HOW THINGS WENT FOR A TIME.
Clare’s next day went much as the preceding, only that he was early at
the shop. When his dinner-hour came, he ran home, and was glad to find
Tommy and the dog mildly agreeable to each other. He had but time to
give baby some milk, and Tommy and Abdiel a bit of bread each.
His look when he returned, a look of which he was unaware, but which
one of the girls, who had a year ago been hungry for weeks together,
could read, made her ask him what he had had for dinner. He said he
had had no dinner.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because there wasn’t any.”
“Didn’t your mother keep some for you?”
“No; she couldn’t.”
“Then what will you do?”
“Go without,” answered Clare with a smile.
“But you’ve got a mother?” said the girl, rendered doubtful by his
smile.
“Oh, yes! I’ve got two mothers. But their arms ain’t long enough,”
replied Clare.
The girl wondered: was he an idiot, or what they called a poet?
Anyhow, she had a bun in her pocket, which she had meant to eat at
five o’clock, and she offered him that.
“But what will you do yourself? Have you another?” asked Clare,
unready to take it.
“No,” she answered; “why shouldn’t I go without as well as you?”
“Because it won’t make things any better. There will be just as much
hunger. It’s only shifting it from me to you. That will leave it all
the same!”
“No, not the same,” she returned. “I’ve had a good dinner--as much as
I could eat; and you’ve had none!”
Clare was persuaded, and ate the girl’s bun with much satisfaction and
gratitude.
When he had his wages in the evening, he spent them as before--a penny
for the baby, and fivepence at Mr. Ball’s for Tommy, Abdiel, and
himself.
Observing that he came daily, and spent all he earned, except one
penny, on bread; seeing also that the boy’s cheeks, though plainly he
was in good health, were very thin, Mr. Ball wondered a little: a boy
ought to look better than that on five pennyworth of bread a day!
They were a curious family--Clare, and Tommy, and the baby, and
Abdiel. But the only thing sad about it was, that Clare, who was the
head and the heart of it, and provided for all, should be upheld by no
human sympathy, no human gratitude; that he should be so high above
his companions that, though he never thought he was lonely, he could
not help feeling lonely. Not once did he wish himself rid of any
single member of his adopted family. It was living on his very body;
he was growing a little thinner every day; if things had gone on so,
he must before long have fallen ill; but he never thought of himself
at all, body or soul.
He had no human sympathy or gratitude, I say, but he had both sympathy
and gratitude from Abdiel. The dog never failed to understand what
Clare wished and expected him to understand. In Clare’s absence he
took on himself the protection of the establishment, and was Tommy’s
superior.
Though Tommy was of no use to earn bread, Clare did not therefore
allow him to be idle. He insisted on his keeping the place clean and
tidy, and in this respect Tommy was not quite a failure. He even made
him do some washing, though not much could be accomplished in that way
where there was so little to wash. Now that Abdiel was nurse, Tommy
had the run of the garden, and often went beyond it for an hour or two
without Clare’s knowledge, but always took good care to be back before
his return.
A bale of goods happening to be unpacked in his presence one day,
Clare begged the head-shopman, who was also a partner, for a piece of
what it was wrapped in; and he, having noted how well he worked, and
being quite aware they could not get another such boy at such wages,
gave him a large piece of the soiled canvas. Now Mrs. Porson had
taught Clare to work,--as I think all boys ought to be taught, so as
not to be helpless without mother or sister,--and with the help of a
needle and some thread the friendly girl gave him, he soon made of the
packing-sheet a pair of trousers for Tommy, of a primitive but not
unserviceable cut, and a shirt for himself, of fashion more primitive
still. He managed it this way: he cut a hole in the middle of a piece
of the stuff, through which to put his head, and another hole on each
side of that, through which to put his arms, and hemmed them all
round. Then, having first hemmed the garment also, he indued it, and
let the voluminous mass arrange itself as it might, under as much of
his jacket and trousers as cohered.
My reader may well wonder how, in what was called a respectable shop,
he could be permitted to appear in such poverty; but Mr. Maidstone
disliked the boy so much that he meant to send him away the moment he
found another to do his work, and gave orders that he should never
come up from the basement except when wanted to carry a parcel. The
fact was that his still, solemn, pure face was a haunting rebuke to
his master, although he did not in the least recognize the nature, or
this as the cause, of his dislike.