MRS. BOXALL FINDS A COMPANION IN MISFORTUNE.
At last the day arrived that Lucy and her grandmother had fixed for
removing into the bookseller's house. The furniture was all Mrs.
Boxall's own, though, if Mr. Worboise had thought proper to dispute
the fact, there was nobody left who could have home witness against
it. Mr. Kitely shut shop a little earlier; Mr. Spelt descended from
his perch: and Mr. Dolman crept out of his hole--all to bear a hand in
the moving of it. It was dusk when they began, but the darkness did
not hinder their diligence, and, in the course of a couple of hours,
all the heavier articles were in their new places. When everything was
got into something like order, it did not appear that, save for the
diminution of space, they had had such a terrible downcome. Lucy was
heartily satisfied with their quarters, and the feeling that she had
now to protect and work for her grandmother gave a little cheerfulness
to her behavior, notwithstanding the weight on her heart. Mattie was
important, with an importance which not even the delight of having Miss
Burton to live with them could assuage; for she had to preside at a
little supper which Mr. Kitely had procured, in honor of the occasion,
from the cook-shop which supplied the feasts of Spelt and Poppie. But
when things were partially arranged for the night, Mrs. Boxall, who was
in a very despondent condition, declared her intention of going to bed.
Lucy would gladly have done the same, but she could not think of doing
dishonor to the hospitality of their kind friend.
"Well, I am sorry the old lady can't be prevailed upon," said Mr.
Kitely. "Them sassages I know to be genuine--none of your cats or cats'
meat either. I know the very tree they grew upon--eh, princess? And now
we shan't be able to eat 'em up."
"Why don't you ask Mr. Spelt to come in and help us?" said Mattie.
"Bless you! he's gone to fetch his kid; and before they'll come home
they'll have bought their supper. They always do. I know their ways.
But I do believe that's them gone up the court this minute. I'll run
and see."
Mr. Kitely hurried out, and returned with Mr. Spelt, Poppie, and the
steam-engine, which was set down in the middle of the room.
"Ain't I been fort'nate?" said the bookseller. "Poppie ain't sold all
her potatoes. They was a-going to eat 'em up by the way of savin'. So
we've agreed to club, and go share and share. Ain't that it, Poppie?"
Poppie grinned and gave no other answer. But her father took up the
word.
"It's very kind of you to put it so, Mr. Kitely. But it seems to me
we're hardly fit company for a lady like Miss Burton."
"Surely, Mr. Spelt, we haven't been neighbors so long without being fit
to have our supper together?" said Lucy.
"That's very neighborly of you, miss. Let me assist you to a potato,"
said Spelt, going toward the steamer. "It's my belief there ain't no
better taters in London, though I says it as buys 'em," he added,
throwing back the lid.
"But we ain't going to begin on the taters, Spelt. You come and sit
down here, and we'll have the taters put on a plate. That's the right
way, ain't it, princess?"
"Well, I should say so, Mr. Kitely," answered Mattie, who had hitherto
been too full of her own importance even to talk. But Mr. Spelt
interfered.
"Them taters," said he, with decision, "ought to be eaten fresh out of
the steamer. If you turn 'em out on to a plate, I don't answer for the
consequences. We'll put 'em nearer the table, and I'll sit by 'em, with
your leave, Miss Burton, and help everybody as wants one."
It was remarkable with how much more decision than had belonged to
him formerly, Mr. Spelt now spoke. Mr. Kitely, after a half hour's
meditation, next day, as to whether the cause of it was Poppie or the
potatoes, came to the wise conclusion that between them they had made a
man of him.
By this time they were all seated round the table.
"Mr. Spelt, you be parson, and say grace," said Kitely, in his usual
peremptory tone.
"Why should you ask me, Mr. Kitely?" said the tailor, humbly.
"Because you know more about that sort o' thing than I do--and you know
it."
Mr. Spelt said grace so devoutly that nobody could hear him.
"Why do you say grace as if you was ashamed of it, Spelt? If I was to
say grace, now, I would let you hear me."
"I didn't know you cared about such things," returned Spelt, evasively.
"Well," said Mr. Kitely, "no more I do--or did, rather; for I'm afraid
that Mr. Fuller will get me into bad habits before he has done with me.
He's a good man, Mr. Fuller, and that's more than I'd say for every one
of the cloth. They're nothing but cloth--meaning no offense, Mr. Spelt,
to a honest trade."
