The Parent's Assistant; Or, Stories for Children
by Maria Edgeworth · English · Gutenberg #3655 · 950,403 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Parent's Assistant; Or, Stories for Children
Author: Maria Edgeworth
Illustrator: Francis Arthur Fraser
Release date: January 1, 2003 [eBook #3655]
Most recently updated: March 17, 2015
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3655
Credits: This eBook was produced by Les Bowler
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PARENT'S ASSISTANT; OR, STORIES FOR CHILDREN ***
This eBook was produced by Les Bowler.
[Picture: Book cover]
[Picture: The orphans]
THE
PARENT’S ASSISTANT
OR
STORIES FOR CHILDREN
BY
MARIA EDGEWORTH
“’Tis Education forms the common mind,—
Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.”
POPE.
* * * * *
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY F. A. FRASER_
* * * * *
LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS, LIMITED
BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL
MANCHESTER, GLASGOW, AND NEW YORK
1891
* * * * *
PREFACE,
ADDRESSED TO PARENTS.
OUR great lexicographer, in his celebrated eulogium on Dr. Watts, thus
speaks in commendation of those productions which he so successfully
penned for the pleasure and instruction of the juvenile portion of the
community.
“For children,” says Dr. Johnson, “he condescended to lay aside the
philosopher, the scholar, and the wit, to write little poems of devotion,
and systems of instruction adapted to their wants and capacities, from
the dawn of reason to its gradation of advance in the morning of life.
Every man acquainted with the common principles of human action, will
look with veneration on the writer, who is at one time combating Locke,
and at another time making a catechism for _children in their fourth
year_. A voluntary descent from the dignity of science is perhaps the
hardest lesson which humility can teach.”
It seems, however, no very easy task to write for children. Those only
who have been interested in the education of a family, who have patiently
followed children through the first processes of reasoning, who have
daily watched over their thoughts and feelings—those only who know with
what ease and rapidity the early association of ideas are formed, on
which the future taste, character and happiness depend, can feel the
dangers and difficulties of such an undertaking.
Indeed, in all sciences the grand difficulty has been to ascertain
facts—a difficulty which, in the science of education, peculiar
circumstances conspire to increase. Here the objects of every experiment
are so interesting that we cannot hold our minds indifferent to the
result. Nor is it to be expected that many registers of experiments,
successful and unsuccessful, should be kept, much less should be
published, when we consider that the combined powers of affection and
vanity, of partiality to his child and to his theory, will act upon the
mind of a parent, in opposition to the abstract love of justice, and the
general desire to increase the wisdom and happiness of mankind.
Notwithstanding these difficulties, an attempt to keep such a register
has actually been made. The design has from time to time been pursued.
Though much has not been collected, every circumstance and conversation
that have been preserved are faithfully and accurately related, and these
notes have been of great advantage to the writer of the following
stories.
The question, whether society could exist without the distinction of
ranks, is a question involving a variety of complicated discussions,
which we leave to the politician and the legislator. At present it is
necessary that the education of different ranks should, in some respects,
be different. They have few ideas, few habits in common; their peculiar
vices and virtues do not arise from the same causes, and their ambition
is to be directed to different objects. But justice, truth, and humanity
are confined to no particular rank, and should be enforced with equal
care and energy upon the minds of young people of every station; and it
is hoped that these principles have never been forgotten in the following
pages.
As the ideas of children multiply, the language of their books should
become less simple; else their taste will quickly be disgusted, or will
remain stationary. Children that live with people who converse with
elegance will not be contented with a style inferior to what they hear
from everybody near them.
All poetical allusions, however, have been avoided in this book; such
situations only are described as children can easily imagine, and which
may consequently interest their feelings. Such examples of virtue are
painted as are not above their conception of excellence, or their powers
of sympathy and emulation.
It is not easy to give _rewards_ to children which shall not indirectly
do them harm by fostering some hurtful taste or passion. In the story of
“Lazy Lawrence,” where the object was to excite a spirit of industry,
care has been taken to proportion the reward to the exertion, and to
demonstrate that people feel cheerful and happy whilst they are employed.
The reward of our industrious boy, though it be money, is only money
considered as the means of gratifying a benevolent wish. In a commercial
nation it is especially necessary to separate, as much as possible, the
spirit of industry and avarice; and to beware lest we introduce Vice
under the form of Virtue.
In the story of “Tarlton and Loveit” are represented the danger and the
folly of that weakness of mind, and that easiness to be led, which too
often pass for good nature; and in the tale of the “False Key” are
pointed out some of the evils to which a well educated boy, on first
going to service, is exposed from the profligacy of his fellow servants.
In the “Birthday Present,” and in the character of Mrs. Theresa Tattle,
the “Parent’s Assistant” has pointed out the dangers which may arise in
education from a bad servant, or a common acquaintance.
In the “Barring Out” the errors to which a high spirit and the love of
party are apt to lead have been made the subject of correction, and it is
hoped that the common fault of making the most mischievous characters
appear the most _active_ and the most ingenious, has been as much as
possible avoided. _Unsuccessful_ cunning will not be admired, and cannot
induce imitation.
It has been attempted, in these stories, to provide antidotes against
ill-humour, the epidemic rage for dissipation, and the fatal propensity
to admire and imitate whatever the fashion of the moment may distinguish.
Were young people, either in public schools, or in private families,
absolutely free from bad examples, it would not be advisable to introduce
despicable and vicious characters in books intended for their
improvement. But in real life they _must_ see vice, and it is best that
they should be early shocked with the representation of what they are to
avoid. There is a great deal of difference between innocence and
ignorance.
To prevent the precepts of morality from tiring the ear and the mind, it
was necessary to make the stories in which they are introduced in some
measure dramatic; to keep alive hope and fear and curiosity, by some
degree of intricacy. At the same time, care has been taken to avoid
inflaming the imagination, or exciting a restless spirit of adventure, by
exhibiting false views of life, and creating hopes which, in the ordinary
course of things, cannot be realized.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
THE ORPHANS 1
LAZY LAWRENCE 19
THE FALSE KEY 41
SIMPLE SUSAN 61
THE WHITE PIGEON 114
THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT 123
ETON MONTEM 135
FORGIVE AND FORGET 173
WASTE NOT, WANT NOT; OR, TWO STRINGS TO YOUR BOW 185
OLD POZ 208
THE MIMIC 219
THE BARRING OUT; OR, PARTY SPIRIT 246
THE BRACELETS 279
THE LITTLE MERCHANTS 301
TARLTON 349
THE BASKET WOMAN 365
THE ORPHANS.
NEAR the ruins of the castle of Rossmore, in Ireland, is a small cabin,
in which there once lived a widow and her four children. As long as she
was able to work, she was very industrious, and was accounted the best
spinner in the parish; but she overworked herself at last, and fell ill,
so that she could not sit to her wheel as she used to do, and was obliged
to give it up to her eldest daughter, Mary.
Mary was at this time about twelve years old. One evening she was
sitting at the foot of her mother’s bed spinning, and her little brothers
and sisters were gathered round the fire eating their potatoes and milk
for supper. “Bless them, the poor young creatures!” said the widow, who,
as she lay on her bed, which she knew must be her deathbed, was thinking
of what would become of her children after she was gone. Mary stopped
her wheel, for she was afraid that the noise of it had wakened her
mother, and would hinder her from going to sleep again.
“No need to stop the wheel, Mary, dear, for me,” said her mother, “I was
not asleep; nor is it _that_ which keeps me from sleep. But don’t
overwork yourself, Mary.”
“Oh, no fear of that,” replied Mary; “I’m strong and hearty.”
“So was I once,” said her mother.
“And so you will be again, I hope,” said Mary, “when the fine weather
comes again.”
“The fine weather will never come again to me,” said her mother. “’Tis a
folly, Mary, to hope for that; but what I hope is, that you’ll find some
friend—some help—orphans as you’ll soon all of you be. And one thing
comforts my heart, even as I _am_ lying here, that not a soul in the wide
world I am leaving has to complain of me. Though poor I have lived
honest, and I have brought you up to be the same, Mary; and I am sure the
little ones will take after you; for you’ll be good to them—as good to
them as you can.”
Here the children, who had finished eating their suppers, came round the
bed, to listen to what their mother was saying. She was tired of
speaking, for she was very weak; but she took their little hands, as they
laid them on the bed and joining them all together, she said, “Bless you,
dears; bless you; love and help one another all you can. Good
night!—good-bye!”
Mary took the children away to their bed, for she saw that their mother
was too ill to say more; but Mary did not herself know how ill she was.
Her mother never spoke rightly afterwards, but talked in a confused way
about some debts, and one in particular, which she owed to a
schoolmistress for Mary’s schooling; and then she charged Mary to go and
pay it, because she was not able to _go in_ with it. At the end of the
week she was dead and buried, and the orphans were left alone in their
cabin.
The two youngest girls, Peggy and Nancy, were six and seven years old.
Edmund was not yet nine, but he was a stout-grown, healthy boy, and well
disposed to work. He had been used to bring home turf from the bog on
his back, to lead cart-horses, and often to go on errands for gentlemen’s
families, who paid him a sixpence or a shilling, according to the
distance which he went, so that Edmund, by some or other of these little
employments, was, as he said, likely enough to earn his bread; and he
told Mary to have a good heart, for that he should every year grow able
to do more and more, and that he should never forget his mother’s words
when she last gave him her blessing, and joined their hands all together.
As for Peggy and Nancy, it was little that they could do; but they were
good children, and Mary, when she considered that so much depended upon
her, was resolved to exert herself to the utmost. Her first care was to
pay those debts which her mother had mentioned to her, for which she left
money done up carefully in separate papers. When all these were paid
away, there was not enough left to pay both the rent of the cabin and a
year’s schooling for herself and sisters which was due to the
schoolmistress in a neighbouring village.
Mary was in hopes that the rent would not be called for immediately, but
in this she was disappointed. Mr. Harvey, the gentleman on whose estate
she lived, was in England, and, in his absence, all was managed by a Mr.
Hopkins, an agent, who was a _hard man_. {2} The driver came to Mary
about a week after her mother’s death, and told her that the rent must be
brought in the next day, and that she must leave the cabin, for a new
tenant was coming into it; that she was too young to have a house to
herself, and that the only thing she had to do was to get some neighbour
to take her and her brother and her sisters in for charity’s sake.
The driver finished by hinting that she would not be so hardly used if
she had not brought upon herself the ill-will of Miss Alice, the agent’s
daughter. Mary, it is true, had refused to give Miss Alice a goat upon
which she had set her fancy; but this was the only offence of which she
had been guilty, and at the time she refused it her mother wanted the
goat’s milk, which was the only thing she then liked to drink.
Mary went immediately to Mr. Hopkins, the agent, to pay her rent; and she
begged of him to let her stay another year in her cabin; but this he
refused. It was now September 25th, and he said that the new tenant must
come in on the 29th, so that she must quit it directly. Mary could not
bear the thoughts of begging any of the neighbours to take her and her
brother and sisters in _for charity’s sake_; for the neighbours were all
poor enough themselves. So she bethought herself that she might find
shelter in the ruins of the old castle of Rossmore where she and her
brother, in better times, had often played at hide and seek. The kitchen
and two other rooms near it were yet covered in tolerably well; and a
little thatch, she thought, would make them comfortable through the
winter. The agent consented to let her and her brother and sisters go in
there, upon her paying him half a guinea in hand, and promising to pay
the same yearly.
Into these lodgings the orphans now removed, taking with them two
bedsteads, a stool, chair and a table, a sort of press, which contained
what little clothes they had, and a chest in which they had two hundred
of meal. The chest was carried for them by some of the charitable
neighbours, who likewise added to their scanty stock of potatoes and turf
what would make it last through the winter.
These children were well thought of and pitied, because their mother was
known to have been all her life honest and industrious. “Sure,” says one
of the neighbours, “we can do no less than give a helping hand to the
poor orphans, that are so ready to help themselves.” So one helped to
thatch the room in which they were to sleep, and another took their cow
to graze upon his bit of land on condition of having half the milk; and
one and all said they should be welcome to take share of their potatoes
and buttermilk if they should find their own ever fall short.
The half-guinea which Mr. Hopkins, the agent, required for letting Mary
into the castle, was part of what she had to pay to the schoolmistress,
to whom above a guinea was due. Mary went to her, and took her goat
along with her, and offered it in part of payment of the debt, but the
schoolmistress would not receive the goat. She said that she could afford
to wait for her money till Mary was able to pay it; that she knew her to
be an honest, industrious little girl, and she would trust her with more
than a guinea. Mary thanked her; and she was glad to take the goat home
again, as she was very fond of it.
Being now settled in their house, they went every day regularly to work;
Maud spun nine cuts a day, besides doing all that was to be done in the
house; Edmund got fourpence a day by his work; and Peggy and Annie earned
twopence apiece at the paper-mills near Navan, where they were employed
to sort rags, and to cut them into small pieces.
When they had done work one day, Annie went to the master of the
paper-mill and asked him if she might have two sheets of large white
paper which were lying on the press. She offered a penny for the paper;
but the master would not take anything from her, but gave her the paper
when he found that she wanted it to make a garland for her mother’s
grave. Annie and Peggy cut out the garland, and Mary, when it was
finished, went along with them and Edmund to put it up. It was just a
month after their mother’s death.
It happened, at the time the orphans were putting up this garland, that
two young ladies, who were returning home after their evening walk,
stopped at the gate of the churchyard to look at the red light which the
setting sun cast upon the window of the church. As the ladies were
standing at the gate, they heard a voice near them crying, “O, mother!
mother! are you gone for ever?” They could not see anyone, so they
walked softly round to the other side of the church, and there they saw
Mary kneeling beside a grave, on which her brothers and sisters were
hanging their white garlands.
The children all stood still when they saw the two ladies passing near
them; but Mary did not know anybody was passing, for her face was hid in
her hands.
Isabella and Caroline (so these ladies were called) would not disturb the
poor children; but they stopped in the village to inquire about them. It
was at the house of the schoolmistress that they stopped, and she gave
them a good account of these orphans. She particularly commended Mary’s
honesty, in having immediately paid all her mother’s debts to the utmost
farthing, as far as her money would go. She told the ladies how Mary had
been turned out of her house, and how she had offered her goat, of which
she was very fond, to discharge a debt due for her schooling; and, in
short, the schoolmistress, who had known Mary for several years, spoke so
well of her that these ladies resolved that they would go to the old
castle of Rossmore to see her the next day.
When they went there, they found the room in which the children lived as
clean and neat as such a ruined place could be made. Edmund was out
working with a farmer, Mary was spinning, and her little sisters were
measuring out some bogberries, of which they had gathered a basketful,
for sale. Isabella, after telling Mary what an excellent character she
had heard of her, inquired what it was she most wanted; and Mary said
that she had just worked up all her flax, and she was most in want of
more flax for her wheel.
Isabella promised that she would send her a fresh supply of flax, and
Caroline bought the bogberries from the little girls, and gave them money
enough to buy a pound of coarse cotton for knitting, as Mary said that
she could teach them how to knit.
The supply of flax, which Isabella sent the next day, was of great
service to Mary, as it kept her in employment for above a month; and when
she sold the yarn which she had spun with it, she had money enough to buy
some warm flannel for winter wear. Besides spinning well, she had
learned at school to do plain work tolerably neatly, and Isabella and
Caroline employed her to work for them; by which she earned a great deal
more than she could by spinning. At her leisure hours she taught her
sisters to read and write; and Edmund, with part of the money which he
earned by his work out of doors, paid a schoolmaster for teaching him a
little arithmetic. When the winter nights came on, he used to light his
rush candles for Mary to work by. He had gathered and stripped a good
provision of rushes in the month of August, and a neighbour gave him
grease to dip them in.
One evening, just as he had lighted his candles, a footman came in, who
was sent by Isabella with some plain work to Mary. This servant was an
Englishman, and he was but newly come over to Ireland. The rush candles
caught his attention; for he had never seen any of them before, as he
came from a part of England where they were not used. Edmund, who was
ready to oblige, and proud that his candles were noticed showed the
Englishman how they were made, and gave him a bundle of rushes. {5}
The servant was pleased with his good nature in this trifling instance,
and remembered it long after it was forgotten by Edmund. Whenever his
master wanted to send a messenger anywhere, Gilbert (for that was the
servant’s name) always employed his little friend Edmund, whom, upon
further acquaintance, he liked better and better. He found that Edmund
was both quick and exact in executing commissions.
