A BABY'S HAND.
PEOPLE who know the city of London, and like to wander up and down the
streets, soon learn to leave the broad and more modern thoroughfares and
to plunge into the silence and seclusion of the queer by-ways which lie
away from the great roaring sea of traffic, like the caves and shallows
that skirt some great ocean bay.
Amongst these retired spots none are more suggestive than the old
churchyards all blurred and dim with London smoke, but yet in which a
few trees yearly put forth green leaves of little promise, and a choir
of sooty sparrows chirp around the queer old steeples or perch
impudently upon the leaden ornaments which adorn the sacred porch. In
these places--which even in summer are well-like in their cool
impenetrable shade--there is no little business going on, however, for
all round the rusty iron railing which incloses the weed-entangled
graveyard the houses of city merchants seem to crowd and hustle for
space; and, if they had any time for it, the clerks behind those
dust-blinded windows might spend an hour not unprofitably in looking
down upon the decaying monuments of departed citizens and meditating at
once on the uncertainty of human affairs and the benefits of life
assurance.
Amongst the dozen or so of such places illustrating the brick-and-mortar
history of the city none are more suggestive than the church and yard of
St. Simon Swynherde, which, lying in the circumbendibus of a lane named
after the same saint, forms, as it were, a sort of outlying island, upon
whose quiet shores the incautious wayfarer, being sometimes lost or cast
away, can hear the humming surges of the great sea as they boom in the
thoroughfares beyond. There is no alteration in this place from year to
year, except such differences as are brought about by the change of
seasons; no civic improvement troubles its sedate gloom--no adventurous
speculator regards it as a promising site for building blocks of
offices--no railway company casts an evil eye upon its seclusion within
the area formed by the church and the tall dim houses which have
mouldered into uniform neutrality of colour.
Even the march of time seems to have been arrested amidst the decay of
the place, since the bell of the church clock rusted from its bearings
and the index of the old sun-dial fell a prey to accumulated canker. The
spring brings a few green buds and feeble leaves upon the grimy trees;
the summer serves to accumulate the store of dust and torn paper and
shreds of light rubbish which the autumn wind swirls into neglected
corners on the dim evenings when the rain weeps on the blackened windows
and the mist creeps up to the steeple in long ghostly shapes. The winter
brings a frozen cyclone which whistles round and round or gently covers
the graveyard with snow, the unbroken whiteness of which is gradually
spotted and interlaced with sooty flakes, as though the genius of the
place resented the intrusion and would make no further compromise than
half mourning.
The dimmest, darkest, and dirtiest of all the houses round the yard was
that of Richard Dryce & Co., factors and general merchants. It was never
known who was the Co., for Richard Dryce managed his own business, and
lived in the house, in one of the back rooms of which overlooking a
square paved courtyard he had been born. The business belonged to his
father before him, and he himself had married into the business of
another factor and general merchant. His wife had died some twenty years
before the period of this story--died in giving birth to a boy, who was
sometimes mistaken for the Co., but who at present occupied no better
position than that of a superior clerk, with the questionable advantage
of living with his father in the dull old house, where he had to go
through the warehouse amidst innumerable bales and crates and packages
to reach the staircase that conducted him to the gloomy rooms, the
old-fashioned furniture of which suited his father, but was sorely
against his own taste.
How he should have come to have any opinion of his own is perhaps a
mystery, for he resembled his mother, who was a simple creature, easily
influenced, and with all her tastes apparently moulded on the pattern
set before her by her husband. Still, however it may have been, though
he was born in the gloomy house, and was subject to the same influences,
the younger Dryce--whose name was Robert--never took kindly to the dull
routine to which his father's habits doomed him. He was too dutiful and
too mild in disposition--in fact, too unlike his own father--to offer
any direct opposition to it, or to complain very often of its exactions;
but he felt that at twenty he was kept with too tight a hand, and that
there were worlds beyond Saint Simon Swynherde, which might be
harmlessly explored.