"Perhaps there are more good ones among 'em than you think, Mr.
Kitely," said Lucy.
"There ud need to be, miss. But I declare that man has almost made me
hold my tongue against the whole sect of them. It seems a shame, with
him in St. Amos's, to say a word against Mr. Potter in St. Jacob's. I
never thought I should take to the church in my old age."
"Old age, Mr. Kitely!" Mattie broke in. "If you talk in that way, think
what you make of me!"
A general laugh greeted this remark. But Mattie was serious, and did
not even smile.
Poppie never opened her lips, except to smile. But she behaved with
perfect propriety. Mr. Spelt had civilized her so far, and that without
much trouble. He never told any one, however, that it was with anxiety
that he set out every night at half-past nine to bring her home; for
more than once he had found her potato-steamer standing alone on
the pavement, while she was off somewhere, looking at something, or
following a crowd. He had stood nearly half an hour before she came
back upon one of those occasions. All she said when she returned was,
"I thought I should find you here, daddy."
But I must not linger with the company assembled in the bookseller's
back-parlor; for their conversation will not help my reader on with my
story.
A very little man, with very short, bandy legs, was trudging along a
wide and rather crowded thoroughfare, with a pair of workman's boots in
his hand. It was Mr. Spelt's _sub_, Mr. Dolman, the cobbler.
"Well, Dolly, how do?" said a man in a long velveteen coat, with a
short pipe in his mouth and a greasy cloth cap on his head. "You're
late to-night, ain't you, Dolly?"
"Them lawyers; them lawyers, Jim!" returned Dolman, enigmatically.
"What the blazes have you got to do with lawyers?" exclaimed Jim
Salter, staring at the cobbler, who for the sake of balance had now got
one boot in each hand, and stood weighing the one against the other.
"Not much for my own part," returned Dolman, who was feeling very
important from having assisted at his neighbors' _flitting_. "But
there's good people in our court could tell you another story."
I have said that Mrs. Boxall did anything but hold her tongue about her
affairs, and Dolman had heard Mr. Worboise's behavior so thoroughly
canvassed between Mr. Kitely and Mr. Spelt, that he was familiar with
the main points of the case.
"Come and have a drop of beer," said Jim, "and tell us all about it."
No greater temptation could have been held out to Dolman. But he had a
certain sense of duty that must first be satisfied.
"No, Jim. I never touch a drop till I've taken my work home."
"Where's that?" asked Jim.
"Down by the Minories," answered the cobbler.
"Come along, then. I'll help you carry it."
"'Taint heavy. I'll carry it myself," answered Dolman, who, having once
been robbed on a similar occasion, seemed, in regard to boots, to have
lost his faith in humanity.
"I can't think, Dolly, why you roost so far from your work. Now it's
different with me. My work's here and there and everywhere; but yours
is allus in the same place."
"It gives me a walk, Jim. Besides it's respectable. It's having two
places of one's own. My landlady, Mrs. Dobbs, knows that my shop's
in a fashionable part, and she's rather proud of me for a lodger
in consekence. And my landlord, that's Mr. Spelt, a tailor, and
well-to-do--how's he to know that I ain't got a house in the suburbs?"
answered Dolman, laughing.
The moment he had got his money, and delivered the boots--for that
was the order of business between Dolman and his customers--they
betook themselves to a public-house in the neighborhood, where Dolman
conveyed to Jim, with very tolerable correctness, the whole story of
Mrs. Boxall's misfortunes. Before he reached the end of it, however,
Jim, who had already "put a name upon something" with two of his
acquaintances that night, got rather misty, and took his leave of
Dolman with the idea that Lucy and her grandmother had been turned out,
furniture and all, into the street, without a place to go to.
Much as she had dreaded leaving her own house, as she had always
considered it, Mrs. Boxall had a better night in her new abode than
she had had for months, and rose in the morning with a surprising
sense of freshness. Wonderful things come to us in sleep--none perhaps
more wonderful than this reviving of the colors of the faded soul from
being laid for a few hours in the dark--in _God's ebony box_, as George
Herbert calls the night. It is as if the wakeful angels had been busy
all the night preening the draggled and ruffled wings of their sleeping
brothers and sisters. Finding that Lucy was not yet dressed, she went
down alone to the back parlor, and, having nothing else to do, began
to look at the birds, of which, I have already informed my reader,
Mr. Kitely kept a great many, feeding and cleaning them himself, and
teaching the more gifted, starlings and parrots, and such like birds of
genius, to speak. If he did anything in the way of selling as well as
buying them, it was quite in a private way--as a gentleman may do with
his horses.