One day, after he had waited a great while at a gentleman’s house for an
answer to a letter, he was so impatient to get home that he ran off
without it. When he was questioned by Gilbert why he did not bring an
answer, he did not attempt to make any excuse; he did not say, “_There
was no answer_, _please your honour_,” or, “_They bid me not to wait_,”
etc.; but he told exactly the truth; and though Gilbert scolded him for
being so impatient as not to wait, yet his telling the truth was more to
the boy’s advantage than any excuse he could have made. After this he
was always believed when he said, “_There was no answer_,” or, “_They bid
me not wait_”; for Gilbert knew that he would not tell a lie to save
himself from being scolded.
The orphans continued to assist one another in their work according to
their strength and abilities; and they went on in this manner for three
years. With what Mary got by her spinning and plain work, and Edmund by
leading of cart-horses, going on errands, etc., and with little Peggy and
Anne’s earnings, the family contrived to live comfortably. Isabella and
Caroline often visited them, and sometimes gave them clothes, and
sometimes flax or cotton for their spinning and knitting; and these
children did not _expect_, that because the ladies did something for
them, they should do everything. They did not grow idle or wasteful.
When Edmund was about twelve years old, his friend Gilbert sent for him
one day, and told him that his master had given him leave to have a boy
in the house to assist him, and that his master told him he might choose
one in the neighbourhood. Several were anxious to get into such a good
place: but Gilbert said that he preferred Edmund before them all, because
he knew him to be an industrious, honest, good natured lad, who always
told the truth. So Edmund went into service at the vicarage; and his
master was the father of Isabella and Caroline. He found his new way of
life very pleasant; for he was well fed, well clothed, and well treated;
and he every day learned more of his business, in which at first he was
rather awkward. He was mindful to do all that Mr. Gilbert required of
him; and he was so obliging to all his fellow-servants that they could
not help liking him. But there was one thing which was at first rather
disagreeable to him: he was obliged to wear shoes and stockings, and they
hurt his feet. Besides this, when he waited at dinner he made such a
noise in walking that his fellow-servants laughed at him. He told his
sister Mary of his distress, and she made for him, after many trials, a
pair of cloth shoes, with soles of platted hemp. {7} In these he could
walk without making the least noise; and as these shoes could not be worn
out of doors, he was always sure to change them before he went out; and
consequently he had always clean shoes to wear in the house.
It was soon remarked by the men-servants that he had left off clumping so
heavily, and it was observed by the maids that he never dirtied the
stairs or passages with his shoes. When he was praised for these things,
he said it was his sister Mary who should be thanked, and not he; and he
showed the shoes which she had made for him.
Isabella’s maid bespoke a pair immediately, and sent Mary a piece of
pretty calico for the outside. The last-maker made a last for her, and
over this Mary sewed the calico vamps tight. Her brother advised her to
try platted packthread instead of hemp for the soles; and she found that
this looked more neat than the hemp soles, and was likely to last longer.
She platted the packthread together in strands of about half an inch
thick, and these were served firmly together at the bottom of the shoe.
When they were finished they fitted well, and the maid showed them to her
mistress.
Isabella and Caroline were so well pleased with Mary’s ingenuity and
kindness to her brother, that they bespoke from her two dozen of these
shoes, and gave her three yards of coloured fustian to make them of, and
galloon for the binding. When the shoes were completed, Isabella and
Caroline disposed of them for her amongst their acquaintance, and got
three shillings a pair for them. The young ladies, as soon as they had
collected the money, walked to the old castle, where they found
everything neat and clean as usual. They had great pleasure in giving to
this industrious girl the reward of her ingenuity, which she received
with some surprise and more gratitude. They advised her to continue the
shoemaking trade, as they found the shoes were liked, and they knew that
they could have a sale for them at the Repository in Dublin.
Mary, encouraged by these kind friends, went on with her little
manufacture with increased activity. Peggy and Anne platted the
packthread, and basted the vamps and linings together ready for her.
Edmund was allowed to come home for an hour every morning, provided he
was back again before eight o’clock. It was summer time, and he got up
early, because he liked to go home to see his sisters, and he took his
share in the manufactory. It was his business to hammer the soles flat:
and as soon as he came home every morning he performed his task with so
much cheerfulness and sang so merrily at his work, that the hour of his
arrival was always an hour of joy to the family.
Mary had presently employment enough upon her hands. Orders came to her
for shoes from many families in the neighbourhood, and she could not get
them finished fast enough. She, however, in the midst of her hurry,
found time to make a very pretty pair, with neat roses, as a present for
her schoolmistress, who, now that she saw her pupil in a good way of
business, consented to receive the amount of her old debt. Several of
the children who went to her school were delighted with the sight of
Mary’s present, and went to the little manufactory at Rossmore Castle, to
find out how these shoes were made. Some went from curiosity, others
from idleness; but when they saw how happy the little shoemakers seemed
whilst busy at work, they longed to take some share in what was going
forward. One begged Mary to let her plat some packthread for the soles;
another helped Peggy and Anne to baste in the linings; and all who could
get employment were pleased, for the idle ones were shoved out of the
way. It became a custom with the children of the village to resort to
the old castle at their play hours; and it was surprising to see how much
was done by ten or twelve of them, each doing but a little at a time.
One morning Edmund and the little manufacturers were assembled very
early, and they were busy at their work, all sitting round the meal
chest, which served them for a table.
“My hands must be washed,” said George, a little boy who came running in;
“I ran so fast that I might be in time, to go to work along with you all,
that I tumbled down, and look how I have dirtied my hands. Most haste
worst speed. My hands must be washed before I can do anything.”
Whilst George was washing his hands, two other little children, who had
just finished their morning’s work, came to him to beg that he would blow
some soap bubbles for them, and they were all three eagerly blowing
bubbles, and watching them mount into the air, when suddenly they were
startled by a noise as loud as thunder. They were in a sort of outer
court of the castle, next to the room in which all their companions were
at work, and they ran precipitately into the room, exclaiming, “Did you
hear that noise?”
“I thought I heard a clap of thunder,” said Mary, “but why do you look so
frightened?”
As she finished speaking, another and a louder noise, and the walls round
about them shook. The children turned pale and stood motionless; but
Edmund threw down his hammer, and ran out to see what was the matter.
Mary followed him, and they saw that a great chimney of the old ruins at
the farthest side of the castle had fallen down, and this was the cause
of the prodigious noise.
The part of the castle in which they lived seemed, as Edmund said, to be
perfectly safe; but the children of the village were terrified, and
thinking that the whole would come tumbling down directly, they ran to
their homes as fast as they could. Edmund, who was a courageous lad, and
proud of showing his courage, laughed at their cowardice; but Mary, who
was very prudent, persuaded her brother to ask an experienced mason, who
was building at his master’s, to come and give his opinion, whether their
part of the castle was safe to live in or not. The mason came, and gave
it as his opinion that the rooms they inhabited might last through the
winter but that no part of the ruins could stand another year. Mary was
sorry to leave a place of which she had grown fond, poor as it was,
having lived in it in peace and contentment ever since her mother’s
death, which was now nearly four years; but she determined to look out
for some other place to live in; and she had now money enough to pay the
rent of a comfortable cabin. Without losing any time, she went to the
village that was at the end of the avenue leading to the vicarage, for
she wished to get a lodging in this village because it was so near to her
brother, and to the ladies who had been so kind to her. She found that
there was one newly built house in this village unoccupied; it belonged
to Mr. Harvey, her landlord, who was still in England; it was slated, and
neatly fitted up inside; but the rent of it was six guineas a year, and
this was far above what Mary could afford to pay. Three guineas a year
she thought was the highest rent for which she could venture to engage.
Besides, she heard that several proposals had been made to Mr. Harvey for
this house, and she knew that Mr. Hopkins, the agent, was not her friend;
therefore she despaired of getting it. There was no other to be had in
this village. Her brother was still more vexed than she was, that she
could not find a place near him. He offered to give a guinea yearly
towards the rent out of his wages; and Mr. Gilbert spoke about it for him
to the steward, and inquired whether, amongst any of those who had given
in proposals, there might not be one who would be content with a part of
the house, and who would join with Mary in paying the rent. None could
be found but a woman, who was a great scold, and a man who was famous for
going to law about every trifle with his neighbours. Mary did not choose
to have anything to do with these people. She did not like to speak
either to Miss Isabella or Caroline about it, because she was not of an
encroaching temper; and when they had done so much for her, she would
have been ashamed to beg for more. She returned home to the old castle,
mortified that she had no good news to tell Anne and Peggy, who she knew
expected to hear that she had found a nice house for them in the village
near their brother.
“Bad news for you, Peggy,” cried she, as soon as she got home. “And bad
news for you, Mary,” replied her sisters, who looked very sorrowful.
“What’s the matter?”
“Your poor goat is dead,” replied Peggy. “There she is, yonder, lying
under the great corner stone; you can just see her leg. We cannot lift
the stone from off her, it is so heavy. Betsy [one of the neighbour’s
girls] says she remembers, when she came to us to work early this
morning, she saw the goat rubbing itself, and butting with its horns
against that old tottering chimney.”
“Many’s the time,” said Mary, “that I have driven the poor thing away
from that place; I was always afraid she would shake that great ugly
stone down upon her at last.”
The goat, who had long been the favourite of Mary and her sisters, was
lamented by them all. When Edmund came, he helped them to move the great
stone from off the poor animal, who was crushed so as to be a terrible
sight. As they were moving away this stone in order to bury the goat,
Anne found an odd-looking piece of money, which seemed neither like a
halfpenny, nor a shilling, nor a guinea.
“Here are more, a great many more of them,” cried Peggy; and upon
searching amongst the rubbish, they discovered a small iron pot, which
seemed as if it had been filled with these coins, as a vast number of
them were found about the spot where it fell. On examining these coins,
Edmund thought that several of them looked like gold, and the girls
exclaimed with great joy—“Oh, Mary! Mary! this is come to us just in
right time—now you can pay for the slated house. Never was anything so
lucky!”
But Mary, though nothing could have pleased her better than to have been
able to pay for the house, observed that they could not honestly touch
any of this treasure, as it belonged to the owner of the castle. Edmund
agreed with her, that they ought to carry it all immediately to Mr.
Hopkins, the agent. Peggy and Anne were convinced by what Mary said, and
they begged to go along with her and their brother, to take the coins to
Mr. Hopkins. On their way they stopped at the vicarage, to show the
treasure to Mr. Gilbert, who took it to the young ladies, Isabella and
Caroline, and told them how it had been found.
It is not only by their superior riches, but it is yet more by their
superior knowledge, that persons in the higher rank of life may assist
those in a lower condition.
Isabella, who had some knowledge of chemistry, discovered, by touching
the coins with nitric acid, that several of them were of gold, and
consequently of great value. Caroline also found out that many of the
coins were very valuable as curiosities. She recollected her father’s
having shown to her the prints of the coins at the end of each king’s
reign, in “Rapin’s History of England;” and upon comparing these
impressions with the coins found by the orphans, she perceived that many
of them were of the reign of Henry the Seventh, which, from their
scarcity, were highly appreciated by numismatic collectors.
Isabella and Caroline, knowing something of the character of Mr. Hopkins,
the agent, had the precaution to count the coins, and to mark each of
them with a cross, so small that it was scarcely visible to the naked
eye, though it was easily to be seen through a magnifying glass. They
also begged that their father, who was well acquainted with Mr. Harvey,
the gentleman to whom Rossmore Castle belonged, to write to him, and tell
him how well these orphans had behaved about the treasure which they had
found. The value of the coins was estimated at about thirty or forty
guineas.
A few days after the fall of the chimney at Rossmore Castle, as Mary and
her sisters were sitting at their work, there came hobbling in an old
woman, leaning on a crab stick, that seemed to have been newly cut. She
had a broken tobacco-pipe in her mouth; her head was wrapped up in two
large red and blue handkerchiefs, with their crooked corners hanging far
down over the back of her neck, no shoes on her broad feet, nor stockings
on her many-coloured legs. Her petticoat was jagged at the bottom, and
the skirt of her gown turned up over her shoulders, to serve instead of a
cloak, which she had sold for whisky. This old woman was well known
amongst the country people by the name of _Goody Grope_: {12a} because
she had, for many years, been in the habit of groping in old castles, and
in moats, {12b} and at the bottom of a round tower {12c} in the
neighbourhood, in search of treasure. In her youth she had heard someone
talking, in a whisper, of an old prophecy, found in a bog, which said
that before many
“St. Patrick’s days should come about,
There would be found
A treasure under ground,
By one within twenty miles round.”
This prophecy made a deep impression upon her. She also dreamed of it
three times: and as the dream, she thought, was a sure token that the
prophecy was to come true, she, from that time forwards, gave up her
spinning-wheel and her knitting, and could think of nothing but hunting
for the treasure, that was to be found by one “within twenty miles
round.”
Year after year St. Patrick’s day came about, without her ever finding a
farthing by all her groping; and as she was always idle, she grew poorer
and poorer. Besides, to comfort herself for her disappointments, and to
give her spirits for fresh searches, she took to drinking. She sold all
she had by degrees; but still she fancied that the lucky day would come
sooner or later, _that would pay for all_.
Goody Grope, however, reached her sixtieth year, without ever seeing this
lucky day; and now, in her old age, she was a beggar, without a house to
shelter her, a bed to lie on, or food to put into her mouth, but what she
begged from the charity of those who had trusted more than she had to
industry and less to _luck_.
“Ah, Mary, honey! give me a potato and a sup of something, for the love
o’ mercy; for not a bit have I had all day, except half a glass of whisky
and a halfpenny worth of tobacco!”
Mary immediately set before her some milk, and picked a good potato out
of the bowl for her. She was sorry to see such an old woman in such a
wretched condition. Goody Grope said she would rather have spirits of
some kind or other than milk; but Mary had no spirits to give her; so she
sat herself down close to the fire, and after she had sighed and groaned
and smoked for some time, she said to Mary, “Well, and what have you done
with the treasure you had the luck to find?” Mary told her that she had
carried it to Mr. Hopkins, the agent.
“That’s not what I would have done in your place,” replied the old woman.
“When good luck came to you, what a shame to turn your back upon it! But
it is idle talking of what’s done—that’s past; but I’ll try my luck in
this here castle before next St. Patrick’s day comes about. I was told
it was more than twenty miles from our bog or I would have been here long
ago; but better late than never.”
Mary was much alarmed, and not without reason, at this speech; for she
knew that if Goody Grope once set to work at the foundation of the old
castle of Rossmore, she would soon bring it all down. It was in vain to
talk to Goody Grope of the danger of burying herself under the ruins, or
of the improbability of her meeting with another pot of gold coins. She
set her elbow upon her knees, and stopping her ears with her hands bid
Mary and her sisters not to waste their breath advising their elders; for
that, let them say what they would, she would fall to work the next
morning, “_barring_ you’ll make it worth my while to let it alone.”
“And what will make it worth your while to let it alone?” said Mary; for
she saw that she must either get into a quarrel or give up her
habitation, or comply with the conditions of this provoking old woman.
Half a crown, Goody Grope said, was the least she could be content to
take. Mary paid the half-crown, and was in hopes that she had got rid
for ever of her tormentor, but she was mistaken, for scarcely was the
week at an end before the old woman appeared before her again, and
repeated her threats of falling to work the next morning, unless she had
something given to her to buy tobacco.
The next day and the next, and the next, Goody Grope came on the same
errand, and poor Mary, who could ill-afford to supply her constantly with
halfpence, at last exclaimed, “I am sure the finding of this treasure has
not been any good luck to us, but quite the contrary; and I wish we never
had found it.”
