HOW JIM RETURNED HOME, ALL BUT ONE LEG, AND LIZARANN CALLED ON HIM.
HAD THE DEVIL GOT UNCLE BOB? HOW BRIDGETTICKS HAD HEARD OF A SCHEME
FOR LIZARANN'S BENEFIT
Lizarann's deferred hopes of being allowed to rejoin her Daddy made
her heart sick, but they never ceased to be hopes. No undercurrent of
despair made itself felt. If Teacher's reassuring tones had not been
sufficient, were there not the gentleman's, known to Lizarann's direct
simplicity as Mr. Yorick--a designation remaining uncontradicted in his
laughing acceptance of it. But he was going back to his own Rectory, in
order that Gus should be once more in harness at St. Vulgate's--his own
proper field of labour--during the approaching Holy Week. The invalid
was enormously better; so he himself said.
However, Mr. Yorick was destined before his departure to put the
crowning corner-stone on the fabric of Lizarann's affection for himself.
"Now, Miss Coupland," said he, "you sit still! And don't kick! And then
tell me where you suppose you are going to be taken to-day."
Lizarann was cautious--wouldn't commit herself. "Who's a-going to tight
me?" she asked, to get a clue.
"Me," said Mr. Yorick, falling to the grammatical level of his company.
"I'm going to take you, as soon as ever you've guessed where. But only
one guess, mind!"
Lizarann thought this shabby. But then, after all, when there is only
one guess worth making, you may just as well use it up and have done
with it. She looked from one of the faces that was watching to the
other, and back; then risked her guess. "To Daddy in the Sospital!" she
fairly shouted. But, alas!--disappointment was in store for her.
"No! Not Daddy in the Sospital. Guess again."
"Oh, Yorick, how can you? Playing with the child! I shouldn't have
thought you could be so wicked. No, Lizarann dear, don't you believe
him! Daddy's out of the Hospital, and you're to go and see him.
There!... I'm telling the truth, child!" For Lizarann, bewildered,
still glances from one to the other.
"That's it, Lizarann. Not Daddy in the Sospital, but Daddy out of the
Sospital. Now wrap up warm, and we'll go at once." A wild shriek of
delight, an "undue subordination" of limbs, as in pictures of a debased
period, and a rush for wraps, is followed, we are sorry to say, by some
coughing. There is no such thing as flawless event anywhere.
"Oh no!--it won't do her any harm to go out," says Teacher. "Dr. Ferris
said it might do her good if it got mild. Now, Lizarann!--Mr. Yorick's
ready." For this Monday, known to the Rev. Gus as "Annunciation," and
to most of his flock as Lady Day--a dreadful day when your rent isn't
ready--had come as a herald of early spring, and a belief in violets
was in the air.
* * * * *
"How far mustn't we go to the Sospital?" Lizarann speaks obscurely, but
the meaning is clear to her conductor. How long is the road we are not
going to the Hospital on?--surely that's clear.
"How far is it to Daddy? Daddy's at home." And, surely enough, when
Mr. Yorick comes to Tallack Street he turns the corner. This bewilders
Lizarann.
"But Aunt Stingy, she's took a place," she says. She is not certain
of the exact sense of her words. The place might be Badajoz; or a
Chancellorship of something, with a portfolio. But it doesn't matter!
In either case, Aunt Stingy has left her home desolate--cookless! Again
Lizarann is sympathetically understood.
"Your Daddy's being seen to, Miss Coupland. So he won't starve. Here
we are!" And it is actually true! Lizarann is back in the home she
has been eight weeks away from. For although of late the child had
been allowed out, cautiously, no expedition had covered the half-mile
between the school and Tallack Street. It is actually true that she
is back there now, and wild with delight on the knee her Daddy still
has left for her--in a rapture of tears and laughter that can just
allow--but only just--the moderation of deportment called for when
knees but lately the subjects of comminuted fractures are sat upon,
even by very light weights.