Richard Dryce was, however, not a bad man, not a cruel or a hard man in
his inmost heart; but he had been himself devoted from early life to one
condition of things, which were in some strange way in accordance with
his natural constitution, or with which he had become identified till
they grew into a necessary part of his existence. He was a
self-contained man--an undemonstrative man, whose mind was attuned to
respectable solitude, and who, without being a misanthrope, regarded his
fellow creatures through a ground-glass medium, which made them seem
shadowy and unapproachable. A few business acquaintances he had, with
whom he would sometimes take his chop and glass of old port at a city
tavern of an evening; he would even, on rare occasions, go the length of
smoking a cigar in company with one or two of his less distant
companions; but his laugh was like the harsh echo of a disused violin,
and he seldom or never invited anybody to see him at home.
One of the people whom he disliked most said that he was "a buttoned-up
man," and Richard Dryce could never forgive him--the description was so
true.
One of his most intimate friends, an alderman, of congenial temperament,
who had greatly distinguished himself by quarrelling and exchanging
vituperative epithets with another alderman on the magisterial bench,
seriously advised him to become a candidate for civic honours; but he
strenuously refused, although he ultimately permitted his son Robert to
achieve something like independence by becoming a liveryman of the
Worshipful Company of Twidlers, whose hall stood within the precincts of
Saint Simon Swynherde. It was only on the occasion of one of their
dinners that Robert was allowed to be out after ten o'clock; but that
restriction did not prevent his spending the larger number of his
evenings between eight o'clock and ten at the Twidlers' Hall, which
mouldy old structure, with its great, cold, lonely dining-room and
awkward polygonal ante-rooms decorated with portraits of deceased
dignitaries, held an attraction not to be found elsewhere, in the person
of pretty Agnes Raincliffe, the only daughter of the company's beadle.
For six months they had been under the sweet illusion that disinterested
affection must eventually win for itself a way to union; but old Mr.
Raincliffe had spoken seriously to them, and altogether forbade their
further meeting until Robert had spoken to his father. He went home that
very night, and, nerved to a sort of desperation, _did_ speak to his
father, ending with the usual declarations that his choice was
unalterable. Perhaps it was; but, whether or not, Richard Dryce went the
very way to make it so when he laughed that discordant laugh, and, with
a taunt against his son's weakness of purpose and his dependent
position, told him to dismiss such a scheming little hussey from his
thoughts, for he was to marry when he had permission, which would never
be granted to such a match as the beadle wanted to bring about.
Robert left his father's presence without a word; but in a week from
that date he had followed Agnes down into the country, whither she had
been sent out of the way. When he returned he wrote a letter to his
father, to say that they were married. It is easy to guess what
followed. When he called for an answer to his communication, he received
a brief note, saying that he was discarded from that hour, need never
trouble himself to enter the doors of the old house again, and that
henceforth he must look to his own exertions for the means of living.
This letter was sent by the hand of a sort of managing clerk, one
Jaggers, who was at the same time commissioned to tell Robert that he
could, if he chose, obtain a situation in a house at Liverpool, where
his father's interest was sufficient to secure him a clerkship at a very
moderate salary. Now it so happened that Jaggers had always appeared to
be the best friend young Robert ever had; he had sympathized with him on
the subject of his father's harshness; had applauded his noble
sentiments when he had imparted the secret of his engagement to Agnes;
had wished that _he_ was master of the establishment in St. Simon's
Yard, that justice might be done to disinterested virtue, and had
generally assumed the part of guide, philosopher, and friend, tempered
by humble deference, to the young man. It was arranged between them,
therefore, that, after a time, during which Robert should accept the
situation at Liverpool, a more successful appeal might be made to Dryce
senior, and that a letter addressed to him should be sent under cover to
Jaggers, who would lay it on his table.
