Chapter 17

A DISMAL SWAMP

And now, in the blooming summer days, behold Mr and Mrs Boffin

established in the eminently aristocratic family mansion, and behold

all manner of crawling, creeping, fluttering, and buzzing creatures,

attracted by the gold dust of the Golden Dustman!

Foremost among those leaving cards at the eminently aristocratic door

before it is quite painted, are the Veneerings: out of breath, one

might imagine, from the impetuosity of their rush to the eminently

aristocratic steps. One copper-plate Mrs Veneering, two copper-plate

Mr Veneerings, and a connubial copper-plate Mr and Mrs Veneering,

requesting the honour of Mr and Mrs Boffin’s company at dinner with

the utmost Analytical solemnities. The enchanting Lady Tippins leaves a

card. Twemlow leaves cards. A tall custard-coloured phaeton tooling up

in a solemn manner leaves four cards, to wit, a couple of Mr Podsnaps, a

Mrs Podsnap, and a Miss Podsnap. All the world and his wife and daughter

leave cards. Sometimes the world’s wife has so many daughters, that her

card reads rather like a Miscellaneous Lot at an Auction; comprising Mrs

Tapkins, Miss Tapkins, Miss Frederica Tapkins, Miss Antonina Tapkins,

Miss Malvina Tapkins, and Miss Euphemia Tapkins; at the same time,

the same lady leaves the card of Mrs Henry George Alfred Swoshle, NEE

Tapkins; also, a card, Mrs Tapkins at Home, Wednesdays, Music, Portland

Place.

Miss Bella Wilfer becomes an inmate, for an indefinite period, of the

eminently aristocratic dwelling. Mrs Boffin bears Miss Bella away to

her Milliner’s and Dressmaker’s, and she gets beautifully dressed. The

Veneerings find with swift remorse that they have omitted to invite Miss

Bella Wilfer. One Mrs Veneering and one Mr and Mrs Veneering requesting

that additional honour, instantly do penance in white cardboard on

the hall table. Mrs Tapkins likewise discovers her omission, and

with promptitude repairs it; for herself; for Miss Tapkins, for Miss

Frederica Tapkins, for Miss Antonina Tapkins, for Miss Malvina Tapkins,

and for Miss Euphemia Tapkins. Likewise, for Mrs Henry George Alfred

Swoshle NEE Tapkins. Likewise, for Mrs Tapkins at Home, Wednesdays,

Music, Portland Place.

Tradesmen’s books hunger, and tradesmen’s mouths water, for the gold

dust of the Golden Dustman. As Mrs Boffin and Miss Wilfer drive out, or

as Mr Boffin walks out at his jog-trot pace, the fishmonger pulls off

his hat with an air of reverence founded on conviction. His men cleanse

their fingers on their woollen aprons before presuming to touch their

foreheads to Mr Boffin or Lady. The gaping salmon and the golden mullet

lying on the slab seem to turn up their eyes sideways, as they would

turn up their hands if they had any, in worshipping admiration. The

butcher, though a portly and a prosperous man, doesn’t know what to do

with himself; so anxious is he to express humility when discovered by

the passing Boffins taking the air in a mutton grove. Presents are made

to the Boffin servants, and bland strangers with business-cards

meeting said servants in the street, offer hypothetical corruption. As,

‘Supposing I was to be favoured with an order from Mr Boffin, my dear

friend, it would be worth my while’—to do a certain thing that I hope

might not prove wholly disagreeable to your feelings.

But no one knows so well as the Secretary, who opens and reads the

letters, what a set is made at the man marked by a stroke of notoriety.

Oh the varieties of dust for ocular use, offered in exchange for the

gold dust of the Golden Dustman! Fifty-seven churches to be erected with

half-crowns, forty-two parsonage houses to be repaired with shillings,

seven-and-twenty organs to be built with halfpence, twelve hundred

children to be brought up on postage stamps. Not that a half-crown,

shilling, halfpenny, or postage stamp, would be particularly acceptable

from Mr Boffin, but that it is so obvious he is the man to make up the

deficiency. And then the charities, my Christian brother! And mostly in

difficulties, yet mostly lavish, too, in the expensive articles of print

and paper. Large fat private double letter, sealed with ducal coronet.

‘Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire. My Dear Sir,—Having consented to preside

at the forthcoming Annual Dinner of the Family Party Fund, and feeling

deeply impressed with the immense usefulness of that noble Institution

and the great importance of its being supported by a List of Stewards

that shall prove to the public the interest taken in it by popular and

distinguished men, I have undertaken to ask you to become a Steward on

that occasion. Soliciting your favourable reply before the 14th instant,

I am, My Dear Sir, Your faithful Servant, LINSEED. P.S. The Steward’s

fee is limited to three Guineas.’ Friendly this, on the part of the Duke

of Linseed (and thoughtful in the postscript), only lithographed by

the hundred and presenting but a pale individuality of an address to

Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire, in quite another hand. It takes two noble

Earls and a Viscount, combined, to inform Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire,

in an equally flattering manner, that an estimable lady in the West of

England has offered to present a purse containing twenty pounds, to

the Society for Granting Annuities to Unassuming Members of the Middle

Classes, if twenty individuals will previously present purses of one

hundred pounds each. And those benevolent noblemen very kindly point out

that if Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire, should wish to present two or more

purses, it will not be inconsistent with the design of the estimable

lady in the West of England, provided each purse be coupled with the

name of some member of his honoured and respected family.

These are the corporate beggars. But there are, besides, the individual

beggars; and how does the heart of the Secretary fail him when he has

to cope with THEM! And they must be coped with to some extent, because

they all enclose documents (they call their scraps documents; but they

are, as to papers deserving the name, what minced veal is to a calf),

the non-return of which would be their ruin. That is to say, they

are utterly ruined now, but they would be more utterly ruined then.

Among these correspondents are several daughters of general officers,

long accustomed to every luxury of life (except spelling), who little

thought, when their gallant fathers waged war in the Peninsula, that

they would ever have to appeal to those whom Providence, in its

inscrutable wisdom, has blessed with untold gold, and from among whom

they select the name of Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire, for a maiden effort

in this wise, understanding that he has such a heart as never was.

The Secretary learns, too, that confidence between man and wife would

seem to obtain but rarely when virtue is in distress, so numerous are

the wives who take up their pens to ask Mr Boffin for money without

the knowledge of their devoted husbands, who would never permit it;

while, on the other hand, so numerous are the husbands who take up

their pens to ask Mr Boffin for money without the knowledge of their

devoted wives, who would instantly go out of their senses if they

had the least suspicion of the circumstance. There are the inspired

beggars, too. These were sitting, only yesterday evening, musing over

a fragment of candle which must soon go out and leave them in the dark

for the rest of their nights, when surely some Angel whispered the name

of Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire, to their souls, imparting rays of hope,

nay confidence, to which they had long been strangers! Akin to these

are the suggestively-befriended beggars. They were partaking of a cold

potato and water by the flickering and gloomy light of a lucifer-match,

in their lodgings (rent considerably in arrear, and heartless landlady

threatening expulsion ‘like a dog’ into the streets), when a gifted

friend happening to look in, said, ‘Write immediately to Nicodemus

Boffin, Esquire,’ and would take no denial. There are the nobly

independent beggars too. These, in the days of their abundance, ever

regarded gold as dross, and have not yet got over that only impediment

in the way of their amassing wealth, but they want no dross from

Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire; No, Mr Boffin; the world may term it pride,

paltry pride if you will, but they wouldn’t take it if you offered it;

a loan, sir—for fourteen weeks to the day, interest calculated at the

rate of five per cent per annum, to be bestowed upon any charitable

institution you may name—is all they want of you, and if you have the

meanness to refuse it, count on being despised by these great spirits.

There are the beggars of punctual business-habits too. These will

make an end of themselves at a quarter to one P.M. on Tuesday, if no

Post-office order is in the interim received from Nicodemus Boffin,

Esquire; arriving after a quarter to one P.M. on Tuesday, it need not

be sent, as they will then (having made an exact memorandum of the

heartless circumstances) be ‘cold in death.’ There are the beggars

on horseback too, in another sense from the sense of the proverb.

These are mounted and ready to start on the highway to affluence. The

goal is before them, the road is in the best condition, their spurs

are on, the steed is willing, but, at the last moment, for want of

some special thing—a clock, a violin, an astronomical telescope, an

electrifying machine—they must dismount for ever, unless they receive

its equivalent in money from Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire. Less given to

detail are the beggars who make sporting ventures. These, usually to

be addressed in reply under initials at a country post-office, inquire

in feminine hands, Dare one who cannot disclose herself to Nicodemus

Boffin, Esquire, but whose name might startle him were it revealed,

solicit the immediate advance of two hundred pounds from unexpected

riches exercising their noblest privilege in the trust of a common

humanity?

In such a Dismal Swamp does the new house stand, and through it does

the Secretary daily struggle breast-high. Not to mention all the people

alive who have made inventions that won’t act, and all the jobbers who

job in all the jobberies jobbed; though these may be regarded as the

Alligators of the Dismal Swamp, and are always lying by to drag the

Golden Dustman under.

But the old house. There are no designs against the Golden Dustman

there? There are no fish of the shark tribe in the Bower waters? Perhaps

not. Still, Wegg is established there, and would seem, judged by his

secret proceedings, to cherish a notion of making a discovery. For,

when a man with a wooden leg lies prone on his stomach to peep under

bedsteads; and hops up ladders, like some extinct bird, to survey the

tops of presses and cupboards; and provides himself an iron rod which he

is always poking and prodding into dust-mounds; the probability is that

he expects to find something.

BOOK THE SECOND — BIRDS OF A FEATHER

Chapter 1

OF AN EDUCATIONAL CHARACTER

The school at which young Charley Hexam had first learned from a

book—the streets being, for pupils of his degree, the great Preparatory

Establishment in which very much that is never unlearned is learned

without and before book—was a miserable loft in an unsavoury yard. Its

atmosphere was oppressive and disagreeable; it was crowded, noisy,

and confusing; half the pupils dropped asleep, or fell into a state of

waking stupefaction; the other half kept them in either condition by

maintaining a monotonous droning noise, as if they were performing, out

of time and tune, on a ruder sort of bagpipe. The teachers, animated

solely by good intentions, had no idea of execution, and a lamentable

jumble was the upshot of their kind endeavours.

It was a school for all ages, and for both sexes. The latter were kept

apart, and the former were partitioned off into square assortments. But,

all the place was pervaded by a grimly ludicrous pretence that every

pupil was childish and innocent. This pretence, much favoured by the

lady-visitors, led to the ghastliest absurdities. Young women old in

the vices of the commonest and worst life, were expected to profess

themselves enthralled by the good child’s book, the Adventures of

Little Margery, who resided in the village cottage by the mill; severely

reproved and morally squashed the miller, when she was five and he was

fifty; divided her porridge with singing birds; denied herself a new

nankeen bonnet, on the ground that the turnips did not wear nankeen

bonnets, neither did the sheep who ate them; who plaited straw and

delivered the dreariest orations to all comers, at all sorts of

unseasonable times. So, unwieldy young dredgers and hulking mudlarks

were referred to the experiences of Thomas Twopence, who, having

resolved not to rob (under circumstances of uncommon atrocity) his

particular friend and benefactor, of eighteenpence, presently came into

supernatural possession of three and sixpence, and lived a shining light

ever afterwards. (Note, that the benefactor came to no good.) Several

swaggering sinners had written their own biographies in the same strain;

it always appearing from the lessons of those very boastful persons,

that you were to do good, not because it WAS good, but because you were

to make a good thing of it. Contrariwise, the adult pupils were taught

to read (if they could learn) out of the New Testament; and by dint of

stumbling over the syllables and keeping their bewildered eyes on the

particular syllables coming round to their turn, were as absolutely

ignorant of the sublime history, as if they had never seen or heard of

it. An exceedingly and confoundingly perplexing jumble of a school,

in fact, where black spirits and grey, red spirits and white, jumbled

jumbled jumbled jumbled, jumbled every night. And particularly every

Sunday night. For then, an inclined plane of unfortunate infants would

be handed over to the prosiest and worst of all the teachers with good

intentions, whom nobody older would endure. Who, taking his stand on

the floor before them as chief executioner, would be attended by a

conventional volunteer boy as executioner’s assistant. When and where it

first became the conventional system that a weary or inattentive infant

in a class must have its face smoothed downward with a hot hand, or when

and where the conventional volunteer boy first beheld such system in

operation, and became inflamed with a sacred zeal to administer it,

matters not. It was the function of the chief executioner to hold forth,

and it was the function of the acolyte to dart at sleeping infants,

yawning infants, restless infants, whimpering infants, and smooth their

wretched faces; sometimes with one hand, as if he were anointing them

for a whisker; sometimes with both hands, applied after the fashion of

blinkers. And so the jumble would be in action in this department for a

mortal hour; the exponent drawling on to My Dearert Childerrenerr, let

us say, for example, about the beautiful coming to the Sepulchre; and

repeating the word Sepulchre (commonly used among infants) five hundred

times, and never once hinting what it meant; the conventional boy

smoothing away right and left, as an infallible commentary; the whole

hot-bed of flushed and exhausted infants exchanging measles, rashes,

whooping-cough, fever, and stomach disorders, as if they were assembled

in High Market for the purpose.

