Some years after Mrs. Boxall removed to London, Mr. Burton, the music-master, died. They had lived from hand to mouth, as so many families of uncertain income are compelled to do, and his unexpected death left his wife and child without the means of procuring immediate necessities. Inheriting the narrowness and prejudices of his descent and of his social position to a considerable degree, Mr. Boxall had never come to regard his sister's match with a music-master as other than a degradation to the family, and had, in his best humors, never got further in the humanities of the kingdom of heaven, than to patronize his brother-in-law; though if size and quality go for anything in existence itself, as they do in all its accidents, Richard Boxall was scarcely comparable, honest and just man as he was, to Cecil Burton; who, however, except that he was the father of Lucy, and so in some measure accounts for her, is below the western horizon of our story, and therefore need scarcely be alluded to again. This behavior of her brother was more galling to Mrs. Burton than to her husband, who smiled down any allusion to it; and when she was compelled to accept Richard's kindness in the shape of money, upon the death of Mr. Burton, it was with a bitterness of feeling which showed itself plainly enough to wound the self-love of the consciously benevolent man of business. But from the first there had been the friendliest relations between the mother and daughter, and as it was only from her determination to avoid all ground of misunderstanding, that Mrs. Boxall had not consented to take up her abode with the Burtons. Consequently, after the death of Mr. Burton, the mother drew yet closer to the daughter, while the breach between brother and sister was widened.
Two years after the death of her husband, Mrs. Burton followed him. Then Mrs. Boxall took her grandchild Lucy home to Guild Court, and between the two there never arose the question of which should be the greater. It often happens that even a severe mother becomes an indulgent grandmother, partly from the softening and mellowing influences of time, partly from increase of confidence in child-nature generally, and perhaps also, in part, from a diminished sense or responsibility in regard to a child not immediately her own. Hence grandparents who have brought up their own children well are in danger of spoiling severely those of their sons and daughters. And such might have been the case with Mrs. Boxall and Lucy, had Lucy been of a more spoilable nature. But she had no idea of how much she had her own way, nor would it have made any difference to her if she had known it. There was a certain wonderful delicacy of moral touch about her in the discrimination of what was becoming, as well as of what was right, which resulted in a freedom the legalist of society would have called boldness, and a restraint which the same judge would have designated particularity; for Lucy's ways were not, and could not be, her ways, the one fearing and obeying, as she best could, existing laws hard to interpret, the other being a law unto herself. The harmonies of the music by which, from her earliest childhood, her growing brain had been interpenetrated, had, by her sweet will, been transformed into harmonies of thought, feeling, and action. She was not clever, but then she did not think she was clever, and therefore it was of no consequence; for she was not dependent upon her intellect for those judgments which alone are of importance in the reality of things, and in which clever people are just as likely to go wrong as any other body. She had a great gift in music—a gift which Thomas Worboise had never yet discovered, and which, at this period of his history, he was incapable of discovering, for he had not got beyond the toffee of the drawing-room sentiment—the song which must be sent forth to the universe from the pedestal of ivory shoulders. But two lines of a ballad from Lucy Barton were worth all the music, "She walks in beauty," included, that Mary Boxall could sing or play.
Lucy had not seen her cousins for years. Her uncle Richard, though incapable of being other than satisfied that the orphan should be an inmate of the house in Guild Court, could not, or at least did not, forget the mildly defiant look with which she retreated from his outstretched hand, and took her place beside her mother, on the sole occasion on which he called upon his sister after her husband's death. She had heard remarks—and being her mother's, she could not question the justice of them. Hence she had not once, since she had taken up her abode with her grandmother, been invited to visit her cousins; and there was no affectation, but in truth a little anxiety, in the question she asked Thomas Worboise about Mary Boxall's beauty. But, indeed, had she given her uncle no such offense, I have every reason to believe that her society would not have been much courted by his family. When the good among rich relations can be loving without condescension, and the good among poor relations can make sufficient allowance for the rich, then the kingdom of heaven will be nigh at hand. Mr. Boxall shook hands with his niece when he met her, asked her after his mother, and passed on.
But Lucy was not dependent on her uncle, scarcely on her grandmother, even. Before her mother's death, almost child as she still was, she had begun to give lessons in music to a younger child than herself, the daughter of one of her father's favorite pupils, who had married a rich merchant; and these lessons she continued. She was a favorite with the family, who were Jews, living in one of the older quarters of the west end of London; and they paid her handsomely, her age and experience taken into account. Every morning, except Saturday, she went by the underground railway to give an hour's lesson to Miriam Morgenstern, a gorgeous little eastern, whom her parents had no right to dress in such foggy colors as she wore.
Now a long farewell to preliminaries.
Lucy was just leaving her home one morning to go to her pupil, and had turned into the flagged passage which led from the archway into the court, when she met a little girl of her acquaintance, whom, with her help, I shall now present to my readers. She was a child of eight, but very small for her age. Her hair was neatly parted and brushed on each side of a large, smooth forehead, projecting over quiet eyes of blue, made yet quieter by the shadow of those brows. The rest of her face was very diminutive. A soberness as of complete womanhood, tried and chastened, lay upon her. She looked as if she had pondered upon life and its goal, and had made up her little mind to meet its troubles with patience. She was dressed in a cotton frock printed with blue rose-buds, faded by many waters and much soap. When she spoke, she used only one side of her mouth for the purpose, and then the old-fashionedness of her look rose almost to the antique, so that you could have fancied her one of the time-belated good people that, leaving the green forest-rings, had wandered into the city and become a Christian at a hundred years of age.
"Well, Mattie," said Lucy, "how are you this morning?"
"I am quite well, I thank you, miss," answered Mattie. "I don't call this morning. The church clock struck eleven five minutes ago."
This was uttered with a smile from the half of her mouth which seemed to say, "I know you want to have a little fun with me by using wrong names for things because I am a little girl, and little girls can be taken in; but it is of no use with me, though I can enjoy the joke of it."
Lucy smiled too, but not much, for she knew the child.
"What do you call the morning, then, Mattie?" she asked.
"Well,"—she almost always began her sentences with a Well—"I call it morning before the sun is up."
"But how do you know when the sun is up? London is so foggy, you know, Mattie."
"Is it? I didn't know. Are there places without fog, miss?"
"Oh, yes; many."
"Well, about the sun. I always know what he's about, miss. I've got a almanac."
"But you don't understand the almanac, do you?"
"Well, I don't mean to say I understand all about it, but I always know what time the sun rises and goes to bed, you know."
Lucy had found she was rather early for the train, and from where she stood she could see the clock of St. Jacob's, which happened to be a reliable one. Therefore she went on to amuse herself with the child.
"But how is it that we don't see him, if he gets up when the almanac says, Mattie?"
"Well, you see, miss, he sleeps in a crib. And the sides of it are houses and churches, and St. Paulses, and the likes of that."