Robert and his young wife went away, leaving this good-natured fellow to
watch their interests. A year passed, and the letter had been written,
but remained unanswered; indeed, according to Jaggers's showing, Richard
Dryce was more inveterate than ever, and was unapproachable on the
subject of his undutiful son, in pleading whose cause he, Jaggers, had
very nearly obtained his own dismissal. The firm in which Robert was a
clerk became bankrupt in the commercial crisis, and he was thrown out of
employment. Again he wrote to his father, saying that he had an
appointment offered him in Australia, and only wanted the money to pay
his passage. He received no reply, but some people who knew him in
Liverpool made up the sum, and his wife came to London to live with her
father (who was now superannuated in favour of a new beadle), and to
wait for his return, or for the remittance that was to come by the first
mail, that she might join him there.
Their first child, a girl, had been a poor sickly little creature, and
was dead; but Agnes was likely again to become a mother, and waited
anxiously for the money which would enable her to prepare for such an
event. Anxiously as she waited, it never came, and Jaggers, to whom it
was to have been directed, advanced her a sovereign, as he said, "out of
his small means," and then lost sight of her, for she and her father had
moved into other lodgings, where the managing clerk could scarcely
trouble himself to go, unless he had good news to take with him. Indeed,
he had so much to occupy his attention, that some months had elapsed
since he had seen Agnes; once only he had written a short reply to a
note imploring him to say whether any remittance had arrived; but how
could he spare time to attend to such matters when Mr. Dryce was every
week taking a less active part in the business, and the Christmas
quarter was stealing on with the balance-sheet not even thought of in
the press of country orders. Mr. Richard Dryce was still hale and
active; but those who knew him best, thought that he was breaking. His
voice was less harsh, his hair had turned from iron-gray to white, and
in his face there was an anxious look as of one who waits for something
that does not come. Once or twice old acquaintances ventured to ask
after his son, but he shook his head, and said that he knew nothing of
him; he had written to his last address, but had received no reply.
It was cold dull wintry weather, and the old man looked so solitary,
that one or two tried to rally him, and even asked him to come and dine
or spend the evening with them, to which he responded by his old harsh
laugh, and putting on his worsted gloves, trudged home through the snow.
[Illustration: MR. DRYCE'S PETITION ANSWERED.]
One morning he awoke early, almost before daylight had penetrated the
dull rooms where he lived, and had a sudden fancy to walk into the
church. It was already daylight in the streets, but the interior of St.
Simon Swynherde was dim with mist and with the obscurity of the high
windows. He could only just see the pillars and the organ, where his own
name had been painted in gilt letters since the time that he had been
churchwarden and helped to restore it. Even as he looked up at it, the
notes of the Christmas hymn came trembling into the chill morning air,
for the organist had come there to practise, and expected the parish
school children to come in to sing at a morning service. To most people
there might have been nothing in the place or its associations to evoke
much gentle feeling; but as the tones of the organ swelled and the music
grew louder, old Richard Dryce sat down in the corner of his own pew and
leaned his head upon the book-board, with his hands clasped before his
face. Not till the warm tears had trickled from between his fingers did
he raise his head, and then it was to look round him to the cushion at
the other end of the pew, for from some place near him he thought he had
heard a sound that was out of all harmony with the organ, but not
altogether apart from the associations of the Christmas hymn--the
wailing of a child. Another moment and he was bending over a bundle
seemingly composed of a coarse blue cloak, but from which there
presently came out a baby hand and, the covering once pulled aside, a
little round rosy face in which a pair of large blue eyes were wide
awake in utter astonishment. Who can tell what had been the thoughts
busy in old Dryce's mind? Was it prayer? Was it that yearning which
finds no words of entreaty, but yet ardently and dumbly implores--all
vaguely--that the crooked paths of former error may be made straight at
last--that the rough places of a mistaken course may become divinely
plain? He could not tell; and yet in some way he accepted this child as
a visible answer to a petition that he had meant to frame. When the
organist and the sextoness came down presently, and with indignant
virtue advised the removal of the child to the workhouse, he regarded
their suggestion as little less than impious, and expressed his
determination of taking the little one home with him.