Jim was garrulous about the Hospital, and the kindness and attention
he had received there. "Yes, master, I was main sorry to come away,
one side o' lookin' at it. I'll carry the doctor-gentleman and Nurse
Lucy in my mind a long day on. Many's the time I said to myself what
I'd be tellin' of 'em to the little lass, home again. There was a
bit o' sameness, as might be, when you think of it, and I got fixed
uneasy-like about the lass. But, dear Lard bless you!--there was a many
there worse off than me. Why, there was that pore chap you see, next
bed off on the right! How might you suppose he come there?"
"Don't know, Jim; give it up! How was it?" Mr. Yorick does all the
conversation. Lizarann will find her tongue presently, when she and
Daddy are alone. At present she merely nestles to him, speechless, but
blissful. Jim pursues his topic:
"As I made it out, master, it was this sort o' way: It was a kind o'
small-arms factory, and there was two young wenches in the finishin'
shop o' one mind about him. So it came to making ch'ice, for him.
And one o' them, by name Clara, she warns him if she catches him
sweethearting with her shopmate, she'd just mark him. Both decent
girls, ye see! And she was all as good as her word, with a little pot
of vitrol, right in his eyes! And he run, roaring mad with pain, and
was caught in the machinery, and made a spoiled man of, as I reckon,
all his days. Name of Linklater."
"What a terrible business! And it may have been _he_ wasn't to blame,
either."
"No--pore chap! He'd just no consolation, as you might say. I count
myself a well-off man, set against him. Just wait a bit, master, and
see me when I'm clear of them crutches. Once I get to use my stick
again, anybody'll say, to see me: 'Why, there's a man ain't got
anything the matter with him!' Nor yet I shan't have, to speak of!"
Athelstan Taylor could not help comparing Jim's resolute optimism--poor
crushed wreck that he was!--with his sister's aggressive meekness
and its pious claim to resignation or uncomplaining acquiescence in
what was really a most happy release, though paraded as a cruel blow
of Fate. But he could not stay to chat. He had to get back to St.
Vulgate's; have a talk about the local flock, chiefly goats, with his
friend, who had come home the evening before; pack his trunk, and get
to Euston by one-thirty, with or without lunch. So he had only a few
more hurried words with Jim.
"You'll think of what I was saying to you, Jim?"
"Sure, master!"
"And the lassie will just trot back to Miss Fossett, before it's dark.
She'd better; the house might be cold here. Won't you, Lizarann?"
Lizarann will, honour bright! "And how about those kisses I'm to take
to my own little girls?" Payable on demand, three crossed to the
account of Phoebe, three to Joan; both names being now familiar to
drawer. They are very loud--those kisses! Mr. Yorick says farewell and
goes. Lizarann and her Daddy are again alone together. Eight whole
weeks!
Oh, the hours that had seemed weeks, and the days that had seemed
years, of waiting--waiting for this moment. And here it was! Daddy
himself--come back out of that mysterious Hospital, where Lizarann had
never been to see him! No wonder Lizarann did not know where to begin!
"Well, then, little lass! They haven't cut the little lass's tongue
out amongst 'em?" A vehement headshake of denial precedes the first
of the many things Lizarann can select, at random, from the multitude
she has been resolving to tell Daddy all through this dreary period of
privation.
"Teacher's new cat's black all over, only white on the stomach. Yass!
And four of the kittens was drownded." Jim's sympathies are all ready
for Teacher's cat's kittens. But he is not further called on to show
them, for the child deserts the kittens almost instantly with "Oh,
Daddy!--they took you to the Sospital."
"Coorse they did! How many policeman was there, lassie?"
"There was free I see first. And one he turned back down the road. Only
there was men, as well as policemen."
"Chaps?"