Mary did not yet know how much she was to suffer on account of this
unfortunate pot of gold coins. Mr. Hopkins, the agent, imagined that no
one knew of the discovery of this treasure but himself and these poor
children; so, not being as honest as they were, he resolved to keep it
for his own use. He was surprised some weeks afterwards to receive a
letter from his employer, Mr. Harvey, demanding from him the coins which
had been discovered at Rossmore Castle. Hopkins had sold the gold coins,
and some of the others; and he flattered himself that the children, and
the young ladies, to whom he now found they had been shown, could not
tell whether what they had seen were gold or not, and he was not in the
least apprehensive that those of Henry the Seventh’s reign should be
reclaimed from him as he thought they had escaped attention. So he sent
over the silver coins and others of little value, and apologized for his
not having mentioned them before, by saying that he considered them as
mere rubbish.
Mr. Harvey, in reply, observed that he could not consider as rubbish the
gold coins which were amongst them when they were discovered; and he
inquired why these gold coins, and those of the reign of Henry the
Seventh, were not now sent to him.
Mr. Hopkins denied that he had ever received any such; but he was
thunderstruck when Mr. Harvey, in reply to this falsehood, sent him a
list of the coins which the orphans had deposited with him, and exact
drawings of those that were missing. He informed him that this list and
these drawings came from two ladies who had seen the coins in question.
Mr. Hopkins thought that he had no means of escape but by boldly
persisting in falsehood. He replied, that it was very likely such coins
had been found at Rossmore Castle, and that the ladies alluded to had
probably seen them; but he positively declared that they never came to
his hands; that he had restored all that were deposited with him; and
that, as to the others, he supposed they must have been taken out of the
pot by the children, or by Edmund or Mary on their way from the ladies’
house to his.
The orphans were shocked and astonished when they heard, from Isabella
and Caroline, the charge that was made against them. They looked at one
another in silence for some moments. Then Peggy exclaimed—“Sure! Mr.
Hopkins has forgotten himself strangely. Does not he remember Edmund’s
counting the things to him upon the great table in his hall, and we all
standing by! I remember it as well as if it was this instant.”
“And so do I,” cried Anne. “And don’t you recollect, Mary, your picking
out the gold ones, and telling Mr. Hopkins that they were gold; and he
said you knew nothing of the matter; and I was going to tell him that
Miss Isabella had tried them, and knew that they were gold? but just then
there came in some tenants to pay their rent, and he pushed us out, and
twitched from my hand the piece of gold which I had taken up to show him
the bright spot which Miss Isabella had cleaned by the stuff that she had
poured on it? I believe he was afraid I should steal it; he twitched it
from my hand in such a hurry. Do, Edmund; do, Mary—let us go to him, and
put him in mind of all this.”
“I’ll go to him no more,” said Edmund, sturdily. “He is a bad man—I’ll
never go to him again. Mary, don’t be cast down—we have no need to be
cast down—we are honest.”
“True,” said Mary; “but is not it a hard case that we, who have lived, as
my mother did all her life before us, in peace and honesty with all the
world, should now have our good name taken from us, when—” Mary’s voice
faltered and stopped.
“It can’t be taken from us,” cried Edmund, “poor orphans though we are,
and he a rich gentleman, as he calls himself. Let him say and do what he
will, he can’t hurt our good name.”
Edmund was mistaken, alas! and Mary had but too much reason for her
fears. The affair was a great deal talked of; and the agent spared no
pains to have the story told his own way. The orphans, conscious of
their own innocence, took no pains about the matter; and the consequence
was, that all who knew them well had no doubt of their honesty; but many,
who knew nothing of them, concluded that the agent must be in the right
and the children in the wrong. The buzz of scandal went on for some time
without reaching their ears, because they lived very retiredly. But one
day, when Mary went to sell some stockings of Peggy’s knitting at the
neighbouring fair, the man to whom she sold them bid her write her name
on the back of a note, and exclaimed, on seeing it—“Ho! ho! mistress; I’d
not have had any dealings with you, had I known your name sooner.
Where’s the gold that you found at Rossmore Castle?”
It was in vain that Mary related the fact. She saw that she gained no
belief, as her character was not known to this man, or to any of those
who were present. She left the fair as soon as she could; and though she
struggled against it, she felt very melancholy. Still she exerted
herself every day at her little manufacture; and she endeavoured to
console herself by reflecting that she had two friends left who would not
give up her character, and who continued steadily to protect her and her
sisters.
Isabella and Caroline everywhere asserted their belief in the integrity
of the orphans, but to prove it was in this instance out of their power.
Mr. Hopkins, the agent, and his friends, constantly repeated that the
gold coins were taken away in coming from their house to his; and these
ladies were blamed by many people for continuing to countenance those
that were, with great reason, suspected to be thieves. The orphans were
in a worse condition than ever when the winter came on, and their
benefactresses left the country to spend some months in Dublin. The old
castle, it was true, was likely to last through the winter, as the mason
said; but though the want of a comfortable house to live in was, a little
while ago, the uppermost thing in Mary’s thoughts, now it was not so.
One night as Mary was going to bed, she heard someone knocking hard at
the door. “Mary, are you up? let us in,” cried a voice, which she knew
to be the voice of Betsy Green, the postmaster’s daughter, who lived in
the village near them.
She let Betsy in, and asked what she could want at such a time of night.
“Give me sixpence, and I’ll tell you,” said Betsy; “but waken Anne and
Peggy. Here’s a letter just come by post for you, and I stepped over to
you with it; because I guessed you’d be glad to have it, seeing it is
your brother’s handwriting.”
Peggy and Anne were soon roused, when they heard that there was a letter
from Edmund. It was by one of his rush candles that Mary read it; and
the letter was as follows:—
“DEAR MARY, NANCY, AND LITTLE PEG,—
“Joy! joy!—I always said the truth would come out at last; and that
he could not take our good name from us. But I will not tell you how
it all came about till we meet, which will be next week, as we are (I
mean, master and mistress, and the young ladies—bless them!—and Mr.
Gilbert and I) coming down to the vicarage to keep Christmas; and a
happy Christmas ’tis likely to be for honest folks. As for they that
are not honest, it is not for them to expect to be happy, at
Christmas, or any other time. You shall know all when we meet. So,
till then, fare ye well, dear Mary, Nancy, and little Peg.
“Your joyful and affectionate brother,
EDMUND.”
To comprehend why Edmund is joyful, our readers must be informed of
certain things which happened after Isabella and Caroline went to Dublin.
One morning they went with their father and mother to see the magnificent
library of a nobleman, who took generous and polite pleasure in thus
sharing the advantages of his wealth and station with all who had any
pretensions to science or literature. Knowing that the gentleman who was
now come to see his library was skilled in antiquities, the nobleman
opened a drawer of medals, to ask his opinion concerning the age of some
coins, which he had lately purchased at a high price. They were the very
same which the orphans had found at Rossmore Castle. Isabella and
Caroline knew them again instantly; and as the cross which Isabella had
made on each of them was still visible through a magnifying glass, there
could be no possibility of doubt.
The nobleman, who was much interested both by the story of these orphans,
and the manner in which it was told to him, sent immediately for the
person from whom he had purchased the coins. He was a Jew broker. At
first he refused to tell them from whom he got them, because he had
bought them, he said, under a promise of secrecy. Being further pressed,
he acknowledged that it was made a condition in his bargain that he
should not sell them to anyone in Ireland, but that he had been tempted
by the high price the present noble possessor had offered.
At last, when the Jew was informed that the coins were stolen, and that
he would be proceeded against as a receiver of stolen goods, if he did
not confess the whole truth, he declared that he had purchased them from
a gentleman, whom he had never seen before or since; but he added, that
he could swear to his person, if he saw him again.
Now, Mr. Hopkins, the agent, was at this time in Dublin, and Caroline’s
father posted the Jew, the next day, in the back-parlour of a banker’s
house, with whom Mr. Hopkins had, on this day, appointed to settle some
accounts. Mr. Hopkins came—the Jew knew him—swore that he was the man
who had sold the coins to him; and thus the guilt of the agent and the
innocence of the orphans were completely proved.
A full account of all that happened was sent to England to Mr. Harvey,
their landlord, and a few posts afterwards there came a letter from him,
containing a dismissal of the dishonest agent, and a reward for the
honest and industrious orphans. Mr. Harvey desired that Mary and her
sisters might have the slated house, rent free, from this time forward,
under the care of ladies Isabella and Caroline, as long as Mary or her
sisters should carry on in it any useful business. This was the joyful
news which Edmund had to tell his sisters.
All the neighbours shared in their joy, and the day of their removal from
the ruins of Rossmore Castle to their new house was the happiest of the
Christmas holidays. They were not envied for their prosperity; because
everybody saw that it was the reward of their good conduct; everybody
except Goody Grope. She exclaimed, as she wrung her hands with violent
expressions of sorrow—“Bad luck to me! bad luck to me!—Why didn’t I go
sooner to that there castle? It is all luck, all luck in this world; but
I never had no luck. Think of the luck of these childer, that have found
a pot of gold, and such great, grand friends, and a slated house, and
all: and here am I, with scarce a rag to cover me, and not a potato to
put into my mouth!—I, that have been looking under ground all my days for
treasure, not to have a halfpenny at the last, to buy me tobacco!”
“That is the very reason that you have not a halfpenny,” said Betsy.
“Here Mary has been working hard, and so have her two little sisters and
her brother, for these five years past; and they have made money for
themselves by their own industry—and friends too—not by luck, but by—”
“Phoo! phoo!” interrupted Goody Grope; “don’t be prating; don’t I know as
well as you do, that they found a pot of gold, _by good luck_? and is not
that the cause why they are going to live in a slated house now?”
“No,” replied the postmaster’s daughter; “this house is given to them _as
a reward_—that was the word in the letter; for I saw it. Edmund showed
it to me, and will show it to anyone that wants to see. This house was
given to them ‘_as a reward for their honesty_.’”
LAZY LAWRENCE.
IN the pleasant valley of Ashton there lived an elderly woman of the name
of Preston. She had a small neat cottage, and there was not a weed to be
seen in her garden. It was upon her garden that she chiefly depended for
support; it consisted of strawberry beds, and one small border for
flowers. The pinks and roses she tied up in nice nosegays, and sent
either to Clifton or Bristol to be sold. As to her strawberries, she did
not send them to market, because it was the custom for numbers of people
to come from Clifton, in the summer time, to eat strawberries and cream
at the gardens in Ashton.
Now, the widow Preston was so obliging, active and good-humoured, that
everyone who came to see her was pleased. She lived happily in this
manner for several years; but, alas! one autumn she fell sick, and,
during her illness, everything went wrong; her garden was neglected, her
cow died, and all the money which she had saved was spent in paying for
medicines. The winter passed away, while she was so weak that she could
earn but little by her work; and when the summer came, her rent was
called for, and the rent was not ready in her little purse as usual. She
begged a few months’ delay, and they were granted to her; but at the end
of that time there was no resource but to sell her horse Lightfoot. Now
Lightfoot, though perhaps he had seen his best days, was a very great
favourite. In his youth he had always carried the dame to the market
behind her husband; and it was now her little son Jem’s turn to ride him.
It was Jem’s business to feed Lightfoot, and to take care of him—a charge
which he never neglected, for, besides being a very good natured, he was
a very industrious boy.
“It will go near to break my Jem’s heart,” said Dame Preston to herself,
as she sat one evening beside the fire stirring the embers, and
considering how she had best open the matter to her son, who stood
opposite to her, eating a dry crust of bread very heartily for supper.
“Jem,” said the old woman, “what, ar’t hungry?”
“That I am, brave and hungry!”
“Ay! no wonder, you’ve been brave hard at work—Eh?”
“Brave hard! I wish it was not so dark, mother, that you might just step
out and see the great bed I’ve dug; I know you’d say it was no bad day’s
work—and oh, mother! I’ve good news: Farmer Truck will give us the giant
strawberries, and I’m to go for ’em to-morrow morning, and I’ll be back
afore breakfast.”
“God bless the boy! how he talks!—Four mile there, and four mile back
again, afore breakfast.”
“Ay, upon Lightfoot, you know, mother, very easily; mayn’t I?”
“Ay, child!”
“Why do you sigh, mother?”
“Finish thy supper, child.”
“I’ve done!” cried Jem, swallowing the last mouthful hastily, as if he
thought he had been too long at supper—“and now for the great needle; I
must see and mend Lightfoot’s bridle afore I go to bed.”
To work he set, by the light of the fire, and the dame having once more
stirred it, began again with “Jem, dear, does he go lame at all now?”
“What, Lightfoot! Oh, la, no, not he—never was so well of his lameness
in all his life. He’s grown quite young again, I think, and then he’s so
fat he can hardly wag.”
“God bless him—that’s right. We must see, Jem, and keep him fat.”
“For what, mother?”
“For Monday fortnight at the fair. He’s to be—sold!”
“Lightfoot!” cried Jem, and let the bridle fall from his hand; “and
_will_ mother sell Lightfoot?”
“_Will_? no: but I _must_, Jem.”
“Must! who says you _must_? why _must_ you, mother?”
“I must, I say, child. Why, must not I pay my debts honestly; and must
not I pay my rent, and was not it called for long and long ago; and have
not I had time; and did not I promise to pay it for certain Monday
fortnight, and am not I two guineas short; and where am I to get two
guineas? So what signifies talking, child?” said the widow, leaning her
head upon her arm. “Lightfoot _must_ go.”
Jem was silent for a few minutes—“Two guineas, that’s a great, great
deal. If I worked, and worked, and worked ever so hard, I could no ways
earn two guineas _afore_ Monday fortnight—could I, mother?”
“Lord help thee, no; not an’ work thyself to death.”
“But I could earn something, though, I say,” cried Jem, proudly; “and I
_will_ earn _something_—if it be ever so little, it will be
_something_—and I shall do my very best; so I will.”
“That I’m sure of, my child,” said his mother, drawing him towards her
and kissing him; “you were always a good, industrious lad, _that_ I will
say afore your face or behind your back;—but it won’t do now—Lightfoot
_must_ go.”
Jem turned away struggling to hide his tears, and went to bed without
saying a word more. But he knew that crying would do no good; so he
presently wiped his eyes, and lay awake, considering what he could
possibly do to save the horse. “If I get ever so little,” he still said
to himself, “it will be _something_; and who knows but landlord might
then wait a bit longer? and we might make it all up in time; for a penny
a day might come to two guineas in time.”
But how to get the first penny was the question. Then he recollected
that one day, when he had been sent to Clifton to sell some flowers, he
had seen an old woman with a board beside her covered with various
sparkling stones, which people stopped to look at as they passed, and he
remembered that some people bought the stones; one paid twopence, another
threepence, and another sixpence for them; and Jem heard her say that she
got them amongst the neighbouring rocks: so he thought that if he tried
he might find some too, and sell them as she had done.
Early in the morning he wakened full of this scheme, jumped up, dressed
himself, and, having given one look at poor Lightfoot in his stable, set
off to Clifton in search of the old woman, to inquire where she found her
sparkling stones. But it was too early in the morning, the old woman was
not at her seat; so he turned back again, disappointed. He did not waste
his time waiting for her, but saddled and bridled Lightfoot, and went to
Farmer Truck’s for the giant strawberries.
A great part of the morning was spent in putting them into the ground;
and, as soon as that was finished, he set out again in quest of the old
woman, whom, to his great joy, he spied sitting at her corner of the
street with her board before her. But this old woman was deaf and cross;
and when at last Jem made her hear his questions, he could get no answer
from her, but that she found the fossils where he would never find any
more. “But can’t I look where you looked?”
“Look away, nobody hinders you,” replied the old woman; and these were
the only words she would say.
Jem was not, however, a boy to be easily discouraged; he went to the
rocks, and walked slowly along, looking at all the stones as he passed.
Presently he came to a place where a number of men were at work loosening
some large rocks, and one amongst the workmen was stooping down looking
for something very eagerly; Jem ran up, and asked if he could help him.
“Yes,” said the man, “you can; I’ve just dropped, amongst this heap of
rubbish, a fine piece of crystal that I got to-day.”
“What kind of a looking thing is it?” said Jem.
“White, and like glass,” said the man, and went on working whilst Jem
looked very carefully over the heap of rubbish for a great while.
“Come,” said the man, “it’s gone for ever; don’t trouble yourself any
more, my boy.”
“It’s no trouble; I’ll look a little longer; we’ll not give it up so
soon,” said Jem; and after he had looked a little longer, he found the
piece of crystal.
