let me tell you, be in better quarters. I will look after your patients till you are able to go about again—which won’t be long, I hope—and I’ll make a particular note of your old woman, and send her some wine and things immediately.’ I suppose he meant you, ma’am,” added the footman, “but having to leave the room again owing to some of the children howling for jam and pudding, I heard no more.”Having thus delivered himself of his tale and parcel, the tall footman took his leave with many expressions of good-will.“Now, granny,” remarked young Slidder, as he untied the parcel, and spread its contents on the small deal table, “I’ve got a wague suspicion that the ’ouse w’ich ’as gone to hashes is the wery ’ouse in w’ich Dr Mellon put his little dog last night. ’Cause why? Ain’t it the same identical street, an’ the same side o’ the street, and about the same part o’ the street? An’ didn’t both him and me forgit to ask the name o’ the people o’ the ’ouse, or to look at the number—so took up was we with partin’ from Punch? Wot more nat’ral than for him to go round on ’is way back to look at the ’ouse—supposin’ he was too late to call? Then, didn’t that six-footer say a terrier dogwasreskooed from the lower premises? To be sure there’s many a terrier dog in London, but then didn’t he likewise say that the gov’ness o’ the family is a pretty gal? Wot more likely than that she’smyyoung lady? All that, you see, granny, is what the magistrates would call presumptuous evidence. But I’ll go and inquire for myself this wery evenin’ w’en you’re all settled an comf’rable, an’ w’en I’ve got Mrs Jones to look arter you.”That evening, accordingly, when Robin Slidder—as I shall now call him—was away making his inquiries, Dr McTougall called on Mrs Willis. She was very weak and low at the time. The memory of her lost Edie had been heavy upon her, and she felt strangely disinclined to talk. The kindly doctor did not disturb her more than was sufficient to fully investigate her case.When about to depart he took Mrs Jones into the passage.“Now, my good woman,” he said, “I hope you will see the instructions you heard me give to Mrs Willis carried out. She is very low, but with good food and careful nursing may do well. Can you give her much of your time?”“La, sir! yes. I’m a lone woman, sir, with nothin’ to do but take care of myself; an’ I’m that fond of Mrs Willis—she’s like my own mother.”“Very good. And what of this boy who has come to live with her? D’you think he is steady—to be depended on?”“Indeed I do, sir!” replied Mrs Jones, with much earnestness. “Though he did come from nowheres in partiklar, an’ don’t b’long to nobody, he’s a good boy, is little Slidder, and a better nurse you’ll not find in all the hospitals.”“I wish I had found him at home. Will you give him this card, and tell him to call on me to-morrow morning between eight and nine? Let him ask particularly for me—Dr McTougall. I’m not in my own house, but in a friend’s at present; I was burnt out of my house last night.”“Oh, sir!” exclaimed Mrs Jones with a shocked expression.“Yes; accidents will happen, you know, to the most careful among us, Mrs Jones,” said the little doctor, with a smile, as he drew on his gloves. “Good evening. Take care of your patient now; I’m much interested in her case—because of the young doctor who visits her sometimes.”“Dr Mellon?” exclaimed the woman.“Yes. You know him?”“Know him! I should think I do! He has great consideration for the poor. Ah! heisa gentleman, is Mr Mellon!”“He is more than a gentleman, Mrs Jones,” said the little doctor with a kindly nod, as he turned and hurried away.It may perhaps seem to savour of vanity and egotism my recording this conversation, but I do it chiefly for the purpose of showing how much of hearty gratitude there is for mere trifles among the poor, for the woman who was thus complimentary to me never received a farthing of money from my hands, and I am not aware of having ever taken any notice of her, except now and then wishing her a respectful good-evening, and making a few inquiries as to her health.That night Dr McTougall came to me, on returning from his rounds, to report upon my district. I was in bed at the time, and suffering considerable pain from my bruised and swollen limb. Dumps was lying at my feet—dried, refreshed, and none the worse for his adventures. I may mention that I occupied a comfortable room in the house of the “City man,” who insisted on my staying with him until I should be quite able to walk to my lodgings. As Dr McTougall had taken my district, a brief note to Mrs Miff, my landlady, relieved my mind of all anxieties, professional and domestic, so that my doggie and I could enjoy ourselves as well as the swollen leg would permit.“My dear young friend,” said the little doctor, as he entered, “your patients are all going on admirably, and as I mean to send my assistant to them regularly, you may make your mind quite easy. I’ve seen your old woman too, and she is charming. I don’t wonder you lost your heart to her. Your youngprotégé, however, was absent—the scamp!—but he had provided a good nurse to take his place in the person of Mrs Jones.”“I know her—well,” said I; “she is a capital nurse. Little Slidder has, I am told, been here in your absence, but unfortunately the maid who opened the door to him would not let him see me, as I happened to be asleep at the time. However, he’ll be sure to call again. But you have not told me yet how Miss Blythe is.”“Well, I’ve not had time to tell you,” replied the doctor, with a smile. “I’m sorry to say she is rather feverish; the excitement and exposure to the night air were a severe trial to her, for although she is naturally strong, it is not long since she recovered from a severe illness. Nothing, however, surprises me so much as the way in which my dear wife has come through it all. It seems to have given her quite a turn in the right direction. Why, she used to be as timid as a mouse! Now she scoffs at burglars. After what occurred last night she says she will fear nothing under the sun. Isn’t it odd? As for the children, I’m afraid the event has roused all that is wild and savage in their natures! They were kicking up a horrible shindy when I passed the dining-room—the hospital, as Dobson calls it—so I opened the door and peeped in. There they were, all standing up on their beds, shouting ‘Fire! fire! p’leece! p’leece!—engines! escapes! Come qui-i-i-ck!’“‘Silence!’ I shouted.“‘Oh, papa!’ they screamed, in delight, ‘whatdoyou think we’ve had for supper?’“‘Well, what?’“‘Pudding and jam-pudding and jam—nearlyalljam!’“Then they burst again into a chorus of yells for engines and fire-escapes, while little Dolly’s voice rang high above the rest ‘Pudding and dam!—alldam!—p’leece! p’leece! fire and feeves!’ as I shut the door.“But now, a word in your ear before I leave you for the night. Perhaps it may not surprise you to be told that I have an extensive practice. After getting into a new house, which I must do immediately, I shall want an assistant, who may in course of time, perhaps, become a partner. D’you understand? Are you open to a proposal?”“My dear sir,” said I, “your kindness is very great, but you know that I am not yet—”“Yes, yes, I know all about that. I merely wish to inject an idea into your brain, and leave it there to fructify. Go to sleep now, my dear young fellow, and let me wish you agreeable dreams.”With a warm squeeze of the hand, and a pleasant nod, my new friend said good-night, and left me to my meditations.

