you. Never be mean in anything, never be false, never be cruel. Avoid
these three vices, Trot, and I shall always be hopeful of you?"
I did my best to show my gratitude to my dear aunt by studying hard, and
trying to be all she could wish.
When you are older you can read how Little David Copperfield grew up to
be a good, clever man, and met again all his old friends, and made many
new ones.
Also, what became of Steerforth, Traddles, the Peggottys, little Em'ly,
and the Micawbers.
VIII.
JENNY WREN.
WALKING into the city one holiday, a great many years ago, a gentleman
ran up the steps of a tall house in the neighborhood of St. Mary Axe.
The lower windows were those of a counting-house but the blinds, like
those of the entire front of the house, were drawn down.
The gentleman knocked and rang several times before any one came, but at
last an old man opened the door. "What were you up to that you did not
hear me?" said Mr. Fledgeby irritably.
"I was taking the air at the top of the house, sir," said the old man
meekly, "it being a holiday. What might you please to want, sir?"
"Humph! Holiday indeed," grumbled his master, who was a toy merchant
amongst other things. He then seated himself in the counting-house and
gave the old man--a Jew and Riah by name--directions about the dressing
of some dolls about which he had come to speak, and, as he rose to go,
exclaimed--
[Illustration: "Seated on the Crystal Carpet Were Two Girls."
Page 179]
"By-the-by, how _do_ you take the air? Do you stick your head out of a
chimney-pot?"
"No, sir, I have made a little garden on the leads."
"Let's look it at," said Mr. Fledgeby.
"Sir, I have company there," returned Riah hesitating, "but will you
please come up and see them?"
Mr. Fledgeby nodded, and, passing his master with a bow, the old man led
the way up flight after flight of stairs, till they arrived at the
house-top. Seated on a carpet, and leaning against a chimney-stack, were
two girls bending over books. Some humble creepers were trained round
the chimney-pots, and evergreens were placed round the roof, and a few
more books, a basket of gaily colored scraps, and bits of tinsel, and
another of common print stuff lay near. One of the girls rose on seeing
that Riah had brought a visitor, but the other remarked, "I'm the person
of the house down-stairs, but I can't get up, whoever you are, because
my back is bad and my legs are queer."
"This is my master," said Riah, speaking to the two girls, "and this,"
he added, turning to Mr. Fledgeby, "is Miss Jenny Wren; she lives in
this house, and is a clever little dressmaker for little people. Her
friend Lizzie," continued Riah, introducing the second girl. "They are
good girls, both, and as busy as they are good; in spare moments they
come up here and take to book learning."
"We are glad to come up here for rest, sir," said Lizzie, with a
grateful look at the old Jew. "No one can tell the rest what this place
is to us."
"Humph!" said Mr. Fledgeby, looking round, "Humph!" He was so much
surprised that apparently he couldn't get beyond that word, and as he
went down again the old chimney-pots in their black cowls seemed to turn
round and look after him as if they were saying "Humph" too.
Lizzie, the elder of these two girls, was strong and handsome, but
little Jenny Wren, whom she so loved and protected, was small and
deformed, though she had a beautiful little face, and the longest and
loveliest golden hair in the world, which fell about her like a cloak of
shining curls, as though to hide the poor little mis-shapen figure.
The Jew Riah, as well as Lizzie, was always kind and gentle to Jenny
Wren, who called him her godfather. She had a father, who shared her
poor little rooms, whom she called her child; for he was a bad, drunken,
worthless old man, and the poor girl had to care for him, and earn
money to keep them both. She suffered a great deal, for the poor little
bent back always ached sadly, and was often weary from constant work but
it was only on rare occasions, when alone or with her friend Lizzie, who
often brought her work and sat in Jenny's room, that the brave child
ever complained of her hard lot. Sometimes the two girls Jenny helping
herself along with a crutch, would go and walk about the fashionable
streets, in order to note how the grand folks were dressed. As they
walked along, Jenny would tell her friend of the fancies she had when
sitting alone at her work. "I imagine birds till I can hear them sing,"
she said one day, "and flowers till I can smell them. And oh! the
beautiful children that come to me in the early mornings! They are quite
different to other children, not like me, never cold, or anxious, or
tired, or hungry, never any pain; they come in numbers, in long bright
slanting rows, all dressed in white, and with shiny heads. 'Who is this
in pain?' they say, and they sweep around and about me, take me up in
their arms, and I feel so light, and all the pain goes. I know when they
are coming a long way off, by hearing them say, 'Who is this in pain?'
and I answer, 'Oh my blessed children, it's poor me! have pity on me,
and take me up and then the pain will go."