Even in this temple of good intentions, an exceptionally sharp boy

exceptionally determined to learn, could learn something, and, having

learned it, could impart it much better than the teachers; as being

more knowing than they, and not at the disadvantage in which they stood

towards the shrewder pupils. In this way it had come about that Charley

Hexam had risen in the jumble, taught in the jumble, and been received

from the jumble into a better school.

‘So you want to go and see your sister, Hexam?’

‘If you please, Mr Headstone.’

‘I have half a mind to go with you. Where does your sister live?’

‘Why, she is not settled yet, Mr Headstone. I’d rather you didn’t see

her till she is settled, if it was all the same to you.’

‘Look here, Hexam.’ Mr Bradley Headstone, highly certificated

stipendiary schoolmaster, drew his right forefinger through one of the

buttonholes of the boy’s coat, and looked at it attentively. ‘I hope

your sister may be good company for you?’

‘Why do you doubt it, Mr Headstone?’

‘I did not say I doubted it.’

‘No, sir; you didn’t say so.’

Bradley Headstone looked at his finger again, took it out of the

buttonhole and looked at it closer, bit the side of it and looked at it

again.

‘You see, Hexam, you will be one of us. In good time you are sure to

pass a creditable examination and become one of us. Then the question

is—’

The boy waited so long for the question, while the schoolmaster looked

at a new side of his finger, and bit it, and looked at it again, that at

length the boy repeated:

‘The question is, sir—?’

‘Whether you had not better leave well alone.’

‘Is it well to leave my sister alone, Mr Headstone?’

‘I do not say so, because I do not know. I put it to you. I ask you to

think of it. I want you to consider. You know how well you are doing

here.’

‘After all, she got me here,’ said the boy, with a struggle.

‘Perceiving the necessity of it,’ acquiesced the schoolmaster, ‘and

making up her mind fully to the separation. Yes.’

The boy, with a return of that former reluctance or struggle or whatever

it was, seemed to debate with himself. At length he said, raising his

eyes to the master’s face:

‘I wish you’d come with me and see her, Mr Headstone, though she is not

settled. I wish you’d come with me, and take her in the rough, and judge

her for yourself.’

‘You are sure you would not like,’ asked the schoolmaster, ‘to prepare

her?’

‘My sister Lizzie,’ said the boy, proudly, ‘wants no preparing, Mr

Headstone. What she is, she is, and shows herself to be. There’s no

pretending about my sister.’

His confidence in her, sat more easily upon him than the indecision with

which he had twice contended. It was his better nature to be true to

her, if it were his worse nature to be wholly selfish. And as yet the

better nature had the stronger hold.

‘Well, I can spare the evening,’ said the schoolmaster. ‘I am ready to

walk with you.’

‘Thank you, Mr Headstone. And I am ready to go.’

Bradley Headstone, in his decent black coat and waistcoat, and decent

white shirt, and decent formal black tie, and decent pantaloons of

pepper and salt, with his decent silver watch in his pocket and its

decent hair-guard round his neck, looked a thoroughly decent young man

of six-and-twenty. He was never seen in any other dress, and yet there

was a certain stiffness in his manner of wearing this, as if there were

a want of adaptation between him and it, recalling some mechanics in

their holiday clothes. He had acquired mechanically a great store of

teacher’s knowledge. He could do mental arithmetic mechanically, sing

at sight mechanically, blow various wind instruments mechanically, even

play the great church organ mechanically. From his early childhood up,

his mind had been a place of mechanical stowage. The arrangement of

his wholesale warehouse, so that it might be always ready to meet the

demands of retail dealers—history here, geography there, astronomy to

the right, political economy to the left—natural history, the physical

sciences, figures, music, the lower mathematics, and what not, all in

their several places—this care had imparted to his countenance a look

of care; while the habit of questioning and being questioned had given

him a suspicious manner, or a manner that would be better described as

one of lying in wait. There was a kind of settled trouble in the face.

It was the face belonging to a naturally slow or inattentive intellect

that had toiled hard to get what it had won, and that had to hold it now

that it was gotten. He always seemed to be uneasy lest anything should

be missing from his mental warehouse, and taking stock to assure

himself.

Suppression of so much to make room for so much, had given him a

constrained manner, over and above. Yet there was enough of what was

animal, and of what was fiery (though smouldering), still visible in

him, to suggest that if young Bradley Headstone, when a pauper lad, had

chanced to be told off for the sea, he would not have been the last man

in a ship’s crew. Regarding that origin of his, he was proud, moody, and

sullen, desiring it to be forgotten. And few people knew of it.

In some visits to the Jumble his attention had been attracted to this

boy Hexam. An undeniable boy for a pupil-teacher; an undeniable boy

to do credit to the master who should bring him on. Combined with this

consideration, there may have been some thought of the pauper lad now

never to be mentioned. Be that how it might, he had with pains gradually

worked the boy into his own school, and procured him some offices to

discharge there, which were repaid with food and lodging. Such were the

circumstances that had brought together, Bradley Headstone and young

Charley Hexam that autumn evening. Autumn, because full half a year had

come and gone since the bird of prey lay dead upon the river-shore.

The schools—for they were twofold, as the sexes—were down in that

district of the flat country tending to the Thames, where Kent and

Surrey meet, and where the railways still bestride the market-gardens

that will soon die under them. The schools were newly built, and there

were so many like them all over the country, that one might have thought

the whole were but one restless edifice with the locomotive gift of

Aladdin’s palace. They were in a neighbourhood which looked like a toy

neighbourhood taken in blocks out of a box by a child of particularly

incoherent mind, and set up anyhow; here, one side of a new street;

there, a large solitary public-house facing nowhere; here, another

unfinished street already in ruins; there, a church; here, an immense

new warehouse; there, a dilapidated old country villa; then, a medley

of black ditch, sparkling cucumber-frame, rank field, richly cultivated

kitchen-garden, brick viaduct, arch-spanned canal, and disorder of

frowziness and fog. As if the child had given the table a kick, and gone

to sleep.

But, even among school-buildings, school-teachers, and school-pupils,

all according to pattern and all engendered in the light of the latest

Gospel according to Monotony, the older pattern into which so many

fortunes have been shaped for good and evil, comes out. It came out in

Miss Peecher the schoolmistress, watering her flowers, as Mr Bradley

Headstone walked forth. It came out in Miss Peecher the schoolmistress,

watering the flowers in the little dusty bit of garden attached to her

small official residence, with little windows like the eyes in needles,

and little doors like the covers of school-books.

Small, shining, neat, methodical, and buxom was Miss Peecher;

cherry-cheeked and tuneful of voice. A little pincushion, a little

housewife, a little book, a little workbox, a little set of tables and

weights and measures, and a little woman, all in one. She could write

a little essay on any subject, exactly a slate long, beginning at the

left-hand top of one side and ending at the right-hand bottom of the

other, and the essay should be strictly according to rule. If Mr Bradley

Headstone had addressed a written proposal of marriage to her, she would

probably have replied in a complete little essay on the theme exactly a

slate long, but would certainly have replied Yes. For she loved him. The

decent hair-guard that went round his neck and took care of his decent

silver watch was an object of envy to her. So would Miss Peecher have

gone round his neck and taken care of him. Of him, insensible. Because

he did not love Miss Peecher.

Miss Peecher’s favourite pupil, who assisted her in her little

household, was in attendance with a can of water to replenish her little

watering-pot, and sufficiently divined the state of Miss Peecher’s

affections to feel it necessary that she herself should love young

Charley Hexam. So, there was a double palpitation among the double

stocks and double wall-flowers, when the master and the boy looked over

the little gate.

‘A fine evening, Miss Peecher,’ said the Master.

‘A very fine evening, Mr Headstone,’ said Miss Peecher. ‘Are you taking

a walk?’

‘Hexam and I are going to take a long walk.’

‘Charming weather,’ remarked Miss Peecher, ‘FOR a long walk.’

‘Ours is rather on business than mere pleasure,’ said the Master. Miss

Peecher inverting her watering-pot, and very carefully shaking out the

few last drops over a flower, as if there were some special virtue in

them which would make it a Jack’s beanstalk before morning, called for

replenishment to her pupil, who had been speaking to the boy.

‘Good-night, Miss Peecher,’ said the Master.

‘Good-night, Mr Headstone,’ said the Mistress.

The pupil had been, in her state of pupilage, so imbued with the

class-custom of stretching out an arm, as if to hail a cab or omnibus,

whenever she found she had an observation on hand to offer to Miss

Peecher, that she often did it in their domestic relations; and she did

it now.

‘Well, Mary Anne?’ said Miss Peecher.

‘If you please, ma’am, Hexam said they were going to see his sister.’

‘But that can’t be, I think,’ returned Miss Peecher: ‘because Mr

Headstone can have no business with HER.’

Mary Anne again hailed.

‘Well, Mary Anne?’

‘If you please, ma’am, perhaps it’s Hexam’s business?’

‘That may be,’ said Miss Peecher. ‘I didn’t think of that. Not that it

matters at all.’

Mary Anne again hailed.

‘Well, Mary Anne?’

‘They say she’s very handsome.’

‘Oh, Mary Anne, Mary Anne!’ returned Miss Peecher, slightly colouring

and shaking her head, a little out of humour; ‘how often have I told you

not to use that vague expression, not to speak in that general way? When

you say THEY say, what do you mean? Part of speech They?’

Mary Anne hooked her right arm behind her in her left hand, as being

under examination, and replied:

‘Personal pronoun.’

‘Person, They?’

‘Third person.’

‘Number, They?’

‘Plural number.’

‘Then how many do you mean, Mary Anne? Two? Or more?’

‘I beg your pardon, ma’am,’ said Mary Anne, disconcerted now she came

to think of it; ‘but I don’t know that I mean more than her brother

himself.’ As she said it, she unhooked her arm.

‘I felt convinced of it,’ returned Miss Peecher, smiling again. ‘Now

pray, Mary Anne, be careful another time. He says is very different from

they say, remember. Difference between he says and they say? Give it

me.’

Mary Anne immediately hooked her right arm behind her in her left

hand—an attitude absolutely necessary to the situation—and replied:

‘One is indicative mood, present tense, third person singular, verb

active to say. Other is indicative mood, present tense, third person

plural, verb active to say.’

‘Why verb active, Mary Anne?’

‘Because it takes a pronoun after it in the objective case, Miss

Peecher.’

‘Very good indeed,’ remarked Miss Peecher, with encouragement. ‘In fact,

could not be better. Don’t forget to apply it, another time, Mary Anne.’

This said, Miss Peecher finished the watering of her flowers, and

went into her little official residence, and took a refresher of the

principal rivers and mountains of the world, their breadths, depths, and

heights, before settling the measurements of the body of a dress for her

own personal occupation.

Bradley Headstone and Charley Hexam duly got to the Surrey side of

Westminster Bridge, and crossed the bridge, and made along the Middlesex

shore towards Millbank. In this region are a certain little street

called Church Street, and a certain little blind square, called Smith

Square, in the centre of which last retreat is a very hideous church

with four towers at the four corners, generally resembling some

petrified monster, frightful and gigantic, on its back with its legs

in the air. They found a tree near by in a corner, and a blacksmith’s

forge, and a timber yard, and a dealer’s in old iron. What a rusty

portion of a boiler and a great iron wheel or so meant by lying

half-buried in the dealer’s fore-court, nobody seemed to know or to want

to know. Like the Miller of questionable jollity in the song, They cared

for Nobody, no not they, and Nobody cared for them.

After making the round of this place, and noting that there was a deadly

kind of repose on it, more as though it had taken laudanum than fallen

into a natural rest, they stopped at the point where the street and the

square joined, and where there were some little quiet houses in a row.

To these Charley Hexam finally led the way, and at one of these stopped.

‘This must be where my sister lives, sir. This is where she came for a

temporary lodging, soon after father’s death.’

‘How often have you seen her since?’

‘Why, only twice, sir,’ returned the boy, with his former reluctance;

‘but that’s as much her doing as mine.’

‘How does she support herself?’

‘She was always a fair needlewoman, and she keeps the stockroom of a

seaman’s outfitter.’

‘Does she ever work at her own lodging here?’

‘Sometimes; but her regular hours and regular occupation are at their

place of business, I believe, sir. This is the number.’