"Yes, yes; but some days we see him, and others we don't. We don't see him to-day, now."
"Well, miss, I dare say he's cross some mornings, and keeps the blankets about him after he's got his head up."
Lucy could not help thinking of Milton's line—for of the few poems she knew, one was the "Ode on the Nativity"—
So, when the Sun in bed,
Curtain'd with cloudy red,
Pillows his chin upon an orient wave.
But the child laughed so queerly, that it was impossible to tell whether or how much those were her real ideas about the sunrise.
"How is your father?" Lucy asked.
"Do you mean my father or my mother?"
"I mean your father, of course, when I say so."
"Yes, but I have a mother, too."
Lucy let her have her way, for she did not quite understand her. Only she knew that the child's mother had died two or three years ago.
"Well," resumed the child, "my father is quite well, thank God; and so is my mother. There he is, looking down at us."
"Who do you mean, Mattie?" asked Lucy, now bewildered.
"Well, my mother," answered the child, with a still odder half smile.
Lucy looked up, and saw—but a little description is necessary. They were standing, as I have said already, in the flagged passage which led to, and post-officially considered, formed part of Guild Court. The archway from Bagot Street into this passage was as it were tunneled through a house facing the street, and from this house a wall, stretching inward to the first house in the court proper, formed one side of the passage. About the middle, this wall broke into two workshops, the smallest and strangest ever seen out of the east. There was no roof visible—that lay behind the curtain-wall; but from top to bottom of the wall, a hight of about nine feet, there was glass, divided in the middle so as to form two windows, one above the other. So likewise on the right-hand side of the glass were two doors, or hatches, one above the other. The tenement looked as if the smallest of rooms had been divided into two horizontally by a floor in the middle, thus forming two cells, which could not have been more than five feet by four, and four feet in hight. In the lower, however, a little hight had been gained by sinking the floor, to which a single step led down. In this under cell a cobbler sat, hammering away at his lap-stone—a little man, else he could hardly have sat there, or even got in without discomfort. Every now and then he glanced up at the girl and the child, but never omitted a blow in consequence. Over his head, on the thin floor between, sat a still smaller man, cross-legged like a Turk, busily "plying his needle and thread." His hair, which standing straight up gave a look of terror to his thin, pale countenance, almost touched the roof. It was the only luxuriance about him. As plants run to seed, he seemed to have run to hair. A calm, keen eye underneath its towering forest, revealed observation and peacefulness. He, too, occasionally looked from his work, but only in the act of drawing the horizontal thread, when his eyes had momentary furlough, moving in alternate oscillation with his hand. At the moment when the child said so, he was looking down in a pause in which he seemed for the moment to have forgotten his work in his interest in the pair below. He might be forty, or fifty or sixty—no one could tell which.
Lucy looked up, and said, "That is Mr. Spelt; that is not your mother."
"Well, but I call him my mother. I can't have two fathers, you know. So I call Mr. Spelt my mother; and so he is."
Here she looked up and smiled knowingly to the little tailor, who, leaning forward to the window, through which, reaching from roof to floor of his cage, his whole form was visible, nodded friendlily to the little girl in acknowledgment of her greeting. But it was now time for Lucy to go.
As soon as she had disappeared beyond the archway, Mattie turned toward the workshops. Mr. Spelt saw her coming, and before she had reached them, the upper half of the door was open, and he was stretching down his arms to lift her across the shoemaking region, into his own more celestial realm of tailoring. In a moment she was sitting in the farthest and snuggest corner, not cross-legged, but with her feet invisible in a heap of cuttings, from which she was choosing what she would—always with a reference to Mr. Spelt—for the dressing of a boy-doll which he had given her.
This was a very usual proceeding—so much so that Mattie and the tailor sat for nearly an hour without a word passing between them beyond what sprung from the constructive exigencies of the child. Neither of them was given to much utterance, though each had something of the peculiar gift of the Ancient Mariner, namely, "strange power of speech." They would sit together sometimes for half a day without saying a word; and then again there would be an oasis of the strangest conversation in the desert of their silence—a bad simile, for their silence must have been a thoughtful one to blossom into such speech. But the first words Mattie uttered on this occasion, were of a somewhat mundane character. She heard a footstep pass below. She was too far back in the cell to see who it was, and she did not lift her eyes from her work.
"When the cat's away, the mice will play," she said.
"What are you thinking about, Mattie?" asked the tailor.
"Well, wasn't that Mr. Worboise that passed? Mr. Boxall must be out. But he needn't go there, for somebody's always out this time o' day."
"What do you mean, Mattie?" again asked the tailor.
"Well, perhaps you don't understand such things, Mr. Spelt, not being a married man."
Poor Mr. Spelt had had a wife who had killed herself by drinking all his earnings; but perhaps Mattie knew nothing about that.
"No more I am. You must explain it to me."
"Well, you see, young people will be young people."
"Who told you that?"
"Old Mrs. Boxall says so. And that's why Mr. Worboise goes to see Miss Burton, I know. I told you so," she added, as she heard his step returning. But Thomas bore a huge ledger under his arm, for which Mr. Stopper had sent him round to the court. Very likely, however, had Lucy been at home, he might have laid a few minutes more to the account of the errand.
"So, so!" said the tailor. "That's it, is it, Mattie?"
"Yes; but we don't say anything about such things, you know."
"Oh, of course not," answered Mr. Spelt; and the conversation ceased.
After a long pause, the child spoke again.
"Is God good to you to-day, mother?"
"Yes, Mattie. God is always good to us."
"But he's better some days than others, isn't he?"
To this question the tailor did not know what to reply, and therefore, like a wise man, did not make the attempt. He asked her instead, as he had often occasion to do with Mattie, what she meant.
"Don't you know what I mean, mother? Don't you know God's better to us some days than others? Yes; and he's better to some people than he is to others."
"I am sure he's always good to you and me, Mattie."
"Well, yes; generally."
"Why don't you say always?"
"Because I'm not sure about it. Now to-day it's all very well. But yesterday the sun shone in the window a whole hour."
"And I drew down the blind to shut it out," said Mr. Spelt, thoughtfully.
"Well," Mattie went on, without heeding her friend's remark, "he could make the sun shine every day, if he liked.—I suppose he could," she added, doubtfully.
"I don't think we should like it, if he did," returned Mr. Spelt, "for the drain down below smells bad in the hot weather."
"But the rain might come—at night, I mean, not in the day-time, and wash them all out. Mightn't it, mother?"
"Yes; but the heat makes people ill. And if you had such hot weather as they have in some parts, as I am told, you would be glad enough of a day like this."
"Well, why haven't they a day like this, when they want it?"
"God knows," said Mr. Spelt, whose magazine was nearly exhausted, and the enemy pressing on vigorously.
"Well, that's what I say. God knows, and why doesn't he help it?"
And Mr. Spelt surrendered, if silence was surrender. Mattie did not press her advantage, however, and the besieged plucked up heart a little.
