Illustrations of political economy, Volume 9 (of 9)

Chapter I.

BUDGE-ROW AGAIN!

“Pray open the window, Morgan,” said Jane Farrer to the old servant who was assisting her to arrange for tea the room in which the family had dined.

“Perhaps you don’t know, Ma’am, what a cutting wind it is. More like December than March, Miss Jane; bitter enough to help on your rheumatism, my dear.”

And Morgan paused, with her hand on the sash. Miss Farrer chose that the room should be refreshed. She was aware that the scents from the shop were at all times strong enough for the nerves of any one unaccustomed to the atmosphere she lived in; and she did not wish that her brother Henry should have to encounter in addition those which the dinner had left behind. She tied a handkerchief over her head while the March wind blew in chilly, and Morgan applied herself to light the fire. When the dinner-table was set back against the wall, and the small Pembroke table brought forward, and the sofa, with its brown cotton cover, wheeled round, and the two candlesticks, with whole candles in them, placed in front of the tea-tray, Miss Farrer thought she would go up into Henry’s room, and see that all was right there, before she put off her black stuff apron, and turned down the cuffs of her gown, and took her seat beside the fire.

She tried to look at everything with the eyes she fancied her young brother would bring from the university. She, who had lived for five-and-thirty years in this very house, at the corner of Budge Row, among this very furniture, could not reasonably expect to view either the one or the other as it would appear to a youth of two-and-twenty, who had lived in a far different scene, and among such companions as Jane had no idea of. It was some vague notion of this improbability that made her linger about Henry’s little apartment, and wonder whether he would think she ought to have put up a stuff curtain before the window, and whether he had been accustomed to a bit of carpet, and whether the soap out of her father’s shop was such as he could use. Then came the odd mixture of feelings,—that her father’s youngest son ought not to dream of luxuries that his elder brother and sisters had not had,—and yet that Henry was a scholar and a gentleman, and therefore unavoidably held in awe by the family. When she reverted to the time, well remembered, when she upheld the little fellow, and coaxed him to set one tiny plump foot before the other, the idea of being now half afraid to receive him made her smile and then sigh, and hope that good might come of her father’s ambition to give a son of his a university education.

Before she had finished making herself as neat as usual, and rather more dressed, she heard, amidst all the noises that came in from the narrow bustling street, her own name called from the bottom of the stairs.

“I’m coming, father!—It never can be Henry yet. The postman’s bell is but just gone by, and the six o’clock cries are not all over; and there sound the chimes. It is full five minutes’ walk from Lad-lane, too. Perhaps there is something more to be done at the books: so I will carry down my apron.—Why, Morgan, it is well I did not throw you down stairs.”

Morgan’s face, entrenched in its mob cap, was just visible in the twilight, peeping into the room from the steep, narrow stair upon which the chamber-door directly opened. She came to say that her master wanted Miss Jane; that he was in a great hurry, and seemed to have some good news to tell.

Mr. Farrer was bustling about, apparently in a state of great happiness. His brown wig seemed to sit lightly on his crown; his shoes creaked very actively; his half whistle betokened a light heart, and he poked the fire as if he had forgotten how much coals were a bushel. He stretched out his arms when his daughter came down with a look of inquiry, and kissed her on either cheek, saying,

“I have news for thee, my dear. I say, Morgan, let us have plenty of buttered toast,—plenty and hot. Well, Jenny,—life is short enough to some folks. Of all people, who do you think are dead?”

Jane saw that it was nobody that she would be expected to grieve about. She had fallen enough into her father’s way of thinking to conjecture aright,—that some of the lot of lives with which her father and she were joined in a tontine annuity had failed.

“Poor souls! Yes: Jerry Hill and his brother,—both gone together of a fever, in the same house. Who would have thought it? Both younger lives than mine, by some years. I have no doubt they thought, many a time, that mine would be the first to fail. But this is a fine invention,—this way of purchasing annuities,—though I was against it at first, as being too much like a lottery for a sober man to venture upon. But, I say, Jane, I hope you are glad I made you invest your money in this way. You had a right to look to coming into their lives, sooner or later; but one would hardly have expected it in my time; though, somehow, I always had a notion it would turn out so.”

Jane’s colour had been much raised, from the first disclosure of the news. She now asked whether these were not the last lives of the lot, out of their own family;—whether her father’s, her brother Michael’s, and her own were not the only ones now left.

“To be sure they are! We have the whole thing to ourselves from this time. I think the minister will be for sending Michael and me to the wars, to have us killed off; though I hope, in that case, you would live on and on, and enjoy your own for many a year, to disappoint him. But, to be sure,” said the old man, checking his exultation as he saw his daughter look grave, “life is a very uncertain thing, as we may see by what has just happened.”

“I am sure it is the last thing I thought of,” observed Jane.

“Ay. It is a pretty yearly addition to us three;—two dropping together in this way: and, as I said, I hope you will enjoy it for many a year when I am dead and gone; as I am sure you deserve, for you have been a good daughter to me,—keeping the house as well as your mother did before you, and the books better than I could myself, leaving me free to attend to the shop. But, let us see. The room is half full of smoke still; and you will say that comes of my poking the fire. What have you got for Harry’s tea? The lad will want something solid, though he be a student. I remember his telling me last time that no folks are more hungry than those that have been a long while over their books.”

Jane moved about like one in a dream, till, the shop-boy’s heavy tread having been heard in the passage, Morgan put her head in at the parlour door to say that Michael and a gentleman with him might be seen from the shop-door to have turned the corner at the other end of the Row.

“’Tis a pity Patience can’t be here to-night, now really,” said the old man: “but she always manages to be confined just when we have a merry-making. ’Tis as perverse as her husband not choosing to buy a tontine annuity when he had the cash by him. He will find now he had better have done it. I wish I had thought of it in time to have made it a condition of his marrying Patience.—Well, Harry, lad! I hope you are come home hearty. What! You are not ashamed of your kin, though you have been seeing lords at every turn?”

“How well Jane looks!” was Henry’s first remark, after all the greetings were over. “She is not like the same person that she was the last time I came home.”

Henry was not the only one who saw a change in Jane, this evening. Her eyes shone in the light of the fire, and there was a timidity in her manner which seemed scarcely to belong to the sober age she had attained. Instead of making tea in the shortest and quietest way, as usual, she was hesitating and absent, and glanced towards Henry as often as her father and Michael joked, or the opening of the door let in a whiff of the scent of cheese and the et ceteras of a grocer’s establishment.