“Thank’e,” said the man, “you are a fine little industrious fellow.”
Jem, encouraged by the tone of voice in which the man spoke this,
ventured to ask him the same questions which he had asked the old woman.
“One good turn deserves another,” said the man; “we are going to dinner
just now, and shall leave off work—wait for me here, and I’ll make it
worth your while.”
Jem waited; and, as he was very attentively observing how the workmen
went on with their work, he heard somebody near him give a great yawn,
and, turning round, he saw stretched upon the grass, beside the river, a
boy about his own age, who, in the village of Ashton, as he knew, went by
the name of Lazy Lawrence—a name which he most justly deserved, for he
never did anything from morning to night. He neither worked nor played,
but sauntered or lounged about restless and yawning. His father was an
ale-house keeper, and being generally drunk, could take no care of his
son; so that Lazy Lawrence grew every day worse and worse. However, some
of the neighbours said that he was a good natured, poor fellow enough,
and would never do anyone harm but himself; whilst others, who were
wiser, often shook their heads, and told him that idleness was the root
of all evil.
“What, Lawrence!” cried Jem to him, when he saw him lying upon the grass;
“what, are you asleep?”
“Not quite.”
“Are you awake?”
“Not quite.”
“What are you doing there?”
“Nothing.”
“What are you thinking of?”
“Nothing.”
“What makes you lie there?”
“I don’t know—because I can’t find anybody to play with me to-day. Will
you come and play?”
“No, I can’t; I’m busy.”
“Busy,” cried Lawrence, stretching himself, “you are always busy. I
would not be you for the world, to have so much to do always.”
“And I,” said Jem, laughing, “would not be you for the world, to have
nothing to do.”
They then parted, for the workman just then called Jem to follow him. He
took him home to his own house, and showed him a parcel of fossils, which
he had gathered, he said, on purpose to sell, but had never had time
enough to sell them. Now, however, he set about the task; and having
picked out those which he judged to be the best, he put them in a small
basket, and gave them to Jem to sell, upon condition that he should bring
him half of what he got. Jem, pleased to be employed, was ready to agree
to what the man proposed, provided his mother had no objection. When he
went home to dinner, he told his mother his scheme, and she smiled, and
said he might do as he pleased; for she was not afraid of his being from
home. “You are not an idle boy,” said she; “so there is little danger of
your getting into any mischief.”
Accordingly Jem that evening took his stand, with his little basket, upon
the bank of the river, just at the place where people land from a
ferry-boat, and the walk turns to the wells, and numbers of people
perpetually pass to drink the waters. He chose his place well, and
waited nearly all the evening, offering his fossils with great assiduity
to every passenger; but not one person bought any.
“Hallo!” cried some sailors, who had just rowed a boat to land, “bear a
hand here, will you, my little fellow, and carry these parcels for us
into yonder house?”
Jem ran down immediately for the parcels, and did what he was asked to do
so quickly, and with so much good-will, that the master of the boat took
notice of him, and, when he was going away, stopped to ask him what he
had got in his little basket; and when he saw that they were fossils, he
immediately told Jem to follow him, for that he was going to carry some
shells he had brought from abroad to a lady in the neighbourhood who was
making a grotto. “She will very likely buy your stones into the bargain.
Come along, my lad; we can but try.”
The lady lived but a very little way off, so that they were soon at her
house. She was alone in her parlour, and was sorting a bundle of
feathers of different colours; they lay on a sheet of pasteboard upon a
window seat, and it happened that as the sailor was bustling round the
table to show off his shells, he knocked down the sheet of pasteboard,
and scattered all the feathers. The lady looked very sorry, which Jem
observing, he took the opportunity, whilst she was busy looking over the
sailor’s bag of shells, to gather together all the feathers, and sort
them according to their different colours, as he had seen them sorted
when he first came into the room.
“Where is the little boy you brought with you? I thought I saw him here
just now.”
“And here I am, ma’am,” cried Jem, creeping from under the table, with
some few remaining feathers which he had picked from the carpet; “I
thought,” added he, pointing to the others, “I had better be doing
something than standing idle, ma’am.” She smiled, and, pleased with his
activity and simplicity, began to ask him several questions; such as who
he was, where he lived, what employment he had, and how much a day he
earned by gathering fossils.
“This is the first day I ever tried,” said Jem; “I never sold any yet,
and if you don’t buy ’em now, ma’am, I’m afraid nobody else will; for
I’ve asked everybody else.”
“Come, then,” said the lady, laughing, “if that is the case, I think I
had better buy them all.” So, emptying all the fossils out of his
basket, she put half a crown into it.
Jem’s eyes sparkled with joy. “Oh, thank you, ma’am,” said he, “I will
be sure and bring you as many more, to-morrow.”
“Yes, but I don’t promise you,” said she, “to give you half a crown,
to-morrow.”
“But, perhaps, though you don’t promise it, you will.”
“No,” said the lady, “do not deceive yourself; I assure you that I will
not. _That_, instead of encouraging you to be industrious, would teach
you to be idle.”
Jem did not quite understand what she meant by this, but answered, “I’m
sure I don’t wish to be idle; what I want is to earn something every day,
if I know how; I’m sure I don’t wish to be idle. If you knew all, you’d
know I did not.”
“How do you mean, _if I knew all_?”
“Why, I mean, if you knew about Lightfoot.”
“Who’s Lightfoot?”
“Why, mammy’s horse,” added Jem, looking out of the window; “I must make
haste home, and feed him afore it gets dark; he’ll wonder what’s gone
with me.”
“Let him wonder a few minutes longer,” said the lady, “and tell me the
rest of your story.”
“I’ve no story, ma’am, to tell, but as how mammy says he must go to the
fair Monday fortnight, to be sold, if she can’t get the two guineas for
her rent; and I should be main sorry to part with him, for I love him,
and he loves me; so I’ll work for him, I will, all I can. To be sure, as
mammy says, I have no chance, such a little fellow as I am, of earning
two guineas afore Monday fortnight.”
“But are you willing earnestly to work?” said the lady; “you know there
is a great deal of difference between picking up a few stones, and
working steadily every day, and all day long.”
“But,” said Jem, “I would work every day, and all day long.”
“Then,” said the lady, “I will give you work. Come here, to-morrow
morning, and my gardener will set you to weed the shrubberies, and I will
pay you sixpence a day. Remember, you must be at the gates by six
o’clock.” Jem bowed, thanked her, and went away.
It was late in the evening, and Jem was impatient to get home to feed
Lightfoot; yet he recollected that he had promised the man who had
trusted him to sell the fossils, that he would bring him half of what he
got for them; so he thought that he had better go to him directly; and
away he went, running along by the waterside about a quarter of a mile,
till he came to the man’s house. He was just come home from work, and
was surprised when Jem showed him the half-crown, saying, “Look what I
got for the stones; you are to have half, you know.”
“No,” said the man, when he had heard his story, “I shall not take half
of that; it was given to you. I expected but a shilling at the most, and
the half of that is but sixpence, and that I’ll take. Wife, give the lad
two shillings, and take this half-crown.” So the wife opened an old
glove, and took out two shillings; and the man, as she opened the glove,
put in his fingers, and took out a little silver penny. “There, he shall
have that into the bargain for his honesty—honesty is the best
policy—there’s a lucky penny for you, that I’ve kept ever since I can
remember.”
“Don’t you ever go to part with it, do ye hear!” cried the woman.
“Let him do what he will with it, wife,” said the man.
“But,” argued the wife, “another penny would do just as well to buy
gingerbread; and that’s what it will go for.”
“No, that it shall not, I promise you,” said Jem; and so he ran away
home, fed Lightfoot, stroked him, went to bed, jumped up at five o’clock
in the morning, and went singing to work as gay as a lark.
Four days he worked “every day and all day long”; and every evening the
lady, when she came out to walk in her gardens, looked at his work. At
last she said to her gardener, “This little boy works very hard.”
“Never had so good a little boy about the grounds,” said the gardener;
“he’s always at his work, let me come by when I will, and he has got
twice as much done as another would do; yes, twice as much, ma’am; for
look here—he began at this ’ere rose-bush, and now he’s got to where you
stand, ma’am; and here is the day’s work that t’other boy, and he’s three
years older too, did to-day—I say, measure Jem’s fairly, and it’s twice
as much, I’m sure.”
“Well,” said the lady to her gardener, “show me how much is a fair day’s
work for a boy of his age.”
“Come at six o’clock and go at six? why, about this much, ma’am,” said
the gardener, marking off a piece of the border with his spade.
“Then, little boy,” said the lady, “so much shall be your task every day.
The gardener will mark it off for you; and when you’ve done, the rest of
the day you may do what you please.”
Jem was extremely glad of this; and the next day he had finished his task
by four o’clock; so that he had all the rest of the evening to himself.
He was as fond of play as any little boy could be; and when he was at it
he played with all the eagerness and gaiety imaginable; so as soon as he
had finished his task, fed Lightfoot, and put by the sixpence he had
earned that day, he ran to the playground in the village, where he found
a party of boys playing, and amongst them Lazy Lawrence, who indeed was
not playing, but lounging upon a gate, with his thumb in his mouth. The
rest were playing at cricket. Jem joined them, and was the merriest and
most active amongst them; till, at last, when quite out of breath with
running, he was obliged to give up to rest himself, and sat down upon the
stile, close to the gate on which Lazy Lawrence was swinging.
“And why don’t you play, Lawrence?” said he.
“I’m tired,” said Lawrence.
“Tired of what?”
“I don’t know well what tires me; grandmother says I’m ill, and I must
take something—I don’t know what ails me.”
“Oh, pugh! take a good race—one, two, three, and away—and you’ll find
yourself as well as ever. Come, run—one, two, three, and away.”
“Ah, no, I can’t run, indeed,” said he, hanging back heavily; “you know I
can play all day long if I like it, so I don’t mind play as you do, who
have only one hour for it.”
“So much the worse for you. Come, now, I’m quite fresh again, will you
have one game at ball? do.”
“No, I tell you I can’t; I’m as tired as if I had been working all day
long as hard as a horse.”
“Ten times more,” said Jem, “for I have been working all day long, as
hard as a horse, and yet you see I’m not a bit tired, only a little out
of breath just now.”
“That’s very odd,” said Lawrence, and yawned, for want of some better
answer; then taking out a handful of halfpence,—“See what I got from
father to-day, because I asked him just at the right time, when he had
drunk a glass or two; then I can get anything I want out of him—see! a
penny, twopence, threepence, fourpence—there’s eightpence in all; would
not you be happy if you had _eightpence_?”
“Why, I don’t know,” said Jem, laughing, “for you don’t seem happy, and
you _have eightpence_.”
“That does not signify, though. I’m sure you only say that because you
envy me. You don’t know what it is to have eightpence. You never had
more than twopence or threepence at a time in all your life.”
Jem smiled. “Oh, as to that,” said he, “you are mistaken, for I have at
this very time more than twopence, threepence, or eightpence either. I
have—let me—see—stones, two shillings; then five days’ work—that’s five
sixpences, that’s two shillings and sixpence; in all, makes four
shillings and sixpence; and my silver penny, is four and sevenpence—four
and sevenpence!”
“You have not!” said Lawrence, roused so as absolutely to stand upright,
“four and sevenpence, have you? Show it me, and then I’ll believe you.”
“Follow me, then,” cried Jem, “and I’ll soon make you believe me; come.”
“Is it far?” said Lawrence, following half-running, half-hobbling, till
he came to the stable, where Jem showed him his treasure. “And how did
you come by it—honestly?”
“Honestly! to be sure I did; I earned it all.”
“Lord bless me, earned it! well, I’ve a great mind to work; but then it’s
such hot weather, besides, grandmother says I’m not strong enough yet for
hard work; and besides, I know how to coax daddy out of money when I want
it, so I need not work. But four and sevenpence; let’s see, what will
you do with it all?”
“That’s a secret,” said Jem, looking great.
“I can guess; I know what I’d do with it if it was mine. First, I’d buy
pocketfuls of gingerbread; then I’d buy ever so many apples and nuts.
Don’t you love nuts? I’d buy nuts enough to last me from this time to
Christmas, and I’d make little Newton crack ’em for me, for that’s the
worst of nuts; there’s the trouble of cracking ’em.”
“Well, you never deserve to have a nut.”
“But you’ll give me some of yours,” said Lawrence, in a fawning tone; for
he thought it easier to coax than to work—“you’ll give me some of your
good things, won’t you?”
“I shall not have any of those good things,” said Jem.
“Then, what will you do with all your money?”
“Oh, I know very well what to do with it; but, as I told you, that’s a
secret, and I sha’n’t tell it anybody. Come now, let’s go back and
play—their game’s up, I daresay.”
Lawrence went back with him, full of curiosity, and out of humour with
himself and his eightpence. “If I had four and sevenpence,” said he to
himself, “I certainly should be happy!”
The next day, as usual, Jem jumped up before six o’clock and went to his
work, whilst Lazy Lawrence sauntered about without knowing what to do
with himself. In the course of two days he laid out sixpence of his
money in apples and gingerbread; and as long as these lasted, he found
himself well received by his companions; but, at length the third day he
spent his last halfpenny, and when it was gone, unfortunately some nuts
tempted him very much, but he had no money to pay for them; so he ran
home to coax his father, as he called it.
When he got home he heard his father talking very loud, and at first he
thought he was drunk; but when he opened the kitchen door, he saw that he
was not drunk, but angry.
“You lazy dog!” cried he, turning suddenly upon Lawrence, and gave him
such a violent box on the ear as made the light flash from his eyes; “you
lazy dog! See what you’ve done for me—look!—look, look, I say!”
Lawrence looked as soon as he came to the use of his senses, and with
fear, amazement and remorse, beheld at least a dozen bottles burst, and
the fine Worcestershire cider streaming over the floor.
“Now, did not I order you three days ago to carry these bottles to the
cellar, and did not I charge you to wire the corks? answer me, you lazy
rascal; did not I?”
“Yes,” said Lawrence, scratching his head.
“And why was not it done, I ask you?” cried his father, with renewed
anger, as another bottle burst at the moment. “What do you stand there
for, you lazy brat? why don’t you move, I say? No, no,” catching hold of
him, “I believe you can’t move; but I’ll make you.” And he shook him
till Lawrence was so giddy he could not stand. “What had you to think
of? What had you to do all day long that you could not carry my cider,
my Worcestershire cider, to the cellar when I bid you? But go, you’ll
never be good for anything; you are such a lazy rascal—get out of my
sight!” So saying, he pushed him out of the house door, and Lawrence
sneaked off, seeing that this was no time to make his petition for
halfpence.
The next day he saw the nuts again, and wishing for them more than ever,
he went home, in hopes that his father, as he said to himself, would be
in a better humour. But the cider was still fresh in his recollection;
and the moment Lawrence began to whisper the word “halfpenny” in his ear,
his father swore, with a loud oath, “I will not give you a halfpenny, no,
not a farthing, for a month to come. If you want money, go work for it;
I’ve had enough of your laziness—go work!”
At these terrible words Lawrence burst into tears, and, going to the side
of a ditch, sat down and cried for an hour; and when he had cried till he
could cry no more, he exerted himself so far as to empty his pockets, to
see whether there might not happen to be one halfpenny left; and, to his
great joy, in the farthest corner of his pocket one halfpenny was found.
With this he proceeded to the fruit woman’s stall. She was busy weighing
out some plums, so he was obliged to wait; and whilst he was waiting he
heard some people near him talking and laughing very loud.
The fruit woman’s stall was at the gate of an inn yard; and peeping
through the gate in this yard, Lawrence saw a postilion and a stable boy,
about his own size, playing at pitch farthing. He stood by watching them
for a few minutes. “I began but with one halfpenny,” cried the stable
boy, with an oath, “and now I’ve got twopence!” added he, jingling the
halfpence in his waistcoat pocket. Lawrence was moved at the sound, and
said to himself, “If _I_ begin with one halfpenny I may end, like him,
with having twopence; and it is easier to play at pitch farthing than to
work.”