“Robin,” said old Mrs Willis from her bed, in the wheeziest of voices.

“Who’s Robin, granny?” demanded young Slidder, in some surprise, looking over his shoulder as he stooped at the fire to stir a pan of gruel.

“You are Robin,” returned the old lady following up the remark with a feeble sneeze. “I can’t stand Slidder. It is such an ugly name. Besides, you ought to have a Christian name, child. Don’t you like Robin?”

The boy chuckled a little as he stirred the gruel.

“Vell, I ain’t had it long enough to ’ave made up my mind on the p’int, but you may call me wot you please, granny, s’long as you don’t swear. I’ll answer to Robin, or Bobin, or Dobin, or Nobin, or Flogin—no, by the way, I won’t answer to Flogin. I don’t like that. But why call me Robin?”

“Ah!” sighed the old woman, “because I once had a dear little son so named. He died when he was about your age, and your kindly ways are so like his that—”

“Hallo, granny!” interrupted Slidder, standing up with a look of intense surprise, “are you took bad?”

“No. Why?”

“’Cause you said suthin’ aboutmy waysthat looks suspicious.”

“Did I, Robin? I didn’t mean to. But as I was saying, I’d like to call you Robin because it reminds me of my little darling who is now in heaven. Ah! Robin was so gentle, and loving, and tender, and true, and kind. Hewasa good boy!”

A wheezing, which culminated in another feeble sneeze, here silenced the poor old thing.

For some minutes after that Slidder devoted himself to vigorous stirring of the gruel, and to repressed laughter, which latter made him very red in the face, and caused his shoulders to heave convulsively. At last he sought relief in occasional mutterings.