"Yass! And there was the boys. And there was a woman. And there was
another woman. Only not sober." So she didn't count, that one; was
civilly disqualified, as it were. But was the sober one making herself
of use?--Jim inquires. "She wasn't finding any fault," is all the
testimony Lizarann can give. It seems to imply that the drunken one
was indicting the executive. Lizarann finishes up her report: "Then
there was Mother Groves, and the 'ot-chestnut stall at the corner, and
the Young Varmint." For this is the name--no less--by which Frederick
Hawkins is known to Lizarann and her Daddy.
"So there they all was, the biling of 'em," said Jim. "And there was
Daddy, he'd got himself under a cart, and was a bit the worse by it.
And his little lass, she come and kissed him, for to cheer him up--hay,
lassie? Nor never cried, nor made no noise, like he told her not to."
Lizarann felt proud and happy. But she could not endure a position
with the slightest false pretence in it. "I _did_ cried, too," she
said, "when I got so far as Dartley Street. And the boy, he says not to
water-cart."
"The Young Varmint?"
"Yass! He toldited me his nime, he did. Hawkins--Frederick--Hawkins."
Lizarann gives the exact words the boy had said. "And he says not
to water-cart because of his aunt and uncle. Took to the Sospital
quite flat they was, and begun singing a fortnight after!" Jim made
concession to the Young Varmint--went so far as to say that he would
not warm his hide for him this time, pr'aps! But he spoke without
confidence of the like abstention being justified in the future.
"And then the lassie come home," said he. "And who come to the door?"
"Only me, Daddy!"
"Ah!--but t'other side--who come?"
"Uncle Bob didn't come to the door, only he set it just on the jar
for me to push." Clearly "coming to a door" involves opening it wide
for friends, or conferring with strangers to learn their reason for
knocking or ringing. He who takes letters from a letter-box does not
go to the door, even if he rushes downstairs like a madman when the
postman's knock comes.
You may be sure that Lizarann's narrative that followed was full of
little niceties of language, as spoken in Tallack Street. But you have
had all the substance, and it need not be repeated in a new form.
Jim interspersed the story of the suppression of his delirious
brother-in-law with exclamations of applause. Lizarann deserved what
the players call "a hand" now and again for the vivacity of her
descriptive report of the knife scene, with its dramatic ending of
the application of the spent lucifer-match to Uncle Bob's hand. "He
just give one scroatch, and there he was!" The introduction of a new
self-explanatory word into the language alone deserved recognition. But
Jim was not concerned with this. The conduct of Athelstan Taylor in a
difficult position took his attention off minor points.
"I could have named the sart of man he was," said he, speaking half
to himself, "from the feel of his hand, and maybe no more than just
a 'Good-marning, mate!' by the way. And--but to think of it!--him a
_parson_!" Jim couldn't get over this at all. He dwelt on the unfitness
of the arrangement: "Now, if they'd 'a made pore Bob a parson, it might
'a broke him of his habit, and we'd not have had a bad miss of him
on our side." He seemed to go on thinking of the subject in all its
aspects--possibly of the utilization of ecclesiastical preferments as
an antidote to drunkenness. But his fingers kept wandering about his
little girl's face and head, as if to detect the change eight weeks had
made in it.
"Uncle Bob's dead," said she, getting closer to say it, in a dropped,
awe-struck voice.
"Ah--he's dead! He might have turned over a better day's work, mayhap!
But Lard!--if you come to that, what a many of us mightn't! Poor Bob!"
"Does it hurt, Daddy?"
"Does what hurt, lassie?"
"Being dead."
"I reckoned you might mean my old leg.... No--it don't hurt, bless
you!--not good little lassies, like mine. Other folks' I couldn't say
about. They do say the Devil gets some on 'em, now and again. But he
ain't a sartainty, himself. Though in coorse he manages all he can
see his way to." That is to say that, unless handicapped by absolute
non-existence, Satan might be trusted to do his best to get all bad
little lassies.