The boy knocked at a door, and the door promptly opened with a spring

and a click. A parlour door within a small entry stood open, and

disclosed a child—a dwarf—a girl—a something—sitting on a little low

old-fashioned arm-chair, which had a kind of little working bench before

it.

‘I can’t get up,’ said the child, ‘because my back’s bad, and my legs

are queer. But I’m the person of the house.’

‘Who else is at home?’ asked Charley Hexam, staring.

‘Nobody’s at home at present,’ returned the child, with a glib assertion

of her dignity, ‘except the person of the house. What did you want,

young man?’

‘I wanted to see my sister.’

‘Many young men have sisters,’ returned the child. ‘Give me your name,

young man?’

The queer little figure, and the queer but not ugly little face, with

its bright grey eyes, were so sharp, that the sharpness of the manner

seemed unavoidable. As if, being turned out of that mould, it must be

sharp.

‘Hexam is my name.’

‘Ah, indeed?’ said the person of the house. ‘I thought it might be. Your

sister will be in, in about a quarter of an hour. I am very fond of your

sister. She’s my particular friend. Take a seat. And this gentleman’s

name?’

‘Mr Headstone, my schoolmaster.’

‘Take a seat. And would you please to shut the street door first? I

can’t very well do it myself; because my back’s so bad, and my legs are

so queer.’

They complied in silence, and the little figure went on with its work of

gumming or gluing together with a camel’s-hair brush certain pieces

of cardboard and thin wood, previously cut into various shapes. The

scissors and knives upon the bench showed that the child herself had cut

them; and the bright scraps of velvet and silk and ribbon also strewn

upon the bench showed that when duly stuffed (and stuffing too was

there), she was to cover them smartly. The dexterity of her nimble

fingers was remarkable, and, as she brought two thin edges accurately

together by giving them a little bite, she would glance at the visitors

out of the corners of her grey eyes with a look that out-sharpened all

her other sharpness.

‘You can’t tell me the name of my trade, I’ll be bound,’ she said, after

taking several of these observations.

‘You make pincushions,’ said Charley.

‘What else do I make?’

‘Pen-wipers,’ said Bradley Headstone.

‘Ha! ha! What else do I make? You’re a schoolmaster, but you can’t tell

me.’

‘You do something,’ he returned, pointing to a corner of the little

bench, ‘with straw; but I don’t know what.’

‘Well done you!’ cried the person of the house. ‘I only make pincushions

and pen-wipers, to use up my waste. But my straw really does belong to

my business. Try again. What do I make with my straw?’

‘Dinner-mats?’

‘A schoolmaster, and says dinner-mats! I’ll give you a clue to my trade,

in a game of forfeits. I love my love with a B because she’s Beautiful;

I hate my love with a B because she is Brazen; I took her to the sign of

the Blue Boar, and I treated her with Bonnets; her name’s Bouncer, and

she lives in Bedlam.—Now, what do I make with my straw?’

‘Ladies’ bonnets?’

‘Fine ladies’,’ said the person of the house, nodding assent. ‘Dolls’.

I’m a Doll’s Dressmaker.’

‘I hope it’s a good business?’

The person of the house shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. ‘No.

Poorly paid. And I’m often so pressed for time! I had a doll married,

last week, and was obliged to work all night. And it’s not good for me,

on account of my back being so bad and my legs so queer.’

They looked at the little creature with a wonder that did not diminish,

and the schoolmaster said: ‘I am sorry your fine ladies are so

inconsiderate.’

‘It’s the way with them,’ said the person of the house, shrugging her

shoulders again. ‘And they take no care of their clothes, and they

never keep to the same fashions a month. I work for a doll with three

daughters. Bless you, she’s enough to ruin her husband!’ The person of

the house gave a weird little laugh here, and gave them another look out

of the corners of her eyes. She had an elfin chin that was capable of

great expression; and whenever she gave this look, she hitched this chin

up. As if her eyes and her chin worked together on the same wires.

‘Are you always as busy as you are now?’

‘Busier. I’m slack just now. I finished a large mourning order the day

before yesterday. Doll I work for, lost a canary-bird.’ The person of

the house gave another little laugh, and then nodded her head several

times, as who should moralize, ‘Oh this world, this world!’

‘Are you alone all day?’ asked Bradley Headstone. ‘Don’t any of the

neighbouring children—?’

‘Ah, lud!’ cried the person of the house, with a little scream, as

if the word had pricked her. ‘Don’t talk of children. I can’t bear

children. I know their tricks and their manners.’ She said this with an

angry little shake of her tight fist close before her eyes.

Perhaps it scarcely required the teacher-habit, to perceive that the

doll’s dressmaker was inclined to be bitter on the difference between

herself and other children. But both master and pupil understood it so.

‘Always running about and screeching, always playing and fighting,

always skip-skip-skipping on the pavement and chalking it for their

games! Oh! I know their tricks and their manners!’ Shaking the little

fist as before. ‘And that’s not all. Ever so often calling names in

through a person’s keyhole, and imitating a person’s back and legs. Oh!

I know their tricks and their manners. And I’ll tell you what I’d do, to

punish ’em. There’s doors under the church in the Square—black doors,

leading into black vaults. Well! I’d open one of those doors, and I’d

cram ’em all in, and then I’d lock the door and through the keyhole I’d

blow in pepper.’

‘What would be the good of blowing in pepper?’ asked Charley Hexam.

‘To set ’em sneezing,’ said the person of the house, ‘and make their

eyes water. And when they were all sneezing and inflamed, I’d mock ’em

through the keyhole. Just as they, with their tricks and their manners,

mock a person through a person’s keyhole!’

An uncommonly emphatic shake of her little fist close before her eyes,

seemed to ease the mind of the person of the house; for she added

with recovered composure, ‘No, no, no. No children for me. Give me

grown-ups.’

It was difficult to guess the age of this strange creature, for her poor

figure furnished no clue to it, and her face was at once so young and so

old. Twelve, or at the most thirteen, might be near the mark.

‘I always did like grown-ups,’ she went on, ‘and always kept company

with them. So sensible. Sit so quiet. Don’t go prancing and capering

about! And I mean always to keep among none but grown-ups till I marry.

I suppose I must make up my mind to marry, one of these days.’

She listened to a step outside that caught her ear, and there was a soft

knock at the door. Pulling at a handle within her reach, she said,

with a pleased laugh: ‘Now here, for instance, is a grown-up that’s my

particular friend!’ and Lizzie Hexam in a black dress entered the room.

‘Charley! You!’

Taking him to her arms in the old way—of which he seemed a little

ashamed—she saw no one else.

‘There, there, there, Liz, all right my dear. See! Here’s Mr Headstone

come with me.’

Her eyes met those of the schoolmaster, who had evidently expected

to see a very different sort of person, and a murmured word or two

of salutation passed between them. She was a little flurried by the

unexpected visit, and the schoolmaster was not at his ease. But he never

was, quite.

‘I told Mr Headstone you were not settled, Liz, but he was so kind as to

take an interest in coming, and so I brought him. How well you look!’

Bradley seemed to think so.

‘Ah! Don’t she, don’t she?’ cried the person of the house, resuming her

occupation, though the twilight was falling fast. ‘I believe you she

does! But go on with your chat, one and all:

“You one two three,

My com-pa-nie,

And don’t mind me;”

—pointing this impromptu rhyme with three points of her thin

fore-finger.

‘I didn’t expect a visit from you, Charley,’ said his sister. ‘I

supposed that if you wanted to see me you would have sent to me,

appointing me to come somewhere near the school, as I did last time.

I saw my brother near the school, sir,’ to Bradley Headstone, ‘because

it’s easier for me to go there, than for him to come here. I work about

midway between the two places.’

‘You don’t see much of one another,’ said Bradley, not improving in

respect of ease.

‘No.’ With a rather sad shake of her head. ‘Charley always does well, Mr

Headstone?’

‘He could not do better. I regard his course as quite plain before him.’

‘I hoped so. I am so thankful. So well done of you, Charley dear! It is

better for me not to come (except when he wants me) between him and his

prospects. You think so, Mr Headstone?’

Conscious that his pupil-teacher was looking for his answer, that he

himself had suggested the boy’s keeping aloof from this sister, now seen

for the first time face to face, Bradley Headstone stammered:

‘Your brother is very much occupied, you know. He has to work hard. One

cannot but say that the less his attention is diverted from his work,

the better for his future. When he shall have established himself, why

then—it will be another thing then.’

Lizzie shook her head again, and returned, with a quiet smile: ‘I always

advised him as you advise him. Did I not, Charley?’

‘Well, never mind that now,’ said the boy. ‘How are you getting on?’

‘Very well, Charley. I want for nothing.’

‘You have your own room here?’

‘Oh yes. Upstairs. And it’s quiet, and pleasant, and airy.’

‘And she always has the use of this room for visitors,’ said the

person of the house, screwing up one of her little bony fists, like an

opera-glass, and looking through it, with her eyes and her chin in that

quaint accordance. ‘Always this room for visitors; haven’t you, Lizzie

dear?’

It happened that Bradley Headstone noticed a very slight action of

Lizzie Hexam’s hand, as though it checked the doll’s dressmaker. And it

happened that the latter noticed him in the same instant; for she made

a double eyeglass of her two hands, looked at him through it, and cried,

with a waggish shake of her head: ‘Aha! Caught you spying, did I?’

It might have fallen out so, any way; but Bradley Headstone also noticed

that immediately after this, Lizzie, who had not taken off her bonnet,

rather hurriedly proposed that as the room was getting dark they should

go out into the air. They went out; the visitors saying good-night to

the doll’s dressmaker, whom they left, leaning back in her chair with

her arms crossed, singing to herself in a sweet thoughtful little voice.

‘I’ll saunter on by the river,’ said Bradley. ‘You will be glad to talk

together.’

As his uneasy figure went on before them among the evening shadows, the

boy said to his sister, petulantly:

‘When are you going to settle yourself in some Christian sort of place,

Liz? I thought you were going to do it before now.’

‘I am very well where I am, Charley.’

‘Very well where you are! I am ashamed to have brought Mr Headstone with

me. How came you to get into such company as that little witch’s?’

‘By chance at first, as it seemed, Charley. But I think it must have

been by something more than chance, for that child—You remember the

bills upon the walls at home?’

‘Confound the bills upon the walls at home! I want to forget the bills

upon the walls at home, and it would be better for you to do the same,’

grumbled the boy. ‘Well; what of them?’

‘This child is the grandchild of the old man.’

‘What old man?’

‘The terrible drunken old man, in the list slippers and the night-cap.’

The boy asked, rubbing his nose in a manner that half expressed vexation

at hearing so much, and half curiosity to hear more: ‘How came you to

make that out? What a girl you are!’

‘The child’s father is employed by the house that employs me; that’s how

I came to know it, Charley. The father is like his own father, a weak

wretched trembling creature, falling to pieces, never sober. But a good

workman too, at the work he does. The mother is dead. This poor ailing

little creature has come to be what she is, surrounded by drunken people

from her cradle—if she ever had one, Charley.’

‘I don’t see what you have to do with her, for all that,’ said the boy.

‘Don’t you, Charley?’

The boy looked doggedly at the river. They were at Millbank, and

the river rolled on their left. His sister gently touched him on the

shoulder, and pointed to it.

‘Any compensation—restitution—never mind the word, you know my

meaning. Father’s grave.’

But he did not respond with any tenderness. After a moody silence he

broke out in an ill-used tone:

‘It’ll be a very hard thing, Liz, if, when I am trying my best to get up

in the world, you pull me back.’

‘I, Charley?’

‘Yes, you, Liz. Why can’t you let bygones be bygones? Why can’t you, as

Mr Headstone said to me this very evening about another matter, leave

well alone? What we have got to do, is, to turn our faces full in our

new direction, and keep straight on.’

‘And never look back? Not even to try to make some amends?’

‘You are such a dreamer,’ said the boy, with his former petulance. ‘It

was all very well when we sat before the fire—when we looked into the

hollow down by the flare—but we are looking into the real world, now.’

‘Ah, we were looking into the real world then, Charley!’

‘I understand what you mean by that, but you are not justified in it. I

don’t want, as I raise myself to shake you off, Liz. I want to carry you

up with me. That’s what I want to do, and mean to do. I know what I owe

you. I said to Mr Headstone this very evening, “After all, my sister got

me here.” Well, then. Don’t pull me back, and hold me down. That’s all I

ask, and surely that’s not unconscionable.’

She had kept a steadfast look upon him, and she answered with composure:

‘I am not here selfishly, Charley. To please myself I could not be too

far from that river.’

‘Nor could you be too far from it to please me. Let us get quit of it

equally. Why should you linger about it any more than I? I give it a

wide berth.’

‘I can’t get away from it, I think,’ said Lizzie, passing her hand

across her forehead. ‘It’s no purpose of mine that I live by it still.’