Lizzie sat stroking and brushing the beautiful hair, whilst the tired
little dressmaker leant against her when they were at home again, and as
she kissed her good-night, a miserable old man stumbled into the room.
"How's my Jenny Wren, best of children?" he mumbled, as he shuffled
unsteadily towards her, but Jenny pointed her small finger towards him,
exclaiming--"Go along with you, you bad, wicked old child, you
troublesome, wicked old thing, _I_ know where you have been, _I_ know
your tricks and your manners." The wretched man began to whimper like a
scolded child. "Slave, slave, slave, from morning to night," went on
Jenny, still shaking her finger at him, "and all for this; ain't you
ashamed of yourself, you disgraceful boy?"
"Yes; my dear, yes," stammered the tipsy old father, tumbling into a
corner. Thus was the poor little dolls' dressmaker dragged down day by
day by the very hands that should have cared for and held her up; poor,
poor little dolls' dressmaker! One day when Jenny was on her way home
with Riah, who had accompanied her on one of her walks to the West End,
they came on a small crowd of people. A tipsy man had been knocked down
and badly hurt. "Let us see what it is!" said Jenny, coming swiftly
forward on her crutches. The next moment she exclaimed--"Oh,
gentlemen--gentlemen, he is my child, he belongs to me, my poor, bad old
child!"
"Your child--belongs to you," repeated the man who was about to lift the
helpless figure on to a stretcher, which had been brought for the
purpose. "Aye, it's old Dolls--tipsy old Dolls," cried someone in the
crowd, for it was by this name that they knew the old man.
"He's her father, sir," said Riah in a low tone to the doctor who was
now bending over the stretcher.
"So much the worse," answered the doctor, "for the man is dead."
Yes, "Mr. Dolls" was dead, and many were the dresses which the weary
fingers of the sorrowful little worker must make in order to pay for his
humble funeral and buy a black frock for herself. Riah sat by her in her
poor room, saying a word of comfort now and then, and Lizzie came and
went, and did all manner of little things to help her; but often the
tears rolled down on to her work. "My poor child," she said to Riah, "my
poor old child, and to think I scolded him so."
"You were always a good, brave, patient girl," returned Riah, smiling a
little over her quaint fancy about her _child_, "always good and
patient, however tired."
And so the poor little "person of the house" was left alone but for the
faithful affection of the kind Jew and her friend Lizzie. Her room grew
pretty and comfortable, for she was in great request in her
"profession," as she called it, and there were now no one to spend and
waste her earnings. But nothing could make her life otherwise than a
suffering one till the happy morning when her child-angels visited her
for the last time and carried her away to the land where all such pain
as hers is healed for evermore.
[Illustration: "Keep Still, You Little Imp, or I'll Cut Your Throat."
Page 185]
IX.
PIP'S ADVENTURE
ALL that little Philip Pirrip, usually called Pip, knew about his father
and mother, and his five little brothers, was from seeing their
tombstones in the churchyard. He was cared for by his sister, who was
twenty years older than himself. She had married a blacksmith, named Joe
Gargery, a kind, good man, while she, unfortunately, was a hard, stern
woman, and treated her little brother and her amiable husband with great
harshness. They lived in a marshy part of the country, about twenty
miles from the sea.
One cold, raw day towards evening, when Pip was about six years old, he
had wandered into the churchyard, and was trying to make out what he
could of the inscriptions on his family tombstones. The darkness was
coming on, and feeling very lonely and frightened, he began to cry.
"Hold your noise!" cried a terrible voice; and a man started up from
among the graves close to him. "Keep still, you little imp, or I'll cut
your throat!"
He was a dreadful looking man, dressed in coarse gray cloth, with a
great iron on his leg. Wet, muddy, and miserable, he limped and
shivered, and glared and growled; his teeth chattered in his head, as he
seized Pip, by the chin.
"Oh! don't cut my throat, sir," cried Pip, in terror. "Pray don't do it,
sir."
"Tell us your name!" said the man. "Quick!"
"Pip, sir."
"Once more," said the man, staring at him, "Give it mouth."
"Pip. Pip, sir."
"Show us where you live," said the man. "Point out the place."
Pip showed him the village, about a mile or more from the church.
The man looked at him for a moment, and then turned him upside down and
emptied his pockets. He found nothing in them but a piece of bread,
which he ate ravenously.