So he stepped forward, presenting his halfpenny, offering to toss up with
the stable boy, who, after looking him full in the face, accepted the
proposal, and threw his halfpenny into the air. “Head or tail?” cried
he. “Head,” replied Lawrence, and it came up head. He seized the penny,
surprised at his own success, and would have gone instantly to have laid
it out in nuts; but the stable boy stopped him, and tempted him to throw
again. This time Lawrence lost; he threw again and won; and so he went
on, sometimes losing, but most frequently winning, till half the morning
was lost. At last, however, finding himself the master of three
halfpence, said he would play no more.
The stable boy, grumbling, swore he would have his revenge another time,
and Lawrence went and bought his nuts. “It is a good thing,” said he to
himself, “to play at pitch farthing; the next time I want a halfpenny
I’ll not ask my father for it, nor go to work neither.” Satisfied with
this resolution, he sat down to crack his nuts at his leisure, upon the
horse block in the inn yard. Here, whilst he ate, he overheard the
conversation of the stable boys and postilions. At first their shocking
oaths and loud wrangling frightened and shocked him; for Lawrence, though
lazy, had not yet learned to be a wicked boy. But, by degrees, he was
accustomed to the swearing and quarrelling, and took a delight and
interest in their disputes and battles. As this was an amusement which
he could enjoy without any sort of exertion, he soon grew so fond of it,
that every day he returned to the stable yard, and the horse block became
his constant seat. Here he found some relief from the insupportable
fatigue of doing nothing, and here, hour after hour, with his elbows on
his knees, and his head on his hands, he sat, the spectator of
wickedness. Gaming, cheating and lying soon became familiar to him; and,
to complete his ruin, he formed a sudden and close intimacy with the
stable boy (a very bad boy) with whom he had first begun to game.
The consequences of this intimacy we shall presently see. But it is now
time to inquire what little Jem had been doing all this while.
One day, after Jem had finished his task, the gardener asked him to stay
a little while, to help him to carry some geranium pots into the hall.
Jem, always active and obliging, readily stayed from play, and was
carrying in a heavy flower pot, when his mistress crossed the hall.
“What a terrible litter!” said she, “you are making here—why don’t you
wipe your shoes upon the mat?” Jem turned to look for the mat, but he
saw none. “Oh,” said the lady recollecting herself, “I can’t blame you,
for there is no mat.”
“No, ma’am,” said the gardener, “nor I don’t know when, if ever, the man
will bring home those mats you bespoke, ma’am.”
“I am very sorry to hear that,” said the lady; “I wish we could find
somebody who would do them, if he can’t. I should not care what sort of
mats they were, so that one could wipe one’s feet on them.”
Jem, as he was sweeping away the litter, when he heard these last words,
said to himself, “Perhaps I could make a mat.” And all the way home, as
he trudged along whistling, he was thinking over a scheme for making
mats, which, however bold it may appear, he did not despair of executing,
with patience and industry. Many were the difficulties which his
“prophetic eye” foresaw; but he felt within himself that spirit which
spurs men on to great enterprises, and makes them “trample on
impossibilities.” In the first place, he recollected that he had seen
Lazy Lawrence, whilst he lounged upon the gate, twist a bit of heath into
different shapes; and he thought, that if he could find some way of
plaiting heath firmly together, it would make a very pretty green soft
mat, which would do very well for one to wipe one’s shoes on. About a
mile from his mother’s house, on the common which Jem rode over when he
went to Farmer Truck’s for the giant strawberries, he remembered to have
seen a great quantity of this heath; and, as it was now only six o’clock
in the evening, he knew that he should have time to feed Lightfoot,
stroke him, go to the common, return, and make one trial of his skill
before he went to bed.
Lightfoot carried him swiftly to the common, and there Jem gathered as
much of the heath as he thought he should want. But what toil! what
time! what pains did it cost him, before he could make anything like a
mat! Twenty times he was ready to throw aside the heath, and give up his
project, from impatience of repeated disappointments. But still he
persevered. Nothing _truly great_ can be accomplished without toil and
time. Two hours he worked before he went to bed. All his play hours the
next day he spent at his mat; which, in all, made five hours of fruitless
attempts. The sixth, however, repaid him for the labours of the other
five. He conquered his grand difficulty of fastening the heath
substantially together, and at length completely finished a mat, which
far surpassed his most sanguine expectations. He was extremely
happy—sang, danced round it—whistled—looked at it again and again, and
could hardly leave off looking at it when it was time to go to bed. He
laid it by his bedside, that he might see it the moment he awoke in the
morning.
And now came the grand pleasure of carrying it to his mistress. She
looked fully as much surprised as he expected, when she saw it, and when
she heard who made it. After having duly admired it, she asked how much
he expected for his mat. “Expect!—Nothing, ma’am,” said Jem; “I meant to
give it you, if you’d have it; I did not mean to sell it. I made it in
my play hours, I was very happy in making it; and I’m very glad, too,
that you like it; and if you please to keep it, ma’am, that’s all.”
“But that’s not all,” said the lady. “Spend your time no more in weeding
in my garden, you can employ yourself much better; you shall have the
reward of your ingenuity as well as of your industry. Make as many more
such mats as you can, and I will take care and dispose of them for you.”
“Thank’e, ma’am,” said Jem, making his best bow, for he thought by the
lady’s looks that she meant to do him a favour, though he repeated to
himself, “Dispose of them, what does that mean?”
The next day he went to work to make more mats, and he soon learned to
make them so well and quickly, that he was surprised at his own success.
In every one he made he found less difficulty, so that, instead of making
two, he could soon make four in a day. In a fortnight he made eighteen.
It was Saturday night when he finished, and he carried, at three
journeys, his eighteen mats to his mistress’ house; piled them all up in
the hall, and stood with his hat off, with a look of proud humility,
beside the pile, waiting for his mistress’ appearance. Presently a
folding-door, at one end of the hall, opened, and he saw his mistress,
with a great many gentlemen and ladies, rising from several tables.
“Oh! there is my little boy and his mats,” cried the lady; and, followed
by all the rest of the company, she came into the hall. Jem modestly
retired whilst they looked at his mats; but in a minute or two his
mistress beckoned to him, and when he came into the middle of the circle,
he saw that his pile of mats had disappeared.
“Well,” said the lady, smiling, “what do you see that makes you look so
surprised?”
“That all my mats are gone,” said Jem; “but you are very welcome.”
“Are we?” said the lady, “well, take up your hat and go home then, for
you see that it is getting late, and you know Lightfoot will wonder
what’s become of you.” Jem turned round to take up his hat, which he had
left on the floor.
But how his countenance changed! the hat was heavy with shillings.
Everyone who had taken a mat had put in two shillings; so that for the
eighteen mats he had got thirty-six shillings. “Thirty-six shillings,”
said the lady; “five and sevenpence I think you told me you had earned
already—how much does that make? I must add, I believe, one other
sixpence to make out your two guineas.”
“Two guineas!” exclaimed Jem, now quite conquering his bashfulness, for
at the moment he forgot where he was, and saw nobody that was by. “Two
guineas!” cried he, clapping his hands together,—“O, Lightfoot! O,
mother!” Then, recollecting himself, he saw his mistress, whom he now
looked up to quite as a friend. “Will _you_ thank them all?” said he,
scarcely daring to glance his eyes round upon the company; “will _you_
thank ’em, for you know I don’t know how to thank ’em _rightly_.”
Everybody thought, however, that they had been thanked _rightly_.
“Now we won’t keep you any longer, only,” said his mistress, “I have one
thing to ask you, that I may be by when you show your treasure to your
mother.”
“Come, then,” said Jem, “come with me now.”
“Not now,” said the lady, laughing; “but I will come to Ashton to-morrow
evening; perhaps your mother can find me a few strawberries.”
“That she will,” said Jem: “I’ll search the garden myself.”
He now went home, but felt it a great restraint to wait till to-morrow
evening before he told his mother. To console himself he flew to the
stable:—“Lightfoot, you’re not to be sold on Monday, poor fellow!” said
he, patting him, and then could not refrain from counting out his money.
Whilst he was intent upon this, Jem was startled by a noise at the door:
somebody was trying to pull up the latch. It opened, and there came in
Lazy Lawrence, with a boy in a red jacket, who had a cock under his arm.
They started when they got into the middle of the stable, and when they
saw Jem, who had been at first hidden by the horse.
“We—we—we came,” stammered Lazy Lawrence—“I mean, I came to—to—to—”
“To ask you,” continued the stable-boy, in a bold tone, “whether you will
go with us to the cock-fight on Monday? See, I’ve a fine cock here, and
Lawrence told me you were a great friend of his; so I came.”
Lawrence now attempted to say something in praise of the pleasures of
cock-fighting and in recommendation of his new companion. But Jem looked
at the stable-boy with dislike, and a sort of dread. Then turning his
eyes upon the cock with a look of compassion, said, in a low voice, to
Lawrence, “Shall you like to stand by and see its eyes pecked out?”
“I don’t know,” said Lawrence, “as to that; but they say a cockfight’s a
fine sight, and it’s no more cruel in me to go than another; and a great
many go, and I’ve nothing else to do, so I shall go.”
“But I have something else to do,” said Jem, laughing, “so I shall not
go.”
“But,” continued Lawrence, “you know Monday is the great Bristol fair,
and one must be merry then, of all the days in the year.”
“One day in the year, sure, there’s no harm in being merry,” said the
stable boy.
“I hope not,” said Jem; “for I know for my part, I am merry every day in
the year.”
“That’s very odd,” said Lawrence; “but I know for my part, I would not
for all the world miss going to the fair, for at least it will be
something to talk of for half a year after. Come, you’ll go, won’t you?”
“No,” said Jem, still looking as if he did not like to talk before the
ill-looking stranger.
“Then what will you do with all your money?”
“I’ll tell you about that another time,” whispered Jem; “and don’t you go
to see that cock’s eyes pecked out; it won’t make you merry, I’m sure.”
“If I had anything else to divert me,” said Lawrence, hesitating and
yawning.
“Come,” cried the stable boy, seizing his stretching arm, “come along,”
cried he; and, pulling him away from Jem, upon whom he cast a look of
extreme contempt; “leave him alone, he’s not the sort.
“What a fool you are,” said he to Lawrence, the moment he got him out of
the stable; “you might have known he would not go, else we should soon
have trimmed him out of his four and sevenpence. But how came you to
talk of four and sevenpence. I saw in the manger a hat full of silver.”
“Indeed!” exclaimed Lawrence.
“Yes, indeed; but why did you stammer so when we first got in? You had
liked to have blown us all up.”
“I was so ashamed,” said Lawrence, hanging down his head.
“Ashamed! but you must not talk of shame now you are in for it, and I
sha’n’t let you off; you owe us half a crown, recollect, and I must be
paid to-night, so see and get the money somehow or other.” After a
considerable pause he added, “I answer for it he’d never miss half a
crown out of all that silver.”
“But to steal,” said Lawrence, drawing back with horror, “I never thought
I should come to that—and from poor Jem, too—the money that he has worked
so hard for, too.”
“But it is not stealing; we don’t mean to steal; only to borrow it; and
if we win, which we certainly shall, at the cock-fight, pay it back
again, and he’ll never know anything about the matter, and what harm will
it do him? Besides, what signifies talking, you can’t go to the
cock-fight, or the fair either, if you don’t; and I tell ye we don’t mean
to steal it; we’ll pay it by Monday night.”
Lawrence made no reply, and they parted without his coming to any
determination.
Here let us pause in our story. We are almost afraid to go on. The rest
is very shocking. Our little readers will shudder as they read. But it
is better that they should know the truth, and see what the idle boy came
to at last.
In the dead of the night, Lawrence heard somebody tap at his window. He
knew well who it was, for this was the signal agreed upon between him and
his wicked companion. He trembled at the thoughts of what he was about
to do, and lay quite still, with his head under the bedclothes, till he
heard the second tap. Then he got up, dressed himself, and opened his
window. It was almost even with the ground. His companion said to him,
in a hollow voice, “Are you ready?” He made no answer, but got out of
the window and followed.
When he got to the stable a black cloud was just passing over the moon,
and it was quite dark. “Where are you?” whispered Lawrence, groping
about, “where are you? Speak to me.”
“I am here; give me your hand.” Lawrence stretched out his hand. “Is
that your hand?” said the wicked boy, as Lawrence laid hold of him; “how
cold it feels.”
“Let us go back,” said Lawrence; “it is time yet.”
“It is no time to go back,” replied the other, opening the door; “you’ve
gone too far now to go back,” and he pushed Lawrence into the stable.
“Have you found it? Take care of the horse. Have you done? What are
you about? Make haste, I hear a noise,” said the stable boy, who watched
at the door.
“I am feeling for the half-crown, but I can’t find it.”
“Bring all together.” He brought Jem’s broken flower pot, with all the
money in it, to the door. The black cloud had now passed over the moon,
and the light shone full upon them. “What do we stand here for?” said
the stable boy, snatching the flower-pot out of Lawrence’s trembling
hands, and pulled him away from the door.
“Good God!” cried Lawrence, “you won’t take all. You said you’d only
take half a crown, and pay it back on Monday. You said you’d only take
half a crown!”
“Hold your tongue,” replied the other, walking on, deaf to all
remonstrances—“if ever I am to be hanged, it sha’n’t be for half a
crown.”
Lawrence’s blood ran cold in his veins, and he felt as if all his hair
stood on end. Not another word passed. His accomplice carried off the
money, and Lawrence crept, with all the horrors of guilt upon him, to his
restless bed. All night he was starting from frightful dreams; or else,
broad awake, he lay listening to every small noise, unable to stir, and
scarcely daring to breathe—tormented by that most dreadful of all kinds
of fear, that fear which is the constant companion of an evil conscience.
He thought the morning would never come; but when it was day, when he
heard the birds sing, and saw everything look cheerful as usual, he felt
still more miserable. It was Sunday morning, and the bell rang for
church. All the children of the village, dressed in their Sunday
clothes, innocent and gay, and little Jem, the best and gayest amongst
them, went flocking by his door to church.
“Well, Lawrence,” said Jem, pulling his coat as he passed and saw
Lawrence leaning against his father’s door, “what makes you look so
black?”
“I?” said Lawrence, starting; “why do you say that I look black?”
“Nay, then,” said Jem, “you look white enough now, if that will please
you, for you’re turned as pale as death.”
“Pale?” replied Lawrence, not knowing what he said, and turned abruptly
away, for he dared not stand another look of Jem’s; conscious that guilt
was written in his face, he shunned every eye. He would now have given
the world to have thrown off the load of guilt which lay upon his mind.
He longed to follow Jem, to fall upon his knees and confess all.
Dreading the moment when Jem should discover his loss, Lawrence dared not
stay at home, and not knowing what to do, or where to go, he mechanically
went to his old haunt at the stable yard, and lurked thereabouts all day
with his accomplice, who tried in vain to quiet his fears and raise his
spirits by talking of the next day’s cock-fight. It was agreed that as
soon as the dusk of the evening came on, they should go together into a
certain lonely field, and there divide their booty.
In the meantime, Jem, when he returned from church, was very full of
business, preparing for the reception of his mistress, of whose intended
visit he had informed his mother; and whilst she was arranging the
kitchen and their little parlour, he ran to search the strawberry beds.
“Why, my Jem, how merry you are to-day!” said his mother, when he came in
with the strawberries, and was jumping about the room playfully. “Now,
keep those spirits of yours, Jem, till you want ’em, and don’t let it
come upon you all at once. Have it in mind that to-morrow’s fair day,
and Lightfoot must go. I bid Farmer Truck call for him to-night. He
said he’d take him along with his own, and he’ll be here just now—and
then I know how it will be with you, Jem!”
“So do I!” cried Jem, swallowing his secret with great difficulty, and
then tumbling head over heels four times running.
A carriage passed the window, and stopped at the door. Jem ran out; it
was his mistress. She came in smiling, and soon made the old woman
smile, too, by praising the neatness of everything in the house.
We shall pass over, however important as they were deemed at the time,
the praises of the strawberries, and of “my grandmother’s china plate.”
Another knock was heard at the door. “Run, Jem,” said his mother. “I
hope it’s our milk-woman with cream for the lady.” No; it was Farmer
Truck come for Lightfoot. The old woman’s countenance fell. “Fetch him
out, dear,” said she, turning to her son; but Jem was gone; he flew out
to the stable the moment he saw the flap of Farmer Truck’s great-coat.