“On’y think!” he said, quoting Mrs Willis’s words, in a scarcely audible whisper, “‘so gentle, an’ lovin’, an’ tender, an’ true, an’ kind’—an’ sitch a good boy too—an’mykindly ways is likehis, are they? Well, well, Mrs W, it’s quite clear that a loo-natic asylum must be your native ’ome arter this.”

“What are you muttering about, Robin?”

“Nuffin’ partikler, granny. On’y suthin’ about your futur’ prospec’s. The gruel’s ready, I think. Will you ’ave it now, or vait till you get it?”

“There—even in your little touches of humour you’re so like him!” said the old woman, with a mingled smile and sneeze, as she slowly rose to a sitting posture, making a cone of the bedclothes with her knees, on which she laid her thin hands.

“Come now, old ’ooman,” said Slidder seriously, “if you go on jokin’ like that you’ll make me larf and spill your gruel—p’raps let it fall bash on the floor. There! Don’t let it tumble off your knees, now; I’d adwise you to lower ’em for the time bein’. Here’s the spoon; it ain’t as bright as I could wish, but you can’t expect much of pewter; an’ the napkin—that’s your sort; an’ the bit of bread—which it isn’t too much for a ’ealthy happetite. Now then, granny, go in and win!”

“Solike,” murmured the old woman, as she gazed in Slidder’s face. “And it is so good of you to give up your play and come to look after a helpless old creature like me.”

“Yes, itiswery good of me,” assented the boy, with an air of profound gravity; “I was used to sleep under a damp archway or in a wet cask,nowI slumbers in a ’ouse by a fire, under a blankit. Vunce on a time I got wittles any’ow—sometimes didn’t get ’em at all;nowI ’ave ’em riglar, as well as good, an’ ’ot. In wot poets call ‘the days gone by’—an’ nights too, let me tell you—I wos kicked an’ cuffed by everybody, an’ ’unted to death by bobbies.NowI’m—let alone! ’Eavenly condition—letalone! sometimes even complimented with such pleasant greetings as ‘Go it, Ginger!’ or ‘Does your mother know you’re out?’ Oh yes, granny! I made great sacrifices, I did, w’en I come ’ere to look arteryou!”

Mrs Willis smiled, sneezed, and began her gruel. Slidder, who looked at her with deep interest, was called away by a knock at the door. Opening it he beheld a tall footman, with a parcel in his hand.

“Does a Mrs Willis live here?” he asked.

“No,” replied Slidder; “a Mrs Willis don’t live here, buttheMrs Willis—the on’y one vurth speakin’ of—does.”

“Ah!” replied the man, with a smile—for he was an amiable footman—“and I suppose you are young Slidder?”

“I amMisterSlidder, sir! And I would ’ave you remember,” said the urchin, with dignity, “that every Englishman’s ’ouse is his castle, and that neither imperence nor flunkies ’as a right to enter.”

“Indeed!” exclaimed the man, with affected surprise, “then I’m afraid this castle can’t be a strong one, or it ain’t well guarded, for ‘Imperence’ got into it somehow whenyouentered.”

“Good, good!” returned the boy, with the air of a connoisseur; “that’s worthy of the East End. You should ’ave bin one of us.—Now then, old six-foot! wot’s your business?”

“To deliver this parcel.”

“’And it over, then.”

“But I am also to see Mrs Willis, and ask how she is.”

“Walk in, then, an’ wipe your feet. We ain’t got a door-mat to-day. It’s a-comin’, like Christmas; but you may use the boards in the meantime.”

The footman turned out to be a pleasant, gossipy man, and soon won the hearts of old Mrs Willis and her young guardian. He had been sent, he said, by a Dr McTougall with a parcel containing wine, tea, sugar, rice, and a few other articles of food, and with a message that the doctor would call and see Mrs Willis that afternoon.

“Deary me, that’s very kind,” said the old woman; “but I wonder why he sent such things to me, and who told him I was in want of ’em?”

“It was a young gentleman who rescued most of the doctor’s family from a fire last night. His name, I believe, is Mellon—”

“Wot! Doctor John Mellon?” exclaimed Slidder, with widening eyes.

“Whether he’s John or doctor I cannot tell. All I know is that he’sMisterMellon, and he’s bin rather knocked up by— But, bless me, I forgot: I was to say nothing about the—the fire till Dr McTougall had seen you. How stoopid of me; but thingswillslip out!”