Mr. Farrer remarked that Henry would find London a somewhat busier place just now than he had been accustomed to. London had been all in a bustle since the King’s speech, so that there was no such thing as getting shop-boys back when they had been sent of an errand. What with the soldiers in the Parks, and the fuss upon the river when any news came, and the forces marching to embark, and the shows some of the emigrants made in the streets, there was enough to entice idle boys from their duty.

“Not only from their duty of coming home,” said Michael. “There was our Sam to-day,—’tis a fact,—left the shop while I was half a mile off, and the Taylors’ maid came in for half a pound of currants, and would have gone away again if Morgan had not chanced to pass the inside door and look over the blind at the moment. ’Tis a fact: and Sam had nothing to say but that he heard firing, and the newsmen’s horns blowing like mad, and he went to learn what it was all about.”

“I’ll teach him! I’ll make him remember it!” cried Mr. Farrer. “But we want another pair of eyes in the shop, sure enough. ’Tis not often that you and I want to be away at the same time; but——”

And the father and son talked over their shop plans, and prepared vengeance for Sam, while Henry told his sister what signs of public rejoicing he had seen this day on his journey;—flags on the steeples, processions of little boys, and evergreen boughs on the stage coaches. The war seemed a very amusing thing to the nation at present.

“Stocks are up to-day. The people are in high spirits.”

“When people are bent on being in high spirits, anything will do to make them so. We were in high spirits six years ago because a few bad taxes were taken off; and now we are merrier than ever under the necessity of laying on more.”

“Come, come, Hal,” said his father, “don’t grudge the people a taste of merriment while they can get it. You will see long faces enough when these new taxes come to be paid. I hope you are not so dead set against the minister as you used to be when younger; or so given to find fault with all that is done.”

“So far from being an enemy to the minister, father, I think it is very hard that the nation, or the part of them that makes itself heard by the minister, should be so fond of war as to encourage him to plunge us into it. These very people will not abuse him the less, in the long run, for getting the nation into debt.”

“Well, well. We won’t abuse the debt, and loans, and that sort of thing to-day,—eh, Jane!” And Mr. Farrer chuckled, and Michael laughed loudly.

“For my part,” continued the old man, “I think the debt is no bad thing for showing what sort of spirits the nation is in. You may depend upon it, Peek, and all other husbands who have wives apt to be high and low, would be very glad of such a thermometer to measure the ladies’ humour by. ’Tis just so, I take it, with Mr. Pitt and the nation. If he wants to know his mistress’s humour, he has only just to learn the state of the stocks.”

“Just the same case,” said Michael, laughing.

“Not quite,” said Henry. “Peek would rather do without such a thermometer, or barometer, if Patience must ruin herself to pay for it: much more, if she must leave it to her children to pay it after her. I should not have expected, father, to find you speaking up for war and the debt.”

“Why, as for war, it seems to make a pretty sort of bustle that rather brings people to the shop than keeps them away, and that will help us to pay our share of the new taxes, if we only keep to the shop, instead of fancying to be fine gentlemen. But I am of your mind about the minister. If the people are eager for war,—and full of hope—of—of——”

“Ah! of what? What is the best that can come of it?”

“O, every true Englishman hopes to win, you know. But if they will go headlong into war, they have no right to blame the minister, as if it was all his doing that they have to pay heavy taxes.”

“Yet he ought to know better than to judge of the people by a parliament that claps its hands the more the more burdens are laid on their children’s children. He ought to question their right to tax posterity in any such way. I cannot see how it is at all more just for us to make a war which our grandchildren must pay for, than for our allies to make a war which the English must pay for.”

“I am sure we are paying as fast as we can,” replied Mr. Farrer. “It has kept me awake more nights than one, I can tell you,—the thinking what will come of these new taxes on many things that we sell. As for the debt, it has got so high, it can get little higher; that is one comfort. To think that in my father’s young days, it was under seven hundred thousand pounds; and now, in my day, it is near three hundred millions!”

“What makes you so sure it will soon stop, father?”

“That it can’t go on without ruining the nation, son. I suppose you don’t think any minister on earth would do that. No, no. Three hundred millions is debt enough, in all conscience, for any nation. No minister will venture beyond that.”

“Not unless the people choose. And I, for one, will do all in my power to prevent its proceeding further.”

“And pray how?”

“That depends on what your plans are for me, sir.”

“True enough. Well, eat away now, and let us see whether book-learning spoils buttered toast. Come, tell us what you think of us, after all the fine folks you have been amongst.”

Jane was astonished that her father could speak in this way to the gentleman in black, who, however simple in his manners, and accommodating in his conversation, was quite unlike every other person present in his quiet tone, and gentle way of talking. She could not have asked him what he thought of the place and the party.

Henry replied that he was, as he had said, much struck by his sister’s looking so well; and as for Morgan, she was not a day older since the time when he used to run away with her Welsh beaver——

“And make yourself look like a girl, with your puny pale face,” interrupted Michael.

“Well, but, the place,—how does the old house look?” persisted Mr. Farrer. “You used to be fond of prying through that green curtain to see the folks go in and out of the shop; and then you raised mustard and cress at the back window; and you used to whistle up and down stairs to your attic till your poor mother could bear it no longer. The old place looks just as it did to you, I dare say?”

Henry could say no more than that he remembered all these things. By recalling many others, he hoped to divert the course of investigation; but his father insisted on his saying that the dingy, confined, shabby rooms looked to the grown wise man the very same as to the thoughtless child who had seen no other house. It was as impossible for Henry to say this as to believe still, as he once did, that his father was the wisest man in the world; and Mr. Farrer was disconcerted accordingly. He thought within himself that this was a poor reward for all that he had spent on his son Harry, and pushed away his cup with the spoon in it when it had been filled only four times.

“Are you tired, Jane?” asked Henry, setting down his tin candlestick with its tall thin candle, when his father had done bidding him be careful not to set the house on fire, and Michael was gone to see that all was safe in the shop. Jane was quite disposed for more conversation; and would indeed have been darning stockings for at least another hour if Henry had gone to sleep at ten, like his brother. She brought out her knitting, carefully piled the embers, extinguished one candle, and was ready to hear Henry’s questions and remarks, and to offer some of her own. She could not return the compliment she had received as to her looks. She thought Harry was thin, and nearly as pale as in the old days when his nankeen frock and drab beaver matched his complexion.

Henry had been studying hard; and he acknowledged that his mind had been anxious of late. It was so strange that nothing had been said to him respecting his destination in life, that he could not help speculating on the future more than was quite good for health and spirits. Could Jane give him any idea what his father’s intentions were?