‘There you go, Liz! Dreaming again! You lodge yourself of your own

accord in a house with a drunken—tailor, I suppose—or something of the

sort, and a little crooked antic of a child, or old person, or whatever

it is, and then you talk as if you were drawn or driven there. Now, do

be more practical.’

She had been practical enough with him, in suffering and striving

for him; but she only laid her hand upon his shoulder—not

reproachfully—and tapped it twice or thrice. She had been used to

do so, to soothe him when she carried him about, a child as heavy as

herself. Tears started to his eyes.

‘Upon my word, Liz,’ drawing the back of his hand across them, ‘I mean

to be a good brother to you, and to prove that I know what I owe you.

All I say is, that I hope you’ll control your fancies a little, on my

account. I’ll get a school, and then you must come and live with me,

and you’ll have to control your fancies then, so why not now? Now, say I

haven’t vexed you.’

‘You haven’t, Charley, you haven’t.’

‘And say I haven’t hurt you.’

‘You haven’t, Charley.’ But this answer was less ready.

‘Say you are sure I didn’t mean to. Come! There’s Mr Headstone stopping

and looking over the wall at the tide, to hint that it’s time to go.

Kiss me, and tell me that you know I didn’t mean to hurt you.’

She told him so, and they embraced, and walked on and came up with the

schoolmaster.

‘But we go your sister’s way,’ he remarked, when the boy told him he was

ready. And with his cumbrous and uneasy action he stiffly offered her

his arm. Her hand was just within it, when she drew it back. He looked

round with a start, as if he thought she had detected something that

repelled her, in the momentary touch.

‘I will not go in just yet,’ said Lizzie. ‘And you have a distance

before you, and will walk faster without me.’

Being by this time close to Vauxhall Bridge, they resolved, in

consequence, to take that way over the Thames, and they left her;

Bradley Headstone giving her his hand at parting, and she thanking him

for his care of her brother.

The master and the pupil walked on, rapidly and silently. They had

nearly crossed the bridge, when a gentleman came coolly sauntering

towards them, with a cigar in his mouth, his coat thrown back, and his

hands behind him. Something in the careless manner of this person,

and in a certain lazily arrogant air with which he approached, holding

possession of twice as much pavement as another would have claimed,

instantly caught the boy’s attention. As the gentleman passed the boy

looked at him narrowly, and then stood still, looking after him.

‘Who is it that you stare after?’ asked Bradley.

‘Why!’ said the boy, with a confused and pondering frown upon his face,

‘It IS that Wrayburn one!’

Bradley Headstone scrutinized the boy as closely as the boy had

scrutinized the gentleman.

‘I beg your pardon, Mr Headstone, but I couldn’t help wondering what in

the world brought HIM here!’

Though he said it as if his wonder were past—at the same time resuming

the walk—it was not lost upon the master that he looked over his

shoulder after speaking, and that the same perplexed and pondering frown

was heavy on his face.

‘You don’t appear to like your friend, Hexam?’

‘I DON’T like him,’ said the boy.

‘Why not?’

‘He took hold of me by the chin in a precious impertinent way, the first

time I ever saw him,’ said the boy.

‘Again, why?’

‘For nothing. Or—it’s much the same—because something I happened to

say about my sister didn’t happen to please him.’

‘Then he knows your sister?’

‘He didn’t at that time,’ said the boy, still moodily pondering.

‘Does now?’

The boy had so lost himself that he looked at Mr Bradley Headstone

as they walked on side by side, without attempting to reply until the

question had been repeated; then he nodded and answered, ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Going to see her, I dare say.’

‘It can’t be!’ said the boy, quickly. ‘He doesn’t know her well enough.

I should like to catch him at it!’

When they had walked on for a time, more rapidly than before, the master

said, clasping the pupil’s arm between the elbow and the shoulder with

his hand:

‘You were going to tell me something about that person. What did you say

his name was?’

‘Wrayburn. Mr Eugene Wrayburn. He is what they call a barrister, with

nothing to do. The first time he came to our old place was when my

father was alive. He came on business; not that it was HIS business—HE

never had any business—he was brought by a friend of his.’

‘And the other times?’

‘There was only one other time that I know of. When my father was killed

by accident, he chanced to be one of the finders. He was mooning about,

I suppose, taking liberties with people’s chins; but there he was,

somehow. He brought the news home to my sister early in the morning, and

brought Miss Abbey Potterson, a neighbour, to help break it to her.

He was mooning about the house when I was fetched home in the

afternoon—they didn’t know where to find me till my sister could be

brought round sufficiently to tell them—and then he mooned away.’

‘And is that all?’

‘That’s all, sir.’

Bradley Headstone gradually released the boy’s arm, as if he were

thoughtful, and they walked on side by side as before. After a long

silence between them, Bradley resumed the talk.

‘I suppose—your sister—’ with a curious break both before and after

the words, ‘has received hardly any teaching, Hexam?’

‘Hardly any, sir.’

‘Sacrificed, no doubt, to her father’s objections. I remember them in

your case. Yet—your sister—scarcely looks or speaks like an ignorant

person.’

‘Lizzie has as much thought as the best, Mr Headstone. Too much,

perhaps, without teaching. I used to call the fire at home, her books,

for she was always full of fancies—sometimes quite wise fancies,

considering—when she sat looking at it.’

‘I don’t like that,’ said Bradley Headstone.

His pupil was a little surprised by this striking in with so sudden

and decided and emotional an objection, but took it as a proof of the

master’s interest in himself. It emboldened him to say:

‘I have never brought myself to mention it openly to you, Mr Headstone,

and you’re my witness that I couldn’t even make up my mind to take it

from you before we came out to-night; but it’s a painful thing to think

that if I get on as well as you hope, I shall be—I won’t say disgraced,

because I don’t mean disgraced—but—rather put to the blush if it was

known—by a sister who has been very good to me.’

‘Yes,’ said Bradley Headstone in a slurring way, for his mind scarcely

seemed to touch that point, so smoothly did it glide to another, ‘and

there is this possibility to consider. Some man who had worked his way

might come to admire—your sister—and might even in time bring himself

to think of marrying—your sister—and it would be a sad drawback and a

heavy penalty upon him, if; overcoming in his mind other inequalities of

condition and other considerations against it, this inequality and this

consideration remained in full force.’

‘That’s much my own meaning, sir.’

‘Ay, ay,’ said Bradley Headstone, ‘but you spoke of a mere brother.

Now, the case I have supposed would be a much stronger case; because an

admirer, a husband, would form the connexion voluntarily, besides being

obliged to proclaim it: which a brother is not. After all, you know, it

must be said of you that you couldn’t help yourself: while it would be

said of him, with equal reason, that he could.’

‘That’s true, sir. Sometimes since Lizzie was left free by father’s

death, I have thought that such a young woman might soon acquire more

than enough to pass muster. And sometimes I have even thought that

perhaps Miss Peecher—’

‘For the purpose, I would advise Not Miss Peecher,’ Bradley Headstone

struck in with a recurrence of his late decision of manner.

‘Would you be so kind as to think of it for me, Mr Headstone?’

‘Yes, Hexam, yes. I’ll think of it. I’ll think maturely of it. I’ll

think well of it.’

Their walk was almost a silent one afterwards, until it ended at the

school-house. There, one of neat Miss Peecher’s little windows, like the

eyes in needles, was illuminated, and in a corner near it sat Mary Anne

watching, while Miss Peecher at the table stitched at the neat little

body she was making up by brown paper pattern for her own wearing. N.B.

Miss Peecher and Miss Peecher’s pupils were not much encouraged in the

unscholastic art of needlework, by Government.

Mary Anne with her face to the window, held her arm up.

‘Well, Mary Anne?’

‘Mr Headstone coming home, ma’am.’

In about a minute, Mary Anne again hailed.

‘Yes, Mary Anne?’

‘Gone in and locked his door, ma’am.’

Miss Peecher repressed a sigh as she gathered her work together for bed,

and transfixed that part of her dress where her heart would have been if

she had had the dress on, with a sharp, sharp needle.

Chapter 2

STILL EDUCATIONAL

The person of the house, doll’s dressmaker and manufacturer of

ornamental pincushions and pen-wipers, sat in her quaint little low

arm-chair, singing in the dark, until Lizzie came back. The person

of the house had attained that dignity while yet of very tender years

indeed, through being the only trustworthy person IN the house.

‘Well Lizzie-Mizzie-Wizzie,’ said she, breaking off in her song, ‘what’s

the news out of doors?’

‘What’s the news in doors?’ returned Lizzie, playfully smoothing the

bright long fair hair which grew very luxuriant and beautiful on the

head of the doll’s dressmaker.

‘Let me see, said the blind man. Why the last news is, that I don’t mean

to marry your brother.’

‘No?’

‘No-o,’ shaking her head and her chin. ‘Don’t like the boy.’

‘What do you say to his master?’

‘I say that I think he’s bespoke.’

Lizzie finished putting the hair carefully back over the misshapen

shoulders, and then lighted a candle. It showed the little parlour to

be dingy, but orderly and clean. She stood it on the mantelshelf, remote

from the dressmaker’s eyes, and then put the room door open, and the

house door open, and turned the little low chair and its occupant

towards the outer air. It was a sultry night, and this was a

fine-weather arrangement when the day’s work was done. To complete

it, she seated herself in a chair by the side of the little chair, and

protectingly drew under her arm the spare hand that crept up to her.

‘This is what your loving Jenny Wren calls the best time in the day and

night,’ said the person of the house. Her real name was Fanny Cleaver;

but she had long ago chosen to bestow upon herself the appellation of

Miss Jenny Wren.

‘I have been thinking,’ Jenny went on, ‘as I sat at work to-day, what

a thing it would be, if I should be able to have your company till I am

married, or at least courted. Because when I am courted, I shall make

Him do some of the things that you do for me. He couldn’t brush my hair

like you do, or help me up and down stairs like you do, and he couldn’t

do anything like you do; but he could take my work home, and he could

call for orders in his clumsy way. And he shall too. I’LL trot him

about, I can tell him!’

Jenny Wren had her personal vanities—happily for her—and no intentions

were stronger in her breast than the various trials and torments that

were, in the fulness of time, to be inflicted upon ‘him.’

‘Wherever he may happen to be just at present, or whoever he may happen

to be,’ said Miss Wren, ‘I know his tricks and his manners, and I give

him warning to look out.’

‘Don’t you think you are rather hard upon him?’ asked her friend,

smiling, and smoothing her hair.

‘Not a bit,’ replied the sage Miss Wren, with an air of vast experience.

‘My dear, they don’t care for you, those fellows, if you’re NOT hard

upon ’em. But I was saying If I should be able to have your company. Ah!

What a large If! Ain’t it?’

‘I have no intention of parting company, Jenny.’

‘Don’t say that, or you’ll go directly.’

‘Am I so little to be relied upon?’

‘You’re more to be relied upon than silver and gold.’ As she said it,

Miss Wren suddenly broke off, screwed up her eyes and her chin, and

looked prodigiously knowing. ‘Aha!

Who comes here?

A Grenadier.

What does he want?

A pot of beer.

And nothing else in the world, my dear!’

A man’s figure paused on the pavement at the outer door. ‘Mr Eugene

Wrayburn, ain’t it?’ said Miss Wren.

‘So I am told,’ was the answer.

‘You may come in, if you’re good.’

‘I am not good,’ said Eugene, ‘but I’ll come in.’

He gave his hand to Jenny Wren, and he gave his hand to Lizzie, and he

stood leaning by the door at Lizzie’s side. He had been strolling with

his cigar, he said, (it was smoked out and gone by this time,) and he

had strolled round to return in that direction that he might look in as

he passed. Had she not seen her brother to-night?

‘Yes,’ said Lizzie, whose manner was a little troubled.

Gracious condescension on our brother’s part! Mr Eugene Wrayburn thought

he had passed my young gentleman on the bridge yonder. Who was his

friend with him?

‘The schoolmaster.’

‘To be sure. Looked like it.’

Lizzie sat so still, that one could not have said wherein the fact of

her manner being troubled was expressed; and yet one could not have

doubted it. Eugene was as easy as ever; but perhaps, as she sat with

her eyes cast down, it might have been rather more perceptible that

his attention was concentrated upon her for certain moments, than its

concentration upon any subject for any short time ever was, elsewhere.

‘I have nothing to report, Lizzie,’ said Eugene. ‘But, having promised

you that an eye should be always kept on Mr Riderhood through my friend

Lightwood, I like occasionally to renew my assurance that I keep my

promise, and keep my friend up to the mark.’

‘I should not have doubted it, sir.’

‘Generally, I confess myself a man to be doubted,’ returned Eugene,

coolly, ‘for all that.’

‘Why are you?’ asked the sharp Miss Wren.

‘Because, my dear,’ said the airy Eugene, ‘I am a bad idle dog.’