He stopped abruptly, and placed his brown paper parcel on the bed.

“Now, I say, look here, Mister Six-foot or wotever’s your name,” said Slidder, with intense eagerness. “It’s of no use your tyin’ up the mouth o’ the bag now. The cat’s got out an’ can’t be got in again by no manner o’ means. Just make a clean breast of it, an’ tell it all out like a man,—there’s a good feller! If you don’t, I’ll tell Dr McTougall that you gave me an’ the old lady a full, true, an’ partikler account o’ the whole affair, from the fust bustin’ out o’ the flames, an’ the calling o’ theingines, to the last crash o’ the fallin’ roof, and the roastin’ alive of the ’ousehold cat. I will, as sure as you’re a six-foot flunkey!”

Thus adjured and threatened, the gossipy footman made a clean breast of it. He told them how that I had acted like a hero at the fire, and then, after giving, in minute detail, an account of all that the reader already knows, he went on to say that the whole family, except Dr McTougall, was laid up with colds; that the governess was in a high fever; that the maid-servants, having been rescued on the shoulders of firemen from the attics, were completely broken down in their nerves; and that I had received an injury to my right leg, which, although I had said nothing about it on the night of the fire, had become so much worse in the morning that I could scarcely walk across the room. In these circumstances, he added, Dr McTougall had agreed to visit my poor people for me until I should recover.

“You see,” continued the footman, “I only heard a little of their conversation. Dr McTougall was saying when I come into the room: ‘Well, Mr Mellon,’ he said, ‘you must of necessity remain where you are, and you could not, let me tell you, be in better quarters. I will look after your patients till you are able to go about again—which won’t be long, I hope—and I’ll make a particular note of your old woman, and send her some wine and things immediately.’ I suppose he meant you, ma’am,” added the footman, “but having to leave the room again owing to some of the children howling for jam and pudding, I heard no more.”

Having thus delivered himself of his tale and parcel, the tall footman took his leave with many expressions of good-will.

“Now, granny,” remarked young Slidder, as he untied the parcel, and spread its contents on the small deal table, “I’ve got a wague suspicion that the ’ouse w’ich ’as gone to hashes is the wery ’ouse in w’ich Dr Mellon put his little dog last night. ’Cause why? Ain’t it the same identical street, an’ the same side o’ the street, and about the same part o’ the street? An’ didn’t both him and me forgit to ask the name o’ the people o’ the ’ouse, or to look at the number—so took up was we with partin’ from Punch? Wot more nat’ral than for him to go round on ’is way back to look at the ’ouse—supposin’ he was too late to call? Then, didn’t that six-footer say a terrier dogwasreskooed from the lower premises? To be sure there’s many a terrier dog in London, but then didn’t he likewise say that the gov’ness o’ the family is a pretty gal? Wot more likely than that she’smyyoung lady? All that, you see, granny, is what the magistrates would call presumptuous evidence. But I’ll go and inquire for myself this wery evenin’ w’en you’re all settled an comf’rable, an’ w’en I’ve got Mrs Jones to look arter you.”

That evening, accordingly, when Robin Slidder—as I shall now call him—was away making his inquiries, Dr McTougall called on Mrs Willis. She was very weak and low at the time. The memory of her lost Edie had been heavy upon her, and she felt strangely disinclined to talk. The kindly doctor did not disturb her more than was sufficient to fully investigate her case.

When about to depart he took Mrs Jones into the passage.

“Now, my good woman,” he said, “I hope you will see the instructions you heard me give to Mrs Willis carried out. She is very low, but with good food and careful nursing may do well. Can you give her much of your time?”

“La, sir! yes. I’m a lone woman, sir, with nothin’ to do but take care of myself; an’ I’m that fond of Mrs Willis—she’s like my own mother.”

“Very good. And what of this boy who has come to live with her? D’you think he is steady—to be depended on?”

“Indeed I do, sir!” replied Mrs Jones, with much earnestness. “Though he did come from nowheres in partiklar, an’ don’t b’long to nobody, he’s a good boy, is little Slidder, and a better nurse you’ll not find in all the hospitals.”

