"There you are," said Tim Ruggles, shaking up a bottle, and carefully
pouring out a dessert-spoonful of cod-liver oil into a wineglass,
previously well wetted round with the thin blue fluid which the Carnaby
Street people bought under the impression that it was milk. "There you
are," said Tim, as he sat cross-legged upon his board; "and now look
sharp, and get a lump of sugar out of the basin, and take your oil
before she comes back."
"Brayvo! capital! and never made one ugly face," exclaimed Tim, as
little Pine drank the contents of the glass, but not without a slight
shudder. "That's the thing to bring you round, little one--bring you
round and turn you round, and make you round as a little tub. Oil turns
into fat, you know, and fat keeps you warm in winter. Fat's Nature's
greatcoat, you know, for quilting and padding people's ribs, and wants
no stitching on, nor pressing down. That's the way to--scissors--thank
you, my pet--the way to trim the--trim the--now my twist and a short
needle--that's him--to trim the lamp of life, that is; and you only want
to swallow a long skein of cotton and light one end, and then you'd
burn. My eye! what a go it would be for her to come home and find you
burning! But come, I say, put that bottle away before she comes back."
Tim was very particular that the cod-liver oil bottle should be put away
before Mrs Ruggles' return from marketing; for though the dispensary
doctor had ordered that medicine twice a day for the child's cough, and
a reasonable quantity was supplied, Tim had an idea of his own that if
it were taken twice as often, it would act with double rapidity. So he
used to invest all his very spare cash in the purchase of more of the
nauseous medicine, and kept a private stock, out of which he replenished
the bottle in the cupboard, so that it should not appear in Mrs Ruggles'
eyes to disappear too quickly.
"Does seem such a thing," said Tim to himself, "to see any one suffering
when you can't do anything to help them. There's her poor little cough
getting worse and worse, and them fits coming on, and I can't help her a
bit. It's dreadful, that it is. If one has to rub, or hold, or lift,
or do something, it don't seem half so bad; but to stand and do nothing
but look on is the worst itself. Never saw such a child as she is,
though; and it makes me shiver when she gets looking in that far-off way
of hers, as if she could see more than any one else. Takes her stuff
without a word; but I'd sooner see her kick and cry out, and then have a
good laugh after, when I talk rubbish about trimming the lamp. I don't
know what it's a coming to--for she ain't like no other child--ain't
like a child at all, that she ain't."
It was not once that Tim would mutter in that fashion over his work, but
often and often; and in spite of his words, he did know in his heart
what was coming, though, stitching away there upon his board, early and
late, he tried to shut his eyes to the ray of light that fell upon
them--a ray of pale wondrous light, as from another world; light which
shone with a cold lustre in upon his heart, to tell him that something
must soon come to pass.
For little Pine had of late grown quieter day by day; dull and heavy,
too, at times, falling asleep in her chair, and more than once upon the
bare floor, where Tim had found her, and gently raised her head to place
beneath it the list-tied roll of newly-cut cloth for a pair of trousers,
and then covered her with his coat.
As the days lengthened, a hectic red settled in her little cheeks, and a
cough came on to rack her chest; when, night after night, would Tim
creep out of bed to give her lozenges and various infallible sweets
which he had purchased to allay the irritating tickle that kept her
awake hour after hour.
"'Pon my word," Tim would say, "I don't think I should take more notice
of that child if she was my very own; but somehow I can't help this
here."
And it was plain enough that Tim could not help "this here;" and, intent
as he seemed upon his work by day, his thoughts were fixed upon the poor
child, whom he watched hour after hour unnoticed by his domestic tyrant.
"I don't like it," muttered Tim; "it's all rules of contrary. That
there cough ought to make her pale and poorly, and it don't, for it
makes her little cheeks red, and her eyes bright; and it ain't nat'ral
for her to not eat nothing one time, and to eat savage another; and I'm
'most afraid to say anything to her, because she's so old and deep."
"Am I going to die?" said the child one day, suddenly, as she left off
work to gaze up earnestly in Tim's face.
"Eh! what? Going to which?" exclaimed Tim, startled.
"Am I going to die, and go away?" said the child again.
"I'm blessed!" muttered Tim; "who's agoing to answer questions like
that? Why, we're all of us going to die some day, my pretty," said Tim,
aloud, and in quite a cheery voice, whose fire he directly after damped
by singing, in a peculiar reedy, cracked voice--
"Oh! that'll be joyful!
Joyful, joy-yoy-ful, joy-hoy-ful!"
but in so melancholy a fashion that it was evident that Tim Ruggles did
not look forward to the joyful event with much pleasure.
"Yes, I know that," said little Pine, dreamily; "but am I going to die
soon, and go to my own mother? Mrs Johnson, who lived up-stairs, used
to take cod-liver oil, and she soon died."
"Bother Mrs Johnson!" exclaimed Tim, fiercely. "I say, you know, you
mustn't talk like that, my pet; it makes one feel just as if cold water
was running all down one's back. You ain't Mrs Johnson, and you're
taking that there stuff to make you strong and well. Now, come on, and
let's say catechism."
"No, please, not this morning," little Pine would say; "my head does
ache so, so much, and catechism makes me cough;" and then the sharp
little elbow would rest upon the thin knee, and the child lay her head
upon her hand, and listen to the tailor as he tried to tell her stories
raked up piecemeal out of his memory, where they had rested for so many
years that they had grown rusty, and hardly recognisable. Puss would
somehow manage to get into the wrong boots, and perform wonders in the
famed seven-league pair; a sensational story would be compiled out of
the exploits of Jack the Giant-killer, Jack Sprat, and the hero of the
bean-stalk; while to make out from Tim's description where Robinson
Crusoe's adventures began, and Sinbad the Sailor's ended, would have
puzzled the most learned.
For, after the fashion of his craft, Tim would baste one piece on to
another, and fit in here, and fit in there, according to the
circumstances of the case; the invariable result being that little Pine
would begin to nod; when Tim would steal softly off his board, and
closer and closer to her till he could let the weary little head rest
against his breast, kneeling there in some horribly uncomfortable
position until the short dose was over, and the child would once more
start into wakefulness, to gaze up in a frightened way in his face.
Then, seeing who held her, she would smile, and close her heavy eyelids,
nestling down closer and closer, within the open waistcoat, the little
thin arms trying to clasp her protector tightly; Tim anxiously watching
the while, with contracted brows, the painful catching of the child's
breath, and the spasms of pain that contracted her little features.
The church duties took Mrs Ruggles much away now, to the softening of
these latter days of the poor child's life; and many and many an hour
would Tim spend in the way described--hours which he had to work far
into the night to redeem, when others were sleeping; so that the item of
paraffin became so heavy in the domestic economy that Tim had to
replenish the can on the sly, after the manner of the cod-liver oil
bottle; and the consequence was, that his ordinary moderate amount of
beer-money seldom found its way to the publican's.
How swiftly sped those minutes spent with poor little Pine! and how
slowly would the hours crawl on, when, with his shaded lamp throwing its
glow upon his work, Tim would sit stitching patiently away like what he
was--a little, shrunken, shrivelled tailor!
Volume 1, Chapter XXII.