POPPIE IN TOWN.
Between Mr. Spelt's roost and the house called No. 1 of Guild Court
there stood a narrow house, as tall as the rest, which showed by the
several bell-pulls, ranged along the side of the door, that it was
occupied by different households. Mr. Spelt had for some time had his
eye upon it, in the hope of a vacancy occurring in its top chambers,
occupying which he would be nearer his work, and have a more convenient
home in case he should some day succeed in taming and capturing Poppie.
Things had been going well in every way with the little tailor. He had
had a good many more private customers for the last few months, began
in consequence to look down from a growing hight upon slop-work, though
he was too prudent to drop it all at once, and had three or four pounds
in the post-office savings-bank. Likewise his fishing had prospered.
Poppie came for her sweets as regularly as a robin for his crumbs in
winter. Spelt, however, did not now confine his bait to sweets; a fresh
roll, a currant bun, sometimes--when his longing for his daughter had
been especially strong the night before, even a Bath bun--would hang
suspended by a string from the aerial threshold, so that Poppie could
easily reach it, and yet it should be under the protection of the
tailor from chance marauders. And every morning as she took it, she
sent a sweet smile of thanks to the upper regions whence came her
aid. Though not very capable of conversation, she would occasionally
answer a few questions about facts--as, for instance, where she had
slept the last night, to which the answer would commonly be, "Mother
Flanaghan's;" but once, to the tailor's no small discomposure, was
"The Jug." She did not seem to know exactly, however, how it was that
she got incarcerated: there had been a crowd, and somebody had prigged
something, and there was a scurry and a running, and she scudded as
usual, and got took up. Mr. Spelt was more anxious than ever to take
her home after this. But sometimes, the moment he began to talk to her
she would run away, without the smallest appearance of rudeness, only
of inexplicable oddity; and Mr. Spelt thought sometimes that he was not
a single step nearer to the desired result than when he first baited
his hook. He regarded it as a good omen, however, when, by the death
of an old woman and the removal of her daughter, the topmost floor of
the house, consisting of two small rooms, became vacant; and he secured
them at a weekly rental quite within the reach of his improved means.
He did not imagine how soon he would be able to put them to the use he
most desired.
One evening, just as the light was fading and he proceeded to light a
candle to enable him to go on with his work, he heard the patter of
her bare feet on the slabs, for his ear was very keen for this most
pleasant of sounds, and looking down, saw the child coming toward him,
holding the bottom of her ragged frock up to her head. He had scarcely
time to be alarmed before she stopped at the foot of his shop, looked
up pale as death, with a dark streak of blood running through the
paleness, and burst into a wail. The little man was down in a moment,
but before his feet reached the ground Poppie had fallen upon it in a
faint. He lifted the child in his arms with a strange mixture of pity
and horror in his big heart, and sped up the three stairs to his own
dwelling. There he laid her on his bed, struck a light, and proceeded
to examine her. He found a large and deep cut in her head, from which
the blood was still flowing. He rushed down again, and fortunately
found Dolman on the point of leaving. Him he sent for the doctor, and
returned like an arrow to his treasure. Having done all he could, with
the aid of his best Sunday shirt, to stop the bleeding, he waited
impatiently for the doctor's arrival, which seemed long delayed. Before
he came the child began to revive; and, taught by the motion of her
lips, he got some water and held to them. Poppie drank and opened
her eyes. When she saw who was bending over her, the faintest ghost
of a smile glimmered about her mouth, and she closed her eyes again,
murmuring something about Mother Flanaghan.
As far as he could gather from piecing together what the child said
afterward, Mr. Spelt came to the conclusion that Mrs. Flanaghan had
come home a little the worse for "cream of the valley," and wanted
more. Poppie happened to be alone in her room when she came, for we
have seen that she sometimes forgot to lock the door, if, indeed,
there was a lock on it. She had nothing to care for, however, but her
gin-bottle; and that she thought she hid safely enough. Whether she
had left it empty or not, I do not know, but she found it empty when
she neither desired nor expected to find it so; and coming to the
hasty and stupid conclusion that poor Poppie was the thief--just as
an ill-trained child expends the rage of a hurt upon the first person
within his reach--she broke the vile vessel upon Poppie's head with the
result we have seen. But the child had forgotten everything between
that and her waking upon Mr. Spelt's bed.
The doctor came and dressed her wound, and gave directions for her
treatment.
And now Mr. Spelt was in the seventh heaven of delight--he had a little
woman of his own to take care of. He was thirty-nine years of age;
and now, for the first time in his life, saw a prospect of happiness
opening before him. No--once before, when he led the splendid Mrs.
Spelt home from church, he had looked into a rosy future; but the next
morning the prospect closed, and had never opened again till now. He
did not lie down all that night, but hovered about her bed, as if she
had been a creature that might any moment spread out great wings and
fly away from him forever. Sometimes he had to soothe her with kind
words, for she wandered a good deal, and would occasionally start up
with wild looks, as if to fly once more from Mother Flanaghan with the
gin-bottle bludgeon uplifted in her hand; then the sound of Mr. Spelt's
voice would instantly soothe her, and she would lie down again and
sleep. But she scarcely spoke; for at no time was Poppie given to much
speech.
When the light came, he hurried down-stairs to his shop, got his work
and all his implements out, carried them up, and sat with them on the
floor where he could see Poppie's face. There he worked away busily
at a pair of cords for a groom, every now and then lifting his eyes
from his seam to look down into the court, and finding them always met
by the floor. Then his look would go up to the bed, seeking Poppie's
pale face. He found he could not get on so fast as usual. Still he made
progress; and it was a comfort to think that by working thus early he
was saving time for nursing his little white Poppie.
When at length she woke, she seemed a little better; but she soon grew
more feverish, and soon he found that he must constantly watch her, for
she was ready to spring out of bed any moment. The father-heart grew
dreadfully anxious before the doctor came; and all that day and the
next he got very little work done, for the poor child was really in
danger. Indeed it was more than a week before he began to feel a little
easy about her; and ten days yet passed before she was at all able to
leave her bed.
And herein lay the greatest blessing both for Spelt and Poppie. I
doubt if anything else could have given him a reasonable chance, as we
say, of taming the wild animal. Her illness compelled her into such a
continuance of dependent association with him, that the idea of him
had time to grow into her heart; while all her scudding propensities,
which prevented her from making a quiet and thorough acquaintance
with anybody, were not merely thwarted, but utterly gone, while she
remained weak. The humanity of the child had therefore an opportunity
of developing itself; obstructions removed, the well of love belonging
to her nature began to pulse and to flow, and she was, as it were,
compelled to love Mr. Spelt; so that, by the time old impulses returned
with returning health, he had a chance against them.