Lizarann knew her catechism, and all that was necessary for her
salvation, as school-knowledge. But she could not help being curious
about these things as actual facts--knowledge-knowledge, one might say.
Daddy could be relied on. Why not go straight to the point? So after
some mere conversation-making about whether Mr. Winkleson had ever
actually seen the Devil, Lizarann did so. "Has he got Uncle Bob?" she
asked.
Her father's answer was not consistent with his previous expressions
of opinion. "Never you fear for him, lass! The Devil don't take a poor
chap for making mistakes with his grog. And as for his handling that
knife a bit too free, I doubt the liquor had just got the mastery of
him. And then, you know, lass, a man ain't himself when that happens.
Ye may make your mind easy about Bob."
So Lizarann felt no further disquiet. Perhaps she was unconsciously
soothed by observing the differences of opinion among her seniors--Mr.
Winkleson, Teacher, and Daddy. The last was most likely to know, and
gave the pleasantest answer to the problem.
"And there was my little lass out in the snow in her night-shimmee.
To think of that! And her Daddy all the while no more use than a
turned turtle!" This had to be explained; and the continuity of the
conversation was risked, owing to Lizarann's womanly pity for turtles
on their backs and helpless. However, this very pity caused reaction
towards the previous questions, as Jim's situation had been no better
than that of the turtles. Lizarann had to cry a little over this, and
then renewed her petition--previous applications having been met by
evasion or postponement--to actually see the wooden substitute for a
limb that, in spite of its boasted efficacy, compelled her Daddy to
sit on a chair with more or less disguise of coat or blanket over it,
both limbs being preferably kept horizontal for the present. But she
might look at it, sure, might Lizarann; and, indeed, anyone would have
thought, to see Jim exhibiting the business-end of a very new wooden
leg, that some great improvement on a previous unsatisfactory condition
had been attained. The little woman was incredulous about this; and,
suspecting guile, put her Daddy through a severe cross-examination.
"'Sposin' you was obliged to it, Daddy; 'sposin' you had to walk all
the way up Tallack Street, and all the way acrost Cazenove Street,
and all the way acrost Trott Street to Blading Street where the cart
was...?"
"Lard, lassie!--I could do it on my head, as the saying is, any minute
o' the week!" But Jim demurs to an actual performance--says the doctor
don't allow any tricks to be played. Lizarann gives the point up; but,
oh dear!--how dreadfully afraid she feels that she is being practised
on, and that in reality this shiny, well-turned, clean-leather-strapped
contraption is, after all, no better--even perhaps worse--than an
ordinary human foot. She will--she must!--elicit the truth somehow.
"Daddy!"
"Lassie!"
"When you was out on the yard-arm, and the wind was a-freshenin' up
from the south...."
"To be sure, lass! Freshening to a three-quarter gale, and none too
little canvas on her.... Easy ahead, lassie!" Jim is only helping the
memory of the well-worn story, and the child accepts the prompting.
"... None too little canvas on her. And Peter Cortright and Marmaduke
Flyn, they was both on the mainyard reefin' alongside. And Peter
Cortright he sings out to look...."
"Ah!--and your Daddy, he looked, and there he see her, the Dutchman,
carrying all sail afore the wind.... Well, little lass, and what o'
that?"
"When you was then, 'sposin' you'd only had a wooden leg!"
Jim's big laugh comes; and so lost is he in his little lass, so free
from all thought of his own great privation, even in the face of the
bygone time, that he can make it a heart-whole laugh and never flinch.
"'Sposin' I'd only had a wooden leg? Well--as I reckon it--I shouldn't
have taken much notice. Not for one such! If you'd 'a named two wooden
legs now, lassie! That might have constitooted a poor kind of holt on
a slippery yard. But I might have made a shift to do, even at that."