"You young dog," said the man, licking his lips, "what fat cheeks you
ha' got.... Darn me if I couldn't eat 'em, and if I han't half a mind
to!"
Pip said earnestly that he hoped he would not.
"Now lookee here," said the man. "Where's your mother?"
"There sir," said Pip.
At this the man started and seemed about to run away, but stopped and
looked over his shoulder.
"There, sir," explained Pip, showing him the tombstone.
"Oh, and is that your father along of your mother?"
"Yes, sir," said Pip.
"Ha!" muttered the man, "then who d'ye live with--supposin' you're
kindly let to live, which I han't made up my mind about?"
"My sister, sir, Mrs. Joe Gargery, wife of Joe Gargery, the blacksmith,
sir."
"Blacksmith, eh?" said the man, and looked down at his leg. Then he
seized the trembling little boy by both arms, and glaring down at him,
he said--
"Now lookee here, the question being whether you're to be let to live.
You know what a file is?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you know what wittles is. Something to eat?"
"Yes, sir."
"You get me a file, and you get me wittles--you bring 'em both to me."
All this time he was tilting poor Pip backwards till he was so
dreadfully frightened and giddy that he clung to the man with both
hands.
"You bring me, to-morrow morning early, that file and them wittles. You
do it, and you never dare to say a word or dare to make a sign
concerning your having seen such a person as me, or any person sumever,
and you shall be let to live." Then he threatened all sorts of dreadful
and terrible things to poor Pip if he failed to do all he had commanded,
and made him solemnly promise to bring him what he wanted, and to keep
the secret. Then he let him go, saying, "You remember what you've
undertook, and you get home."
"Goo--good-night, sir," faltered Pip.
"Much of that!" said he, glancing over the cold wet flat. "I wish I was
a frog or a eel!"
Pip ran home without stopping. Joe was sitting in the chimney-corner,
and told him Mrs. Joe had been out to look for him, and taken Tickler
with her. Tickler was a cane, and Pip was rather downhearted by this
piece of news.
Mrs. Joe came in almost directly, and, after having given Pip a taste of
Tickler, she sat down to prepare the tea, and, cutting a huge slice of
bread and butter, she gave half of it to Joe and half to Pip. Pip
managed, after some time, to slip his down the leg of his trousers, and
Joe, thinking he had swallowed it, was dreadfully alarmed and begged
him not to bolt his food like that. "Pip, old chap, you'll do yourself a
mischief--it'll stick somewhere, you can't have chewed it, Pip. You
know, Pip, you and me is always friends and I'd be the last one to tell
upon you any time, but such a--such a most uncommon bolt as that."
"Been bolting his food, has he?" cried Mrs. Joe.
"You know, old chap," said Joe. "I bolted myself when I was your
age--frequent--and as a boy I've been among a many bolters; but I never
see your bolting equal yet, Pip, and it's a mercy you ain't bolted
dead."
Mrs. Joe made a dive at Pip, fished him up by the hair, saying, "You
come along and be dosed."
It was Christmas eve, and Pip had to stir the pudding from seven to
eight, and found the bread and butter dreadfully in his way. At last he
slipped out and put it away in his little bedroom.
Poor Pip passed a wretched night, thinking of the dreadful promise he
had made, and as soon as it was beginning to get light outside he got up
and crept down-stairs, fancying that every board creaked out "Stop
thief!" and "Get up, Mrs. Joe!"
As quickly as he could, he took some bread, some rind of cheese, about
half a jar of mince-meat, which he tied up in a handkerchief, with the
slice of bread and butter, some brandy from a stone bottle, a meat-bone
with very little on it, and a pork-pipe, which he found on an upper
shelf. Then he got a file from among Joe's tools, and ran for the
marshes.
It was a very misty morning, and Pip imagined that all the cattle stared
at him, as if to say, "Halloa, young thief!" and one black ox with a
white cravat on, that made Pip think of a clergyman, looked so
accusingly at him, that Pip blubbered out, "I couldn't help it, sir! It
wasn't for myself I took it."
Upon which the ox put down his head, blew a cloud of smoke out of his
nose, and vanished with a kick-up of his hind legs and a flourish of his
tail.
Pip was soon at the place of meeting after that, and there was the
man--hugging himself and limping to and fro, as if he had never all
night left off hugging and limping. He was awfully cold, to be sure. Pip
half expected to see him drop down before his face and die of cold. His
eyes looked so awfully hungry, too, that when Pip handed him the file it
occurred to him he would have tried to eat it, if he had not seen the
bundle. He did not turn Pip upside down, this time, to get at what he
had, but left him right side upward while he opened the bundle and
emptied his pockets.