"I fancy perhaps, Mattie, he leaves something for us to do. You know they cut out the slop-work at the shop, and I can't do much more with that but put the pieces together. But when a repairing job comes in, I can contrive a bit then, and I like that better."
Mr. Spelt's meaning was not very clear, either to himself or to Mattie. But it involved the shadow of a great truth—that all the discords we hear in the universe around us, are God's trumpets sounding a réveillé to the sleeping human will, which once working harmoniously with his, will soon bring all things into a pure and healthy rectitude of operation. Till a man has learned to be happy without the sunshine, and therein becomes capable of enjoying it perfectly, it is well that the shine and the shadow should be mingled, so as God only knows how to mingle them. To effect the blessedness for which God made him, man must become a fellow-worker with God.
After a little while Mattie resumed operations.
"But you can't say, mother, that God isn't better to some people than to other people. He's surely gooder to you and me than he is to Poppie."
"Who's Poppie?" asked Mr. Spelt, sending out a flag of negotiation.
"Well, there she is—down in the gutter, I suppose, as usual," answered Mattie, without lifting her eyes.
The tailor peeped out of his house-front, and saw a barefooted child in the court below. What she was like I shall take a better opportunity of informing my reader. For at this moment the sound of strong nails tapping sharply reached the ear of Mr. Spelt and his friend. The sound came from a window just over the archway, hence at right angles to Mr. Spelt's workshop. It was very dingy with dust and smoke, allowing only the outline of a man's figure to be seen from the court. This much Poppie saw, and taking the tapping to be intended for her, fled from the court on soundless feet. But Mattie rose at once from her corner, and, laying aside cuttings and doll, stuck her needle and thread carefully in the bosom of her frock, saying:
"That's my father a-wanting of me. I wonder what he wants now. I'm sure I don't know how he would get on without me. And that is a comfort. Poor man! he misses my mother more than I do, I believe. He's always after me. Well, I'll see you again in the afternoon if I can. And, if not, you may expect me about the same hour to-morrow."
While she thus spoke she was let down from the not very airy hight of the workshop on to the firm pavement below; the tailor stretching his arms with her from above, like a bird of prey with a lamb in his talons. The last words she spoke from the ground, her head thrown back between her shoulders that she might look the tailor in the face, who was stooping over her like an angel from a cloud in the family Bible.
"Very well, Mattie," returned Mr. Spelt; "you know your own corner well enough by this time, I should think."
So saying, he drew himself carefully into his shell, for the place was hardly more, except that he could just work without having to get outside of it first. A soft half smile glimmered on his face; for although he was so used to Mattie's old-fashioned ways, that they scarcely appeared strange to him now, the questions that she raised were food for the little tailor's meditation—all day long, upon occasion. For some tailors are given to thinking, and when they are they have good opportunity of indulging their inclinations. And it is wonderful what a tailor's thinking may come to, especially if he reads his New Testament. Now, strange perhaps to tell, though Mr. Spelt never went to church, he did read his New Testament. And the little tailor was a living soul. He was one of those few who seem to be born with a certain law of order in themselves, a certain tidiness of mind, as it were, which would gladly see all the rooms or regions of thought swept and arranged; and not only makes them orderly, but prompts them to search after the order of the universe. They would gladly believe in the harmony of things; and although the questions they feel the necessity of answering take the crudest forms and the most limited and individual application, they yet are sure to have something to do with the laws that govern the world. Hence it was that the partial misfit of a pair of moleskin or fustian trowsers—for seldom did his originality find nobler material to exercise itself upon—would make him quite miserable, even though the navvy or dock-laborer might be perfectly satisfied with the result, and ready to pay the money for them willingly. But it was seldom, too, that he had even such a chance of indulging in the creative element of the tailor's calling, though he might have done something of the sort, if he would, in the way of altering. Of that branch of the trade, however, he was shy, knowing that it was most frequently in request with garment unrighteously come by; and Mr. Spelt's thin hands were clean.
He had not sat long after Mattie left him, before she reappeared from under the archway.
"No, no, mother," she said, "I ain't going to perch this time. But father sends his compliments, and will you come and take a dish of tea with him and me this afternoon?"
"Yes, Mattie; if you will come and fetch me when the tea's ready."
"Well, you had better not depend on me; for I shall have a herring to cook, and a muffin to toast, besides the tea to make and set on the hob, and the best china to get out of the black cupboard, and no end o' things to see to."
"But you needn't get out the best china for me, you know."
"Well, I like to do what's proper. And you just keep your eye on St. Jacob's, Mr. Spelt, and at five o'clock, when it has struck two of them, you get down and come in, and you'll find your tea a-waiting of you. There!"
With which conclusive form of speech, Mattie turned and walked back through the archway. She never ran, still less skipped as most children do, but held feet and head alike steadily progressive, save for the slightest occasional toss of the latter, which, as well as her mode of speech, revealed the element of conceit which had its share in the oddity of the little damsel.
When two strokes of the five had sounded in the ears of Mr. Spelt, he laid his work aside, took his tall hat from one of the comers where it hung on a peg, leaped lightly from his perch into the court, shut his half of the door, told the shoemaker below that he was going to Mr. Kitely's to tea, and would be obliged if he would fetch him should anyone want him, and went through the archway. There was a door to Mr. Kitely's house under the archway, but the tailor preferred going round the corner to the shop door in Bagot Street. By this he entered Jacob Kitely's domain, an old book-shop, of which it required some previous knowledge to find the way to the back premises. For the whole cubical space of the shop was divided and subdivided into a labyrinth of book-shelves, those in front filled with decently if not elegantly bound books, and those behind with a multitude innumerable of books in all conditions of dinginess, mustiness, and general shabbiness. Among these Jacob Kitely spent his time patching and mending them, and drawing up catalogues. He was not one of those booksellers who are so fond of their books that they cannot bear to part with them, and therefore when they are fortunate enough to lay their hands upon a rare volume, the highest pleasure they know in life, justify themselves in keeping it by laying a manuscript price upon it, and considering it so much actual property. Such men, perhaps, know something about the contents of their wares; but while few surpassed Jacob in a knowledge of the outside of books, from the proper treatment of covers in the varying stages of dilapidation, and of leaves when water-stained or mildewed or dry-rotted to the different values of better and best editions, cut and uncut leaves, tall copies, and folios shortened by the plow into doubtful quartos, he never advanced beyond the title-page, except when one edition differed from another, and some examination was necessary to determine to which the copy belonged. And not only did he lay no fancy prices upon his books, but he was proud of selling them under the market value—which he understood well enough, though he used the knowledge only to regulate his buying. The rate at which he sold was determined entirely by the rate at which he bought. Do not think, my reader, that I have the thinnest ghost of a political economy theory under this: I am simply and only describing character. Hence he sold his books cheaper than any other bookseller in London, contenting himself with a profit proportioned to his expenditure, and taking his pleasure in the rapidity with which the stream of books flowed through his shop. I have known him take threepence off the price he had first affixed to a book, because he found that he had not advertised it, and therefore it had not to bear its share of the expense of the catalogue.