"Good-morning, sir," screamed a huge gray parrot the moment she
entered, regardless of the sex of his visitor. It was one the
bookseller had bought of a sailor somewhere about the docks, a day or
two before, and its fame had not yet spread through the neighborhood,
consequently Mrs. Boxall was considerably startled by the salutation.
"Have you spliced the main-brace this morning, sir?" continued the
parrot, and, without waiting for a reply, like the great ladies who
inquire after an inferior's family and then look out of the window,
burst into the song, "There's a sweet little cherub," and, stopping
as suddenly at the word, followed it with the inquiry, "How's your
mother?" upon which point Mrs. Boxall may, without any irreverence,
be presumed to have been a little in the dark. The next moment the
unprincipled animal poured forth his innocent soul in a torrent of
imprecations which, growing as furious as fast, reached the ears of
Mr. Kitely. He entered in a moment and silenced the animal with prompt
rebuke, and the descent of an artificial night in the shape of a green
cloth over his cage--the vengeance of the lower Jove. The creature
exploded worse than ever for a while, and then subsided. Meantime the
bookseller turned to Mrs. Boxall to apologize.
"I haven't had him long, ma'am--only a day or two. He's been ill
brought up, as you see, poor bird! I shall have a world of trouble to
cure him of his bad language. If I can't cure him I'll wring his neck."
"The poor creature doesn't know better," said Mrs. Boxall. "Wouldn't it
be rather hard to kill him for it?"
"Well, but what am I to do? I can't have such words running out and in
of my princess's ears all day."
"But you could sell him, or give him away, you know, Mr. Kitely."
"A pretty present he would be, the rascal! And for selling him, it
would be wickedness to put the money in my pocket. There was a time,
ma'am, when I would have taught him such words myself, and thought no
harm of it; but now, if I were to sell that bird, ma'am--how should I
look Mr. Fuller in the face next Sunday? No; if I can't cure him, I
must twist his neck. We'll eat him, ma'am; I dare say he's nice."
He added, in a whisper: "I wanted him to hear me. There's no telling
how much them creatures understand."
But before Mr. Kitely had done talking, Mrs. Boxall's attention was
entirely taken up with another bird, of the paroquet species. It was
the most awfully grotesque, the most pitiably comic animal in creation.
It had a green head, with a band of red round the back of it; while
white feathers came down on each side of its huge beak, like the gray
whiskers of a retired military man. This head looked enormous for the
rest of the body, for from the nape of the neck to the tail, except a
few long feathers on the shoulders of its wings, blue like those of a
jay, there was not another feather on its body: it was as bare as if
it had been plucked for roasting. A more desolate, poverty-stricken,
wretched object, can hardly be conceived. The immense importance of
his head and beak and gray whiskers, with the abject nakedness--more
than nakedness, _pluckedness_--of his body was quite beyond laughing
at. It was far fitter to make one cry. But the creature was so
absolutely, perfectly self-satisfied, without a notion of shame, or
even discomfort, that it appeared impossible he could ever have seen
himself behind. He must sorely have fancied himself as glorious as in
his palmiest days. And his body was so thin, and his skin so old and
wrinkled--I wish I could set him in the margin for my younger readers
to see him. He hopped from place to place, and turned himself round
before the spectators with such an absence of discomposure, that one
could not help admiring his utter _sang-froid_, almost envying his
perfect self-possession. Observing that his guest was absorbed in the
contemplation of the phenomenon, Mr. Kitely said:
"You're a-wondering at poor Widdles. Widdles was an old friend of mine
I named the bird after before he lost his greatcoat all but the collar.
Widdles! Widdles!"
The bird came close up to the end of his perch, and, setting his head
on one side, looked at his master with one round yellow eye.
"He's the strangest bird I ever saw," said Mrs. Boxall. "If you talked
of wringing _his_ neck, now, I shouldn't wonder, knowing you for a
kind-hearted man, Mr. Kitely."
"Wring Widdles' neck!" exclaimed the bookseller. "His is the last
neck I would think of wringing. See how bravely he bears misfortune.
Nobody could well lose more than Widdles, and nobody could well take it
lighter. He's a sermon, is that bird. His whole worldly wealth consists
in his wig. They was a fine pair once, only he was always henpecked.