"What's in the bottle, boy?" said he.
"Brandy," said Pip.
He was already handing mince-pie down his throat in the most curious
manner, more like a man who was putting it away somewhere in a violent
hurry than a man who was eating it--but he left off to take some of the
liquor, shivering all the while so violently that it was quite as much
as he could do to keep the neck of the bottle between his teeth.
"I think you have got the chills," said Pip.
"I'm much of your opinion, boy," said he.
"It's bad about here. You've been lying out on the marshes, and they're
dreadful for the chills. Rheumatic, too."
"I'll eat my breakfast before they're the death of me," said he. "I'd do
that, if I was going to be strung up to that there gallows as there is
over there directly arterward. I'll beat the shivers so far, I'll bet
you a guinea."
He was gobbling mince-meat, meat-bone, bread, cheese, and pork-pie all
at once, staring distrustfully while he did so at the mist all round,
and often stopping--even stopping his jaws--to listen. Some real or
fancied sound, some clink upon the river or breathing of beasts upon
the marsh, now gave him a start, and he said, suddenly:
"You're not a false imp? You brought no one with you?"
"No, sir! No!"
"Nor told nobody to follow you?"
"No!"
"Well," said he, "I believe you. You'd be but a fierce young hound
indeed, if at your time of life you should help to hunt a wretched
warmint, hunted as near death and dunghill as this poor wretched warmint
is!"
Something clicked in his throat, as if he had works in him like a clock,
and was going to strike. And he smeared his ragged, rough sleeve over
his eyes.
Pitying his desolation, and watching him as he gradually settled down
upon the pie, Pip made bold to say, "I am glad you enjoy it."
"Did you speak?"
"I said I was glad you enjoyed it."
"Thankee, my boy--. I do."
Pip had often watched a large dog eating his food; and he now noticed a
decided similarity between the dog's way of eating and the man's. The
man took strong, sharp, sudden bites, just like the dog. He swallowed,
or rather snapped up, every mouthful too soon and too fast; and he
looked sideways here and there while he ate, as if he thought there was
danger of somebody's coming to take the pie away. He was altogether too
unsettled in his mind over it to enjoy it comfortably, Pip thought, or
to have anybody to dine with him, without making a chop with his jaws at
the visitor. In all of which particulars he was very like the dog.
Pip watched him trying to file the iron off his leg, and then being
afraid of stopping longer away from home, he ran off.
Pip passed a wretched morning, expecting every moment that the
disappearance of the pie would be found out. But Mrs. Joe was too much
taken up with preparing the dinner, for they were expecting visitors,
and were to have a superb dinner, consisting of a leg of pickled pork
and greens, and a pair of roast stuffed fowls, a mince-pie, and a
pudding.
Just at the end of the dinner Pip thought his time had come to be found
out, for his sister said graciously to her guests--
"You must taste a most delightful and delicious present I have had. It's
a pie, a savory pork-pie."
Pip could bear it no longer, and ran for the door, and there ran head
foremost into a party of soldiers with their muskets, one of whom held
out a pair of handcuffs to him, saying, "Here you are, look sharp, come
on." But they had not come for him, they only wanted Joe to mend the
handcuffs, for they were on the search for two convicts who had escaped
and were somewhere hid in the marshes. This turned the attention of Mrs.
Joe from the disappearance of the pie, without which she had come back,
in great astonishment. When the handcuffs were mended the soldiers went
off, accompanied by Joe and one of the visitors, and Joe took Pip and
carried him on his back.
Pip whispered, "I hope, Joe, we shan't find them," and Joe answered,
"I'd give a shilling if they had cut and run, Pip."
But the soldiers soon caught them, and one was the wretched man who had
talked with Pip; and once when he looked at Pip, the child shook his
head to try and let him know he had said nothing.
But the convict, without looking at anyone, told the sergeant he wanted
to say something to prevent other people being under suspicion, and said
he had taken some "wittles" from the blacksmith's. "It was some broken
wittles, that's what it was, and a dram of liquor, and a pie."
"Have you happened to miss such an article as a pie, blacksmith?"
inquired the sergeant.
"My wife did, at the very moment when you came in. Don't you know, Pip?"
"So," said the convict, looking at Joe, "you're the blacksmith, are you?