Mr. Spelt made his way through the maze of books into the back shop, no one confronting him, and there found Mr. Kitely busy over his next catalogue, which he was making out in a school-boy's hand.
"How are you, Spelt?" he said, in an alto voice, in which rung a certain healthy vigor, amounting to determination. "Just in time, I believe. My little woman has been busy in the parlor for the last hour, and I can depend upon her to the minute. Step in."
"Don't let me interrupt you," suggested Mr. Spelt, meekly, and reverentially even, for he thought Mr. Kitely must be a very learned man indeed to write so much about books, and had at home a collection of his catalogues complete from the year when he first occupied the nest in the passage. I had forgot to say that Mr. Kitely was Mr. Spelt's landlord, and found him a regular tenant, else he certainly would not have invited him to tea.
"Don't let me interrupt you," said Mr. Spelt.
"Not at all," returned Mr. Kitely. "I'm very happy to see you, Spelt. You're very kind to my Mattie, and it pleases both of us to have you to tea in our humble way."
His humble way was a very grand way indeed to poor Spelt—and Mr. Kitely knew that. Spelt could only rub his nervous, delicate hands in token that he would like to say something in reply if he could but find the right thing to say. What hands those were, instinct with life and expression to the finger nails! No hands like them for fine-drawing. He would make the worst rent look as if there never had been a rough contact with the nappy surface.
The tailor stepped into the parlor, which opened out of the back shop sideways, and found himself in an enchanted region. A fire—we always see the fire first, and the remark will mean more to some people than to others—a most respectable fire burned in the grate, and if the room was full of the odor of red herrings, possibly objectionable per se, where was the harm when they were going to partake of the bloaters? A consequential cat lay on the hearth-rug. A great black oak cabinet, carved to repletion of surface, for which a pre-Raphaelite painter would have given half the price of one of his best pictures, stood at the end of the room. This was an accident, for Mr. Kitely could not appreciate it. But neither would he sell it when asked to do so. He was not going to mix trades, for that was against his creed; the fact being that he had tried so many things in his life that he now felt quite respectable from having settled to one for the rest of his days. But the chief peculiarity of the room was the number of birds that hung around it in cages of all sizes and shapes, most of them covered up now that they might go to sleep.
After Mattie had bestowed her approbation upon Mr. Spelt for coming exactly to the hour, she took the brown tea-pot from the hob, the muffin from before the fire, and three herrings from the top of it, and put them all one after another upon the table. Then she would have placed chairs for them all, but was prevented by the gallantry of Mr. Spelt, and only succeeded in carrying to the head of the table her own high chair, on which she climbed up, and sat enthroned to pour out the tea. It was a noteworthy triad. On opposite sides of the table sat the meek tailor and the hawk-expressioned bookseller. The latter had a broad forehead and large, clear, light eyes. His nose—I never think a face described when the nose is forgotten: Chaucer never omits it—rose from between his eyes as if intending to make the true Roman arch, but having reached the keystone, held on upon the same high level, and did not descend, but ceased. He wore no beard, and bore his face in front of him like a banner. A strong pediment of chin and a long, thin-lipped mouth completed an expression of truculent good nature. Plenty of clear-voiced speech, a breezy defiance of nonsense in every tone, bore in it a certain cold but fierce friendliness, which would show no mercy to any weakness you might vaunt, but would drag none to the light you abstained from forcing into notice. Opposite to him sat the thoughtful, thin-visaged, small man, with his hair on end; and between them the staid, old-maidenly child, with her hair in bands on each side of the smooth solemnity of her face, the conceit of her gentle nature expressed only in the turn-up of her diminutive nose. The bookseller behaved to her as if she had been a grown lady.
"Now, Miss Kitely," he said, "we shall have tea of the right sort, shan't we?"
"I hope so," answered Mattie, demurely. "Help Mr. Spelt to a herring, father."
"That I will, my princess. There, Mr. Spelt! There's a herring with a roe worth millions. To think, now, that every one of those eggs would be a fish like that, if it was only let alone!"
"It's a great waste of eggs, ain't it, father?" said Mattie.
"Mr. Spelt won't say so, my princess," returned Mr. Kitely, laughing. "He likes 'em."
"I do like them," said the tailor.
"Well, I dare say they're good for him, and it don't hurt them much," resumed Mattie, reflectively.
"They'll go to his brains, and make him clever," said Kitely. "And you wouldn't call that a waste, would you, Mattie?"
"Well, I don't know. I think Mr. Spelt's clever enough already. He's too much for me sometimes. I confess I can't always follow him."
The father burst into a loud roar of laughter, and laughed till the tears were running down his face. Spelt would have joined him but for the reverence he had for Mattie, who sat unmoved on her throne at the head of the table, looking down with calm benignity on her father's passion, as if laughter were a weakness belonging to grown-up men, in which they were to be condescendingly indulged by princesses, and little girls in general.
"Well, how's the world behaving to you, Spelt?" asked the bookseller, after various ineffectual attempts to stop his laughter by the wiping of his eyes.
"The world has never behaved ill to me, thank God," answered the tailor.
"Now, don't you trouble yourself to say that. You've got nobody to thank but yourself."
"But I like to thank God," said Mr. Spelt, apologetically. "I forgot that you wouldn't like it."
"Pshaw! pshaw! I don't mind it from you, for I believe you're fool enough to mean what you say. But, tell me this, Spelt—did you thank God when your wife died?"
"I tried hard not. I'm afraid I did, though," answered Spelt, and sat staring like one who has confessed, and awaits his penance.
The bookseller burst into another loud laugh, and slapped his hand on his leg.
"You have me there, I grant, Spelt."
But his face grew sober as he added, in a lower but still loud voice—
"I was thinking of my wife, not of yours. Folk say she was a rum un."
"She was a splendid woman," said the tailor. "She weighed twice as much as I do, and her fist—" Here he doubled up his own slender hand, laid it on the table, and stared at it, with his mouth full of muffin. Then, with a sigh, he added, "She was rather too much for me, sometimes. She was a splendid woman, though, when she was sober."
"And what was she when she was drunk?"
This grated a little on the tailor's feelings, and he answered with spirit—-
"A match for you or any other man, Mr. Kitely."
The bookseller said, "Bravo, Spelt!" and said no more.
They went on with their tea for some moments in silence.
"Well, princess!" said Mr. Kitely at last, giving an aimless poke to the conversation.
"Well, father," returned Mattie.
Whereupon her father turned to Spelt and said, as if resuming what had passed before—
"Now tell me honestly, Spelt, do you believe there is a God?"
"I don't doubt it."