Lizarann was silenced, but not convinced. She resolved to thresh the
subject out with Bridgetticks, whom she had secretly resolved to call
upon on her way home. Bridget might know nothing about wooden legs,
but she could cite a parallel experience, having herself walked on her
brother's stelts, what he made out of two broomsticks and the foot'old
nyled on, and mide syfe with a scrop of narrer iron hooping. She would
refer it to Bridgetticks whether her brother--or a Circus, for that
matter--could walk upon a bare yard, of which her own image was akin to
a yard-measure, with a pair of stelts. If she, Bridget, felt confident
of her brother's powers, no doubt Jim's assurance of his own might have
been well grounded.
"Doesn't Aunt Stingy come to see to you, Daddy?" she asked anxiously.
For she couldn't see no sign neither of breakfast, nor yet of dinner,
nor yet of supper.
"No--lassie! Your aunt, she's got to 'tend on somebody else, away off
to Wimbledon Common; and these here Simses--or Groombridges; I didn't
catch the name right--she's got a short let to, are mostly away on
a job. So she's packed together her bit of furniture, like you see
it, and Mrs. Hacker, she's so obliging as to give me her time and
attention; 'cos the master, ye see, he put the matter in trim for me.
One don't look for hospital fare all the days of one's life."
Lizarann had heard where her aunt's "place" was, but her experience of
places was of such as could be got to by half-past seven in the morning
and come back to sleep at home. She thought now that she saw her way to
enlightenment.
"Is where Aunt Stingy's gone where Mr. Winkleson lives?"
"Never a bit of it, lassie! He's by name Wilkins--Wilkinson Wilkins.
This here's Wimbledon, a place with a Common to it. I went there once,
for to see a review. I wouldn't mind going to see one again, and take
the little lass." Perhaps he meant that his child's sight would serve
for both; but more probably it was an instance of the strange way blind
folk forget their own blindness. "Your aunty, she's come over once or
twice, to pack up her traps and make straight, but I've got to put my
dependence on Mrs. Hacker, so far as I can't shift for myself."
Lizarann derived from this and what followed one broad impression
that the history of No. 27, Tallack Street had reached the end of a
chapter--the one that contained her own biography to date. Another,
that Aunt Stingy would be much less in evidence for the future.
Another, that a new force had come into her life and Daddy's--a
welcome one, connected with Miss Fossett and Mr. Yorick. She had a
happy guardian-angel sensation about this, and took it to her bosom
with only one slight misgiving--that they were too easily duped by
that ridiculous little pipe of Dr. Ferris's, that would hold up like a
candlestick certainly, and you could blow through if he let you, but
that was impotent for every other purpose.
If this story could ask its reader a question at this point, it would
be: "Have you not noticed that Lizarann has scarcely coughed, all
through this long interview with her Daddy?" It was the case, anyhow,
and rather points to the truth of what a physician once said to
ourself, the writer: "If in the early stages of lung-disease doses of
unalloyed joy, of perfect happiness, could be administered three times
a day to the patient, the later stages would be much rarer than they
are at present." Certainly Lizarann's happiness had almost touched
rapture, doubts about the wooden leg being the only alloy in the pure
gold. And she certainly had coughed mighty little. Perhaps Dr. Ferris
would have known what claim Lizarann had to be considered a case of the
kind referred to.
The delightful time had to come to an end, and Lizarann found herself
compelled to say good-bye. Daddy would have it so, although darkness
was a long way off yet awhile. So she departed, bidden first to go to
Mrs. Hacker's, and say to that good lady, that she was on no account
to be in any tirrit to come away from her own supper to attend to
Jim's, for that he had got his pipe, Lizarann having helped him to
light it,--a thing to rejoice at, after that one defective usage of
an Institution otherwise perfect--and wasn't in any driving hurry.
This message Lizarann gave fairly honestly, in an interview with Mrs.
Hacker, which--being repeated to Jim--may be held responsible for some
borrowed phrases used lately to describe impressions on her mind of his
surroundings. But she was not uneasy about him; her faith in Mr. Yorick
was too great for that.
