No doubt, if little Patty had been more highly educated, more refined,
and had no more engrossing occupations than reading and paying visits,
she too would have worn a Mariana-like aspect, and sighed more
frequently. But though she often wept in secret, hers was so busy a
life that she had but little time to mourn, and though she sighed to
herself, and suffered too most keenly, her cheeks somehow would not grow
pale or less sound, and the sorrow was hidden away deeply in her heart.
Mrs Jared knew a great deal, and kept finding out more and more; but the
subject was tabooed, and though her tender heart yearned to condole with
Patty and try to comfort her, yet long talks with Jared had schooled her
to be silent, and poor Patty had no comforter save Janet, and even with
her she refrained from fully opening her heart.
"Poor girl! I know she feels it keenly," said Mrs Jared to her husband
on one occasion.
"Not she," said Jared. "It must be nearly forgotten by this time."
"Did I forget you, years ago?" said Mrs Jared, severely.
"Too good a memory, my dear," said Jared, smiling.
"Then don't talk such nonsense," said his wife. "What ideas you men do
have of women's hearts, just because now and then you meet with some
silly, flighty, coquettish thing, not without a heart, certainly, but
with one that is worthless. Do you suppose that all girls' hearts are
counterfeit coin?"
"Not I!" said Jared; "but it won't do. It is just as I thought at the
time, and it always is the case with those red-hot sanguine fellows.
All very well at first, but they cool down gradually, and then it's all
over. You see we hear nothing at all of him now."
"I'm afraid he's ill," said Mrs Jared; "there must be something wrong."
"Wrong! well, yes, I suppose so," said Jared; "if it's wrong to get
rich, it was wrong of him to talk to our poor girl in the way he did;
and it's wrong of her to dream of it, if she still does, and it was
wrong of you to expect that anything would ever come of it but sorrow,
and it was wrong--"
"Wrong of you to go on talking in that way," said Mrs Jared,
impetuously; "and, for my part, I don't believe that it is as you say.
There's some misfortune or something happened to him, or--"
"Don't, for goodness' sake, talk in that way to her," said Jared, "or
you'll complete the mischief. It's as well as it is, and the sooner she
forgets it all, the better. Nothing could ever have come of it, and I
should never have given my consent, even if he had kept to his professed
determination. Richard would always have been against it; and, goodness
knows, there's estrangement enough between us without our doing anything
to increase the distance. Look at us: poor people, with poor-people
friends,--old Purkis and Tim Ruggles, and those aristocrats in Decadia;
and then look at Richard and his--"
"Richard's a selfish--"
"Hush! don't, please, dear," said Jared, with a pained look; and he laid
his hand gently upon his wife's lips, when, smoothing her forehead, she
exclaimed--
"Well, I won't then; but it does make me angry when I think of his
money, and then of how poor we are, while somehow the poorer we get, the
more tiresome the children grow. You've no conception how cross they
are at times."
"Haven't I?" said Jared, drily.
"No," said Mrs Jared, impetuously; "how can you have?"
"Did you wash the little ones this morning, my dear?" said Jared.
"Wash them! Why, of course; at least Patty did, the same as usual."
"Notice anything peculiar between their shoulders, either of you--any
strange sprouting growth?"
"Goodness, gracious! no," exclaimed Mrs Pellet, with a shudder. "Why,
what do you mean? Surely there's no dreadful infectious thing about for
which they are sickening? Surely Patty has brought home nothing from
that dreadful place of Wragg's? What do you mean?"
"Oh! nothing," said Jared, coolly; "only you seemed under the impression
that the little ones were, or ought to be, angels, and I was anxious to
hear of the advent of sprouting wings."
"Stuff!" ejaculated Mrs Jared; and then, directly after, "just look here
at Totty's boots."
"Well, they are on the go," said Jared, turning the little leather
understandings in his hands.
"On the go!" said his wife; "why they're quite gone. It does seem such
a thing when he's rolling in riches!"
"Who? Totty?" said Jared, innocently.
"Stuff!" said Mrs Jared, in her impetuous way. "Why, Richard, to be
sure. He could buy oceans of boots, and never feel the loss."
"Very true," said Jared, without pausing to think what number of pairs
would form oceans. "But then, my dear, he'd have no Tottys to put in
them."
"And a good thing, too," said Mrs Jared, "seeing what an expense they
are."
"I don't know that, my dear," said Jared, softly. "They are an expense
certainly, and it does seem hard upon us; but I don't know, after all,
but what ours is the happier home."
"The man came for the poor-rate to-day," said Mrs Jared, melting, but
still frigid.
"That's nothing new, my dear," said Jared; "he's always coming. Our
little ones are healthy and strong and happy."
"Have you thought about the rent being nearly due?" said Mrs Jared, who
would not give in yet.
"Yes," said Jared; "I have thought about it, for I never get a chance of
forgetting it, my dear. It always seems to me that there are eight
quarters in poor-people's years. But, as I was saying about the
children, they are happy and merry, and the doctor comes seldom--that
is," he said, with a comical look, "with exceptions, my dear--with
exceptions."
Mrs Jared tried to knit her brows and frown, but she could not, for the
corner of a smile would peep out at one angle of her mouth; and, somehow
or other, as they sat alone by the fire that night, Jared's arm crept
round his wife's waist, and her head went down upon his shoulder.
"Plenty," said Jared, "certainly; but I don't think you would like to
part with any one of them."
"Oh! how can you!" ejaculated Mrs Jared; and she quite shivered at the
thought.
"And I never saw you obliged to make chest-warmers for them because they
were delicate, or compelled to get cod-liver oil for them because they
were thin and weak, and--"
"Oh! don't talk so, pray," exclaimed Mrs Jared. "That poor child! it
gives me the heartache to see her, when Ruggles brings her with him.
I'd give almost anything to have the poor little thing here for the
short time she's for this world."
"Think she's so bad as that?" said Jared.
"Oh! yes; her poor little bones show so dreadfully. I don't think she's
neglected, for Ruggles is too good-hearted for that; but that horrid
woman would almost keep her from getting well. Now, if we had her with
ours, and--"
"Didn't you say the collector called to-day?" said Jared.
"Yes," said his wife;--"had her here with ours, and Patty and I attended
well to her, she might get through the winter, and--what did you say?"
"I didn't speak," said Jared. "I was only thinking about the rent."
"And, besides," said Mrs Jared, "as she is so young--"
"How much would a pair of boots cost for Totty?" said Jared.
"Really, it is too bad!" exclaimed Mrs Jared; "and I can't help thinking
about the poor little thing."
"And how well and hearty our own are, even if we are poor," said Jared.
So Mrs Jared sighed, and contrived to put a patch on the side of Totty's
boots, and they lasted another week.
Volume 2, Chapter VII.