"And I do. Will you tell me that, if there was a God, he would have a fool like that in the church over the way there, to do nothing but read the service, and a sermon he bought for eighteenpence, and—"
"From you?" asked Spelt, with an access of interest.
"No, no. I was too near the church for that. But he bought it of Spelman, in Holywell Street. Well, what was I saying?"
"You was telling us what Mr. Potter did for his money."
"Yes, yes. I don't know anything else he does but stroke his Piccadilly weepers, and draw his salary. Only I suppose they have some grand name for salary nowadays, out of the Latin Grammar or the Roman Antiquities, or some such, to make it respectable. Don't tell me there's a God, when he puts a man like that in the pulpit. To hear him haw-haw!"
The bookseller's logic was, to say the least of it, queer. But Spelt was no logician. He was something better, though in a feeble way. He could jump over the dry-stone fences and the cross-ditches of the logician. He was not one of those who stop to answer arguments against going home, instead of making haste to kiss their wives and children.
"I have read somewhere—in a book I dare say you mayn't have in your collection, Mr. Kitely—they call it the New Testament—"
There was not an atom of conscious humor in the tailor as he said this. He really thought Mr. Kitely might have conscientious scruples as to favoring the sale of the New Testament. Kitely smiled, but said nothing.
"I've read"—the tailor went on—"that God winked at some people's ignorance. I dare say he may wink at Mr. Potter's."
"Anyhow, I wouldn't like to be Mr. Potter," said the bookseller.
"No, nor I," returned Spelt. "But just as I let that poor creature, Dolman, cobble away in my ground-floor—though he has never paid me more than half his rent since ever he took it—"
"Is that the way of it? Whew!" said Mr. Kitely.
"About and about it," answered the tailor. "But that's not the point."
"What a fool you are then, Spelt, to—"
"Mr. Kitely," interposed the tailor with dignity, "do I pay your rent?"
"You've got my receipts, I believe," answered the bookseller, offended in his turn.
"Then I may make a fool of myself, if I please," returned Spelt, with a smile which took all offense out of the remark. "I only wanted to say that perhaps God lets Mr. Potter hold the living of St. Jacob's in something of the same way that I let poor Dolman cobble in my ground-floor. No offense, I hope."
"None whatever. You're a good-natured, honest fellow, Spelt; and don't distress yourself, you know, for a week or so. Have half a herring more? I fear this is a soft roe."
"No more, I thank you, Mr. Kitely. But all the clergy ain't like Mr. Potter. Perhaps he talks such nonsense because there's nobody there to hear it."
"There's plenty not there to do something for his money," said Kitely.
"That's true," returned the tailor. "But seeing I don't go to church myself, I don't see I've any right to complain. Do you go to church, Mr. Kitely?"
"I should think not," answered the bookseller. "But there's some one in the shop."
So saying, he started up and disappeared. Presently voices were heard, if not in dispute, yet in difference.
"You won't oblige me so far as that, Mr. Kitely?"
"No, I won't. I never pledge myself. I've been too often taken in. No offense. A man goes away and forgets. Send or bring the money, and the book is yours; or come to-morrow. I dare say it won't be gone. But I won't promise to keep it. There!"
"Very well, I won't trouble you again in a hurry."
"That is as you please, sir," said the bookseller, and no reply followed.
"That's Mr. Worboise," said Mattie, "I wish father wouldn't be so hard upon him."
"I don't like that young man," said Kitely, reëntering. "My opinion is that he's a humbug."
"Miss Burton does not think so," said Mattie, quietly.
"Eh, what, princess?" said her father. "Eh! ah! well! well!"
"You don't give credit, Mr. Kitely?" said the tailor.
"No, not to my own father. I don't know, though, if I had the old boy back again, now he's dead. I didn't behave over well to him, I'm afraid. I wonder if he's in the moon, or where he is, Mr. Spelt, eh? I should like to believe in God now, if it were only for the chance of saying to my father, 'I'm sorry I said so-and-so to you, old man.' Do you think he'll have got over it by this time, Spelt? You know all about those things. But I won't have a book engaged and left and not paid for. I'd rather give credit and lose it, and have done with it. If young Worboise wants the book he may come for it to-morrow."
"He always pays me—and pleasantly," said Spelt.
"Of course," said Mattie.
"I don't doubt it," said her father; "but I like things neat and clean. And I don't like him. He thinks a deal of himself."
"Surely he's neat and clean enough," said Spelt.
"Now, you don't know what I mean. A man ought always to know what another man means before he makes his remarks. I mean, I like a book to go out of my sight, and the price of it to go into my pocket, right slick off. But here's Dolman come to fetch you, Spelt," said the bookseller, as the cobbler made his appearance at the half-open door of the parlor.
"No, I ain't," said Dolman. "I only come to let the guv'nor know as I'm a going home."
"Where's that?" asked Kitely.
"Leastways, I mean going home with a pair o' boots," answered Dolman, evasively, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.
"Ah!" said the bookseller.
CHAPTER VI.
THE MORNING OF CHRISTMAS DAY.
It is but justice to Thomas Worboise to mention that he made no opportunities of going to his "governor's" house after this. But the relations of the families rendered it impossible for him to avoid seeing Mary Boxall sometimes. Nor did he make any great effort to evade each meetings: and it must be confessed that it was not without a glow of inward satisfaction that he saw her confusion and the rosy tinge that spread over her face and deepened the color of her eyes when they thus happened to meet. For Mary was a soft-hearted and too impressible girl. "I never said anything to her," were the words with which he would now and then apply an unction to his soul, compounded of self-justification and self-flattery. But he could not keep an outward appearance of coolness correspondent to the real coldness of his selfish heart, and the confusion which was only a dim reflection of her own was sufficient to make poor Mary suppose that feelings similar to her own were at work in the mind of the handsome youth. Why he did not say anything to her had not yet begun to trouble her, and her love was as yet satisfied with the ethereal luxuries of dreaming and castle-building.
It had been arranged between Amy Worboise and the Boxall girls, that if Christmas Day were fine, they would persuade their fathers to go with them to Hampstead Heath in the morning. How much of this arrangement was owing to sly suggestion on the part of Mary in the hope of seeing Tom, I do not know. I believe Jane contrived that Charles Wither should have a hint of the possibility. It is enough that the plan was accepted by the parents, and that the two families, with the exception of Mrs. Boxall, who could not commit the care of the Christmas dinner to the servants, and the invalid Mrs. Worboise, who, indeed, would always have preferred the chance of a visit from Mr. Simon to the certainty of sunshine and extended prospect, found themselves, after morning service, on the platform of the Highbury railway station, whence they soon reached Hampstead.