‘Then why don’t you reform and be a good dog?’ inquired Miss Wren.

‘Because, my dear,’ returned Eugene, ‘there’s nobody who makes it worth

my while. Have you considered my suggestion, Lizzie?’ This in a lower

voice, but only as if it were a graver matter; not at all to the

exclusion of the person of the house.

‘I have thought of it, Mr Wrayburn, but I have not been able to make up

my mind to accept it.’

‘False pride!’ said Eugene.

‘I think not, Mr Wrayburn. I hope not.’

‘False pride!’ repeated Eugene. ‘Why, what else is it? The thing is

worth nothing in itself. The thing is worth nothing to me. What can it

be worth to me? You know the most I make of it. I propose to be of some

use to somebody—which I never was in this world, and never shall be on

any other occasion—by paying some qualified person of your own sex and

age, so many (or rather so few) contemptible shillings, to come here,

certain nights in the week, and give you certain instruction which you

wouldn’t want if you hadn’t been a self-denying daughter and sister.

You know that it’s good to have it, or you would never have so devoted

yourself to your brother’s having it. Then why not have it: especially

when our friend Miss Jenny here would profit by it too? If I proposed to

be the teacher, or to attend the lessons—obviously incongruous!—but

as to that, I might as well be on the other side of the globe, or not

on the globe at all. False pride, Lizzie. Because true pride wouldn’t

shame, or be shamed by, your thankless brother. True pride wouldn’t have

schoolmasters brought here, like doctors, to look at a bad case. True

pride would go to work and do it. You know that, well enough, for you

know that your own true pride would do it to-morrow, if you had the ways

and means which false pride won’t let me supply. Very well. I add no

more than this. Your false pride does wrong to yourself and does wrong

to your dead father.’

‘How to my father, Mr Wrayburn?’ she asked, with an anxious face.

‘How to your father? Can you ask! By perpetuating the consequences of

his ignorant and blind obstinacy. By resolving not to set right the

wrong he did you. By determining that the deprivation to which he

condemned you, and which he forced upon you, shall always rest upon his

head.’

It chanced to be a subtle string to sound, in her who had so spoken to

her brother within the hour. It sounded far more forcibly, because of

the change in the speaker for the moment; the passing appearance of

earnestness, complete conviction, injured resentment of suspicion,

generous and unselfish interest. All these qualities, in him usually so

light and careless, she felt to be inseparable from some touch of their

opposites in her own breast. She thought, had she, so far below him

and so different, rejected this disinterestedness, because of some vain

misgiving that he sought her out, or heeded any personal attractions

that he might descry in her? The poor girl, pure of heart and purpose,

could not bear to think it. Sinking before her own eyes, as she

suspected herself of it, she drooped her head as though she had done him

some wicked and grievous injury, and broke into silent tears.

‘Don’t be distressed,’ said Eugene, very, very kindly. ‘I hope it is not

I who have distressed you. I meant no more than to put the matter in its

true light before you; though I acknowledge I did it selfishly enough,

for I am disappointed.’

Disappointed of doing her a service. How else COULD he be disappointed?

‘It won’t break my heart,’ laughed Eugene; ‘it won’t stay by me

eight-and-forty hours; but I am genuinely disappointed. I had set my

fancy on doing this little thing for you and for our friend Miss Jenny.

The novelty of my doing anything in the least useful, had its charms. I

see, now, that I might have managed it better. I might have affected to

do it wholly for our friend Miss J. I might have got myself up, morally,

as Sir Eugene Bountiful. But upon my soul I can’t make flourishes, and I

would rather be disappointed than try.’

If he meant to follow home what was in Lizzie’s thoughts, it was

skilfully done. If he followed it by mere fortuitous coincidence, it was

done by an evil chance.

‘It opened out so naturally before me,’ said Eugene. ‘The ball seemed so

thrown into my hands by accident! I happen to be originally brought into

contact with you, Lizzie, on those two occasions that you know of. I

happen to be able to promise you that a watch shall be kept upon that

false accuser, Riderhood. I happen to be able to give you some little

consolation in the darkest hour of your distress, by assuring you that I

don’t believe him. On the same occasion I tell you that I am the idlest

and least of lawyers, but that I am better than none, in a case I have

noted down with my own hand, and that you may be always sure of my best

help, and incidentally of Lightwood’s too, in your efforts to clear

your father. So, it gradually takes my fancy that I may help you—so

easily!—to clear your father of that other blame which I mentioned

a few minutes ago, and which is a just and real one. I hope I have

explained myself; for I am heartily sorry to have distressed you. I hate

to claim to mean well, but I really did mean honestly and simply well,

and I want you to know it.’

‘I have never doubted that, Mr Wrayburn,’ said Lizzie; the more

repentant, the less he claimed.

‘I am very glad to hear it. Though if you had quite understood my whole

meaning at first, I think you would not have refused. Do you think you

would?’

‘I—don’t know that I should, Mr Wrayburn.’

‘Well! Then why refuse now you do understand it?’

‘It’s not easy for me to talk to you,’ returned Lizzie, in some

confusion, ‘for you see all the consequences of what I say, as soon as I

say it.’

‘Take all the consequences,’ laughed Eugene, ‘and take away my

disappointment. Lizzie Hexam, as I truly respect you, and as I am your

friend and a poor devil of a gentleman, I protest I don’t even now

understand why you hesitate.’

There was an appearance of openness, trustfulness, unsuspecting

generosity, in his words and manner, that won the poor girl over; and

not only won her over, but again caused her to feel as though she had

been influenced by the opposite qualities, with vanity at their head.

‘I will not hesitate any longer, Mr Wrayburn. I hope you will not

think the worse of me for having hesitated at all. For myself and for

Jenny—you let me answer for you, Jenny dear?’

The little creature had been leaning back, attentive, with her elbows

resting on the elbows of her chair, and her chin upon her hands. Without

changing her attitude, she answered, ‘Yes!’ so suddenly that it rather

seemed as if she had chopped the monosyllable than spoken it.

‘For myself and for Jenny, I thankfully accept your kind offer.’

‘Agreed! Dismissed!’ said Eugene, giving Lizzie his hand before lightly

waving it, as if he waved the whole subject away. ‘I hope it may not be

often that so much is made of so little!’

Then he fell to talking playfully with Jenny Wren. ‘I think of setting

up a doll, Miss Jenny,’ he said.

‘You had better not,’ replied the dressmaker.

‘Why not?’

‘You are sure to break it. All you children do.’

‘But that makes good for trade, you know, Miss Wren,’ returned Eugene.

‘Much as people’s breaking promises and contracts and bargains of all

sorts, makes good for MY trade.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ Miss Wren retorted; ‘but you had better by

half set up a pen-wiper, and turn industrious, and use it.’

‘Why, if we were all as industrious as you, little Busy-Body, we should

begin to work as soon as we could crawl, and there would be a bad

thing!’

‘Do you mean,’ returned the little creature, with a flush suffusing her

face, ‘bad for your backs and your legs?’

‘No, no, no,’ said Eugene; shocked—to do him justice—at the thought of

trifling with her infirmity. ‘Bad for business, bad for business. If we

all set to work as soon as we could use our hands, it would be all over

with the dolls’ dressmakers.’

‘There’s something in that,’ replied Miss Wren; ‘you have a sort of an

idea in your noddle sometimes.’ Then, in a changed tone; ‘Talking of

ideas, my Lizzie,’ they were sitting side by side as they had sat at

first, ‘I wonder how it happens that when I am work, work, working here,

all alone in the summer-time, I smell flowers.’

‘As a commonplace individual, I should say,’ Eugene suggested

languidly—for he was growing weary of the person of the house—‘that

you smell flowers because you DO smell flowers.’

‘No I don’t,’ said the little creature, resting one arm upon the elbow

of her chair, resting her chin upon that hand, and looking vacantly

before her; ‘this is not a flowery neighbourhood. It’s anything but

that. And yet as I sit at work, I smell miles of flowers. I smell roses,

till I think I see the rose-leaves lying in heaps, bushels, on the

floor. I smell fallen leaves, till I put down my hand—so—and expect to

make them rustle. I smell the white and the pink May in the hedges, and

all sorts of flowers that I never was among. For I have seen very few

flowers indeed, in my life.’

‘Pleasant fancies to have, Jenny dear!’ said her friend: with a glance

towards Eugene as if she would have asked him whether they were given

the child in compensation for her losses.

‘So I think, Lizzie, when they come to me. And the birds I hear! Oh!’

cried the little creature, holding out her hand and looking upward, ‘how

they sing!’

There was something in the face and action for the moment, quite

inspired and beautiful. Then the chin dropped musingly upon the hand

again.

‘I dare say my birds sing better than other birds, and my flowers smell

better than other flowers. For when I was a little child,’ in a tone as

though it were ages ago, ‘the children that I used to see early in the

morning were very different from any others that I ever saw. They were

not like me; they were not chilled, anxious, ragged, or beaten; they

were never in pain. They were not like the children of the neighbours;

they never made me tremble all over, by setting up shrill noises, and

they never mocked me. Such numbers of them too! All in white dresses,

and with something shining on the borders, and on their heads, that I

have never been able to imitate with my work, though I know it so

well. They used to come down in long bright slanting rows, and say all

together, “Who is this in pain! Who is this in pain!” When I told them

who it was, they answered, “Come and play with us!” When I said “I never

play! I can’t play!” they swept about me and took me up, and made me

light. Then it was all delicious ease and rest till they laid me

down, and said, all together, “Have patience, and we will come again.”

Whenever they came back, I used to know they were coming before I saw

the long bright rows, by hearing them ask, all together a long way off,

“Who is this in pain! Who is this in pain!” And I used to cry out, “O my

blessed children, it’s poor me. Have pity on me. Take me up and make me

light!”’

By degrees, as she progressed in this remembrance, the hand was raised,

the late ecstatic look returned, and she became quite beautiful. Having

so paused for a moment, silent, with a listening smile upon her face,

she looked round and recalled herself.

‘What poor fun you think me; don’t you, Mr Wrayburn? You may well look

tired of me. But it’s Saturday night, and I won’t detain you.’

‘That is to say, Miss Wren,’ observed Eugene, quite ready to profit by

the hint, ‘you wish me to go?’

‘Well, it’s Saturday night,’ she returned, ‘and my child’s coming

home. And my child is a troublesome bad child, and costs me a world of

scolding. I would rather you didn’t see my child.’

‘A doll?’ said Eugene, not understanding, and looking for an

explanation.

But Lizzie, with her lips only, shaping the two words, ‘Her father,’ he

delayed no longer. He took his leave immediately. At the corner of the

street he stopped to light another cigar, and possibly to ask himself

what he was doing otherwise. If so, the answer was indefinite and vague.

Who knows what he is doing, who is careless what he does!

A man stumbled against him as he turned away, who mumbled some maudlin

apology. Looking after this man, Eugene saw him go in at the door by

which he himself had just come out.

On the man’s stumbling into the room, Lizzie rose to leave it.

‘Don’t go away, Miss Hexam,’ he said in a submissive manner, speaking

thickly and with difficulty. ‘Don’t fly from unfortunate man in

shattered state of health. Give poor invalid honour of your company. It

ain’t—ain’t catching.’

Lizzie murmured that she had something to do in her own room, and went

away upstairs.

‘How’s my Jenny?’ said the man, timidly. ‘How’s my Jenny Wren, best of

children, object dearest affections broken-hearted invalid?’

To which the person of the house, stretching out her arm in an attitude

of command, replied with irresponsive asperity: ‘Go along with you! Go

along into your corner! Get into your corner directly!’

The wretched spectacle made as if he would have offered some

remonstrance; but not venturing to resist the person of the house,

thought better of it, and went and sat down on a particular chair of

disgrace.

‘Oh-h-h!’ cried the person of the house, pointing her little finger,

‘You bad old boy! Oh-h-h you naughty, wicked creature! WHAT do you mean

by it?’

The shaking figure, unnerved and disjointed from head to foot, put

out its two hands a little way, as making overtures of peace and

reconciliation. Abject tears stood in its eyes, and stained the blotched

red of its cheeks. The swollen lead-coloured under lip trembled with a

shameful whine. The whole indecorous threadbare ruin, from the broken

shoes to the prematurely-grey scanty hair, grovelled. Not with any sense

worthy to be called a sense, of this dire reversal of the places of

parent and child, but in a pitiful expostulation to be let off from a

scolding.

‘I know your tricks and your manners,’ cried Miss Wren. ‘I know where

you’ve been to!’ (which indeed it did not require discernment to

discover). ‘Oh, you disgraceful old chap!’

The very breathing of the figure was contemptible, as it laboured and

rattled in that operation, like a blundering clock.

‘Slave, slave, slave, from morning to night,’ pursued the person of the

house, ‘and all for this! WHAT do you mean by it?’