Henry now looked so boyish, with feet on fender, and fingers busy with an unemployed knitting-needle, that Jane’s ancient familiarity began to return. She hoped there were no matrimonial thoughts at the bottom of Henry’s anxiety about the future.

“Must no man be anxious about his duties and his prospects till he thinks of marrying, Jane? But why have you hopes and fears about it?”

“Because I am sure my father will not hear of such a thing as your marrying. You know how steady he is when he once makes up his mind.”

Henry glanced up in his sister’s face, and away again when he saw that she met his eye. She continued,

“I am not speaking of my own case in particular; but he has expressed his will to Michael, very plainly, and told him what sort of connexion he must make if he marries at all. And Michael has in consequence given up all talk of marriage with a young woman he had promised himself to.”

“Given up the connexion! A grown man like Michael give up the woman he had engaged himself to, at another man’s bidding! How can he sit laughing as he did to-night?”

“I did not say he had given up the connexion,” replied Jane, very quietly; “but he has given up all talk of marriage. So you see——”

“I see I shall have nothing to say to my father on this part of the subject of settling in life. But you, Jane,—what are you doing and thinking of? My father knows that he is on safer ground with you than he can be with his sons. How is it with you, sister?”

“What you say is very true. If he chooses to speak for his daughter, keeping her in the dark all the while, what can she do but make herself content to be in the dark, and turn her mind upon something else? If mine is too full of one object or another, I hope God will be merciful with me, since I have been under another’s bidding all my days.”

“It is hard—very hard.”

“It is hard that others,—that Morgan, and I dare say Michael, should know more of what has been said and written in my name than I do myself. Yes, Morgan. It is from her that I know——”

“About Peek? That he wanted you before he thought of Patience?”

“Not only that. Patience is welcome to her lot,—though I do not see what need have prevented her taking my place at the books, if my father had not made up his mind to keep me by him. But that is nothing in comparison with—some other things that have been done in my name; the treating a friend as if he were an impostor, and I a royal princess; while, all the time, I had no such proud thoughts myself, God knows.”

“How came Morgan to tell you anything about it?” cried Henry, eager to find some one on whom to vent the indignation that he was unwilling to express in relation to his father.

“Morgan was made a friend of by that person; and she is the kindest friend I have, you may believe it, Henry. She would have upheld me in anything I might have chosen to do or to say. But I was doubtful whether it was not too late then; and altogether I fancy it was best to get on as I did for a time. And now I am settled to my lot, you see, and grown into it. I am fully satisfied now with my way of life; and it is not likely to change.”

“Do you mean that you expect to keep the books, and be a thrifty housewife, as long as you live? If it was necessary, well and good. But my father must be enormously rich.”

Jane shook her head as she carefully mended the fire, and observed that the times were such as to alarm the wealthiest. While her brother made inquiries about the business, and her share of profit for her toils, she answered with her habitual caution, and made no communication about the increased income which the three members of the family would receive in consequence of the deaths of which she had this afternoon heard.heard.

“So you have no idea,” said Henry, “how long I am to remain here, and what I am to do next?”

“Ah! indeed I am afraid you will hardly know what to do with your days here, Henry. I have been thinking what can be managed as to that. You see we have no books but the one shelf-full that you have read many times already. And we have no friends; and we dine so early; and the house itself, I am afraid, is the kind of thing you have been little used to. You may speak out to me more than you liked to do to my father.”

Henry was looking about him with a half smile, and owned that the slanting glass between the windows did not appear quite so grand a mirror as when he looked up into it fearfully, in his childhood, wondering by what magic the straight floor could be made to look so like a very steep carpeted hill. He then thought that no entertainment could be grander than the new year’s eve, when Mr. Jerry Hill and his brother used to come to drink punch, and were kind enough to take each a boy between his knees. But now, it seemed as if there would be barely room for Mr. Jerry Hill and his brother to turn themselves round in this very same parlour.

They would never spend another new year’s eve here! They were dead! How? When? Where? The news only arrived this day! and his father and Michael so merry! Henry could not understand this.

“But, Jane, do not trouble your head about what amusement I am to find at home. If it comes to that, I can sit in my old place in the window-seat and read, let the carts clatter and the sashes rattle as they may. What I want to know is how I am to employ myself. I shall not live idly, as you may suppose. I will not accept of food and clothes, to be led about for a show as my father’s learned son that was bred up at the university.”

“Certainly not,” said Jane, uneasily. “Perhaps in two or three days something may turn up to settle the matter. I dare say you had rather go back to college than do anything else?”

No. Henry now fell into praises of the life of a country clergyman, living in just such a parsonage as he saw at Allansford, when he was staying there with his friend, John Stephens.

“Are there any ladies at Mr. Stephens’s?” inquired Jane.

“Mrs. Stephens and her daughter, and a friend of Miss Stephens’s. Ah! that is just the kind of settlement that I should like; and how easily my father might, if he would—But, as you say, a few days will show; and I will have patience till then. I cannot conceive what made him send for me, unless he has something in view.”

Jane knitted in silence.

“Will you go with me to-morrow morning, Jane, to see poor Patience?”

Jane could not be spared in the mornings; but she could step over before dark in the evening, and should be glad to introduce to Henry some of his new nephews and nieces; there having been two brace of twins since Harry had crossed the threshold. Harry thought Peek was a very dutiful king’s man. He not only raised taxes wherewith to carry on the king’s wars, but reared men to fight in them.

“Why, Morgan,” said he, “I thought you had gone to bed without bestowing a word on me. Cannot you sit down with us for five minutes?”

Morgan set down the little tray with hot water and a bottle of home-made wine, which she had brought unbidden and half fearfully. She was relieved by seeing her mistress bring out the sugar and glasses cheerfully from the cupboard, and invite her brother to help himself. He did so when he had filled a glass for Morgan.

When the candlewicks had grown long, and the fire had fallen low, so prodigious a knocking was heard overhead as nearly prevented Morgan from carrying her last mouthful straight to its destination. Mr. Farrer had heard their voices on waking from his first sleep, and had no idea of thoughtless young people wasting his coals and candles in such an idle way,—as if they could not talk by day-light! The glasses were deposited so carefully as to make no jingle; the slender candles were once more lighted, and Henry found time just to assure his sister, in a whisper, that he had not seen a truer lady than Morgan since they had last parted. He picked out one favourite volume from the single row of books, to carry to his chamber; shook hands with his sister, and edged his way up the narrow stairs. As he found that the room seemed made to forbid all reading, unless it were in bed, he left his book unopened till the morning. It was the first volume of poetry that he had ever studied; but as the window-curtain was puffed to and fro, and a cutting draught entered under the door, and the whole room was divided between the two, he put out his flaring candle, and lay thinking poetry instead of reading it, while the gleams on the ceiling, and the drowsy sounds from below, called up visions of his childhood, which at last insensibly mingled with those of sleep.