The walk from the station, up the hill to the top of the heath, was delightful. It was a clear day, the sun shining overhead, and the ground sparkling with frost under their feet. The keen, healthy air brought color to the cheeks and light to the eyes of all the party, possibly with the sole exception of Mr. Worboise, who, able to walk uncovered in the keenest weather, was equally impervious to all the gentler influences of Nature. He could not be said to be a disbeliever in Nature, for he had not the smallest idea that she had any existence beyond an allegorical one. What he did believe in was the law, meaning by that neither the Mosaic nor the Christian, neither the law of love nor the law of right, but the law of England as practiced in her courts of justice. Therefore he was not a very interesting person to spend a Christmas morning with, and he and Mr. Boxall, who was equally a believer in commerce, were left to entertain each other.
Mary Boxall was especially merry; Amy Worboise roguish as usual; Jane Boxall rather silent, but still bright-eyed, for who could tell whom she might meet upon the heath? And with three such girls Tom could not be other than gay, if not brilliant. True, Lucy was alone with her old grandmother in dingy Guild Court; but if she loved him, was not that enough to make her or any other woman happy? And he could not help it, besides. And why should he not improve the shining hour because Lucy had no flowers to gather honey from? Besides, was he not going to meet her the very next day, after much contrivance for concealment? So he was resolved to be merry and "freuen sich des Lebens."
They reached the flag-staff. The sun was getting low, and clouds were gathering behind him. Harrow-on-the-Hill was invisible, but the reservoir gleamed coldly far across the heath. A wind was blowing from the northwest; all London lay south and east in clearness wonderful, for two or three minutes. Then a vapor slowly melted away the dome of St. Paul's, and, like a spirit of sorrow, gathered and gathered till that which was full of life to those who were in it, was but a gray cloud to those that looked on from the distant hight. Already the young people felt their spirits affected, and as if by a common impulse, set off to walk briskly to the pines above the "Spaniards." They had not gone far, before they met Charles Wither sauntering carelessly along—at least he seemed much surprised to see them. He turned and walked between Jane and Amy, and Mary and Tom were compelled to drop behind, so as not to extend their line unreasonably and occupy the whole path. Quite unintentionally on Tom's part, the distance between the two divisions increased, and when he and Mary reached the pines, the rest of the party had vanished. They had in fact gone down into the Vale of Health, to be out of the wind, and return by the hollow, at the suggestion of Charles Wither, who wished thus to avoid the chance of being seen by Mr. Boxall. When he had taken his leave of them, just as they came in sight of the flag-staff, where Mr. Worboise and Mr. Boxall had appointed to meet them on their return from the pines, Jane begged Amy to say nothing about having met him.
"Oh," said Amy, with sudden and painful illumination, "I am so sorry to have been in the way."
"On the contrary, dear Amy, I should not have known what to say to papa, except you had been with me. I am so much obliged to you."
Thus there was clearly trouble in store for Mr. Boxall, who had never yet known what it was not to have his own way—in matters which he would consider of importance at least.
The two gentlemen had gone into Jack Straw's to have a glass of wine together, in honor of Christmas Day; and while they were seated together before a good fire, it seemed to Mr. Boxall a suitable opportunity for entering on a matter of business.
"What will you say to me, Worboise, when I tell you that I have never yet made a will?"
"I needn't tell you what I think, Boxall. You know well enough. Very foolish of you. Very imprudent, indeed. And I confess I should not have expected it of you, although I had a shrewd suspicion that such was the case.
"How came you to suspect it?"
"To tell the truth; I could not help thinking that as our friendship was not of yesterday, you would hardly have asked any one else to draw up your will but your old friend. So you see it was by no mysterious exercise of intelligence that I came to the conclusion that, not being an unkind or suspicious man, you must be a dilatory, and, excuse me, in this sole point, a foolish man."
"I grant the worst you can say, but you shall say it only till to-morrow—that is, if you will draw up the will, and have it ready for me to sign at any hour you may be at leisure for a call from me."
"I can't undertake it by to-morrow; but it shall be ready by the next day at twelve o'clock."
"That will do perfectly. I must remain 'a foolish man' for twenty-four hours longer—that is all."
"You won't be much the worse for that, except you have an attack of apoplexy to fix you there. But, joking apart, give me my instructions. May I ask how much you have to leave?"
"Oh; somewhere, off and on, about thirty thousand. It isn't much, but I hope to double it in the course of a few years, if things go on as they are doing."
Mr. Worboise had not known so much about his friend's affairs as he had pretended to his son. When he heard the amount, he uttered a slight "Whew!" But whether it meant that the sum fell below or exceeded his expectations, he gave Mr. Boxall no time to inquire.
"And how do you want the sum divided?" he asked.
"I don't want it divided at all. There's no occasion whatever to mention the sum. The books will show my property. I want my wife, in the case of her surviving me, to have the whole of it."
"And failing her?"
"My daughters, of course—equally divided. If my wife lives, there is no occasion to mention them. I want them to be dependent upon her as long as she lives, and so hold the family together as long as possible. She knows my wishes about them in everything. I have no secrets from her."
"I have only to carry out instructions. I have no right to offer any suggestions."
"That means that you would suggest something. Speak out, man."
"Suppose your daughters wished to marry?"
"I leave all that to their mother, as I said. They must be their own mistresses some day."
"Well, call on me the day after to-morrow, and I shall have the draught at least ready."
When the two girls reached the flag-staff, their parents were not there. Jane was glad of this, for it precluded questioning as to the point whence they had arrived. As they stood waiting, large snow-flakes began to fall, and the wind was rising. But they had not to wait long before the gentlemen made their appearance, busily conversing, so busily, indeed, that when they had joined the girls, they walked away toward the railway station without concerning themselves to ask what had become of Mary and Thomas.
When they reached the railway station, Mr. Boxall became suddenly aware that two of their party were missing.
"Why, Jane, where's Mary? And where's Tom? Where did you leave them?"
"Somewhere about the pines. I thought they would have been back long ago."
The two fathers looked at each other, and each seeing that the other looked knowing, then first consented, as he thought, to look knowing himself.
"Well," said Mr. Worboise, "they're old enough to take care of themselves, I suppose. I vote we don't wait for them."
"Serve them right," said Mr. Boxall.
"Oh, don't, papa," interposed Jane.
"Well, Jane, will you stop for them?" said her father.
But a sudden light that flashed into Jane's eyes made him change his tone. He did not know why, but the idea of Charles Wither rose in his mind, and he made haste to prevent Jane from taking advantage of the proposal.
"Come along," he said. "Let them take care of themselves. Come along."
The suspicion had crossed him more than once, that Mr. Wither and Jane possibly contrived to meet without his knowledge, and the thought made him writhe with jealousy; for it lay in his nature to be jealous of everyone of whom his wife or his daughters spoke well—that is, until he began to like him himself, when the jealousy, or what was akin to it, vanished. But it was not jealousy alone that distressed him, but the anxiety of real love as well.
By the time they reached Camden Road station, the ground was covered with snow.
When Tom and Mary arrived at the pines, I have said they found that the rest of their party had gone.