“Sit ye down, farmer,” said the old woman, after they had waited about
five minutes in expectation of Jem’s return. “You’d best sit down, if
the lady will give you leave; for he’ll not hurry himself back again. My
boy’s a fool, madam, about that there horse.” Trying to laugh, she
added, “I knew how Lightfoot and he would be loath enough to part. He
won’t bring him out till the last minute; so do sit ye down, neighbour.”
The farmer had scarcely sat down when Jem, with a pale, wild countenance
came back. “What’s the matter?” said his mistress. “God bless the boy!”
said his mother, looking at him quite frightened, whilst he tried to
speak, but could not.
She went up to him, and then leaning his head against her, he cried,
“It’s gone!—it’s all gone!” and, bursting into tears, he sobbed as if his
little heart would break.
“What’s gone, love?” said his mother.
“My two guineas—Lightfoot’s two guineas. I went to fetch ’em to give
you, mammy; but the broken flower-pot that I put them in, and all’s
gone!—quite gone!” repeated he, checking his sobs. “I saw them safe last
night, and was showing ’em to Lightfoot; and I was so glad to think I had
earned them all myself; and I thought how surprised you’d look, and how
glad you’d be, and how you’d kiss me, and all!”
His mother listened to him with the greatest surprise, whilst his
mistress stood in silence, looking first at the old woman, and then at
Jem with a penetrating eye, as if she suspected the truth of his story,
and was afraid of becoming the dupe of her own compassion.
“This is a very strange thing!” said she, gravely. “How came you to
leave all your money in a broken flower-pot in the stable? How came you
not to give it to your mother to take care of?”
“Why, don’t you remember?” said Jem, looking up, in the midst of his
tears—“why, don’t you remember you, your own self, bid me not tell her
about it till you were by?”
“And did you not tell her?”
“Nay, ask mammy,” said Jem, a little offended; and when afterwards the
lady went on questioning him in a severe manner, as if she did not
believe him, he at last made no answer.
“Oh, Jem! Jem! why don’t you speak to the lady?” said his mother.
“I have spoke, and spoke the truth,” said Jem, proudly; “and she did not
believe me.”
Still the lady, who had lived too long in the world to be without
suspicion, maintained a cold manner, and determined to wait the event
without interfering, saying only, that she hoped the money would be
found, and advised Jem to have done crying.
“I have done,” said Jem; “I shall cry no more.” And as he had the
greatest command over himself, he actually did not shed another tear, not
even when the farmer got up to go, saying, he could wait no longer.
Jem silently went to bring out Lightfoot. The lady now took her seat,
where she could see all that passed at the open parlour-window. The old
woman stood at the door, and several idle people of the village, who had
gathered round the lady’s carriage examining it, turned about to listen.
In a minute or two Jem appeared, with a steady countenance, leading
Lightfoot and, when he came up, without saying a word, put the bridle
into Farmer Truck’s hand.
“He _has been_ a good horse,” said the farmer.
“He _is_ a good horse!” cried Jem, and threw his arm over Lightfoot’s
neck, hiding his own face as he leaned upon him.
At this instant a party of milk-women went by; and one of them, having
set down her pail, came behind Jem, and gave him a pretty smart blow upon
the back. He looked up. “And don’t you know me?” said she.
“I forget,” said Jem; “I think I have seen your face before, but I
forget.”
“Do you so? and you’ll tell me just now,” said she, half opening her
hand, “that you forget who gave you this, and who charged you not to part
with it, too.” Here she quite opened her large hand, and on the palm of
it appeared Jem’s silver penny.
“Where?” exclaimed Jem, seizing it, “oh, where did you find it? and have
you—oh, tell me, have you got the rest of my money?”
“I know nothing of your money—I don’t know what you would be at,” said
the milk-woman.
“But where—pray tell me where—did you find this?”
“With them that you gave it to, I suppose,” said the milk-woman, turning
away suddenly to take up her milk-pail. But now Jem’s mistress called to
her through the window, begging her to stop, and joining in his
entreaties to know how she came by the silver penny.
“Why, madam,” said she, taking up the corner of her apron, “I came by it
in an odd way, too. You must know my Betty is sick, so I came with the
milk myself, though it’s not what I’m used to; for my Betty—you know my
Betty?” said she, turning round to the old woman, “my Betty serves you,
and she’s a tight and stirring lassy, ma’am, I can assure—”
“Yes, I don’t doubt it,” said the lady, impatiently; “but about the
silver penny?”
“Why, that’s true; as I was coming along all alone, for the rest came
round, and I came a short cut across yon field—no, you can’t see it,
madam, where you stand—but if you were here—”
“I see it—I know it,” said Jem, out of breath with anxiety.
“Well—well—I rested my pail upon the stile, and sets me down awhile, and
there comes out of the hedge—I don’t know well how, for they startled me
so I’d liked to have thrown down my milk—two boys, one about the size of
he,” said she pointing to Jem, “and one a matter taller, but ill-looking
like; so I did not think to stir to make way for them, and they were like
in a desperate hurry: so, without waiting for the stile, one of ’em
pulled at the gate, and when it would not open (for it was tied with a
pretty stout cord) one of ’em whips out with his knife and cuts it— Now,
have you a knife about you, sir?” continued the milk woman to the farmer.
He gave her his knife. “Here, now, ma’am, just sticking, as it were
here, between the blade and the haft, was the silver penny. The lad took
no notice; but when he opened it, out it falls. Still he takes no heed,
but cuts the cord, as I said before, and through the gate they went, and
out of sight in half a minute. I picks up the penny, for my heart
misgave me that it was the very one husband had had a long time, and had
given against my voice to he,” pointing to Jem; “and I charged him not to
part with it; and, ma’am, when I looked I knew it by the mark, so I
thought I would show it to _he_,” again pointing to Jem, “and let him
give it back to those it belongs to.”
“It belongs to me,” said Jem, “I never gave it to anybody—but—”
“But,” cried the farmer, “those boys have robbed him; it is they who have
all his money.”
“Oh, which way did they go?” cried Jem, “I’ll run after them.”
“No, no,” said the lady, calling to her servant; and she desired him to
take his horse and ride after them. “Ay,” added Farmer Truck, “do you
take the road, and I’ll take the field way, and I’ll be bound we’ll have
’em presently.”
Whilst they were gone in pursuit of the thieves, the lady, who was now
thoroughly convinced of Jem’s truth, desired her coachman would produce
what she had ordered him to bring with him that evening. Out of the boot
of the carriage the coachman immediately produced a new saddle and
bridle.
How Jem’s eyes sparkled when the saddle was thrown upon Lightfoot’s back!
“Put it on your horse yourself, Jem,” said the lady; “it is yours.”
Confused reports of Lightfoot’s splendid accoutrements, of the pursuit of
thieves, and of the fine and generous lady who was standing at Dame
Preston’s window, quickly spread through the village, and drew everybody
from their houses. They crowded round Jem to hear the story. The
children especially, who were fond of him, expressed the strongest
indignation against the thieves. Every eye was on the stretch; and now
some, who had run down the lane, came back shouting, “Here they are!
they’ve got the thieves!”
The footman on horseback carried one boy before him; and the farmer,
striding along, dragged another. The latter had on a red jacket, which
little Jem immediately recollected, and scarcely dared lift his eyes to
look at the boy on horseback. “Good God!” said he to himself, “it must
be—yet surely it can’t be Lawrence!” The footman rode on as fast as the
people would let him. The boy’s hat was slouched, and his head hung
down, so that nobody could see his face.
At this instant there was a disturbance in the crowd. A man who was half
drunk pushed his way forwards, swearing that nobody should stop him; that
he had a right to see—and he _would_ see. And so he did; for, forcing
through all resistance, he staggered up to the footman just as he was
lifting down the boy he had carried before him. “I _will_—I tell you I
_will_ see the thief!” cried the drunken man, pushing up the boy’s hat.
It was his own son. “Lawrence!” exclaimed the wretched father. The
shock sobered him at once, and he hid his face in his hands.
There was an awful silence. Lawrence fell on his knees, and in a voice
that could scarcely be heard made a full confession of all the
circumstances of his guilt.
“Such a young creature so wicked!” the bystanders exclaimed; “what could
put such wickedness in your head?”
“Bad company,” said Lawrence.
“And how came you—what brought you into bad company?”
“I don’t know, except it was idleness.”
While this was saying the farmer was emptying Lazy Lawrence’s pockets;
and when the money appeared, all his former companions in the village
looked at each other with astonishment and terror. Their parents grasped
their little hands closer, and cried, “Thank God! he is not my son. How
often when he was little we used, as he lounged about, to tell him that
idleness was the root of all evil.”
As for the hardened wretch, his accomplice, everyone was impatient to
have him sent to gaol. He put on a bold, insolent countenance, till he
heard Lawrence’s confession; till the money was found upon him; and he
heard the milk-woman declare that she would swear to the silver penny
which he had dropped. Then he turned pale, and betrayed the strongest
signs of fear.
“We must take him before the justice,” said the farmer, “and he’ll be
lodged in Bristol gaol.”
“Oh!” said Jem, springing forwards when Lawrence’s hands were going to be
tied, “let him go—won’t you?—can’t you let him go?”
“Yes, madam, for mercy’s sake,” said Jem’s mother to the lady, “think
what a disgrace to his family to be sent to gaol.”
His father stood by wringing his hands in an agony of despair. “It’s all
my fault,” cried he; “I brought him up in idleness.”
“But he’ll never be idle any more,” said Jem; “won’t you speak for him,
ma’am?”
“Don’t ask the lady to speak for him,” said the farmer; “it’s better he
should go to Bridewell now, than to the gallows by-and-by.”
Nothing more was said; for everybody felt the truth of the farmer’s
speech.
Lawrence was eventually sent to Bridewell for a month, and the stable-boy
was sent for trial, convicted, and transported to Botany Bay.
During Lawrence’s confinement, Jem often visited him, and carried him
such little presents as he could afford to give; and Jem could afford to
be _generous_, because he was _industrious_. Lawrence’s heart was
touched by his kindness, and his example struck him so forcibly that,
when his confinement was ended, he resolved to set immediately to work;
and, to the astonishment of all who knew him, soon became remarkable for
industry. He was found early and late at his work, established a new
character, and for ever lost the name of “_Lazy Lawrence_.”
THE FALSE KEY.
MR. SPENCER, a very benevolent and sensible man, undertook the education
of several poor children. Among the rest was a boy of the name of
Franklin, whom he had bred up from the time he was five years old.
Franklin had the misfortune to be the son of a man of infamous character;
and for many years this was a disgrace and reproach to his child. When
any of the neighbours’ children quarrelled with him, they used to tell
him that he would turn out like his father. But Mr. Spencer always
assured him that he might make himself whatever he pleased; that by
behaving well he would certainly, sooner or later, secure the esteem and
love of all who knew him, even of those who had the strongest prejudice
against him on his father’s account.
This hope was very delightful to Franklin, and he showed the strongest
desire to learn and to do everything that was right; so that Mr. Spencer
soon grew fond of him, and took great pains to instruct him, and to give
him all the good habits and principles which might make him a useful,
respectable and happy man.
When he was about thirteen years of age, Mr. Spencer one day sent for him
into his closet; and as he was folding up a letter which he had been
writing, said to him, with a very kind look, but in a graver tone than
usual, “Franklin, you are going to leave me.”
“Sir!” said Franklin.
“You are now going to leave me, and to begin the world for yourself. You
will carry this letter to my sister, Mrs. Churchill, in Queen’s Square.
You know Queen’s Square?” Franklin bowed. “You must expect,” continued
Mr. Spencer, “to meet with several disagreeable things, and a great deal
of rough work, at your first setting out; but be faithful and obedient to
your mistress, and obliging to your fellow-servants, and all will go
well. Mrs. Churchill will make you a very good mistress, if you behave
properly; and I have no doubt but you will.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And you will always—I mean, as long as you deserve it—find a friend in
me.”
“Thank you, sir—I am sure you are—” There Franklin stopped short, for
the recollection of all Mr. Spencer’s goodness rushed upon him at once,
and he could not say another word.
“Bring me a candle to seal this letter,” said his master; and he was very
glad to get out of the room. He came back with the candle, and, with a
stout heart, stood by whilst the letter was sealing; and, when his master
put it into his hand, said, in a cheerful voice, “I hope you will let me
see you again, sir, sometimes.”
“Certainly; whenever your mistress can spare you, I shall be very glad to
see you; and remember, if ever you get into any difficulty, don’t be
afraid to come to me. I have sometimes spoken harshly to you; but you
will not meet with a more indulgent friend.” Franklin at this turned
away with a full heart; and, after making two or three attempts to
express his gratitude, left the room without being able to speak.
He got to Queen’s Square about three o’clock. The door was opened by a
large, red-faced man, in a blue coat and scarlet waistcoat, to whom he
felt afraid to give his message, lest he should not be a servant.
“Well, what’s your business, sir?” said the butler.
“I have a letter for Mrs. Churchill, sir,” said Franklin, endeavouring to
pronounce his “sir” in a tone as respectful as the butler’s was insolent.
The man having examined the direction, seal, and edges of the letter,
carried it upstairs, and in a few minutes returned, and ordered Franklin
to rub his shoes well and follow him. He was then shown into a handsome
room, where he found his mistress—an elderly lady. She asked him a few
questions, examining him attentively as she spoke; and her severe eye at
first, and her gracious smile afterwards, made him feel that she was a
person to be both loved and feared. “I shall give you in charge,” said
she, ringing a bell, “to my housekeeper, and I hope she will have no
reason to be displeased with you.”
The housekeeper, when she first came in, appeared with a smiling
countenance; but the moment she cast her eyes on Franklin, it changed to
a look of surprise and suspicion. Her mistress recommended him to her
protection, saying, “Pomfret, I hope you will keep this boy under your
own eye.” And she received him with a cold “Very well, ma’am,” which
plainly showed that she was not disposed to like him. In fact, Mrs.
Pomfret was a woman so fond of power, and so jealous of favour, that she
would have quarrelled with an angel who had got so near her mistress
without her introduction. She smothered her displeasure, however, till
night; when, as she attended her mistress’ toilette, she could not
refrain from expressing her sentiments. She began cautiously: “Ma’am, is
not this the boy Mr. Spencer was talking of one day—that has been brought
up by the _Villaintropic Society_, I think they call it?”
“Philanthropic Society; yes,” said her mistress; “and my brother gives
him a high character: I hope he will do very well.”
“I’m sure I hope so too,” observed Mrs. Pomfret; “but I can’t say; for my
part, I’ve no great notion of those low people. They say all those
children are taken from the very lowest _drugs_ and _refuges_ of the
town, and surely they are like enough, ma’am, to take after their own
fathers and mothers.”
“But they are not suffered to be with their parents,” rejoined the lady;
“and therefore cannot be hurt by their example. This little boy, to be
sure, was unfortunate in his father, but he has had an excellent
education.”
“Oh, _edication_! to be sure, ma’am, I know. I don’t say but what
_edication_ is a great thing. But then, ma’am, _edication_ can’t change
the _natur_ that’s in one, they say; and one’s that born naturally bad
and low, they say, all the edication in the world won’t do no good; and,
for my part, ma’am, I know you knows best; but I should be afraid to let
any of those Villaintropic folks get into my house; for nobody can tell
the natur of them aforehand. I declare it frights me.”
“Pomfret, I thought you had better sense: how would this poor boy earn
his bread? he would be forced to starve or steal, if everybody had such
prejudices.”
Pomfret, who really was a good woman, was softened at this idea, and
said, “God forbid he should starve or steal, and God forbid I should say
anything _prejudiciary_ of the boy; for there may be no harm in him.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Churchill, changing her tone, “but, Pomfret, if we
don’t like the boy at the end of the month, we have done with him; for I
have only promised Mr. Spencer to keep him a month upon trial: there is
no harm done.”
“Dear, no, ma’am, to be sure; and cook must put up with her
disappointment, that’s all.”
“What disappointment?”
“About her nephew, ma’am; the boy she and I was speaking to you for.”