His old housekeeper and the younger servants were not a little surprised
to see the merchant come home with such a companion; but Mr. Dryce was
master in his own house, and the little guest was fed. Then Doctor Banks
was sent for, and he declared that it would be necessary to provide a
nurse, while, as luck would have it, he had that very morning been sent
for to see a casual applicant for relief at the Union workhouse--a woman
who had just lost a child. Temporarily she might do well enough, and
Doctor Banks wanted to get home to dinner; so away went the housekeeper
in a cab with a letter from the doctor, and in two hours came back
bringing with her a pale pretty young woman whose name was Jane Harris,
and who, her husband having gone abroad and left her with a child which
she had just lost, was reduced to apply at the workhouse. She was so
timid, and had at first such a scared look, that Mr. Dryce had much
trouble to induce her to stay; but it was quite wonderful the way in
which the child took to her, and so a room was got ready for them both,
and she was comfortably settled, almost, as the housekeeper said, "as if
she was a lady, though for the matter of that, Doctor Banks knew more
about her than he said." At any rate Doctor Banks said the next day,
after he had had a little conversation with the new nurse, that she was
thoroughly trustworthy, and that he himself had known her father, who
once held a very respectable position in the city. So Mrs. Harris became
an inmate at the dim old house, and her charge throve under her care.
He was a bonny boy, and every day his little baby ways became of so
great interest to the lonely old man, that he was never happy after
business hours until he had the little fellow in the room. He never
stayed at his old tavern now for more than half an hour beyond the time
it took him to eat his dinner, and even went so far as to tell two or
three of his friends what he had done, and invite them home to see the
child, in whom--they being themselves fathers of families--they could
see nothing extraordinary, and wondered amongst themselves at old
Dryce's strange infatuation.
When the boy at last grew able to crawl about, and even to walk from
chair to chair, he seemed to have so grown to the old man's heart that
Dryce became subject to a kind of transformation. His laugh grew more
mellow, as though the violin had been laid near the fire, and played
upon gently; a dozen old and forgotten picture-books were disinterred
from some box, and toys strewed the floor of the dingy sitting-room. At
about this time Mrs. Harris was for a week or more strangely agitated by
a letter which was brought to her one morning, and came as she said from
her husband, who had been for some time in Australia. Upon her recovery
Mr. Dryce inquired a little into her husband's circumstances, and
hearing that he was endeavouring to establish an agency in Sydney, wrote
a letter requesting him to make some inquiries about a house to which
Dryce & Co. had made large consignments, but whose promised remittance
had not duly arrived. The old man had other matters to occupy him,
however, for with something like a resumption of his old vigour and his
business habits he had called for his books, for he had had some serious
losses lately, and began to think it necessary to give more personal
attention to the current accounts. Still every day he had his little pet
into the room to play about his knees, and indeed refused to part with
him even when nurse Harris came to put him to bed, often making her stay
and take some wine, or consulting her as to some future provisions, for
her little charge, for whom she seemed to have even more affection than
the old gentleman himself.
It was late one evening that he sat talking to her in this way, but
still with a rather absent manner, for his heavy ledgers and cash-books
lay beside him on the table. She would have taken the child away, but
Mr. Dryce told her to let him remain, and at the same time asked her to
step down into the counting-house, and if Mr. Jaggers had not left for
the night, to ask him to come up.
Now Mr. Jaggers had so seldom been invited to come upstairs, that,
although he of course knew of the adoption of the little foundling, he
had never seen the nurse; but that was scarcely any reason for her
stopping on her way downstairs and pressing her hand to her side with a
sudden spasm of fear.
She got down at last, however, and opening the two doors which led to
the passage, at the end of which was the private counting-house, stood
there in the shadow and looked in.
Mr. Jaggers was busy at his desk tearing up papers, some of which
already blazed upon the hearth. The desk itself was open, and by the
light of the shaded lamp she could see that it contained a heavily bound
box in which hung a bunch of keys. As she delivered Mr. Dryce's message,
still in the shadow of the door, he looked up with a scared face, and
dropping the lid of the desk with a loud slam, peered into the darkness.