"Oh, never mind," said Mary, merrily; "let us run down into the hollow, and wait till they come back. I dare say they are not far off. They will never go without us."
Partly from false gallantry, partly from inclination, Thomas agreed. They descended the bank of sand in a quite opposite direction from that taken by Jane and her companions, and wandered along down the heath. By this time the sky was all gray and white. Long masses of vapor were driving overhead with jagged upper edges. They looked like lines of fierce warriors stooping in their eager rush to the battle. But down in the hollows of the heath all was still, and they wandered on for some time without paying any heed to the signs of the coming storm. Does my reader ask what they talked about? Nothing worthy of record, I answer; although every word that Thomas uttered seemed to Mary worth looking into for some occult application of the sort she would gladly have heard more openly expressed. At length, something cold fell upon her face, and Thomas glancing that moment at her countenance, saw it lying there, and took it for a tear. She looked up: the sky was one mass of heavy vapor, and a multitude of great downy snow-flakes was settling slowly on the earth. In a moment they were clasped hand in hand. The pleasure of the snow, the excitement of being shut out from the visible, or rather the seeing world, wrapped in the skirts of a storm with a pretty girl for his sole companion, so wrought upon Thomas, who loved to be moved and hated to will, that he forgot Lucy, and stood in delight gazing certainly at the falling snow, and not at Mary Boxall, but holding her hand tight in his own. She crept closer to him, for a little gentle fear added to her pleasure, and in a moment more his arm was about her—to protect her, I dare say, he said to himself.
Now, be it understood that Thomas was too much in love with himself to be capable of loving any woman under the sun after a noble and true fashion. He did not love Lucy a great deal better than he loved Mary. Only Mary was an ordinary pretty blonde, and Lucy was dark, with great black eyes, and far more distinguished in appearance than Mary. Besides, she was poor, and that added greatly to the romance of the thing; for it made it quite noble in him to love her, and must make her look up to him with such deserved admiration, that—without reckoning the fact that the one was offered him, and the other only not forbidden because there was as yet no suspicion of his visits in Guild Court—there was positively no room to hesitate in choice between them. Still the preference was not strong enough to keep his heart from beating fast when he found the snow-storm had closed him in with Mary. He had sense enough, however, to turn at once in order to lead her back toward the road. But this was already a matter of difficulty, for there was no path where the storm found them, and with the gathering darkness the snow already hid the high road across the heath; so that the first question was in what direction to go to find it. They kept moving, however, Mary leaning a good deal on Tom's arm, and getting more and more frightened as no path came in view. Even Tom began to be anxious about what was to come of it, and although he did his best to comfort Mary, he soon found that, before the least suspicion of actual danger, the whole romance had vanished. And now the snow not only fell rapidly, but the wind blew it sharply in their faces, and blinded them yet more than merely with its darkness—not that this mattered much as to the finding the way, for that was all hap-hazard long ago.
After wandering, probably in a circuitous fashion, for more than an hour, Mary burst out crying, and said she could not walk a step farther. She would have thrown herself down had not Tom prevented her. With the kindest encouragement—though he was really down-hearted himself—he persuaded her to climb a little hight near them, which with great difficulty she managed to do. From the top they saw a light, and descending the opposite side of the hill, found themselves in a road, where an empty cab stood by the door of a public-house. After trying to persuade Mary to have some refreshment, to which she refused to listen, insisting on being taken to her mother, Thomas succeeded in getting the cabman to drive them to the station. In the railway carriage, Mary lay like one dead, and although he took off both his coats to wrap about her, she seemed quite unconscious of the attention. It was with great difficulty that she reached her home; for there was no cab at the hackney station, and the streets were by this time nearly a foot deep in snow.
Thomas was not sorry to give her up to her mother. She immediately began to scold him. Then Mary spoke for the first time, saying, with great effort:
"Don't, mother. If it had not been for Thomas, I should have been dead long ago. He could not help it. Good-night, Tom."
And she feebly held up her face to kiss him. Tom stooped to meet it, and went away feeling tolerably miserable. He was wet and cold. The momentary fancy for Mary was quite gone out of him, and he could not help seeing that now he had kissed her before her mother he had got himself into a scrape.
Before morning Mary was in a raging fever.
That night Charles Wither spent at a billiard-table in London, playing, not high but long, sipping brandy and water all the time, and thinking what a splendid girl Jane Boxall was. But in the morning he looked all right.
CHAPTER VII.
POPPIE.
Thomas woke the next morning with a well-deserved sense of something troubling him. This too was a holiday, but he did not feel in a holiday mood. It was not from any fear that Mary might be the worse for her exposure, neither was it from regret for his conduct toward her. What made him uncomfortable was the feeling rather than thought that now Mrs. Boxall, Mary's mother, had a window that overlooked his premises, a window over which he had no legal hold, but which, on the contrary, gave her a hold over him. It was a window, also, of which she was not likely, as he thought, to neglect the advantage. Nor did it console him to imagine what Lucy would think, or—which was of more weight with Thomas—say or do, if she should happen to hear of the affair of yesterday. This, however, was very unlikely to happen; for she had not one friend in common with her cousins, except just her lover. To-day being likewise a holiday, he had arranged to meet her at the Marble Arch, and take her to that frightful source of amusement, Madame Tussaud's. Her morning engagement led her to that neighborhood, and it was a safe place to meet in—far from Highbury, Hackney, and Bagot Street.
The snow was very deep. Mrs. Boxall tried to persuade Lucy not to go. But where birds can pass, lovers can pass, and she was just finishing her lesson to resplendent little Miriam as Thomas got out of an omnibus at Park Street, that he might saunter up on foot to the Marble Arch.
The vision of Hyde Park was such as rarely meets the eye of a Londoner. It was almost grotesquely beautiful. Even while waiting for a lovely girl, Thomas could not help taking notice of the trees. Every bough, branch, twig, and shoot supported a ghost of itself, or rather a white shadow of itself upon the opposite side from where the black shadow fell. The whole tree looked like a huge growth of that kind of coral they call brain-coral, and the whole park a forest of such coralline growths. But against the sky, which was one canopy of unfallen snow, bright with the sun behind it, the brilliant trees looked more like coral still, gray namely, and dull.
Thomas had not sauntered and gazed for more than a few minutes before he saw Lucy coming down Great Cumberland Street toward him. Instead of crossing the street to meet her, he stood and watched her approach. There was even some excuse for his coolness, she looked so picturesque flitting over the spotless white in her violet dress, her red cloak, her grebe muff. I do not know what her bonnet was; for if a bonnet be suitable, it allows the face to show as it ought, and who can think of a bonnet then! But I know that they were a pair of very dainty morocco boots that made little holes in the snow across Oxford Street toward the Marble Arch where Thomas stood, filled, I fear, with more pride in the lovely figure that was coming to him than love of her.
"Have I kept you waiting long, Thomas?" said Lucy, with the sweetest of smiles, her teeth white as snow in the summer flush of her face.