Morgan need not have exercised her old office of calling Henry the next morning. Her knock was heard at the accustomed hour; but Henry had been wakened long before by horns, bells, cries, and rumbling, which seemed to proceed from “above, about, and underneath,” and which made him wonder how, in his childhood, he could find it as difficult to open his eyes when told that the day was come, as to be persuaded to go to bed when he had laid hold of a new book. A certain childish question of Henry’s was held in mirthful remembrance by his family, and brought up by his father every time that he showed his face at home,—“Why must one go to bed? One no sooner goes to bed than one has to get up again.” Such a happy oblivion of the many intervening hours was no longer found practicable in the little apartment that shook with every passing waggon; and how it could ever have been attained was at least as great a mystery now as the perpetual motion. “Well, Harry,” said his father, “what a pity you should have troubled yourself to pull off your clothes, as you had to put them on again directly! Hey? But I thought you were of the same mind last night, by the time you sat up. What kept you up so late?”

“We had a great deal to say, father, after such a long absence. Jane had but little time for writing letters, you know, while I was away.”

“I think you might have your talk by daylight. What are you going to do with yourself to-day?”

There was no lack of something to do this first day. First, there was seeing the shop,—being shown the new contrivance for obtaining half a foot more room behind the counter, and the better plan for securing the till, and the evidence of Michael’s pretty taste in the shape of a yellow lamb of spun butter, with two currants for eyes, and a fine curly fleece, which might keep its beauty a whole fortnight longer, if this seasonable March weather should last. Opposite to the lamb was a tower of Babel, of cheese, which had been crumbling for some time. But, though the tower was infested with mice, it was the general opinion that it would outlast the lamb. Then, while Jane settled herself, aproned, shawled, and mittened, at her desk, there was a long story to be told,—a story really interesting to Henry,—of the perplexities which had been introduced into the trade by the fluctuations of the duties on various articles. When tobacco was sometimes to pay a tax of 350 per cent., and then no more than 200, and then, on a sudden, 1200, how should custom be regular, and the trader know what to expect? A man must be as wise as a Scripture prophet to know what stock to lay in when there was no depending on custom. People would use twice as much tobacco one year as another; and a third more sugar; and a fourth more tea; or would drop one article after another in a way that no mortal could foretell.

Why not foretell? Was it not certain that when a tax on an article of consumption was increased, the consumption fell off in a definite proportion?

Quite certain; but then came in another sort of disturbance. When duties rose very high, smuggling was the next thing; and there was no calculating how smuggling might keep up the demand.

“Nor what new taxes it may lead to,” observed Henry. “If the consumption of taxed articles falls off, the revenue suffers; and if, at the same time, smuggling increases, new expenses are incurred for guarding the coast. The people must pay both for the one and the other; and so, the next thing is to lay on new taxes.”

“Ah!” groaned the old man. “They begin to talk of an income tax.”

Whatever Henry’s opinion of an income tax might be, he was aware that few inflictions could be so dreadful to his father. Mr. Farrer, possessed, it was supposed, of nearly half a million, managed to pay less in taxes than most of his neighbours who happened to have eight hundred a year, and spent it. Mr. Farrer eschewed luxuries, except a few of the most unexpensive; he was sparing of comforts, and got off paying more to the state than any other man who must have common food, clothing, and house-room. His contributions must be prodigiously increased if he was to be made to pay in proportion to his income. It was a subject on which none of his family dared to speak, even on this morrow of a piece of good fortune. The most moderate income tax would sweep away more than the addition gained by the dropping of the two lives in the joint annuity.

“They had better mend their old ways than try new,” said Michael. “If they knew how, they might get more by every tax than it has yielded yet. Peek says so. He says there is not a taxed article eaten or drunk, or used, that would not yield more if the tax was lowered; and Peek ought to know.”

“And you ought to know, Mike, that you are the last man that should wish for such a change,” said his father, with a sly wink. Michael’s laugh made his brother uneasy; he scarcely knew why.

“It is a great wrong, I think,” said Henry, “to keep the poorer classes from the use of comforts and luxuries that they might have, if the state managed its plan of taxation better.”

“Well, and so it is, Henry; and I often say so when I see a poor man come for his tobacco, and grumble at the price, and threaten it shall be the last time; and a poor woman cheapen her ounce of tea, and taste the butter and smell at the cheese, and go away without buying any of them. As long as good management would serve to satisfy such poor creatures as these, without bringing an income tax upon their betters, it is a shame there is no such management.”

“How much more would be consumed in your family, sir, if taxes on commodities were lowered as you would have them?”

“O, as for us, we have every thing we want, as far as I know. There might be little or no difference in our own family; but I know there would be among our customers. Shopkeepers would wonder where all the crowd of buyers came from.”

“And the smugglers might turn tax-gatherers, hey, father?”

“And there need be no more talk of an income tax,” said the old man; “let the French brazen their matters out as they will.”

Henry was not very sure of this, in his own mind. It seemed to him that the more support the state derived from taxes on commodities, the more clearly the people would see the injustice of levying the taxes upon those who were compelled to spend their whole income in the purchase of commodities, while the rich, who chose to live very frugally and hoard, might escape the payment of their due share. A customer now came in; and then the cheese-cellar had to be visited; and then Mr. Farrer wanted Henry to go with him to two or three neighbours’ houses, where there was a due admiration of the blessings of a learned education on the one side, and on the other a prodigious self-complacency about the liberality, and the generosity, and the wisdom, and the glory of making one member of the family a great man, who should do honour to his kith and kin.

The evening was spent at Mrs. Peek’s. Mrs. Peek was able to receive her family at home, though she had not yet left the house since her confinement. She was proud of having a brother who had been at college, though no one grumbled more at the expense than she did by her own fireside. She was unwilling to lose this opportunity of showing him off to some neighbours; and when the party from Budge Row entered Peek’s house, at five o’clock, they perceived several shawls and calashes on the window-seat in the passage which was called the hall. One of Mr. Farrer’s candles was flaring in this passage, and two in the waiting-room, as the children’s play-place was called, and six in the parlour, it being Mrs. Peek’s wish to have every thing smart for the reception of her genteel brother. The ample sofa and two arm-chairs were ranged on one side, and four chairs on the other. When the door was thrown open, the party in the ante-room saw two young ladies take flight from the sofa across the room; and by the time that all had entered the parlour, five maidens were wedged in a close rank, in front of the three chairs which were next Mrs. Peek’s.