“I wish I had found him at home. Will you give him this card, and tell him to call on me to-morrow morning between eight and nine? Let him ask particularly for me—Dr McTougall. I’m not in my own house, but in a friend’s at present; I was burnt out of my house last night.”

“Oh, sir!” exclaimed Mrs Jones with a shocked expression.

“Yes; accidents will happen, you know, to the most careful among us, Mrs Jones,” said the little doctor, with a smile, as he drew on his gloves. “Good evening. Take care of your patient now; I’m much interested in her case—because of the young doctor who visits her sometimes.”

“Dr Mellon?” exclaimed the woman.

“Yes. You know him?”

“Know him! I should think I do! He has great consideration for the poor. Ah! heisa gentleman, is Mr Mellon!”

“He is more than a gentleman, Mrs Jones,” said the little doctor with a kindly nod, as he turned and hurried away.

It may perhaps seem to savour of vanity and egotism my recording this conversation, but I do it chiefly for the purpose of showing how much of hearty gratitude there is for mere trifles among the poor, for the woman who was thus complimentary to me never received a farthing of money from my hands, and I am not aware of having ever taken any notice of her, except now and then wishing her a respectful good-evening, and making a few inquiries as to her health.

That night Dr McTougall came to me, on returning from his rounds, to report upon my district. I was in bed at the time, and suffering considerable pain from my bruised and swollen limb. Dumps was lying at my feet—dried, refreshed, and none the worse for his adventures. I may mention that I occupied a comfortable room in the house of the “City man,” who insisted on my staying with him until I should be quite able to walk to my lodgings. As Dr McTougall had taken my district, a brief note to Mrs Miff, my landlady, relieved my mind of all anxieties, professional and domestic, so that my doggie and I could enjoy ourselves as well as the swollen leg would permit.

“My dear young friend,” said the little doctor, as he entered, “your patients are all going on admirably, and as I mean to send my assistant to them regularly, you may make your mind quite easy. I’ve seen your old woman too, and she is charming. I don’t wonder you lost your heart to her. Your youngprotégé, however, was absent—the scamp!—but he had provided a good nurse to take his place in the person of Mrs Jones.”

“I know her—well,” said I; “she is a capital nurse. Little Slidder has, I am told, been here in your absence, but unfortunately the maid who opened the door to him would not let him see me, as I happened to be asleep at the time. However, he’ll be sure to call again. But you have not told me yet how Miss Blythe is.”

“Well, I’ve not had time to tell you,” replied the doctor, with a smile. “I’m sorry to say she is rather feverish; the excitement and exposure to the night air were a severe trial to her, for although she is naturally strong, it is not long since she recovered from a severe illness. Nothing, however, surprises me so much as the way in which my dear wife has come through it all. It seems to have given her quite a turn in the right direction. Why, she used to be as timid as a mouse! Now she scoffs at burglars. After what occurred last night she says she will fear nothing under the sun. Isn’t it odd? As for the children, I’m afraid the event has roused all that is wild and savage in their natures! They were kicking up a horrible shindy when I passed the dining-room—the hospital, as Dobson calls it—so I opened the door and peeped in. There they were, all standing up on their beds, shouting ‘Fire! fire! p’leece! p’leece!—engines! escapes! Come qui-i-i-ck!’

“‘Silence!’ I shouted.

“‘Oh, papa!’ they screamed, in delight, ‘whatdoyou think we’ve had for supper?’

“‘Well, what?’

“‘Pudding and jam-pudding and jam—nearlyalljam!’

“Then they burst again into a chorus of yells for engines and fire-escapes, while little Dolly’s voice rang high above the rest ‘Pudding and dam!—alldam!—p’leece! p’leece! fire and feeves!’ as I shut the door.

“But now, a word in your ear before I leave you for the night. Perhaps it may not surprise you to be told that I have an extensive practice. After getting into a new house, which I must do immediately, I shall want an assistant, who may in course of time, perhaps, become a partner. D’you understand? Are you open to a proposal?”

“My dear sir,” said I, “your kindness is very great, but you know that I am not yet—”

“Yes, yes, I know all about that. I merely wish to inject an idea into your brain, and leave it there to fructify. Go to sleep now, my dear young fellow, and let me wish you agreeable dreams.”

With a warm squeeze of the hand, and a pleasant nod, my new friend said good-night, and left me to my meditations.

Back to IndexNext