"Now then," said Tim Ruggles, "we mustn't have no more sobbing and
sighing, you know, but get on with working, and eddication, and what
not, before some one comes home, and goes off. Now what were we doing
last, my pretty?"
"Reading," said little Pine, absently.
"Mistake," said Tim. "It was cate--cate--well, what was it?"
"Chism," said the child; "catechism."
"Right," said Tim. "Now, let's see; it was duty towards my neighbour,
and if we don't look sharp as a seven--between we shall never get
through that beautiful little bit. Eddication, my pretty, is the
concrete, atop of which they build society; and if I'd been an eddicated
man and known a few things--"
"But you know everything, don't you?" queried Pine.
"Well, no, my dear, not quite," said Tim, rubbing one side of his nose,
and gazing in a a comical way at the child.
"But you are very clever, ain't you."
"Oh, dear me, no; not at all," said Tim; "leastwise, without it's in
trousis, and there I ain't so much amiss. But come, I say, this won't
do; this is catechism wrong side out, so go on."
Then slowly on to the accompaniment of the metal polishing--the lid
being by this time succeeded by a brass candlestick--and the sharp click
of Tim's needle, the portion of catechism under consideration progressed
till it was brought to a full stop over the words, "Succour my father
and mother," when Tim was, to use his own words, quite knocked off his
perch by the child's question--
"Who is my mother?"
"Why--er--er--why, mother, you know," replied Tim.
The child shook her head thoughtfully, and now speaking, now stopping to
rub at the bright metal, said--
"No, no! not her--not her! My own--my own dear mother could not, would
not beat me so. I think it must be some one who comes when I'm half
asleep, and I can see her blue eyes, and feel her long curls round my
face when she kisses me, and then it is that I wake up; and," she
continued dreamily, "I'm not sure whether she does come, for she is not
there then, and when I whisper, no one answers; and do you know whether
she comes, or whether I dream she does, that must be my mother, for no
one else would come and kiss me like that."
"Why, I do," remonstrated Tim, "lots o' times."
"Yes, yes! you do!" said the child, smiling, "but I know when it's you,
and I can't help thinking--"
"Here, I say," exclaimed Tim, "this isn't catechism. This won't do, my
pretty, you mustn't talk like that. Now, then, go on,--`Succour my
father'--"
"Succour--succour," continued the child, "my father and mother. Is she
gone to heaven, and does she come to look at me in the night, and kiss
me? I don't think that she would whip me so, and--and--oh! pray don't
beat me for it. I can't help it. Oh! I can't help it," and then once
again, the little thin hands were pressed upon the quivering lips to
thrust back the bitter heart-wrung wail that would make itself heard.
No child's cry; but the moaning of a bruised heart, forced and rendered
premature in its feelings by the long course of cruelty to which it had
been subjected. A stranger might have listened, and then have gone away
believing that his feelings had been moved to pity by the anguished
utterances of a woman in distress.
Tim hopped from his board, half bewildered, and quite in trouble, to
kiss and caress the child, smoothing her hair, patting her cheeks, and
holding her tightly to his breast.
"Come, my pretty," he whispered, "you mustn't, you know. It does hurt
me so, and ain't I as good as a father? And didn't you promise me as
you'd love me very, very much? And now you're raining down tears, and
melting all the sugar out of a fellow's nature till you'll make him
cross as--Polish away, my pretty."
With two bounds Tim was back in his place, and little Pine again bent
over her task; for there was a heavy step upon the staircase, and as it
stopped at the door, Tim grunted, and slowly shuffled off his board to
replace his iron in the fire after giving it a loud clink upon the
stand.
"Now, my dear," said Tim, loudly, "we ain't getting on so fast as we
oughter. `Bear no malice.'"
"`Bear no malice,'" repeated the child, looking up at him, with a quaint
smile upon her little pinched lips.
"`Nor hatred in my heart,'" said Tim; and then dolefully, "why don't you
look at your work?"
"`Nor hatred in my heart,'" said the child, whose little face, then
again upturned, showed that, if there were truth in looks, malice or
hatred had never entered her breast.
"Louder, ever so much," whispered Tim, "and don't yer get whipped whilst
I'm at Pellet's, there's a pet. `Keep my hands from picking and
stealing,'" he continued, aloud.
"`From picking and stealing,'" said the child, softly.
"She'd better, that's all I can say," came from the doorway; and Mrs
Ruggles closed the portal, and then swung round again, right about face,
and confronted her husband, "perhaps some one else will keep his tongue
from evil-speaking, lying, and so on."
"I'm blessed," muttered Tim, "that's rather hot."
"Of course it is," exclaimed Mrs Ruggles, who only caught the latter
part of the sentence, and applied it to the fire. "Such waste of coals.
I suppose that girl's been shovelling them on as if they cost nothing."
"No, my dear--me--it was me," said Tim, who well enough knew that the
fire had been made up by Mrs Ruggles herself: but he was a terrible
liar.
"Then you ought to have known better."
"Yes, my dear," said Tim, humbly, glad to have averted the current of
his lady's wrath.
"Are those trousers nearly done?" said Mrs Ruggles.
"Very nearly, my dear," replied Tim, throwing his iron duster, and some
more scraps over the spot where lay the doll.
"Because you have to go to Pellet's, mind, this afternoon."
"Thinking about 'em when you was on the stairs, my dear," said Tim, and
this time he spoke the truth.
Volume 1, Chapter XI.