Then, I'm sorry to say, I've eat your pie."
"God knows you're welcome to it," said Joe. "We don't know what you have
done, but we wouldn't have you starved to death for it, poor miserable
fellow-creature. Would us, Pip?"
Then the boat came, and the convicts were taken back to their prison,
and Joe carried Pip home.
* * * * *
Some years after, some mysterious friend sent money for Pip to be
educated and brought up as a gentleman; but it was only when Pip was
quite grown up that he discovered this mysterious friend was the
wretched convict who had frightened him so dreadfully that cold, dark
Christmas eve. He had been sent to a far away land, and there had grown
rich; but he never forgot the little boy who had been kind to him.
X.
TODGERS'.
THIS is the story of a visit made by Mr. Pecksniff, a very pompous man,
and his two daughters Miss Mercy and Miss Charity, to the boarding-house
kept by Mrs. Todgers, in London; and a call while there on Miss Pinch, a
governess or young lady teaching in a rich family.
Mr. Pecksniff with his two beautiful young daughters looked about him
for a moment, and then knocked at the door of a very dingy building,
even among the choice collection of dingy houses around, on the front of
which was a little oval board, like a tea-tray, with this
inscription--"Commercial Boarding-house: M. Todgers."
It seemed that M. Todgers was not up yet, for Mr. Pecksniff knocked
twice and rang three times without making any impression on anything but
a dog over the way. At last a chain and some bolts were withdrawn with a
rusty noise, and a small boy with a large red head, and no nose to speak
of, and a very dirty boot on his left arm, appeared; who (being
surprised) rubbed the nose just mentioned with the back of a
shoe-brush, and said nothing.
"Still abed, my man?" asked Mr. Pecksniff.
"Still abed!" replied the boy. "I wish they was still abed. They're very
noisy abed; all calling for their boots at once. I thought you was the
paper, and wondered why you didn't shove yourself through the grating as
usual. What do you want?"
Considering his years, which were tender, the youth may be said to have
asked this question sternly, and in something of a defiant manner. But
Mr. Pecksniff, without taking offense at his bearing, put a card in his
hand, and bade him take that up-stairs, and show them in the meanwhile
into a room where there was a fire.
Surely there never was, in any other borough, city, or hamlet, in the
world, such a singular sort of a place as Todgers'. And surely London,
to judge from that part of it which hemmed Todgers' round, and hustled
it, and crushed it, and stuck its brick-and-mortar elbows into it, and
kept the air from it, and stood perpetually between it and the light,
was worthy of Todgers'.
There were more trucks near Todgers' than you would suppose a whole city
could ever need; not trucks at work but a vagabond race, forever
lounging in the narrow lanes before their masters' doors and stopping up
the pass; so that when a stray hackney-coach or lumbering wagon came
that way, they were the cause of such an uproar as enlivened the whole
neighborhood, and made the very bells in the next church-tower ring
again. In the narrow dark streets near Todgers', wine-merchants and
wholesale dealers in grocery-ware had perfect little towns of their own;
and, deep among the very foundations of these buildings, the ground was
undermined and burrowed out into stables, where cart-horses, troubled by
rats, might be heard on a quiet Sunday, rattling their halters, as
disturbed spirits in tales of haunted houses are said to clank their
chains.
To tell of half the queer old taverns that had a drowsy and secret
existence near Todgers' would fill a goodly book; while a second volume
no less in size might be given to an account of the quaint old guests
who frequented their dimly-lighted parlors.
The top of the house was worthy of notice. There was a sort of terrace
on the roof, with posts and fragments of rotten lines, once intended to
dry clothes upon; and there were two or three tea-chests out there, full
of earth, with forgotten plants in them, like old walking-sticks.
Whoever climbed to this observatory was stunned at first from having
knocked his head against the little door in coming out; and, after that,
was for the moment choked from having looked, perforce, straight down
the kitchen chimney; but these two stages over, there were things to
gaze at from the top of Todgers', well worth your seeing, too. For,
first and foremost, if the day were bright, you observed upon the
house-tops, stretching far away, a long dark path--the shadow of the
tall Monument which stands in memory of the great fire in London many
years before: and turning round, the Monument itself was close beside
you, with every hair erect upon his golden head, as if the doings of the
city frightened him. Then there were steeples, towers, belfries, shining
vanes and masts of ships, a very forest. Gables, house-tops,
garret-windows, wilderness upon wilderness. Smoke and noise enough for
all the world at once.