They stood looking shy during the introduction, and were made more awkward still by the old gentleman insisting, as he settled himself by the fire, that one of those young ladies should come and sit on the sofa beside him. None of them stirred.

“Miss Mills, suppose you take a seat on the sofa,” observed Mrs. Peek.

“No, thank you, ma’am,” said Miss Mills.

“Miss Anne Mills, won’t you take a seat on the sofa?”

“No, ma’am, thank you.”

“Then, Miss Baker, or Miss Grace——. My fourth girl, Grace, is called after that young lady, Henry;—(Grace Baker is a great favourite of ours). Grace, my dear, you will sit on the sofa, I am sure. What! none of you!” (seeing the five edge themselves down on the three chairs.) “Dear me! and there’s so much room on the other side! I believe I must go to the sofa, and then Henry will take my seat.”

Miss Mills looked disposed to fly back again to the sofa when Henry took his seat beside her, as directed. She twisted the tips of her gloves, looked down, said “Yes, sir,” and “No, sir,” to all he observed, and soon found she must go and ask Mrs. Peek after the dear little baby. At this unexpected movement, two out of the remaining four halfstarted from their chair, but settled themselves again with a muttered, “Now, how——!” and then the next began to twist her gloves and look down, leaving, however, full a third of a chair between herself and the scholar.

Nothing could be done till Mr. Peek came in, further than to tell Henry which of the young ladies could play and which could draw. Henry could only hope to hear them play, and to see their drawings; upon which Mrs. Peek was sorry that her piano was put away in a room up stairs till her girls should be qualified to use it; but she rang for a servant, who was desired to tell master Harry to step across for Miss Mills’ sketch-book, and Master Michael to run to Mr. Baker’s for Miss Grace Baker’s portfolio.

“The blue portfolio, ma’am,” Miss Baker leaned forward to say on her sister’s behalf.

“O! the blue portfolio, tell Master Michael.”

Mr. Peek came in, at length, rubbing his hands, and apologizing for having kept the ladies waiting for their tea; but it was the privilege of such a business as his to take, in some measure, his own times and seasons for doing things; and this afternoon he had been paying one of his official visits where he was least expected.

When Jane had stationed herself at the tea-table, with a Miss Mills to aid her, and Peek had ordered one little table to be brought for himself and another for his father-in-law, he addressed his conversation chiefly to the latter, observing that the young scholar’s part was to entertain the young ladies.

“You know the Browns,—the way they behaved to my wife and me about our nursemaid that they tempted away?” said Peek to Mr. Farrer.

“O yes; I hope you have served them out.”

“That I have, pretty well! They should have taken care what they were about in offending me. I can always make out what are their busy days, and then I pop in, and there is no end of the stock-taking I make them go through. What with measuring the canisters, and weighing, and peeping, and prying, I keep them at it a pretty time; and that is what I have been about this afternoon.”

“Can’t you catch them with a pound of smuggled stuff?”

“Not an ounce. They know I would if I could; and that makes them take care and look sharp. What did you think of the last rummer of toddy you got here?”

“Capital! Had Brown anything to do with that?”

“Not he; but you shall have another to-night, since you liked the last so much; and Mr. Henry too, if he likes. But I suppose he will be too busy playing commerce with the ladies? That fine spirit was one of the good things that one gets by being gentle in one’s vocation, as I tell Patience when she is cross; and then I hold back some nice present that I was thinking of giving her.”

“Aye, aye. A little convenient blindness, I suppose, you find your account in sometimes; and who finds it out, among all the multitude of articles that pay taxes? Yes, yes, that is one of the understood things in the business; as our men of your tribe give us to understand.”

“I hope you find them accommodating, sir?”

“Yes; now we know how to manage them. And they are wonderfully kind to Mike, considering all things.”

Mike assented, with one of his loud laughs.

Henry was listening to all this not the less for his civility in handing tea, and amusing his next neighbour. By taking in all that passed now and when he was seated at cards, after Mrs. Peek had made her excuses and withdrawn, he learned more than he had known before of the facilities afforded to the collector of taxes on commodities, of oppressing the humble, and teasing the proud, and sheltering the shabby, and aiding the fraudulent. He felt that he would rather be a street-sweep than such an exciseman as Peek. At best, the office was a most hateful one.

He grew less and less able to give good counsel at cards, and to admire figures and landscapes, the louder grew Michael’s mirth, and the more humorous Peek’s stories of how he treated his victims, the small tradesmen. He would not touch the spirit and water so strongly recommended, but bore rallying on preferring the more lady-like refreshment of negus and sweet cake. He roused himself to do what was proper in shawling Miss Grace Baker; but it was feared by his family that the young ladies would not be able to give so enthusiastic an account of him at home as might have been, if he had done himself justice. It was a great pity!

“What a clever fellow Peek is; he is made for his business! Eh, Harry?” observed Mr. Farrer, as they turned homewards, after having deposited the Misses Mills.

“He is made for his business as you say, father. What a cold night it is!”

“Well; I hoped you caught a bit of what Peek was saying; I thought it would entertain you. We’ll have him some evening soon; and then I’ll make him tell some stories as good as any you heard to-night, only not so new. Do you hear, Jenny; mind you fix Peek and Patience for the first afternoon they can name next week, and we will have them all to ourselves. Come, Mike, ring again. It is gone ten. I warrant Morgan and Sam are nodding at one another on each side the fire. Give it them well.”