Having given her message, it did not strike her as a serious
transgression to pay a visit to Bridgetticks. The injunction to go
straight home covered the line of road--did not deal with continuity of
movement. That seemed to her a just interpretation of it. But of course
not stopping only five minutes!
So she went to the door of Bridgetticks, and shouted through its
keyhole, in preference to knocking or ringing. But Bridget was
assisting her mother at the washtub, and up to her elbers in suds; so
she sent an emissary to the door instead of going herself. He was very
young, and was eating an apple; he was, in fact, too young and crude
to be trusted to do like he was told; and he put a false construction
on his mission, endeavouring to spit some of his apple through the
keyhole, with a mistaken hospitality. His name was, as pronounced,
Halexandericks. His bursts of laughter at each new failure of his
attempts on the keyhole obscured the voice that was calling through it.
He had a vacuous though not unpleasant laugh.
"I'll let you know directly, if you don't open that door," shouted
his sister. She gave close particulars of the means she would resort
to, but without effect. So she onsoapied the suds off of her arms,
which she then placed akimbo, and went herself; not without a certain
dancing effect, in consonance with a rhythmic utterance difficult to
class as either song or recitation. Its words were certainly, "Waxy
diddle-iddle-iddle, high-gee-wo!" ending in a pounce on Alexander, who
spat his last piece of apple in his captor's face with a fiendish crow
of delight. She wiped if off on his costume without comment.
"I seen my Daddy," said Lizarann, beaming, when the door was opened.
"I seen him afore ever you did," said Bridget, not to be outdone. "I
seen him fetched along in a cab, last night just on seven-thirty. I
seen him holped into the house."
"You story!" said Lizarann, hurt. "He can help himself, he can. He
don't call for no help. Who was helping him?"
"Clapham Church Parsing--same as see your uncle Mr. Steptoe
drownded--and rilewye-stytion cabman with rilings for trunks atop.
Three thousand six hundred and thirty-two. Got him indoors they did."
Lizarann felt inclined to cry; this was a throw-back! But she wasn't
one to give in easily. "My Daddy says he could swarm up the rigging as
soon as not," said she. "Only the doctor he says for to keep quiet a
bit, owing to prudence." When Lizarann repeated phrases lately heard,
you would have thought, to listen to her, she was quite a big girl.
Now, it must not be supposed that Lizarann and Bridgetticks had not met
during the past eight weeks. On the contrary, visits had been arranged,
by request, even before Lizarann had been thought plenty well enough
for school, only not to fret herself. These were the terms in which
Miss Fossett's Anne confirmed that lady's opinion, and sanctioned a
continued study of arithmetic and calligraphy. But intercourse during
school-hours is fettered by formula; and when there's carpets and the
bed made and all, you have to set quiet, and it's not the same thing.
So when these two found themselves once more in their old haunt, it was
as though a ceremonial padlock had been removed from their tongues.
Lizarann's improved exterior--for Teacher and Anne had reconstructed
it--clashed a little with Bridgetticks; but the principle held good.
Here, on Mr. 'Icks's doorstep, when an imputation of falsehood as
an exordium to any reply seemed natural and genial, neither speaker
felt bound to check her inspirations. Lizarann and Bridgetticks were
themselves again.
They sat on the doorstep, cloze or no!--this referred to Lizarann's
frock--and Bridget retained her younger brother, perhaps for slight
rehearsals of the vengeance she had in store for him; he was that
troublesome! Bridget smelt of soap and warm steam.
"_You_ wented on stelts, and wooden legs is better than stelts!"
Lizarann's uneasiness rankles, and she longs for public acknowledgment
of her Daddy's prospects of rehabilitation.