Mrs. Harris repeated her message, and returned swiftly up the stairs,
nor stopped even to go in for the child, but shut herself into her own
room. Somehow or other Mr. Jaggers felt a cold perspiration break out
all over him, and yet he need scarcely have been cold, for he already
had his greatcoat on, and there was a decent fire in the grate burning
behind a guard. Still he shivered, and after taking the lamp and once
more looking into the entry, gave a deep sigh of relief, and in a
half-absent manner locked both box and desk and carefully placed the
keys in a breast pocket. Leaving the lamp still burning, he went
upstairs and found Mr. Dryce alone, sitting at the table with the books
open before him. He looked up as his clerk entered. "Take a seat,
Jaggers," he said, "I shall want you for an hour or more, for there are
several things here that require explanation."
Mr. Jaggers turned pale, but he took off his coat and laid it along with
his hat on the great horsehair sofa at the other end of the room. Then
both he and his employer plunged into figures, till the chimes of a
distant clock sounded nine. "We must finish this the day after
to-morrow, Jaggers," said Mr. Dryce. "I won't keep you longer."
Mr. Jaggers put on his coat and hat, and bade his employer good-night,
and he had no sooner left the room than Mrs. Harris came in to fetch the
little one, for, as she said, "it was already past his bedtime."
Richard Dryce fell into his chair, and was as near having a fit as ever
he had been in his life.
"Good heaven! Mrs. Harris--you don't mean to say you haven't got the
boy. He's not here; run and see whether he has gone into Betsy's room;
she runs away with him sometimes."
"Mamma!" said a sleepy little voice under the sofa, and Mr. Dryce and
the nurse were both on their knees in a moment.
"The precious! why, if he hasn't been asleep all the time!" said Mr.
Dryce, kissing the warm rosy cheek; "take him off to bed directly, and
bring him down to breakfast in the morning."
Mrs. Harris only just escaped meeting Jaggers on the stairs, up which he
was coming, followed by Betty with a flaring tallow candle, and looking
carefully on every stair. "I beg your pardon, sir," he said, with a
scared look, as he opened the room door, "but have you seen my keys
anywhere? I must have dropped them somewhere in the room, I think."
"No," replied Mr. Dryce, "I've seen nothing--most extraordinary!" he
said to himself, thinking of the child and forgetting Jaggers.
"It is, sir, very extraordinary," said the clerk, groping on the floor
and patting the carpet with his hands. "I know I had them when I came up
here, and I can't open my desk where I keep my money."
"Oh! never mind, Jaggers," said Mr. Dryce sleepily. "Here are a couple
of sovereigns. If we find the keys, you can have them to-morrow; and if
not, we will have a new lock. Come, good night! I'll come down and bolt
the office door after you."
Jaggers entreated his employer not to take so much trouble, and delayed
so long that the old gentleman began to grow a little impatient. At last
he got rid of him by giving him permission to come early on the
following morning, when, if his keys were not discovered by the servant
in sweeping, he might pick the lock.
Mr. Dryce was in a brown study, sitting looking at the fire, and sipping
a glass of hot negus, when Mrs. Harris knocked at the door.
"Excuse me, sir, but have you missed your keys?"
"Hang the keys!" said Mr. Dryce absently. "I beg your pardon, Mrs.
Harris; sit down a moment. I was thinking what I could buy our little
fellow for a present."
"But these keys, sir? I took them out of the bosom of baby's frock when
I undressed him. How he got them I can't tell."
Mr. Dryce took the keys in his hand and looked at them mechanically;
then he started and singled out one particular key, held it nearer the
light, at the same time comparing it with one of a bunch which he took
from his own pocket. He had turned stern and pale.
"I want you to come downstairs with me, Mrs. Harris," he said: "these
are the keys Mr. Jaggers has lost, and I'm afraid I shall want a
policeman."
First the door of the great iron safe let into the wall. Mr. Dryce knew
that it was a cunningly-made lock, and thought that no key but his would
open it. It opened easily with Jaggers's key, however; and from the
lower drawer was missing all the property which in those days were often
kept in such places--bills, gold, and notes to the value of four
thousand five hundred pounds.