“When?”
“The day you called her up about the almond pudding, ma’am. If you
remember, you said you should have no objections to try the boy; and upon
that cook bought him new shirts; but they are to the good, as I tell
her.”
“But I did not promise to take her nephew.”
“O, no ma’am, not at all; she does not think to _say that_, else I should
be very angry; but the poor woman never let fall a word, any more than
frets that the boy should miss such a good place.”
“Well, but since I did say that I should have no objection to try him, I
shall keep my word; let him come to-morrow. Let them both have a fair
trial, and at the end of the month I can decide which I like best, and
which we had better keep.”
Dismissed with these orders, Mrs. Pomfret hastened to report all that had
passed to the cook, like a favourite minister, proud to display the
extent of her secret influence. In the morning Felix, the cook’s nephew,
arrived; and, the moment he came into the kitchen, every eye, even the
scullion’s, was fixed upon him with approbation, and afterwards glanced
upon Franklin with contempt—contempt which Franklin could not endure
without some confusion, though quite unconscious of having deserved it;
nor, upon the most impartial and cool self-examination, could he
comprehend the justice of his judges. He perceived indeed—for the
comparisons were minutely made in audible and scornful whispers—that
Felix was a much handsomer, or as the kitchen maid expressed it, a much
more genteeler gentlemanly looking like sort of person than he was; and
he was made to understand, that he wanted a frill to his shirt, a cravat,
a pair of thin shoes, and, above all, shoe strings, besides other
nameless advantages, which justly made his rival the admiration of the
kitchen. However, upon calling to mind all that his friend Mr. Spencer
had ever said to him, he could not recollect his having warned him that
shoe strings were indispensable requisites to the character of a good
servant; so that he could only comfort himself with resolving, if
possible, to make amends for these deficiencies, and to dissipate the
prejudices which he saw were formed against him, by the strictest
adherence to all that his tutor had taught him to be his duty. He hoped
to secure the approbation of his mistress by scrupulous obedience to all
her commands, and faithful care of all that belonged to her. At the same
time he flattered himself he should win the goodwill of his fellow
servants by showing a constant desire to oblige them. He pursued this
plan of conduct steadily for nearly three weeks, and found that he
succeeded beyond his expectations in pleasing his mistress; but
unfortunately he found it more difficult to please his fellow servants,
and he sometimes offended when he least expected it. He had made great
progress in the affections of Corkscrew, the butler, by working indeed
very hard for him, and doing every day at least half his business. But
one unfortunate night the butler was gone out; the bell rang: he went
upstairs; and his mistress asking where Corkscrew was, he answered that
he was gone out. “Where to!” said his mistress. “I don’t know,”
answered Franklin. And, as he had told exactly the truth, and meant to
do no harm, he was surprised, at the butler’s return, when he repeated to
him what had passed, at receiving a sudden box on the ear, and the
appellation of a mischievous, impertinent, mean-spirited brat.
“Mischievous, impertinent, mean!” repeated Franklin to himself; but,
looking in the butler’s face, which was a deeper scarlet than usual, he
judged that he was far from sober, and did not doubt but that the next
morning, when he came to the use of his reason, he would be sensible of
his injustice, and apologize for his box of the ear. But no apology
coming all day, Franklin at last ventured to request an explanation, or
rather, to ask what he had best do on the next occasion.
“Why,” said Corkscrew, “when mistress asked for me, how came you to say I
was gone out?”
“Because, you know, I saw you go out.”
“And when she asked you where I was gone, how came you to say that you
did not know?”
“Because, indeed, I did not.”
“You are a stupid blockhead! could you not say I was gone to the
washerwoman’s?”
“But _were_ you?” said Franklin.
“Was I?” cried Corkscrew, and looked as if he would have struck him
again; “how dare you give me the lie, Mr. Hypocrite? You would be ready
enough, I’ll be bound, to make excuses for yourself. Why are not
mistress’ clogs cleaned? Go along and blacken ’em, this minute, and send
Felix to me.”
From this time forward Felix alone was privileged to enter the butler’s
pantry. Felix became the favourite of Corkscrew; and, though Franklin by
no means sought to pry into the mysteries of their private conferences,
nor ever entered without knocking at the door, yet it was his fate once
to be sent of a message at an unlucky time; and, as the door was half
open, he could not avoid seeing Felix drinking a bumper of red liquor,
which he could not help suspecting to be wine; and, as the decanter,
which usually went upstairs after dinner, was at this time in the
butler’s grasp, without any stopper in it, he was involuntarily forced to
suspect they were drinking his mistress’ wine.
Nor were the bumpers of port the only unlawful rewards which Felix
received: his aunt, the cook, had occasion for his assistance, and she
had many delicious douceurs in her gift. Many a handful of currants,
many a half-custard, many a triangular remnant of pie, besides the choice
of his own meal at breakfast, dinner and supper, fell to the share of the
favourite Felix; whilst Franklin was neglected, though he took the utmost
pains to please the cook in all honourable service, and, when she was
hot, angry, or hurried, he was always at hand to help her; and in the
hour of adversity, when the clock struck five, and no dinner was dished,
and no kitchen maid with twenty pair of hands was to be had, Franklin
would answer to her call, with flowers to garnish her dishes, and
presence of mind to know, in the midst of the commotion, where everything
that was wanting was to be found; so that, quick as lightning, all
difficulties vanished before him. Yet when the danger was over, and the
hour of adversity had past, the ungrateful cook would forget her
benefactor, and, when it came to his supper time, would throw him, with a
carelessness that touched him sensibly, anything which the other servants
were too nice to eat. All this Franklin bore with fortitude; nor did he
envy Felix the dainties which he ate, sometimes close beside him: “For,”
said he to himself, “I have a clear conscience, and that is more than
Felix can have. I know how he wins cook’s favour too well, and I fancy I
know how I have offended her; for since the day I saw the basket, she has
done nothing but huff me.”
The history of the basket was this. Mrs. Pomfret, the housekeeper, had
several times, directly and indirectly, given the world below to
understand that she and her mistress thought there was a prodigious
quantity of meat eaten of late. Now, when she spoke, it was usually at
dinner time; she always looked, or Franklin imagined that she looked,
suspiciously at him. Other people looked more maliciously; but, as he
felt himself perfectly innocent, he went on eating his dinner in silence.
But at length it was time to explain. One Sunday there appeared a
handsome sirloin of beef, which before noon on Monday had shrunk almost
to the bare bone, and presented such a deplorable spectacle to the
opening eyes of Mrs. Pomfret that her long smothered indignation burst
forth, and she boldly declared she was now certain there had been foul
play, and she would have the beef found, or she would know why. She
spoke, but no beef appeared, till Franklin, with a look of sudden
recollection, cried, “Did not I see something like a piece of beef in a
basket in the dairy?—I think—”
The cook, as if somebody had smote her a deadly blow, grew pale; but,
suddenly recovering the use of her speech, turned upon Franklin, and,
with a voice of thunder, gave him the lie direct; and forthwith, taking
Mrs. Pomfret by the ruffle, led the way to the dairy, declaring she could
defy the world—“that so she could, and would.” “There, ma’am,” said she
kicking an empty basket which lay on the floor—“there’s malice for you.
Ask him why he don’t show you the beef in the basket.”
“I thought I saw—” poor Franklin began.
“You thought you saw!” cried the cook, coming close up to him with
kimboed arms, and looking like a dragon; “and pray, sir, what business
has such a one as you to think you see? And pray, ma’am, will you be
pleased to speak—perhaps, ma’am, he’ll condescend to obey you—ma’am, will
you be pleased to forbid him my dairy? for here he comes prying and
spying about; and how, ma’am, am I to answer for my butter and cream, or
anything at all? I’m sure it’s what I can’t pretend to, unless you do me
the justice to forbid him my places.”
Mrs. Pomfret, whose eyes were blinded by her prejudices against the folks
of the “Villaintropic Society,” and also by her secret jealousy of a boy
whom she deemed to be a growing favourite of her mistress’, took part
with the cook, and ended, as she began, with a firm persuasion that
Franklin was the guilty person. “Let him alone, let him alone!” said
she; “he has as many turns and windings as a hare; but we shall catch him
yet, I’ll be bound, in some of his doublings. I knew the nature of him
well enough, from the first time I ever set my eyes upon him; but
mistress shall have her own way, and see the end of it.”
These words, and the bitter sense of injustice, drew tears at length fast
down the proud cheek of Franklin, which might possibly have touched Mrs.
Pomfret, if Felix, with a sneer, had not called them _crocodile tears_.
“Felix, too!” thought he; “this is too much.” In fact, Felix had till
now professed himself his firm ally, and had on his part received from
Franklin unequivocal proofs of friendship; for it must be told that every
other morning, when it was Felix’s turn to get breakfast, Felix never was
up in decent time, and must inevitably have come to public disgrace if
Franklin had not got all the breakfast things ready for him, the bread
and butter spread, and the toast toasted; and had not, moreover,
regularly, when the clock struck eight, and Mrs. Pomfret’s foot was heard
overhead, run to call the sleeping Felix, and helped him constantly
through the hurry of getting dressed one instant before the housekeeper
came downstairs. All this could not but be present to his memory; but,
seeming to reproach him, Franklin wiped away his crocodile tears, and
preserved a magnanimous silence.
The hour of retribution was, however, not so far off as Felix imagined.
Cunning people may go on cleverly in their devices for some time; but
although they may escape once, twice, perhaps ninety-nine times, what
does that signify?—for the hundredth time they come to shame, and lose
all their character. Grown bold by frequent success, Felix became more
careless in his operations; and it happened that one day he met his
mistress full in the passage, as he was going on one of the cook’s secret
errands.
“Where are you going, Felix?” said his mistress.
“To the washerwoman’s, ma’am,” answered he, with his usual effrontery.
“Very well,” said she. “Call at the bookseller’s in—stay, I must write
down the direction. Pomfret,” said she, opening the housekeeper’s room
door, “have you a bit of paper?” Pomfret came with the writing-paper,
and looked very angry to see that Felix was going out without her
knowledge; so, while Mrs. Churchill was writing the direction, she stood
talking to him about it; whilst he, in the greatest terror imaginable,
looked up in her face as she spoke; but was all the time intent on
parrying on the other side the attacks of a little French dog of his
mistress’, which, unluckily for him, had followed her into the passage.
Manchon was extremely fond of Felix, who, by way of pleasing his
mistress, had paid most assiduous court to her dog; yet now his caresses
were rather troublesome. Manchon leaped up, and was not to be rebuffed.
“Poor fellow—poor fellow—down! down! poor fellow!” cried Felix, and put
him away. But Manchon leaped up again, and began smelling near the fatal
pocket in a most alarming manner. “You will see by this direction where
you are to go,” said his mistress. “Manchon, come here—and you will be
so good as to bring me—down! down! Manchon, be quiet!” But Manchon knew
better—he had now got his head into Felix’s pocket, and would not be
quiet till he had drawn from thence, rustling out of its brown paper,
half a cold turkey, which had been missing since morning.
“My cold turkey, as I’m alive!” exclaimed the housekeeper, darting upon
it with horror and amazement.
“What is all this?” said Mrs. Churchill, in a composed voice.
“I don’t know, ma’am,” answered Felix, so confused that he knew not what
to say; “but—”
“But what?” cried Mrs. Pomfret, indignation flashing from her eyes. “But
what?” repeated his mistress, waiting for his reply with a calm air of
attention, which still more disconcerted Felix; for, though with an angry
person he might have some chance of escape, he knew that he could not
invent any excuse in such circumstances, which could stand the
examination of a person in her sober senses. He was struck dumb.
“Speak,” said Mrs. Churchill, in a still lower tone; “I am ready to hear
all you have to say. In my house everybody shall have justice; speak—but
what?”
“_But_,” stammered Felix; and, after in vain attempting to equivocate,
confessed that he was going to take the turkey to his cousin’s; but he
threw all the blame upon his aunt, the cook, who, he said, had ordered
him upon this expedition.
The cook was now summoned; but she totally denied all knowledge of the
affair, with the same violence with which she had lately confounded
Franklin about the beef in the basket; not entirely, however, with the
same success; for Felix, perceiving by his mistress’ eye that she was on
the point of desiring him to leave the house immediately; and not being
very willing to leave a place in which he had lived so well with the
butler, did not hesitate to confront his aunt with assurance equal to her
own. He knew how to bring his charge home to her. He produced a note in
her own handwriting, the purport of which was to request her cousin’s
acceptance of “some _delicate cold turkey_,” and to beg she would send
her, by the return of the bearer, a little of her cherry-brandy.
Mrs. Churchill coolly wrote upon the back of the note her cook’s
discharge, and informed Felix she had no further occasion for his
services, but, upon his pleading with many tears, which Franklin did not
call _crocodile tears_, that he was so young, that he was under the
dominion of his aunt, he touched Mrs. Pomfret’s compassion, and she
obtained for him permission to stay till the end of the month, to give
him yet a chance of redeeming his character.
Mrs. Pomfret now seeing how far she had been imposed upon, resolved, for
the future, to be more upon her guard with Felix, and felt that she had
treated Franklin with great injustice, when she accused him of
malpractices about the sirloin of beef.
Good people, when they are made sensible that they have treated anyone
with injustice, are impatient to have an opportunity to rectify their
mistake; and Mrs. Pomfret was now prepared to see everything which
Franklin did in the most favourable point of view; especially as the next
day she discovered that it was he who every morning boiled the water for
her tea, and buttered her toast—services for which she had always thought
she was indebted to Felix. Besides, she had rated Felix’s abilities very
highly, because he made up her weekly accounts for her; but unluckily
once, when Franklin was out of the way, and she brought a bill in a hurry
to her favourite to cast up, she discovered that he did not know how to
cast up pounds, shillings and pence, and he was obliged to confess that
she must wait till Franklin came home.
But, passing over a number of small incidents which gradually unfolded
the character of the two boys, we must proceed to a more serious affair.
Corkscrew frequently, after he had finished taking away supper, and after
the housekeeper was gone to bed, sallied forth to a neighbouring alehouse
to drink with his friends. The alehouse was kept by that cousin of
Felix’s, who was so fond of “_delicate_ cold turkey,” and who had such
choice cherry-brandy. Corkscrew kept the key of the house door, so that
he could return home whenever he thought proper; and, if he should by
accident be called for by his mistress after supper, Felix knew where to
find him, and did not scruple to make any of those excuses which poor
Franklin had too much integrity to use.
All these precautions taken, the butler was at liberty to indulge his
favourite passion, which so increased with indulgence, that his wages
were by no means sufficient to support him in this way of life. Every
day he felt less resolution to break through his bad habits; for every
day drinking became more necessary to him. His health was ruined. With
a red, pimpled, bloated face, emaciated legs, and a swelled, diseased
body, he appeared the victim of intoxication. In the morning, when he
got up, his hands trembled, his spirits flagged, he could do nothing
until he had taken a dram—an operation which he was obliged to repeat
several times in the course of the day, as all those wretched people
_must_ who once acquire this habit.
He had run up a long bill at the alehouse which he frequented; and the
landlord, who grew urgent for his money, refused to give further credit.
One night, when Corkscrew had drunk enough only to make him fretful, he
leaned with his elbow surlily upon the table, began to quarrel with the
landlord, and swore that he had not of late treated him like a gentleman.
To which the landlord coolly replied, “That as long as he had paid like a
gentleman, he had been treated like one, and that was as much as anyone
could expect, or, at any rate, as much as anyone would meet with in this
world.” For the truth of this assertion he appealed, laughing, to a
party of men who were drinking in the room. The men, however, took part
with Corkscrew, and, drawing him over to their table, made him sit down
with them. They were in high good-humour, and the butler soon grew so
intimate with them, that, in the openness of his heart, he soon
communicated to them, not only all his own affairs, but all that he knew,
and more than all that he knew, of his mistress’.
His new friends were by no means uninterested by his conversation, and
encouraged him as much as possible to talk; for they had secret views,
which the butler was by no means sufficiently sober to discover.