"I shouldn't 'a said so," Bridget answered. "Stelts you catches hold
atop. Wooden legs is balancin'. Stelts is your hands as well as your
legs. Wooden legs you're stood-on-end and pitches yourself over,
just as like as not. Not onlest you have crutches. Your Daddy he 's
crutches, he has. I see 'em myself!" Lizarann could say nothing about
Job's comforters, if only because, on the one occasion when she had
heard them mentioned--by Mr. Winkleson--she had supposed them to be
woollen ones. Besides, she was interested on another point.
"My Daddy hasn't no scrutches," said she. She had caught their name,
without understanding it, when her father used it; and now decided on
denying them provisionally, pending inquiry into their nature. "What's
a scrutch?"
"Oh, you little ignorance!" said Bridget. "Never to know what a
crutch is, at your age!" She appealed to her infant brother to say,
directly minute, what a crutch was, or she would take advantage of his
unprotected youth to smack him. His reply, needing interpretation, was
that it was a penny-farden. Halexandericks had evidently a turn for
negotiation. His sister cast him off, telling him to go and ply by
himself on the pivement, and then resumed: "If you'd 'a knowed 'em when
you seed 'em, you might have kep' your eye open, and took note."
Lizarann, skipping the unnecessary, immediately replied: "Daddy said
they was second-hand, and to go back when done with."
Bridget skipped some more. "Very well, then!--you see them cross-pieces
for the 'ands?... Very well, then!--there's a lather pad for under
the shoulder-j'int, and they're n'isy going down the street. Now don't
you go to say I never told you." There was nothing really unkind or
overbearing in Bridget's peculiar manner; it was only the strong
working of a leading mind. She was, in fact, a very clever child, being
less than two years her friend's senior.
She saw that Lizarann was downcast by hearing of the crutches, never
having rightly appreciated the position, and set herself good-naturedly
to consolation. "It's always tender where your leg's took off," said
she, "and you want something to ketch the weight, walking." She spoke
as if she had often had legs off. "But my father, he says it's nothing
to get the hump about, with a little accommodatin'. And I seen a
man with one leg and one crutch took two coppers to tike him to the
stytion." Lizarann brightened visibly. "You see what your Daddy he'll
look like when he's been a month in the country!"
Obviously this was repetition of something said by an older mouth. "Who
toldited anything about the country?" said Lizarann.
"Clapham Church Parsing. Him as see Mr. Steptoe drownded. I heard him
telling. 'You see,'--he says to your Daddy--'you see what you'll feel
like when you've been a month in the country,' he says. 'You do just as
I tell you,' he says, 'and I'll make it all square for you,' he says.
And then he says you to go too."
"Me!" Lizarann exclaimed, open-mouthed with amazement. And then
Bridgetticks gave more particulars of what really was a bout of
careful eavesdropping on her part, she having succeeded in overhearing
a good deal of conversation between Jim and the Rector of Royd, who
had accompanied him from the Hospital the night before. It pointed
to a scheme by which Lizarann was to be taken in at the Rectory, and
carefully nurtured--treated, in fact, for a disease which had existence
only on the authority of that lying little stethoscope of Dr. Ferris's!
However, as long as no project involved a new separation from Daddy,
what did Lizarann care?
Besides, look at the new experience of a world she had been so little
in--it was glorious to think of! She was not so much dazzled as
she might have been had every minute of her life been passed--for
instance--in Drury Lane. She and Bridget had both benefited by
school-treats. "I've been in the country," she said. "It's at Dorking."
But Bridget had a larger horizon. "There's more sorts than that," said
she, "without taking count of foring parts. Like you'll find when you
done some more geography." Lizarann felt awe-struck.
But it was getting along towards six, and she knew she ought to be
reporting herself to Teacher. Perhaps she would have delayed still
later, if she had not become anxious to ask that lady point-blank about
this fascinating bucolic scheme. As it was, she was received with
some displeasure--on her own behalf entirely--and decided to postpone
investigations. We, for our part, have never believed that that extra
half-hour of exposure to the evening air made in the long run the
slightest difference.