With feverish haste the old man unlocked the desk and the brass-bound
box within it. The latter contained all the missing property, evidently
placed there for immediate removal. In the desk were found bills,
letters, and correspondence, a glance at which disclosed a long system
of fraud and peculation. Above all, amongst the loose papers were the
letters that Robert sent to his father, and those which had been written
by himself in repentance of the harsh parting which he had brought about
with his lost son.
While they were both looking with mute astonishment at these evidences
of Jaggers's villany, there came a low knocking at the door, and two men
entered, one of them a broad, brown-bearded man in a half seafaring
dress, the other a policeman.
"A clerk of yours, named Jaggers," said the latter. "I want to know
whether he has robbed you, or if you have reason to suspect him. This
party has given him in custody on another charge."
There was a loud scream, and Mrs. Harris fell into the arms of the
stranger, who had taken her aside to whisper to her.
"She is my wife," said he to Mr. Dryce. "I am the person to whom you
wrote, and I have brought the remittance with me from Australia."
They all went upstairs together, except the policeman, whose question
was answered by a recital of the events of the night, and the present of
a sovereign.
"Bring down the boy, and let me look at his dear little face," said old
Dryce, when they were sitting round the fire.
The child was brought down tenderly, and still asleep.
"God bless him!" said the bearded stranger. "He's not like either of us,
Aggy."
"Like either of you?" said Mr. Dryce, surprised. "How should he be like
your husband, Mrs. Harris?"
"Don't you know me, sir," said the stranger, taking Mr. Dryce's hand and
sitting in the firelight. "My name is Robert Dryce, and this is my
child, whose mother left it to the mercy of Heaven, and found that it
had reached its natural home. Forgive us, sir, for our child's sake."
Old Dryce was a shrewd man, but it took an hour to make him understand
it all; events had come about so strangely.
"Well," said Robert at last, "I'm glad you were in time to save the
money."
"Confound the money!" ejaculated the old man; "at least, too much of
it," he added, correcting himself. "This baby's hand has unlocked more
treasures for me than all the Bank of England could count on a summer's
day."
------------------------------
"Oh, I shouldn't like to live in London always," said Kate Bell, whose
father was one of the large mill-owners at Barton. "I've been up twice
with papa, you know; but we lived in a great square where we could hear
the noise of the cabs all night, and of the carts and wagons as soon as
daylight came. And then there are such crowds of people in the streets;
and if you walk you are pushed about so, and if you ride you can't see
anything except from an open carriage. Except the theatre, where I went
twice, and the Zoological Gardens and the Crystal Palace, and Hyde Park,
where everybody goes before dinner, there's nothing to care for."
"Nothing to care for!" exclaimed Annie Bowers; "why, the streets and the
old historical buildings--Westminster Abbey, the Picture Galleries, the
great solemn churches, with monuments of poets and warriors, and the
constant life and movement and change, must be grand, if one only could
stay long enough to get over the feeling that you are only sight-seeing.
To be a part of it all, and to be able to go about quietly and live in
it, looking and thinking and making one's own pictures and one's own
romances of it, would be delightful for six months in the year. I often
think it would be grand to spend a summer day in the middle of one of
the bridges--Westminster or London Bridge--and watch the boats on the
river and the tide of people coming and going, and see the clouds and
the sunshine change the colour of the stream and the outlines of the
great buildings, and then to go back just at dark and see the same scene
by moonlight, with everything transformed and solemn, and listen to the
rush of the tide and watch the lights twinkling on wharves and on board
boats and barges, and the moon on the great lovely buildings of
Westminster, and the dome of St. Paul's in the distance: that is what I
should like to do."
"I used to think very much as you do, Annie, when I was last in London,"
said Miss Grantley; "but then I had very little opportunity of going to
theatres or other amusements, for I had no one to take me except in a
family party, and had to make the most of the pleasure that is to be
found in the wonderful aspects of the great city itself. Of course it is
only possible for a poor unprotected creature to see a part of the
greatest capital in the world; and so when I went to explore the bridges
or any other neighbourhood after dusk I took an escort, and one who knew
London so well that he was able to say where I ought and where I ought
not to go."