His mate used to peck him because he wasn't able to peck her, for he
was the smaller of the two. They always reminded me of Spelt and his
wife. But when they were took ill, both of them, she gave in, and he
wouldn't. Death took his feathers, and left him jolly without them.
Bless him, old Widdles."
"Well, it's a curious taste of yours, I must say, Mr. Kitely. But some
people, no more than some birds, ain't to be accounted for."
Mr. Kitely chose to consider this a good sally of wit, and laughed
loud and long. Mrs. Boxall laughed a little too, and was pleased with
herself. And from that moment she began to take to the bird.
"Try him with a bit of sugar," said Mr. Kitely, going to the carved
cabinet to get a piece, which he then handed to Mrs. Boxall.
The bird was friendly and accepted it. Mrs. Boxall was pleased with
him now as well as with herself, and before long a firm friendship
was established between the two, which went so far that Widdles
would, when she put her hand into his cage, perch upon her bony old
finger, and allow himself to be lifted out. There was no fear of his
even attempting to fly away, for he was perfectly aware of his utter
incapacity in that direction of bird-like use and custom. Before many
days had passed she had become so much attached to the bird that his
company did not a little to shield her from the inroads of recurrent
regret, mortification, and resentment.
One evening when she came home from her now rather numerous
engagements, Lucy found her grandmother seated at the table, with the
bird in her hand, rubbing him all over very gently for fear of hurting
him, with something she took with her finger from a little pot on the
table.
"What _are_ you doing with Widdles, grannie?" she said.
"Trying a little bear's grease, child. Why shouldn't I?" she added,
angrily, when Lucy laughed.
"No reason in the world why you shouldn't, grannie. You mustn't mind my
laughing."
"I don't see why anybody should laugh at misfortune," returned Mrs.
Boxall, severely. "How would you like to be in the condition of this
bird yourself?"--without a feather, she was going to say, but just
pulled up in time. She could not help laughing herself now, but she
went on, nevertheless, with her work of charity. "Who knows," she said,
"but they may grow again?"
"Grow again!" shrieked the gray parrot, in the tone of a violin in
unskillful hands.
"Yes, grow again, you witch!" said Mrs. Boxall. "I don't see why the
devil shouldn't be in you as well as in your betters. Why shouldn't
they grow again?"
"Grow again!" reiterated the gray parrot. "Grow again! Widdles!
Widdles! Widdles! Ha! ha! ha!"
"It shall grow again," retorted the old lady. "If bear's grease won't
do, I'll spend my last penny on a bottle of Macassar; and if it doesn't
grow then I'll pluck your back and stick them into his."
Mrs. Boxall had got into a habit of talking thus with the bird, which
the bookseller had already nearly cured of his wicked words by instant
punishment following each offense.
"Stick them into his!" cried the bird like an echo, and refused to
speak again.
Sometimes, however, he would say a naughty word evidently for the sake
of testing his master, or as if he wondered what punishment he would
have this time--for the punishments were various. On such occasions he
would shriek out the word, "Duck his head," and dart to the opposite
side of the cage, keeping one eye full on his master, with such an
expression that his profile looked like a whole face with a Cyclopean
one eye in it.
Whether Mrs. Boxall was at last successful in her benevolent exertions
I am unable to say, for her experiments were still going on when the
period arrived with which my story must close. She often asserted that
she saw them beginning to sprout; and to see her with spectacles on
nose, examining the poor withered bluish back of Widdles, was ludicrous
or touching, according to the humor of the beholder. Widdles seemed to
like the pains she took with him, however; and there is no doubt of
one thing, that she was rewarded for her trouble tenfold in being thus
withdrawn from the contemplation of her own wrongs and misfortunes.
Widdles thus gave her many a peaceful hour she would not in all
probability have otherwise enjoyed. Nor were her attentions confined to
him; through him, she was introduced to the whole regiment of birds,
which she soon began assisting Mr. Kitely to wait upon. Mattie had
never taken to them. While grannie, as she, too, called her, was busy
with them, Mattie would sit beside at her needlework, scarcely looking
up even when she addressed an occasional remark to grannie. It was a
curious household, and fell into many singular groups.
But here I must leave Mrs. Boxall with her bird-companions, which, save
for the comfort they afforded her in taking her mind off herself, have
no active part in the story. Through Mrs. Morgenstern's influence and
exertions, Lucy soon had as much to do in the way of teaching as she
could compass, and her grandmother knew no difference in her way of
living from what she had been accustomed to.