There was something in that emphasized ‘What,’ which absurdly frightened

the figure. As often as the person of the house worked her way round to

it—even as soon as he saw that it was coming—he collapsed in an extra

degree.

‘I wish you had been taken up, and locked up,’ said the person of the

house. ‘I wish you had been poked into cells and black holes, and run

over by rats and spiders and beetles. I know their tricks and their

manners, and they’d have tickled you nicely. Ain’t you ashamed of

yourself?’

‘Yes, my dear,’ stammered the father.

‘Then,’ said the person of the house, terrifying him by a grand muster

of her spirits and forces before recurring to the emphatic word, ‘WHAT

do you mean by it?’

‘Circumstances over which had no control,’ was the miserable creature’s

plea in extenuation.

‘I’LL circumstance you and control you too,’ retorted the person of the

house, speaking with vehement sharpness, ‘if you talk in that way. I’ll

give you in charge to the police, and have you fined five shillings when

you can’t pay, and then I won’t pay the money for you, and you’ll be

transported for life. How should you like to be transported for life?’

‘Shouldn’t like it. Poor shattered invalid. Trouble nobody long,’ cried

the wretched figure.

‘Come, come!’ said the person of the house, tapping the table near her

in a business-like manner, and shaking her head and her chin; ‘you know

what you’ve got to do. Put down your money this instant.’

The obedient figure began to rummage in its pockets.

‘Spent a fortune out of your wages, I’ll be bound!’ said the person of

the house. ‘Put it here! All you’ve got left! Every farthing!’

Such a business as he made of collecting it from his dogs’-eared

pockets; of expecting it in this pocket, and not finding it; of not

expecting it in that pocket, and passing it over; of finding no pocket

where that other pocket ought to be!

‘Is this all?’ demanded the person of the house, when a confused heap of

pence and shillings lay on the table.

‘Got no more,’ was the rueful answer, with an accordant shake of the

head.

‘Let me make sure. You know what you’ve got to do. Turn all your pockets

inside out, and leave ’em so!’ cried the person of the house.

He obeyed. And if anything could have made him look more abject or more

dismally ridiculous than before, it would have been his so displaying

himself.

‘Here’s but seven and eightpence halfpenny!’ exclaimed Miss Wren, after

reducing the heap to order. ‘Oh, you prodigal old son! Now you shall be

starved.’

‘No, don’t starve me,’ he urged, whimpering.

‘If you were treated as you ought to be,’ said Miss Wren, ‘you’d be fed

upon the skewers of cats’ meat;—only the skewers, after the cats had

had the meat. As it is, go to bed.’

When he stumbled out of the corner to comply, he again put out both his

hands, and pleaded: ‘Circumstances over which no control—’

‘Get along with you to bed!’ cried Miss Wren, snapping him up. ‘Don’t

speak to me. I’m not going to forgive you. Go to bed this moment!’

Seeing another emphatic ‘What’ upon its way, he evaded it by complying

and was heard to shuffle heavily up stairs, and shut his door, and throw

himself on his bed. Within a little while afterwards, Lizzie came down.

‘Shall we have our supper, Jenny dear?’

‘Ah! bless us and save us, we need have something to keep us going,’

returned Miss Jenny, shrugging her shoulders.

Lizzie laid a cloth upon the little bench (more handy for the person of

the house than an ordinary table), and put upon it such plain fare as

they were accustomed to have, and drew up a stool for herself.

‘Now for supper! What are you thinking of, Jenny darling?’

‘I was thinking,’ she returned, coming out of a deep study, ‘what I

would do to Him, if he should turn out a drunkard.’

‘Oh, but he won’t,’ said Lizzie. ‘You’ll take care of that, beforehand.’

‘I shall try to take care of it beforehand, but he might deceive me.

Oh, my dear, all those fellows with their tricks and their manners do

deceive!’ With the little fist in full action. ‘And if so, I tell you

what I think I’d do. When he was asleep, I’d make a spoon red hot, and

I’d have some boiling liquor bubbling in a saucepan, and I’d take it

out hissing, and I’d open his mouth with the other hand—or perhaps he’d

sleep with his mouth ready open—and I’d pour it down his throat, and

blister it and choke him.’

‘I am sure you would do no such horrible thing,’ said Lizzie.

‘Shouldn’t I? Well; perhaps I shouldn’t. But I should like to!’

‘I am equally sure you would not.’

‘Not even like to? Well, you generally know best. Only you haven’t

always lived among it as I have lived—and your back isn’t bad and your

legs are not queer.’

As they went on with their supper, Lizzie tried to bring her round to

that prettier and better state. But, the charm was broken. The person

of the house was the person of a house full of sordid shames and cares,

with an upper room in which that abased figure was infecting even

innocent sleep with sensual brutality and degradation. The doll’s

dressmaker had become a little quaint shrew; of the world, worldly; of

the earth, earthy.

Poor doll’s dressmaker! How often so dragged down by hands that should

have raised her up; how often so misdirected when losing her way on the

eternal road, and asking guidance! Poor, poor little doll’s dressmaker!

Chapter 3

A PIECE OF WORK

Britannia, sitting meditating one fine day (perhaps in the attitude in

which she is presented on the copper coinage), discovers all of a sudden

that she wants Veneering in Parliament. It occurs to her that Veneering

is ‘a representative man’—which cannot in these times be doubted—and

that Her Majesty’s faithful Commons are incomplete without him. So,

Britannia mentions to a legal gentleman of her acquaintance that if

Veneering will ‘put down’ five thousand pounds, he may write a couple

of initial letters after his name at the extremely cheap rate of two

thousand five hundred per letter. It is clearly understood between

Britannia and the legal gentleman that nobody is to take up the five

thousand pounds, but that being put down they will disappear by magical

conjuration and enchantment.

The legal gentleman in Britannia’s confidence going straight from that

lady to Veneering, thus commissioned, Veneering declares himself highly

flattered, but requires breathing time to ascertain ‘whether his friends

will rally round him.’ Above all things, he says, it behoves him to be

clear, at a crisis of this importance, ‘whether his friends will rally

round him.’ The legal gentleman, in the interests of his client cannot

allow much time for this purpose, as the lady rather thinks she knows

somebody prepared to put down six thousand pounds; but he says he will

give Veneering four hours.

Veneering then says to Mrs Veneering, ‘We must work,’ and throws himself

into a Hansom cab. Mrs Veneering in the same moment relinquishes baby

to Nurse; presses her aquiline hands upon her brow, to arrange the

throbbing intellect within; orders out the carriage; and repeats in

a distracted and devoted manner, compounded of Ophelia and any

self-immolating female of antiquity you may prefer, ‘We must work.’

Veneering having instructed his driver to charge at the Public in the

streets, like the Life-Guards at Waterloo, is driven furiously to Duke

Street, Saint James’s. There, he finds Twemlow in his lodgings, fresh

from the hands of a secret artist who has been doing something to his

hair with yolks of eggs. The process requiring that Twemlow shall, for

two hours after the application, allow his hair to stick upright and dry

gradually, he is in an appropriate state for the receipt of startling

intelligence; looking equally like the Monument on Fish Street Hill, and

King Priam on a certain incendiary occasion not wholly unknown as a neat

point from the classics.

‘My dear Twemlow,’ says Veneering, grasping both his hands, ‘as the

dearest and oldest of my friends—’

(‘Then there can be no more doubt about it in future,’ thinks Twemlow,

‘and I AM!’)

‘—Are you of opinion that your cousin, Lord Snigsworth, would give his

name as a Member of my Committee? I don’t go so far as to ask for his

lordship; I only ask for his name. Do you think he would give me his

name?’

In sudden low spirits, Twemlow replies, ‘I don’t think he would.’

‘My political opinions,’ says Veneering, not previously aware of having

any, ‘are identical with those of Lord Snigsworth, and perhaps as a

matter of public feeling and public principle, Lord Snigsworth would

give me his name.’

‘It might be so,’ says Twemlow; ‘but—’ And perplexedly scratching his

head, forgetful of the yolks of eggs, is the more discomfited by being

reminded how stickey he is.

‘Between such old and intimate friends as ourselves,’ pursues Veneering,

‘there should in such a case be no reserve. Promise me that if I ask you

to do anything for me which you don’t like to do, or feel the slightest

difficulty in doing, you will freely tell me so.’

This, Twemlow is so kind as to promise, with every appearance of most

heartily intending to keep his word.

‘Would you have any objection to write down to Snigsworthy Park, and ask

this favour of Lord Snigsworth? Of course if it were granted I should

know that I owed it solely to you; while at the same time you would put

it to Lord Snigsworth entirely upon public grounds. Would you have any

objection?’

Says Twemlow, with his hand to his forehead, ‘You have exacted a promise

from me.’

‘I have, my dear Twemlow.’

‘And you expect me to keep it honourably.’

‘I do, my dear Twemlow.’

‘ON the whole, then;—observe me,’ urges Twemlow with great nicety, as

if; in the case of its having been off the whole, he would have done it

directly—‘ON the whole, I must beg you to excuse me from addressing any

communication to Lord Snigsworth.’

‘Bless you, bless you!’ says Veneering; horribly disappointed, but

grasping him by both hands again, in a particularly fervent manner.

It is not to be wondered at that poor Twemlow should decline to inflict

a letter on his noble cousin (who has gout in the temper), inasmuch

as his noble cousin, who allows him a small annuity on which he lives,

takes it out of him, as the phrase goes, in extreme severity; putting

him, when he visits at Snigsworthy Park, under a kind of martial law;

ordaining that he shall hang his hat on a particular peg, sit on a

particular chair, talk on particular subjects to particular people, and

perform particular exercises: such as sounding the praises of the Family

Varnish (not to say Pictures), and abstaining from the choicest of the

Family Wines unless expressly invited to partake.

‘One thing, however, I CAN do for you,’ says Twemlow; ‘and that is, work

for you.’

Veneering blesses him again.

‘I’ll go,’ says Twemlow, in a rising hurry of spirits, ‘to the

club;—let us see now; what o’clock is it?’

‘Twenty minutes to eleven.’

‘I’ll be,’ says Twemlow, ‘at the club by ten minutes to twelve, and I’ll

never leave it all day.’

Veneering feels that his friends are rallying round him, and says,

‘Thank you, thank you. I knew I could rely upon you. I said to Anastatia

before leaving home just now to come to you—of course the first friend

I have seen on a subject so momentous to me, my dear Twemlow—I said to

Anastatia, “We must work.”’

‘You were right, you were right,’ replies Twemlow. ‘Tell me. Is SHE

working?’

‘She is,’ says Veneering.

‘Good!’ cries Twemlow, polite little gentleman that he is. ‘A woman’s

tact is invaluable. To have the dear sex with us, is to have everything

with us.’

‘But you have not imparted to me,’ remarks Veneering, ‘what you think of

my entering the House of Commons?’

‘I think,’ rejoins Twemlow, feelingly, ‘that it is the best club in

London.’

Veneering again blesses him, plunges down stairs, rushes into his

Hansom, and directs the driver to be up and at the British Public, and

to charge into the City.

Meanwhile Twemlow, in an increasing hurry of spirits, gets his hair down

as well as he can—which is not very well; for, after these glutinous

applications it is restive, and has a surface on it somewhat in the

nature of pastry—and gets to the club by the appointed time. At the

club he promptly secures a large window, writing materials, and all

the newspapers, and establishes himself; immoveable, to be respectfully

contemplated by Pall Mall. Sometimes, when a man enters who nods to

him, Twemlow says, ‘Do you know Veneering?’ Man says, ‘No; member of

the club?’ Twemlow says, ‘Yes. Coming in for Pocket-Breaches.’ Man says,

‘Ah! Hope he may find it worth the money!’ yawns, and saunters out.

Towards six o’clock of the afternoon, Twemlow begins to persuade

himself that he is positively jaded with work, and thinks it much to be

regretted that he was not brought up as a Parliamentary agent.

From Twemlow’s, Veneering dashes at Podsnap’s place of business. Finds

Podsnap reading the paper, standing, and inclined to be oratorical

over the astonishing discovery he has made, that Italy is not England.

Respectfully entreats Podsnap’s pardon for stopping the flow of his

words of wisdom, and informs him what is in the wind. Tells Podsnap that

their political opinions are identical. Gives Podsnap to understand that

he, Veneering, formed his political opinions while sitting at the feet

of him, Podsnap. Seeks earnestly to know whether Podsnap ‘will rally

round him?’

Says Podsnap, something sternly, ‘Now, first of all, Veneering, do you

ask my advice?’

Veneering falters that as so old and so dear a friend—

‘Yes, yes, that’s all very well,’ says Podsnap; ‘but have you made up

your mind to take this borough of Pocket-Breaches on its own terms, or

do you ask my opinion whether you shall take it or leave it alone?’

Veneering repeats that his heart’s desire and his soul’s thirst are,

that Podsnap shall rally round him.