Day after day was filled up in somewhat a similar manner, nothing being said of the purpose for which Henry was brought home, or of his future destination. He soon became more reconciled than at first to his strange position, not only from becoming familiarized with it, but because London was astir with rumours of strange events abroad, and with speculations on what curious chapters in the history of nations were about to be presented for men’s reading. Mr. Farrer made no objection to his son’s disappearance during the greater part of the day, as he was sure of bringing home all the news at the end of it. Sometimes he fell in with a procession going to plant the tree of liberty on Kennington Common; sometimes he had interesting tales to tell of the misfortunes of the emigrants, whom his father ceased for the time to compare to locusts devouring the fruits of the land, or to the wasps that swarmed among his sugars in summer. Henry could bring the latest tidings of the progress of the riots in the country on account of the high price of food, and of certain trials for sedition in which his heart seemed to be deeply engaged, though he let his father rail on at the traitors who encouraged the people to think that governments could do wrong. Henry saw all the reviews, and heard of all the embarkations of soldiers, and could tell how many new clerks were taken on at the Bank, and what a demand there was for servants at the government offices, and what spirits every body was in at Portsmouth and Birmingham, while no one knew what was to be done with the poor wretches who tried an ineffectual riot in the manufacturing districts from time to time. All this passed with Mr. Farrer for a very natural love of news, and was approved in as far as it enabled him to say to his superior customers, “My son who was at the University hears this,” or says that, or knows the other. But Jane saw that Henry the student was not interested in these vast movements of humanity as a mere amusement to pass the time. Not in pursuit of mere amusement was he often without food from breakfast-time till he returned by lamp-light. Not in pursuit of mere amusement was he sometimes content to be wet through twice in a day; sometimes feverish with excitement, and sometimes so silent that she left him unquestioned to the deep emotions that were stirring within. She occasionally wondered whether he had any thoughts of entering the army. If he was really anxious to be doing something, this seemed a ready means; yet she had some suspicion that his patriotism was not of a kind to show itself in that way; and that if he fought at all, it would not be to avenge the late French King. However it might be, Jane felt her affection for this brother grow with her awe of his mysterious powers and tastes. She listened for his step when he was absent; intimated her dissent from any passing censure upon him uttered by his father; saw that dry shoes were always ready for him when he came in; received gratefully all that he had to tell her, and asked no questions. She struggled with all the might that was to prove at last too feeble a barrier to a devastating passion, against the daily thoughts of food eaten and clothes worn by one who was earning nothing; satisfied herself that though Henry was no longer enjoying the advantages of college, he was living more cheaply than he could do there; and trusted, on the whole, that this way of life might continue some time.

One morning, Michael’s cup of tea having stood till it was cold, the discovery was made that Michael was not at home. Mr. Farrer dropped, with apparent carelessness, the news that he would not return for two or three days; and when Jane had helped herself to the cold tea, in order that it might not be wasted, nobody seemed to think more of the matter.

Half an hour after breakfast, before Henry had closed a certain pocket volume in Greek which he had been observed to read in at all odd times, Mr. Farrer put his head in at the parlour-door, with

“I say, Harry, we are very busy in the shop to-day, and Mike away.”

“Indeed, sir! Shall I go out and find somebody to help you?”

“Very pretty! And you sitting here with nothing to do! Come yourself; I will help you to find Mike’s apron.”

Henry first laughed, and then, after an instant’s hesitation, pocketed his book, and followed his father. While he was somewhat awkwardly tying on his apron, his sister saw him through the tiny window which gave her, in her retirement a view of the shop; and she called out to know what he was doing.

“I am going to try to cut bacon and weigh butter as well as Michael.”

“Is it your own fancy?”

“My father put it into my head; but it is my own will to do it till Michael comes back.”

There was no more to be said; but Jane reddened all over; and when she saw the first customer come in, and Mr. Farrer stand over Henry to see him guess at the weight of soap required, Jane lost all power of casting up the column of figures over which her pen was suspended.

It was told in many a neighbour’s house that day that there was a new shopman at Farrer’s, who was dead-slow at tying up parcels, and hacked sadly at the cheese, as if he did not know an ounce from a pound at sight. Henry was not aware how far he was from being worthy to rival Michael. It requires some practice to achieve the peculiar twirl and jerk with which an adroit shopman ties up and delivers a parcel to a fair dealer; and Henry knew nothing yet of the art of joking with the maidens and coaxing the matrons among his customers.

When weary, sick, and inwardly troubled to a degree for which he could scarcely account, he came in from seeing that the shutters were properly closed, and from purifying himself from the defilements of the counter, his father hailed him with,

“Well done, Harry! You will do very well soon, and make up for the cheese you have crumbled to-day. You will manage not to spill so much sugar to-morrow, perhaps. And by the end of the year, we shall see what sort of a younger partner’s share we can afford you.”

“You do not mean that I am to spend a whole year as I have spent to-day, father?”

“Indeed but I do, though; and as many more years as you have to live. My father made his fortune in this same business, and I mean my sons to do the same.”

Henry answered by handing his father the candle to light his pipe.

“I say, Harry,” the old man resumed, after a long silence, “you go into the shop to-morrow morning.”

“Certainly; till Michael comes back; if, as you said this morning, he returns before the end of the week.”

“And after he comes back. He will put you in the way better than I can, you’ll find.”

“After he comes back, I hope to find means of using the education you have given me, father. It would be all lost if I were to be a grocer.”

Mr. Farrer could see nothing but loss in following any other occupation, and ingratitude in hesitating to accept a provision which would enable Henry to become, like his brother and sisters, a public creditor on very advantageous terms. He let his son more into the secret of his wealth than he had ever done before; and when he found this confidence of no avail to his purpose, was vexed at his communicativeness, grew very angry, threw down his pipe, and ordered the family to bed.

The next day, and the next, all went on so smoothly in the shop that each party hoped the other had relented. On the Friday evening, Michael returned, in high spirits, his talk savouring of the sea as his clothes did of tobacco. On Saturday morning, Henry was missing in his turn. Morgan appeared with red eyes to say that he had gone out with his blue bag very early, and had left the letter she now delivered to her master.

This letter was read, crumpled up and thrown under the grate in silence. Jane afterwards took possession of it; and found that Henry valued his education too highly not to make the best use he could of it; that he was quite of his father’s opinion that it was a sin to remain at home in idleness; that he would therefore endeavour to obtain immediate employment and independence; that he would come and see his father as soon as he had anything to communicate, and should be always on the watch to repay by any duty and attention in his power the obligation he was under for the advantages he had enjoyed.

Morgan had no intelligence to give of where Henry was gone. He had left his love for his sister, and an assurance that he would see her soon and often. Morgan trusted she might take his word for his not feeling himself “put upon” or ill-regarded in the family. He had assured her that his feelings for them were as kind as ever, as he hoped to show, if occasion should arise. Might she believe this?

Jane trusted that she might;—would not let his chamber be disarranged just at present; and went to her place of business to start at every black coat that passed the window.

Chapter III.

DEATH-CHAMBER SOOTHINGS.

Mr. Farrer seemed to be somewhat surprised to see that Henry’s coat was still black and still glossy when he called, as he promised, to see his family. A vague image of a tattered shirt, a wallet and mouldy crusts, had floated before the old man’s mind as often as he prophesied that Harry would come begging to his father’s door; whereas Henry seemed to have nothing to complain of, did not ask for anything to eat, never mentioned money, and looked very cheerful. It was impossible to pronounce him paler than usual; and, what was more surprising, he made no mysteries, but told all that he was asked to tell. Nobody inquired whether he was married, and none but Jane desired to know where he lived. But the circumstance of his having obtained employment that would suffice for the present was related; and he endeavoured to explain to his father the nature of the literary occupations in which he was engaged; but when he had once acknowledged that they did not bring him in so much per week as his brother’s labours afforded, Mr. Farrer did not desire to hear anything more.