"Oh! about ten minutes," said Thomas. It wasn't five. "What a cold morning it is!"
"I don't feel it much," answered Lucy. "I came away the first moment I could. I am sorry I kept you waiting."
"Don't mention it, Lucy. I should be only too happy to wait for you as long every morning," said Thomas, gallantly, not tenderly.
Lucy did not relish the tone. But what could she do? A tone is one of the most difficult things to fix a complaint upon. Besides, she was not in a humor to complain of any thing if she could help it. And, to tell the truth, she was a little afraid of offending Thomas, for she looked up to him ten times more than he deserved.
"How lovely your red cloak looked—quite a splendor—crossing the snow!" he continued.
And Lucy received this as a compliment to herself, and smiled again. She took his arm—for lovers will do that sometimes after it is quite out of fashion. But, will it be believed? Thomas did not altogether like her doing so, just because it was out of fashion.
"What a delightful morning it is," she said. "Oh! do look at the bars of the railing."
"Yes, I see. The snow has stuck to them. But how can you look at such vulgar things as iron stanchions when you have such a fairy forest as that before you?" said the reader of Byron, who was not seldom crossed by a feeling of dismay at finding Lucy, as he thought, decidedly unpoetical. He wanted to train her in poetry, as, with shame let it flow from my pen, in religion.
"But just look here," insisted Lucy, drawing him closer to the fence. "You are short-sighted, surely, Thomas. Just look there."
"Well, I see nothing but snow on both sides of the paling-bars," returned Thomas.
"Now I am sure you are short-sighted. It is snow on the one side, but not on the other. Look at the lovely crystals."
On the eastern quarter of each upright bar the snow had accumulated and stuck fast to the depth of an inch: the wind had been easterly. The fall had ceased some hours before morning, and a strong frost had set in. That the moisture in the air should have settled frozen upon the iron would not have been surprising; what Lucy wondered at was, that there should be a growth, half an inch long, of slender crystals, like the fungous growth commonly called mold, only closer, standing out from the bar horizontally, as if they had grown through it, out of the soil of the snow exactly opposite to it on the other side. On the one side was a beaten mass of snow, on the other a fantastic little forest of ice.
"I do not care about such microscopic beauties," said Thomas, a little annoyed that she whom he thought unpoetical could find out something lovely sooner than he could; for he was of those in whom a phantasm of self-culture is one of the forms taken by their selfishness. They regard this culture in relation to others with an eye to superiority, and do not desire it purely for its own sake. "Those trees are much more to my mind, now."
"Ah, but I do not love the trees less. Come into the park, and then we can see them from all sides."
"The snow is too deep. There is no path there."
"I don't mind it. My boots are very thick."
"No, no; come along. We shall get to Madame Tussaud's before there are many people there. It will be so much nicer."
"I should like much better to stay here awhile," said Lucy, half vexed and a little offended.
But Thomas did not heed her. He led the way up Oxford Street. She had dropped his arm, and now walked by his side.
"A nice lover to have!" I think I hear some of my girl readers say. But he was not so bad as this always, or even gentle-tempered Lucy would have quarreled with him, if it had been only for the sake of getting rid of him. The weight of yesterday was upon him. And while they were walking up the street, as handsome and fresh a couple as you would find in all London, Mary was lying in her bed talking wildly about Thomas.
Alas for the loving thoughts of youth and maidens, that go out like the dove from the ark, and find no room on the face of the desired world to fold their wings and alight! Olive-leaves they will gather in plenty, even when they are destined never to build a nest in the branches of the olive tree. Let such be strong notwithstanding, even when there are no more olive-leaves to gather, for God will have mercy upon his youths and maidens, and they shall grow men and women. Let who can understand me.
Having thus left the beauties of nature behind them for the horrible mockery of art at Madame Tussaud's, Thomas became aware from Lucy's silence that he had not been behaving well to her. He therefore set about being more agreeable, and before they reached Baker Street she had his arm again, and they were talking and laughing gayly enough. Behind them, at some distance, trotted a small apparition which I must now describe.
It was a little girl, perhaps ten years old, looking as wild as any savage in Canadian forest. Her face was pretty, as far as could be judged through the dirt that variegated its surface. Her eyes were black and restless. Her dress was a frock, of what stuff it would have been impossible to determine, scarcely reaching below her knees, and rent upward into an irregular fringe of ribbons that frostily fanned her little legs as she followed the happy couple, in a pair of shoes much too large for her, and already worn into such holes as to afford more refuge for the snow than for her feet. Her little knees were very black, and oh! those poor legs, caked and streaked with dirt, and the delicate skin of them thickened and cracked with frost and east winds and neglect! They could carry her through the snow satisfactorily, however—with considerable suffering to themselves, no doubt. But Poppie was not bound to be miserable because Poppie's legs were anything but comfortable; there is no selfishness in not being sorry for one's own legs. Her hair, which might have been expected to be quite black, was mingled with a reddish tinge from exposure to the hot sun of the preceding summer. It hung in tangled locks about her, without protection of any sort. How strange the snow must have looked upon it! No doubt she had been out in the storm. Her face peeped out from among it with the wild innocence of a gentle and shy but brave little animal of the forest. Purposely she followed Lucy's red cloak. But this was not the first time she had followed her; like a lost pup, she would go after this one and that one—generally a lady—for a whole day from place to place, obedient to some hidden drawing of the heart. She had often seen Lucy start from Guild Court, and had followed her to the railway; and, at length, by watching first one station and then another, had found out where she went every morning. Knowing then that she could find her when she pleased, she did not follow her more than twice a week or so, sometimes not once—just as the appetite woke in her for a little of her society. But my reader must see more of her before he or she will be interested enough in her either to please me or to care to hear more about the habits of this little wild animal of the stone forest of London. She had never seen Lucy with a gentleman before. I wonder if she had ever in her little life walked side by side with anybody herself; she was always trotting behind. This was the little girl whom Miss Matilda Kitely, her father's princess, called Poppie, and patronized, although she was at least two years older than herself, as near as could be guessed. Nor had she any other name; for no one knew where she had come from, or who were her parents, and she herself cared as little about the matter as anybody.
The lovers were some distance ahead of Poppie, as they had been all the way, when they entered the passage leading to the wax works. The instant she lost sight of them so suddenly, Poppie started in pursuit, lost one of her great shoes, and, instead of turning to pick it up, kicked the other after it—no great loss—and scampered at full barefooted speed over the snow, which was here well trodden. They could hardly have more than disappeared at the further end when she arrived at the entrance.
Poppie never thought about might or might not, but only about could or could not. So the way being open, and she happening to have no mind that morning to part with her company before she was compelled, she darted in to see whether she could not get another peep of the couple. Not only was the red cloak a fountain of warmth to Poppie's imagination, but the two seemed so happy together that she felt in most desirable society.