‘Now, I’ll be plain with you, Veneering,’ says Podsnap, knitting his

brows. ‘You will infer that I don’t care about Parliament, from the fact

of my not being there?’

Why, of course Veneering knows that! Of course Veneering knows that if

Podsnap chose to go there, he would be there, in a space of time that

might be stated by the light and thoughtless as a jiffy.

‘It is not worth my while,’ pursues Podsnap, becoming handsomely

mollified, ‘and it is the reverse of important to my position. But it

is not my wish to set myself up as law for another man, differently

situated. You think it IS worth YOUR while, and IS important to YOUR

position. Is that so?’

Always with the proviso that Podsnap will rally round him, Veneering

thinks it is so.

‘Then you don’t ask my advice,’ says Podsnap. ‘Good. Then I won’t give

it you. But you do ask my help. Good. Then I’ll work for you.’

Veneering instantly blesses him, and apprises him that Twemlow is

already working. Podsnap does not quite approve that anybody should

be already working—regarding it rather in the light of a liberty—but

tolerates Twemlow, and says he is a well-connected old female who will

do no harm.

‘I have nothing very particular to do to-day,’ adds Podsnap, ‘and I’ll

mix with some influential people. I had engaged myself to dinner, but

I’ll send Mrs Podsnap and get off going myself; and I’ll dine with you

at eight. It’s important we should report progress and compare notes.

Now, let me see. You ought to have a couple of active energetic fellows,

of gentlemanly manners, to go about.’

Veneering, after cogitation, thinks of Boots and Brewer.

‘Whom I have met at your house,’ says Podsnap. ‘Yes. They’ll do very

well. Let them each have a cab, and go about.’

Veneering immediately mentions what a blessing he feels it, to possess

a friend capable of such grand administrative suggestions, and really

is elated at this going about of Boots and Brewer, as an idea wearing

an electioneering aspect and looking desperately like business. Leaving

Podsnap, at a hand-gallop, he descends upon Boots and Brewer, who

enthusiastically rally round him by at once bolting off in cabs, taking

opposite directions. Then Veneering repairs to the legal gentleman in

Britannia’s confidence, and with him transacts some delicate affairs

of business, and issues an address to the independent electors of

Pocket-Breaches, announcing that he is coming among them for their

suffrages, as the mariner returns to the home of his early childhood: a

phrase which is none the worse for his never having been near the place

in his life, and not even now distinctly knowing where it is.

Mrs Veneering, during the same eventful hours, is not idle. No sooner

does the carriage turn out, all complete, than she turns into it, all

complete, and gives the word ‘To Lady Tippins’s.’ That charmer dwells

over a staymaker’s in the Belgravian Borders, with a life-size model

in the window on the ground floor of a distinguished beauty in a blue

petticoat, stay-lace in hand, looking over her shoulder at the town in

innocent surprise. As well she may, to find herself dressing under the

circumstances.

Lady Tippins at home? Lady Tippins at home, with the room darkened,

and her back (like the lady’s at the ground-floor window, though for a

different reason) cunningly turned towards the light. Lady Tippins is

so surprised by seeing her dear Mrs Veneering so early—in the middle of

the night, the pretty creature calls it—that her eyelids almost go up,

under the influence of that emotion.

To whom Mrs Veneering incoherently communicates, how that Veneering

has been offered Pocket-Breaches; how that it is the time for rallying

round; how that Veneering has said ‘We must work’; how that she is here,

as a wife and mother, to entreat Lady Tippins to work; how that the

carriage is at Lady Tippins’s disposal for purposes of work; how that

she, proprietress of said bran new elegant equipage, will return home on

foot—on bleeding feet if need be—to work (not specifying how), until

she drops by the side of baby’s crib.

‘My love,’ says Lady Tippins, ‘compose yourself; we’ll bring him in.’

And Lady Tippins really does work, and work the Veneering horses too;

for she clatters about town all day, calling upon everybody she knows,

and showing her entertaining powers and green fan to immense advantage,

by rattling on with, My dear soul, what do you think? What do

you suppose me to be? You’ll never guess. I’m pretending to be an

electioneering agent. And for what place of all places? Pocket-Breaches.

And why? Because the dearest friend I have in the world has bought it.

And who is the dearest friend I have in the world? A man of the name of

Veneering. Not omitting his wife, who is the other dearest friend I have

in the world; and I positively declare I forgot their baby, who is the

other. And we are carrying on this little farce to keep up appearances,

and isn’t it refreshing! Then, my precious child, the fun of it is that

nobody knows who these Veneerings are, and that they know nobody, and

that they have a house out of the Tales of the Genii, and give dinners

out of the Arabian Nights. Curious to see ’em, my dear? Say you’ll know

’em. Come and dine with ’em. They shan’t bore you. Say who shall meet

you. We’ll make up a party of our own, and I’ll engage that they shall

not interfere with you for one single moment. You really ought to see

their gold and silver camels. I call their dinner-table, the Caravan.

Do come and dine with my Veneerings, my own Veneerings, my exclusive

property, the dearest friends I have in the world! And above all, my

dear, be sure you promise me your vote and interest and all sorts of

plumpers for Pocket-Breaches; for we couldn’t think of spending sixpence

on it, my love, and can only consent to be brought in by the spontaneous

thingummies of the incorruptible whatdoyoucallums.

Now, the point of view seized by the bewitching Tippins, that this same

working and rallying round is to keep up appearances, may have something

in it, but not all the truth. More is done, or considered to be

done—which does as well—by taking cabs, and ‘going about,’ than the

fair Tippins knew of. Many vast vague reputations have been made,

solely by taking cabs and going about. This particularly obtains in all

Parliamentary affairs. Whether the business in hand be to get a man in,

or get a man out, or get a man over, or promote a railway, or jockey

a railway, or what else, nothing is understood to be so effectual as

scouring nowhere in a violent hurry—in short, as taking cabs and going

about.

Probably because this reason is in the air, Twemlow, far from being

singular in his persuasion that he works like a Trojan, is capped by

Podsnap, who in his turn is capped by Boots and Brewer. At eight o’clock

when all these hard workers assemble to dine at Veneering’s, it is

understood that the cabs of Boots and Brewer mustn’t leave the door, but

that pails of water must be brought from the nearest baiting-place,

and cast over the horses’ legs on the very spot, lest Boots and Brewer

should have instant occasion to mount and away. Those fleet messengers

require the Analytical to see that their hats are deposited where they

can be laid hold of at an instant’s notice; and they dine (remarkably

well though) with the air of firemen in charge of an engine, expecting

intelligence of some tremendous conflagration.

Mrs Veneering faintly remarks, as dinner opens, that many such days

would be too much for her.

‘Many such days would be too much for all of us,’ says Podsnap; ‘but

we’ll bring him in!’

‘We’ll bring him in,’ says Lady Tippins, sportively waving her green

fan. ‘Veneering for ever!’

‘We’ll bring him in!’ says Twemlow.

‘We’ll bring him in!’ say Boots and Brewer.

Strictly speaking, it would be hard to show cause why they should not

bring him in, Pocket-Breaches having closed its little bargain, and

there being no opposition. However, it is agreed that they must ‘work’

to the last, and that if they did not work, something indefinite would

happen. It is likewise agreed that they are all so exhausted with the

work behind them, and need to be so fortified for the work before them,

as to require peculiar strengthening from Veneering’s cellar. Therefore,

the Analytical has orders to produce the cream of the cream of his

binns, and therefore it falls out that rallying becomes rather a trying

word for the occasion; Lady Tippins being observed gamely to inculcate

the necessity of rearing round their dear Veneering; Podsnap advocating

roaring round him; Boots and Brewer declaring their intention of reeling

round him; and Veneering thanking his devoted friends one and all, with

great emotion, for rarullarulling round him.

In these inspiring moments, Brewer strikes out an idea which is the

great hit of the day. He consults his watch, and says (like Guy Fawkes),

he’ll now go down to the House of Commons and see how things look.

‘I’ll keep about the lobby for an hour or so,’ says Brewer, with a

deeply mysterious countenance, ‘and if things look well, I won’t come

back, but will order my cab for nine in the morning.’

‘You couldn’t do better,’ says Podsnap.

Veneering expresses his inability ever to acknowledge this last service.

Tears stand in Mrs Veneering’s affectionate eyes. Boots shows envy,

loses ground, and is regarded as possessing a second-rate mind. They all

crowd to the door, to see Brewer off. Brewer says to his driver, ‘Now,

is your horse pretty fresh?’ eyeing the animal with critical scrutiny.

Driver says he’s as fresh as butter. ‘Put him along then,’ says Brewer;

‘House of Commons.’ Driver darts up, Brewer leaps in, they cheer him as

he departs, and Mr Podsnap says, ‘Mark my words, sir. That’s a man of

resource; that’s a man to make his way in life.’

When the time comes for Veneering to deliver a neat and appropriate

stammer to the men of Pocket-Breaches, only Podsnap and Twemlow

accompany him by railway to that sequestered spot. The legal gentleman

is at the Pocket-Breaches Branch Station, with an open carriage with a

printed bill ‘Veneering for ever’ stuck upon it, as if it were a wall;

and they gloriously proceed, amidst the grins of the populace, to a

feeble little town hall on crutches, with some onions and bootlaces

under it, which the legal gentleman says are a Market; and from the

front window of that edifice Veneering speaks to the listening earth.

In the moment of his taking his hat off, Podsnap, as per agreement made

with Mrs Veneering, telegraphs to that wife and mother, ‘He’s up.’

Veneering loses his way in the usual No Thoroughfares of speech, and

Podsnap and Twemlow say Hear hear! and sometimes, when he can’t by any

means back himself out of some very unlucky No Thoroughfare, ‘He-a-a-r

He-a-a-r!’ with an air of facetious conviction, as if the ingenuity of

the thing gave them a sensation of exquisite pleasure. But Veneering

makes two remarkably good points; so good, that they are supposed

to have been suggested to him by the legal gentleman in Britannia’s

confidence, while briefly conferring on the stairs.

Point the first is this. Veneering institutes an original comparison

between the country, and a ship; pointedly calling the ship, the Vessel

of the State, and the Minister the Man at the Helm. Veneering’s object

is to let Pocket-Breaches know that his friend on his right (Podsnap) is

a man of wealth. Consequently says he, ‘And, gentlemen, when the timbers

of the Vessel of the State are unsound and the Man at the Helm is

unskilful, would those great Marine Insurers, who rank among our

world-famed merchant-princes—would they insure her, gentlemen? Would

they underwrite her? Would they incur a risk in her? Would they have

confidence in her? Why, gentlemen, if I appealed to my honourable friend

upon my right, himself among the greatest and most respected of that

great and much respected class, he would answer No!’

Point the second is this. The telling fact that Twemlow is related to

Lord Snigsworth, must be let off. Veneering supposes a state of public

affairs that probably never could by any possibility exist (though this

is not quite certain, in consequence of his picture being unintelligible

to himself and everybody else), and thus proceeds. ‘Why, gentlemen, if

I were to indicate such a programme to any class of society, I say it

would be received with derision, would be pointed at by the finger of

scorn. If I indicated such a programme to any worthy and intelligent

tradesman of your town—nay, I will here be personal, and say Our

town—what would he reply? He would reply, “Away with it!” That’s what

HE would reply, gentlemen. In his honest indignation he would reply,

“Away with it!” But suppose I mounted higher in the social scale.

Suppose I drew my arm through the arm of my respected friend upon my

left, and, walking with him through the ancestral woods of his family,

and under the spreading beeches of Snigsworthy Park, approached the

noble hall, crossed the courtyard, entered by the door, went up the

staircase, and, passing from room to room, found myself at last in

the august presence of my friend’s near kinsman, Lord Snigsworth. And

suppose I said to that venerable earl, “My Lord, I am here before your

lordship, presented by your lordship’s near kinsman, my friend upon my

left, to indicate that programme;” what would his lordship answer? Why,

he would answer, “Away with it!” That’s what he would answer, gentlemen.

“Away with it!” Unconsciously using, in his exalted sphere, the exact

language of the worthy and intelligent tradesman of our town, the near

and dear kinsman of my friend upon my left would answer in his wrath,

“Away with it!”’

Veneering finishes with this last success, and Mr Podsnap telegraphs to

Mrs Veneering, ‘He’s down.’

Then, dinner is had at the Hotel with the legal gentleman, and then

there are in due succession, nomination, and declaration. Finally Mr

Podsnap telegraphs to Mrs Veneering, ‘We have brought him in.’

Another gorgeous dinner awaits them on their return to the Veneering

halls, and Lady Tippins awaits them, and Boots and Brewer await

them. There is a modest assertion on everybody’s part that everybody

single-handed ‘brought him in’; but in the main it is conceded by all,

that that stroke of business on Brewer’s part, in going down to the

house that night to see how things looked, was the master-stroke.