“Jane, you will come and see me?” said Henry, when they were alone.

“My father says you had better come here.”

“Well, so I shall; but you will look in upon me some day? I have something to show you.”

“Perhaps you can bring it here. My father——”

“Oh, he forbids your visiting me. Yes, I shall certainly come here, and soon. Do you know, Jane, I think my father looks ill.”

“He is harassed about business just now;—not about the part you have taken; for he said yesterday that people are better out of business in such times.”

“What is the matter? Does his custom fall off?”

“Very much; and his profits are less and less. Everything is so taxed,—everything that the common people must have,—(and they are the customers that signify most, from their number)—that they go without tea and sugar, and save in soap and candles more than you would suppose; and besides, all this dearness makes wages rise every where; and we feel that directly in the fall of our profits. If things get much worse, we shall soon be laying by nothing. It will be as much as we can do to make the year’s gains answer the year’s expenses.”

“That will be a very bad thing if it comes to be the case of the whole nation, Jane: but I do not think that my father and you need mind it,—so much as you have both accumulated. It is a bad state of things, however. Have you seen Dr. Say about my father?”

“Why, no. I think that he would be alarmed at my mentioning such a thing; and as I know his ailments to be from an uneasy mind——However, I will watch him, and if he does not get better——But he looks particularly ill to-day.”

“He does indeed.”

Morgan was waiting near the door when Henry went out.

“I take shame, Mr. Henry, my dear,” said she, “that I did not half believe you in what you said, the morning you went away, about coming again, and going to be happy.”

“Well, Morgan, you believe me now?”

“Yes, my dear, I do; and I feel, by your looks, that there is some great reason behind. Do you know, I should say, if it was not a strange thing to say, Mr. Henry,—I should say you were married.”

“That is a strange guess, Morgan. Suppose you come, some day, and see; and, if you bring Jane with you, so much the better.”

“Ah! my dear, it would be a wholesome change for her, so much as she goes through with my master. You may believe me I hear her half the night, stealing about to watch his sleep, when by chance he gets any quiet sleep; and at other times comforting him.”

“Do you mean that he suffers much?”

“In mind, Mr. Henry. What can they expect whom God permits to be deluded about what they should seek? Be sure you take care, Sir, to provide for your own household; but I hope never to hear you tossing in your bed because of the doubt whether you will have three times or only twice as much gold as you can use.”

“Treat him tenderly, Morgan; and send for me whenever you think I can be of any use.”

“My dear, there is not a sick child crying for its broken toy that I would treat so tenderly as your father,—even if I had not Miss Jane before me for a pattern. I will send for you, I promise you; but it is little that any of us can do when it comes to be a matter of serious illness. We brought neither gold nor friends into this world, and ’tis certain we cannot carry them out; but what you can do for your father, you shall be called to do, Sir. However, as Michael says, if there comes a flow of custom to make his mind easy, he may be as well as ever.”

No such flow of custom came, and various circumstances concurred to lower Mr. Farrer’s spirits, and therefore aggravate his disease. Within the next eight months, nearly a thousand bankruptcies bore testimony to the grievous nature of the burdens under which trade was suffering. Rumours of the approaching downfall of church and state were circulated with sufficient emphasis to shake the nerves of a sick man who had very little notion of a dependence on anything but church and state. Besides this, he did not see that it was now possible for him to be well against New Year’s Eve,—the festival occasion of those whose lives had afforded a subject of mutual money-speculation; and if he could not be well on this anniversary, he was convinced he should be dead. Every time that Henry went, he thought worse of his father’s case, however flattering might be the physician’s reports and assurances. There was no thought of removing him; for the first attempt would have been the death of him. Where he was born and bred, there he must die; and the best kindness was to wrap him in his great-coat, and let him sit behind the counter, ordering, and chatting, and weighing pennyworths, and finding fault with every body, from Mr. Pitt down to Sam the shop-boy.

The last morning of the year broke bright and cheery. When Morgan issued from the shop, dressed in her red cloak and round beaver over a mob-cap,—the Welsh costume which she continued to wear,—the copper sun showed himself behind the opposite chimney, and glistened on the candies in the window and the icicles which hung from the outside cornice. Many a cheery sound was in the frosty air,—the laughter of children sliding in the Row, the newsman’s call, the clatter of horses’ feet over the slippery pavement, and the jangle of cans at the stall where hot coffee was sold at the street-corner. All this was strange to the eyes and ears of Morgan, not only from her being unaccustomed to walk abroad, but from its contrast with the scene she had just left.

When she had quitted Mr. Farrer’s sick chamber, the red daylight had begun to glimmer through the green stuff window curtain, giving a signal to have done with the yellow candlelight, and to speak some words of cheer to the patient on the coming of a new day. Mr. Farrer had looked dreadfully ill in the flickering gleam of the fire, as he sat in the arm-chair from which his oppressed breathing forbade him to move; but in the daylight he looked absolutely ghastly, and Morgan felt that no time was to be lost in summoning Henry, under pretence of purchasing a gallon of wine.

Her master had called her back to forbid her buying wine while there was so much in the house; but she was gone beyond the reach of his feeble voice, and the other persons who were in the room were for the wine being bought. Dr. Say, an apothecary who passed very well for a physician in this neighbourhood, declared that home-made raisin wine was by no means likely to agree with the patient, or support his strength; and Peek, the son-in-law, reminded the old gentleman that the cost of the wine would come out of his estate, as it was little likely that he would live to pay the bill.

“You yourself said,” uttered the old man in the intervals of his pantings, “you said, only last week, that few drink foreign wine that spend less than their six hundred a-year. I don’t spend six hundred a-year; and Jane’s raisin wine might serve my turn.”

“That was in talking about the taxes,—the tax that doubles the cost of wine. I don’t see why people of three hundred a-year should not drink as much as those that spend six, if the cost of wine was but half what it is; especially if they be sick and dying.—And a fine thing it would be for the wine trade, seeing that there are many more people who spend three hundred a-year than six. So both the makers and the drinkers have reason to be vexed that for every gallon of wine that ought to cost five shillings, they have to pay ten.”

“Now, Mr. Peek, do not make my father discontented with his wine before he tastes it,” said Jane, observing the shade that came over the old man’s face at the mention of the price.