"A policeman, was it, Miss Grantley?" said Kate Bell.
"Oh, dear! no. Policemen have no time to go out as escorts to young or
middle-aged ladies," said our governess laughing. "My cavalier was a boy
who worked at a printing-office. His mother was a very respectable woman
who lived in a tidy house in a very quiet street where she let two
furnished rooms, and I was her tenant while I was studying to pass two
examinations. I had been staying with old friends of my dear father,
for they did not desert me altogether though I was only a governess;
indeed, they gave me too large a share of the amusements and
sight-seeing which take up so much time, so that I was obliged to bid
them good-bye for a good while, and restrict my visits to Sundays or one
evening a week. I think my landlady, who was a widow, had been their
cook; but at all events she was a good motherly woman, and her boy of
fourteen was always ready for an excursion when he came home from work.
"At first I was obliged to repress his sense of being a sort of
champion; and once when a bigger and very dirty boy, who had a dog in a
string, splashed my dress with mud and nearly threw me down, I had to go
home again because my young friend gave him battle, and after fighting
for several minutes came out of the fray with his collar so rumpled, his
best cap so crushed, and his face so smirched that it was a
dearly-bought victory. But he was an excellent boy and an apt pupil, for
I used to give him easy lessons in French and mathematics sometimes, so
that when I left he was able to attend an advanced class at an evening
college in the city. He had the sentiment of a gentleman too, though he
was a printer's boy and was always called Bob. He never talked to me
unless I spoke to him first or he had to give me some direction or tell
me which way we were going; and in the great thoroughfares he would
walk either just in front or at a little distance, so that no one would
have known we were companions. I used to remonstrate with him sometimes,
for it made me feel that I was selfish and discourteous to have him to
guide or follow me without acknowledgment; but he always replied that
people couldn't talk in the noise of the streets, and that what I came
out for was 'to see London or to look at shop-windows, or to see how
places looked after dark, or to get a walk and some fresh air on London
or Blackfriars' Bridge, and to be able to fancy all manner of things,
and yet to have somebody that knew all about London to keep me from
being run over or pick-pocketed or interfered with by anybody.'
"Never had lady a more devoted squire; and I really believe he used to
read up the history and anecdotes of some of the churches and public
buildings, that he might be able to have something to say when I
insisted on talking to him as we strolled quietly along in the
less-crowded thoroughfares--especially those around St. Paul's and the
Royal Exchange, where the city is nearly deserted after the hours of
business."
"Well, Miss Grantley, and is it about this very agreeable boy that you
are going to tell us a story?" asked Sarah Jorring, who was often rather
abrupt and impertinent.
For a moment a shaft of light seemed to dart from those expressive eyes
upon the questioner, but the instantaneous gleam of surprise and
annoyance passed into a smile.
"I would never willingly forget or be ashamed to speak of true service
and real courtesy," she said. "I should--we most of us would--feel some
satisfaction in acknowledging the politeness shown to us by a duke or an
earl, even though to be scrupulously courteous should be regarded as
duties and customs belonging to their station. To have received true and
delicate consideration from a printer's boy is therefore more
remarkable, and to speak of it with grateful recollection is only just.
My own want of courtesy, however, led me to forget that we seldom feel
much enthusiasm about the attentions that are bestowed on other people."
We were all silent for a moment, for there was a rebuke even in the
gentle tone in which the words were uttered; but presently Annie Bowers
said:
"Did you ever know an actor, Miss Grantley?"
"Well, I cannot say I never met an actor," replied our governess; "and
yet it was not in London, but at the village near which I lived when I
was at home with my dear father, whose house and grounds were not far
off, and whose pew in the church had belonged to his family from time
immemorial."
"Oh! do let us hear something about that, then," we said.
"Well," replied our governess, "that shall be the story for to-morrow
evening--the story of a stranger from London who visited our village."
[Illustration]
[Illustration]