A touching little incident is related by Mrs Veneering, in the course of

the evening. Mrs Veneering is habitually disposed to be tearful, and

has an extra disposition that way after her late excitement. Previous

to withdrawing from the dinner-table with Lady Tippins, she says, in a

pathetic and physically weak manner:

‘You will all think it foolish of me, I know, but I must mention it. As

I sat by Baby’s crib, on the night before the election, Baby was very

uneasy in her sleep.’

The Analytical chemist, who is gloomily looking on, has diabolical

impulses to suggest ‘Wind’ and throw up his situation; but represses

them.

‘After an interval almost convulsive, Baby curled her little hands in

one another and smiled.’

Mrs Veneering stopping here, Mr Podsnap deems it incumbent on him to

say: ‘I wonder why!’

‘Could it be, I asked myself,’ says Mrs Veneering, looking about her for

her pocket-handkerchief, ‘that the Fairies were telling Baby that her

papa would shortly be an M. P.?’

So overcome by the sentiment is Mrs Veneering, that they all get up

to make a clear stage for Veneering, who goes round the table to the

rescue, and bears her out backward, with her feet impressively scraping

the carpet: after remarking that her work has been too much for her

strength. Whether the fairies made any mention of the five thousand

pounds, and it disagreed with Baby, is not speculated upon.

Poor little Twemlow, quite done up, is touched, and still continues

touched after he is safely housed over the livery-stable yard in

Duke Street, Saint James’s. But there, upon his sofa, a tremendous

consideration breaks in upon the mild gentleman, putting all softer

considerations to the rout.

‘Gracious heavens! Now I have time to think of it, he never saw one of

his constituents in all his days, until we saw them together!’

After having paced the room in distress of mind, with his hand to his

forehead, the innocent Twemlow returns to his sofa and moans:

‘I shall either go distracted, or die, of this man. He comes upon me too

late in life. I am not strong enough to bear him!’

Chapter 4

CUPID PROMPTED

To use the cold language of the world, Mrs Alfred Lammle rapidly

improved the acquaintance of Miss Podsnap. To use the warm language of

Mrs Lammle, she and her sweet Georgiana soon became one: in heart, in

mind, in sentiment, in soul.

Whenever Georgiana could escape from the thraldom of Podsnappery; could

throw off the bedclothes of the custard-coloured phaeton, and get up;

could shrink out of the range of her mother’s rocking, and (so to speak)

rescue her poor little frosty toes from being rocked over; she repaired

to her friend, Mrs Alfred Lammle. Mrs Podsnap by no means objected. As

a consciously ‘splendid woman,’ accustomed to overhear herself so

denominated by elderly osteologists pursuing their studies in dinner

society, Mrs Podsnap could dispense with her daughter. Mr Podsnap, for

his part, on being informed where Georgiana was, swelled with patronage

of the Lammles. That they, when unable to lay hold of him, should

respectfully grasp at the hem of his mantle; that they, when they could

not bask in the glory of him the sun, should take up with the pale

reflected light of the watery young moon his daughter; appeared quite

natural, becoming, and proper. It gave him a better opinion of the

discretion of the Lammles than he had heretofore held, as showing that

they appreciated the value of the connexion. So, Georgiana repairing

to her friend, Mr Podsnap went out to dinner, and to dinner, and yet to

dinner, arm in arm with Mrs Podsnap: settling his obstinate head in his

cravat and shirt-collar, much as if he were performing on the Pandean

pipes, in his own honour, the triumphal march, See the conquering

Podsnap comes, Sound the trumpets, beat the drums!

It was a trait in Mr Podsnap’s character (and in one form or other

it will be generally seen to pervade the depths and shallows of

Podsnappery), that he could not endure a hint of disparagement of any

friend or acquaintance of his. ‘How dare you?’ he would seem to say, in

such a case. ‘What do you mean? I have licensed this person. This person

has taken out MY certificate. Through this person you strike at me,

Podsnap the Great. And it is not that I particularly care for the

person’s dignity, but that I do most particularly care for Podsnap’s.’

Hence, if any one in his presence had presumed to doubt the

responsibility of the Lammles, he would have been mightily huffed. Not

that any one did, for Veneering, M.P., was always the authority for

their being very rich, and perhaps believed it. As indeed he might, if

he chose, for anything he knew of the matter.

Mr and Mrs Lammle’s house in Sackville Street, Piccadilly, was but

a temporary residence. It has done well enough, they informed their

friends, for Mr Lammle when a bachelor, but it would not do now. So,

they were always looking at palatial residences in the best situations,

and always very nearly taking or buying one, but never quite concluding

the bargain. Hereby they made for themselves a shining little reputation

apart. People said, on seeing a vacant palatial residence, ‘The very

thing for the Lammles!’ and wrote to the Lammles about it, and the

Lammles always went to look at it, but unfortunately it never exactly

answered. In short, they suffered so many disappointments, that they

began to think it would be necessary to build a palatial residence.

And hereby they made another shining reputation; many persons of their

acquaintance becoming by anticipation dissatisfied with their own

houses, and envious of the non-existent Lammle structure.

The handsome fittings and furnishings of the house in Sackville Street

were piled thick and high over the skeleton up-stairs, and if it ever

whispered from under its load of upholstery, ‘Here I am in the closet!’

it was to very few ears, and certainly never to Miss Podsnap’s. What

Miss Podsnap was particularly charmed with, next to the graces of

her friend, was the happiness of her friend’s married life. This was

frequently their theme of conversation.

‘I am sure,’ said Miss Podsnap, ‘Mr Lammle is like a lover. At least

I—I should think he was.’

‘Georgiana, darling!’ said Mrs Lammle, holding up a forefinger, ‘Take

care!’

‘Oh my goodness me!’ exclaimed Miss Podsnap, reddening. ‘What have I

said now?’

‘Alfred, you know,’ hinted Mrs Lammle, playfully shaking her head. ‘You

were never to say Mr Lammle any more, Georgiana.’

‘Oh! Alfred, then. I am glad it’s no worse. I was afraid I had said

something shocking. I am always saying something wrong to ma.’

‘To me, Georgiana dearest?’

‘No, not to you; you are not ma. I wish you were.’

Mrs Lammle bestowed a sweet and loving smile upon her friend, which Miss

Podsnap returned as she best could. They sat at lunch in Mrs Lammle’s

own boudoir.

‘And so, dearest Georgiana, Alfred is like your notion of a lover?’

‘I don’t say that, Sophronia,’ Georgiana replied, beginning to conceal

her elbows. ‘I haven’t any notion of a lover. The dreadful wretches that

ma brings up at places to torment me, are not lovers. I only mean that

Mr—’

‘Again, dearest Georgiana?’

‘That Alfred—’

‘Sounds much better, darling.’

‘—Loves you so. He always treats you with such delicate gallantry and

attention. Now, don’t he?’

‘Truly, my dear,’ said Mrs Lammle, with a rather singular expression

crossing her face. ‘I believe that he loves me, fully as much as I love

him.’

‘Oh, what happiness!’ exclaimed Miss Podsnap.

‘But do you know, my Georgiana,’ Mrs Lammle resumed presently, ‘that

there is something suspicious in your enthusiastic sympathy with

Alfred’s tenderness?’

‘Good gracious no, I hope not!’

‘Doesn’t it rather suggest,’ said Mrs Lammle archly, ‘that my

Georgiana’s little heart is—’

‘Oh don’t!’ Miss Podsnap blushingly besought her. ‘Please don’t! I

assure you, Sophronia, that I only praise Alfred, because he is your

husband and so fond of you.’

Sophronia’s glance was as if a rather new light broke in upon her. It

shaded off into a cool smile, as she said, with her eyes upon her lunch,

and her eyebrows raised:

‘You are quite wrong, my love, in your guess at my meaning. What I

insinuated was, that my Georgiana’s little heart was growing conscious

of a vacancy.’

‘No, no, no,’ said Georgiana. ‘I wouldn’t have anybody say anything to

me in that way for I don’t know how many thousand pounds.’

‘In what way, my Georgiana?’ inquired Mrs Lammle, still smiling coolly

with her eyes upon her lunch, and her eyebrows raised.

‘YOU know,’ returned poor little Miss Podsnap. ‘I think I should go out

of my mind, Sophronia, with vexation and shyness and detestation, if

anybody did. It’s enough for me to see how loving you and your husband

are. That’s a different thing. I couldn’t bear to have anything of that

sort going on with myself. I should beg and pray to—to have the person

taken away and trampled upon.’

Ah! here was Alfred. Having stolen in unobserved, he playfully leaned on

the back of Sophronia’s chair, and, as Miss Podsnap saw him, put one

of Sophronia’s wandering locks to his lips, and waved a kiss from it

towards Miss Podsnap.

‘What is this about husbands and detestations?’ inquired the captivating

Alfred.

‘Why, they say,’ returned his wife, ‘that listeners never hear any good

of themselves; though you—but pray how long have you been here, sir?’

‘This instant arrived, my own.’

‘Then I may go on—though if you had been here but a moment or two

sooner, you would have heard your praises sounded by Georgiana.’

‘Only, if they were to be called praises at all which I really don’t

think they were,’ explained Miss Podsnap in a flutter, ‘for being so

devoted to Sophronia.’

‘Sophronia!’ murmured Alfred. ‘My life!’ and kissed her hand. In return

for which she kissed his watch-chain.

‘But it was not I who was to be taken away and trampled upon, I hope?’

said Alfred, drawing a seat between them.

‘Ask Georgiana, my soul,’ replied his wife.

Alfred touchingly appealed to Georgiana.

‘Oh, it was nobody,’ replied Miss Podsnap. ‘It was nonsense.’

‘But if you are determined to know, Mr Inquisitive Pet, as I suppose you

are,’ said the happy and fond Sophronia, smiling, ‘it was any one who

should venture to aspire to Georgiana.’

‘Sophronia, my love,’ remonstrated Mr Lammle, becoming graver, ‘you are

not serious?’

‘Alfred, my love,’ returned his wife, ‘I dare say Georgiana was not, but

I am.’

‘Now this,’ said Mr Lammle, ‘shows the accidental combinations that

there are in things! Could you believe, my Ownest, that I came in here

with the name of an aspirant to our Georgiana on my lips?’

‘Of course I could believe, Alfred,’ said Mrs Lammle, ‘anything that YOU

told me.’

‘You dear one! And I anything that YOU told me.’

How delightful those interchanges, and the looks accompanying them! Now,

if the skeleton up-stairs had taken that opportunity, for instance, of

calling out ‘Here I am, suffocating in the closet!’

‘I give you my honour, my dear Sophronia—’

‘And I know what that is, love,’ said she.

‘You do, my darling—that I came into the room all but uttering young

Fledgeby’s name. Tell Georgiana, dearest, about young Fledgeby.’

‘Oh no, don’t! Please don’t!’ cried Miss Podsnap, putting her fingers in

her ears. ‘I’d rather not.’

Mrs Lammle laughed in her gayest manner, and, removing her Georgiana’s

unresisting hands, and playfully holding them in her own at arms’

length, sometimes near together and sometimes wide apart, went on:

‘You must know, you dearly beloved little goose, that once upon a

time there was a certain person called young Fledgeby. And this young

Fledgeby, who was of an excellent family and rich, was known to two

other certain persons, dearly attached to one another and called Mr and

Mrs Alfred Lammle. So this young Fledgeby, being one night at the play,

there sees with Mr and Mrs Alfred Lammle, a certain heroine called—’

‘No, don’t say Georgiana Podsnap!’ pleaded that young lady almost in

tears. ‘Please don’t. Oh do do do say somebody else! Not Georgiana

Podsnap. Oh don’t, don’t, don’t!’

‘No other,’ said Mrs Lammle, laughing airily, and, full of affectionate

blandishments, opening and closing Georgiana’s arms like a pair of

compasses, ‘than my little Georgiana Podsnap. So this young Fledgeby goes

to that Alfred Lammle and says—’

‘Oh ple-e-e-ease don’t!’ Georgiana, as if the supplication were being

squeezed out of her by powerful compression. ‘I so hate him for saying

it!’

‘For saying what, my dear?’ laughed Mrs Lammle.

‘Oh, I don’t know what he said,’ cried Georgiana wildly, ‘but I hate him

all the same for saying it.’

‘My dear,’ said Mrs Lammle, always laughing in her most captivating way,

‘the poor young fellow only says that he is stricken all of a heap.’

‘Oh, what shall I ever do!’ interposed Georgiana. ‘Oh my goodness what a

Fool he must be!’

‘—And implores to be asked to dinner, and to make a fourth at the play

another time. And so he dines to-morrow and goes to the Opera with

us. That’s all. Except, my dear Georgiana—and what will you think of

this!—that he is infinitely shyer than you, and far more afraid of you

than you ever were of any one in all your days!’