“O, that need not be. He must have had wine for to-night, you know, if he had been well, and brandy into the bargain, if Jerry Hill and his brother had been alive.—But, sir, if you find fault with the wine-duty, what would you have? There is no help for it but an income tax, and you don’t like that, you tell me.—Dear me, Dr. Say, look how white he turns, and how his teeth chatter. He is failing very fast, poor soul!”

“Confound the income tax! The very talk of it has been the death of me,” Mr. Farrer had still strength to say.

“Mr. Peek, I wish you would leave off talking about such things,” said Jane. “Do not you see that my father cannot bear it?”

“Why, dear me, Jane, don’t you know that there is nothing he is so fond of talking about as that that he and I know most about? Why, he is never tired of asking me about what I meet with in the way of my business!”

“Well! tell him stories to amuse him, if you like; but don’t threaten him with the income tax any more.”

“With all my heart. He shall carry none but pleasant ideas to his grave for me.—I say, sir, I should think you must sell a good many more candles since the duty came off, don’t you?—Ah! I find the difference in some of the poorer houses I go into. A halfpenny a pound on tallow candles was a tax——”

“That prevented many a patient of mine from being properly nursed,” said Dr. Say. “When people are just so poor as not to afford much candlelight, such a tax as that dooms many sick to toss about in the dark, frightened at their own fancies, when a light, to show things as they are, would have composed them to sleep. That was a bad tax: the rich using few tallow candles.”

“If that be bad, the others were worse;—that on cottages with less than seven windows! Lord! I shall never forget what work I used to have and to hear of about that tax. He must have been a perverse genius that thought of that tax, and deserved to be put into a cottage of two windows himself.—Do you hear, Mr. Farrer, that is over and gone; and I suppose you used to pay a tax upon Morgan that you are not asked for now?”

Mr. Farrer now proved himself still able to laugh, while he told how he never paid a farthing for Morgan before the tax on female servants had been repealed. Morgan believed herself to be the fiftieth cousin of the family; and on the days when the tax-gatherer was expected, Farrer always contrived that Morgan should be seated at some employment found for her in the parlour, and called a relation of the family. Jane now understood for the first time why her father was upon occasion so strangely peremptory about the sofa cover being patched, or his shirts mended, by no one but Morgan, and nowhere but in the parlour. The repeal of these three assessed taxes, and of a fourth,—on carts and waggons,—was acknowledged to be an improvement on old management, however grievous might be the actual burdens, and the great one now in prospect.

In pursuance of his plan to give Mr. Farrer none but pleasant ideas to carry to the grave, Peek proceeded to observe on the capability of the country to bear much heavier burdens than formerly. Arkwright alone had provided the means of paying a large amount of taxes, by endowing the country with the vast resources of the cotton manufacture.

“And what came of it all?” muttered Mr. Farrer. “There is Arkwright in his grave, just like any other man.”

“That’s very true; and just as if he had had no more than his three hundred a-year all his days. But it was a noble thing that he did,—the enabling the country to bear up in such times as we live in. For my part, I think the minister may very fairly ask for more money when such a piece of good luck has befallen us as our cotton manufacture turns out to be. I’m not so much against the war, since there is this way of paying for it.”

“You forget we are in debt, Peek. ‘Duty first, and pleasure afterwards,’ I say. ‘Charity begins at home,’ say I. Pay the debt first, and then go to war, if you must.”

“Some“Some other improvements will turn up, time enough to pay the debt, I dare say. When the war is done, the minister has only to find somebody, like Arkwright, that will make a grand invention, and then he can pay off the debt at his leisure.”

“No, never,” cried Farrer, in a stronger voice than Jane thought he could now exert. “You will see Arkwright in the next world before you see his like in this. I knew Arkwright. And as for the debt,—how is that ever to be paid? The country is ruined, and God knows what will become of my little savings!”

And the old man wept as if he had already lost his all. It was always a melancholy fact to him that Arkwright, whom he had been wont to consider the happiest of men, had been obliged to go away from his wealth;—to die like other men. Peek attempted to comfort him, regardless of the frowning looks of Dr. Say, and of Jane’s hints to hold his tongue.

“Why, all that requires to be taken care of will go to Jane, I suppose, though some of your things would be more suitable to my wife than to any single woman. That is a nice mattress; and indeed the bedding altogether is just what would suit our brown chamber, as I was saying to my wife. But I suppose Jane is to have all that sort of thing?”

“Mr. Peek, you will either go away or leave off talking in that manner,” said Jane, moving away the empty tankard from which he had drunk his morning ale.

“Mr. Farrer will enjoy many a good night in that very bed, when we have subdued the little obstruction that affects the breathing,” observed Dr. Say, soothingly.

“We all know better than that,” said Peek, with an ostentatious sigh. “It is hard to leave what it costs such a world of pains to get. I’ve heard you say, Mr. Farrer, how proud you were when you got a watch, as a young man. That’s it, I suppose, over the chimney-piece; and a deal of silver there must be in it, from the weight. I suppose this falls to Jane too? It will go on, tick, tick, just the same as ever.”

Mr. Farrer forgot his pain while he watched Peek’s method of handling the old watch, and followed his speculations about the disposal of his property.

“And do you think that singing-bird will miss you?” asked Peek, nodding to the siskin in its cage. “I have heard of birds that have pined, as they say dogs do, from the day of their master’s death. But my children would soon teach your Teddy a merry ditty, and cure him of moping.”

“Jane, don’t let any body but Morgan move that bird out of the house: do you hear?” said Farrer.

“It is nobody’s bird but your’s, father. Nobody shall touch it.” And Jane set Teddy singing, in hopes of stopping Peek’s speculations.

“And there’s the old punch-bowl,” continued the son-in-law, as soon as there was again silence. “That will be yours of course, Jane?”

“O, our good friend will make punch many a time yet out of that bowl, when we shall have set up his appetite,” declared Dr. Say.

“No, no, Doctor. He will never make punch again in this world.”

There was a pause after this positive declaration, which was broken by Farrer saying to his daughter,

“You don’t say anything against it. You don’t think you had rather not have the things.”

Jane replied in a manner which showed great conflict and agony of mind. She should feel like a child, if her father must leave her. She had never lived without him. She did not know that she could conduct herself and her affairs without him. She was in a terror when she thought of it, and her mind was full of reproach——

“Ah! you’ll be marrying, next thing, and all my things will be going nobody knows where. But as for reproaching yourself,—no need of that, so far, for you have been a good daughter to me.”

Jane declared that she had no thoughts of marrying.