Mrs. Churchill had some fine old family plate; and these men belonged to
a gang of housebreakers. Before they parted with Corkscrew, they engaged
him to meet them again the next night; their intimacy was still more
closely cemented. One of the men actually offered to lend Corkscrew
three guineas towards the payment of his debt, and hinted that, if he
thought proper, he could easily get the whole cleared off. Upon this
hint, Corkscrew became all attention, till, after some hesitation on
their part, and repeated promises of secrecy on his, they at length
disclosed their plans to him. They gave him to understand, that if he
would assist in letting them into his mistress’ house, they would let him
have an ample share in the booty. The butler, who had the reputation of
being an honest man, and indeed whose integrity had hitherto been proof
against everything but his mistress’ port, turned pale, and trembled at
this proposal; drank two or three bumpers to drown thought; and promised
to give an answer the next day.
He went home more than half-intoxicated. His mind was so full of what
had passed, that he could not help bragging to Felix, whom he found awake
at his return, that he could have his bill paid off at the alehouse
whenever he pleased; dropping, besides, some hints, which were not lost
upon Felix.
In the morning Felix reminded him of the things which he had said; and
Corkscrew, alarmed, endeavoured to evade his questions, by saying that he
was not in his senses when he talked in that manner. Nothing, however,
that he could urge made any impression upon Felix, whose recollection on
the subject was perfectly distinct, and who had too much cunning himself,
and too little confidence in his companion, to be the dupe of his
dissimulation. The butler knew not what to do when he saw that Felix was
absolutely determined either to betray their scheme, or to become a
sharer in the booty.
The next night came, and he was now to make a final decision; either to
determine on breaking off entirely with his new acquaintances, or taking
Felix with him to join in the plot.
His debt, his love of drinking, the impossibility of indulging it without
a fresh supply of money, all came into his mind at once, and conquered
his remaining scruples. It is said by those whose fatal experience gives
them a right to be believed, that a drunkard will sacrifice anything,
everything, sooner than the pleasure of habitual intoxication.
How much easier is it never to begin a bad custom than to break through
it when once formed!
The hour of rendezvous came, and Corkscrew went to the alehouse, where he
found the housebreakers waiting for him, and a glass of brandy ready
poured out. He sighed—drank—hesitated—drank again—heard the landlord
talk of his bill, saw the money produced which would pay it in a
moment—drank again—cursed himself, and, giving his hand to the villain
who was whispering in his ear, swore that he could not help it, and must
do as they would have him. They required of him to give up the key of
the house door, that they might get another made by it. He had left it
with Felix, and was now obliged to explain the new difficulty which had
arisen. Felix knew enough to ruin them, and must therefore be won over.
This was no very difficult task; he had a strong desire to have some
worked cravats, and the butler knew enough of him to believe that this
would be a sufficient bribe. The cravats were bought and shown to Felix.
He thought them the only things wanting to make him a complete, fine
gentleman; and to go without them, especially when he had once seen
himself in the glass with one tied on in a splendid bow, appeared
impossible. Even this paltry temptation, working upon his vanity, at
length prevailed with a boy whose integrity had long been corrupted by
the habits of petty pilfering and daily falsehood. It was agreed that,
the first time his mistress sent him out on a message, he should carry
the key of the house door to his cousin’s, and deliver it into the hands
of one of the gang, who were there in waiting for it. Such was the
scheme.
Felix, the night after all this had been planned, went to bed, and fell
fast asleep; but the butler, who had not yet stifled the voice of
conscience, felt, in the silence of the night, so insupportably
miserable, that, instead of going to rest, he stole softly into the
pantry for a bottle of his mistress’ wine, and there drinking glass after
glass, he stayed till he became so far intoxicated, that, though he
contrived to find his way back to bed, he could by no means undress
himself. Without any power of recollection, he flung himself upon the
bed, leaving his candle half hanging out of the candlestick beside him.
Franklin slept in the next room to him, and presently awaking, thought he
perceived a strong smell of something burning. He jumped up, and seeing
a light under the butler’s door, gently opened it, and to his
astonishment, beheld one of the bed curtains in flames. He immediately
ran to the butler, and pulled him with all his force, to rouse him from
his lethargy. He came to his senses at length, but was so terrified, and
so helpless, that, if it had not been for Franklin, the whole house would
soon inevitably have been on fire. Felix, trembling and cowardly, knew
not what to do; and it was curious to see him obeying Franklin, whose
turn it now was to command. Franklin ran upstairs to awaken Mrs.
Pomfret, whose terror of fire was so great that she came from her room
almost out of her senses, whilst he, with the greatest presence of mind,
recollected where he had seen two large tubs of water, which the maids
had prepared the night before for their washing, and seizing the wet
linen which had been left to soak, he threw them upon the flames. He
exerted himself with so much good sense, that the fire was presently
extinguished.
Everything was now once more safe and quiet. Mrs. Pomfret, recovering
from her fright, postponed all inquiries till the morning, and rejoiced
that her mistress had not been awakened, whilst Corkscrew flattered
himself that he should be able to conceal the true cause of the accident.
“Don’t you tell Mrs. Pomfret where you found the candle when you came
into the room,” said he to Franklin.
“If she asks me, you know I must tell the truth,” replied he.
“Must!” repeated Felix, sneeringly; “what, you _must_ be a tell-tale!”
“No, I never told any tales of anybody, and I should be very sorry to get
anyone into a scrape; but for all that I shall not tell a lie, either for
myself or anybody else, let you call me what names you will.”
“But if I were to give you something that you would like,” said
Corkscrew—“something that I know you would like!” repeated Felix.
“Nothing you can give me will do,” answered Franklin, steadily, “so it is
useless to say any more about it—I hope I shall not be questioned.”
In this hope he was mistaken; for the first thing Mrs. Pomfret did in the
morning was to come into the room to examine and deplore the burnt
curtains, whilst Corkscrew stood by, endeavouring to exculpate himself by
all the excuses he could invent.
Mrs. Pomfret, however, though sometimes blinded by her prejudices, was no
fool; and it was absolutely impossible to make her believe that a candle,
which had been left on the hearth, where Corkscrew protested he had left
it, could have set curtains on fire which were at least six feet distant.
Turning short round to Franklin, she desired that he would show her where
he found the candle when he came into the room. He took up the
candlestick; but the moment the housekeeper cast her eye upon it, she
snatched it from his hands; “How did this candlestick come here? This
was not the candlestick you found here last night,” cried she. “Yes,
indeed it was,” answered Franklin. “That is impossible,” retorted she,
vehemently, “for I left this candlestick with my own hands last night, in
the hall, the last thing I did, after you,” said she, turning to the
butler, “was gone to bed—I’m sure of it—Nay, don’t you recollect my
taking this _japanned candlestick_ out of your hand, and making you to go
up to bed with the brass one, and I bolted the door at the stair-head
after you?”
This was all very true; but Corkscrew had afterwards gone down from his
room by a back staircase, unbolted that door, and, upon his return from
the alehouse, had taken the japanned candlestick by mistake upstairs, and
had left the brass one in its stead upon the hall table.
“Oh, ma’am,” said Felix, “indeed you forget; for Mr. Corkscrew came into
my room to desire me to call him betimes in the morning, and I happened
to take particular notice, and he had the japanned candlestick in his
hand, and that was just as I heard you, bolting the door. Indeed, ma’am
you forget.”
“Indeed, sir,” retorted Mrs. Pomfret, rising in anger, “I do not forget;
I’m not come to be _supperannuated_ yet, I hope. How do you dare to tell
me I forget?”
“Oh, ma’am,” cried Felix, “I beg your pardon, I did not—I did not mean to
say you forgot, but only I thought, perhaps, you might not particularly
remember; for if you please to recollect—”
“I won’t please to recollect just whatever you please, sir! Hold your
tongue; why should you poke yourself into this scrape; what have you to
do with it, I should be glad to know?”
“Nothing in the world, oh nothing in the world; I’m sure I beg your
pardon, ma’am,” answered Felix, in a soft tone; and, sneaking off, left
his friend Corkscrew to fight his own battle, secretly resolving to
desert in good time, if he saw any danger of the alehouse transactions
coming to light.
Corkscrew could make but very blundering excuses for himself and,
conscious of guilt, he turned pale, and appeared so much more terrified
than butlers usually appear when detected in a lie, that Mrs. Pomfret
resolved, as she said, to sift the matter to the bottom. Impatiently did
she wait till the clock struck nine, and her mistress’ bell rang, the
signal for her attendance at her levee.
“How do you find yourself this morning, ma’am?” said she, undrawing the
curtains.
“Very sleepy, indeed,” answered her mistress in a drowsy voice; “I think
I must sleep half an hour longer—shut the curtains.”
“As you please, ma’am; but I suppose I had better open a little of the
window shutter, for it’s past nine.”
“But just struck.”
“Oh dear, ma’am, it struck before I came upstairs, and you know we are
twenty minutes slow—Lord bless us!” exclaimed Mrs. Pomfret, as she let
fall the bar of the window, which roused her mistress. “I’m sure I beg
your pardon a thousand times—it’s only the bar—because I had this great
key in my hand.”
“Put down the key, then, or you’ll knock something else down; and you may
open the shutters now; for I’m quite awake.”
“Dear me! I’m so sorry to think of disturbing you,” cried Mrs. Pomfret,
at the same time throwing the shutters wide open; “but, to be sure,
ma’am, I have something to tell you, which won’t let you sleep again in a
hurry. I brought up this here key of the house door for reasons of my
own, which I’m sure you’ll approve of; but I’m not come to that part of
my story yet. I hope you were not disturbed by the noise in the house
last night, ma’am.”
“I heard no noise.”
“I am surprised at that, though,” continued Mrs. Pomfret, and proceeded
to give a most ample account of the fire, of her fears, and her
suspicions. “To be sure, ma’am, what I say _is_, that, without the
spirit of prophecy, one can nowadays account for what has passed. I’m
quite clear in my own judgment, that Mr. Corkscrew must have been out
last night after I went to bed; for, besides the japanned candlestick,
which of itself I’m sure is strong enough to hang a man, there’s another
circumstance, ma’am, that certifies it to me—though I have not mentioned
it, ma’am, to no one yet,” lowering her voice—“Franklin, when I
questioned him, told me, that he left the lantern in the outside porch in
the court last night, and this morning it was on the kitchen table. Now,
ma’am, that lantern could not come without hands; and I could not forget
about that, you know; for Franklin says, he’s sure he left the lantern
out.”
“And do you believe _him_?” inquired her mistress.
“To be sure, ma’am—how can I help believing him? I never found him out
in the least symptom of a lie since ever he came into the house; so one
can’t help believing in him, like him or not.”
“Without meaning to tell a falsehood, however,” said the lady, “he might
make a mistake.”
“No, ma’am, he never makes mistakes; it is not his way to go gossiping
and tattling; he never tells anything till he’s asked, and then it’s fit
he should. About the sirloin of beef, and all, he was right in the end,
I found, to do him justice; and I’m sure he’s right now about the
lantern—he’s _alway’s right_.”
Mrs. Churchill could not help smiling.
“If you had seen him, ma’am, last night in the midst of the fire—I’m sure
we may thank him that we were not burned alive in our beds—and I shall
never forget his coming to call me. Poor fellow! he that I was always
scolding and scolding, enough to make him hate me. But he’s too good to
hate anybody; and I’ll be bound I’ll make it up to him now.”
“Take care that you don’t go from one extreme into another, Pomfret;
don’t spoil the boy.”
“No, ma’am, there’s no danger of that; but I’m sure if you had seen him
last night yourself, you would think he deserved to be rewarded.”
“And so he shall be rewarded,” said Mrs. Churchill; “but I will try him
more fully yet.”
“There’s no occasion, I think, for trying him any more, ma’am,” said Mrs.
Pomfret, who was as violent in her likings as in her dislikes.
“Pray desire,” continued her mistress, “that he will bring up breakfast
this morning; and leave the key of the house-door, Pomfret, with me.”
When Franklin brought the urn into the breakfast-parlour, his mistress
was standing by the fire with the key in her hand. She spoke to him of
his last night’s exertions in terms of much approbation. “How long have
you lived with me?” said she, pausing; “three weeks, I think?”
“Three weeks and four days, madam.”
“That is but a short time; yet you have conducted yourself so as to make
me think I may depend upon you. You know this key?”
“I believe, madam, it is the key of the house-door.”
“It is; I shall trust it in your care. It is a great trust for so young
a person as you are.” Franklin stood silent, with a firm but modest
look. “If you take the charge of this key,” continued his mistress,
“remember it is upon condition that you never give it out of your own
hands. In the daytime it must not be left in the door. You must not
tell anybody where you keep it at night; and the house-door must not be
unlocked after eleven o’clock at night, unless by my orders. Will you
take charge of the key upon these conditions?”
“I will, madam, do anything you order me,” said Franklin, and received
the key from her hands.
When Mrs. Churchill’s orders were made known, they caused many secret
marvellings and murmurings. Corkscrew and Felix were disconcerted, and
dared not openly avow their discontent; and they treated Franklin with
the greatest seeming kindness and cordiality.
Everything went on smoothly for three days. The butler never attempted
his usual midnight visits to the alehouse, but went to bed in proper
time, and paid particular court to Mrs. Pomfret, in order to dispel her
suspicions. She had never had any idea of the real fact, that he and
Felix were joined in a plot with house-breakers to rob the house, but
thought he only went out at irregular hours to indulge himself in his
passion for drinking.
Thus stood affairs the night before Mrs. Churchill’s birthday.
Corkscrew, by the housekeeper’s means, ventured to present a petition
that he might go to the play the next day, and his request was granted.
Franklin came into the kitchen just when all the servants had gathered
round the butler, who, with great importance, was reading aloud the
play-bill. Everybody present soon began to speak at once, and with great
enthusiasm talked of the playhouse, the actors, and actresses; and then
Felix, in the first pause, turned to Franklin, and said, “Lord, you know
nothing of all this! _you_ never went to a play, did you?”
“Never,” said Franklin, and felt, he did not know why, a little ashamed;
and he longed extremely to go to one.
“How should you like to go to the play with me to-morrow?” said
Corkscrew.
“Oh,” exclaimed Franklin, “I should like it exceedingly.”
“And do you think mistress would let you if I asked?”
“I think maybe she would, if Mrs. Pomfret asked her.”
“But then you have no money, have you?”
“No,” said Franklin, sighing.
“But stay,” said Corkscrew, “what I am thinking of is, that if mistress
will let you go, I’ll treat you myself, rather than that you should he
disappointed.”
Delight, surprise and gratitude appeared in Franklin’s face at these
words. Corkscrew rejoiced to see that now, at least, he had found a most
powerful temptation. “Well then, I’ll go just now and ask her. In the
meantime, lend me the key of the house door for a minute or two.”
“The key!” answered Franklin, starting; “I’m sorry, but I can’t do that,
for I’ve promised my mistress never to let it out of my own hands.”
“But how will she know anything of the matter? Run, run, and get it for
us.”
“No, I _cannot_,” replied Franklin, resisting the push which the butler
gave his shoulder.
“You can’t?” cried Corkscrew, changing his tone; “then, sir, I can’t take
you to the play.”
“Very well, sir,” said Franklin, sorrowfully, but with steadiness.
“Very well, sir,” said Felix, mimicking him, “you need not look so
important, nor fancy yourself such a great man, because you’re master of
a key.”
“Say no more to him,” interrupted Corkscrew: “let him alone to take his
own way. Felix, you would have no objection, I suppose, to going to the
play with me?”
“Oh, I should like it of all things, if I did not come between anybody
else. But come, come!” added the hypocrite, assuming a tone of friendly
persuasion, “you won’t be such a blockhead, Franklin, as to lose going to
the play for nothing; it’s only just obstinacy. What harm can it do, to
lend Mr. Corkscrew the key for five minutes? he’ll give it to you back
again safe and sound.”
“I don’t doubt _that_,” answered Franklin.
“Then it must be all because you don’t wish to oblige Mr. Corkscrew.”
“No, but I can’t oblige him in this; for, as I told you before, my
mistress trusted me. I promised never to let the key out of my own
hands, and you would not have me break my trust. Mr. Spencer told me
_that_ was worse than _robbing_.”
At the word _robbing_ both Corkscrew and Felix involuntarily cast down
their eyes, and turned the conversation immediately, saying, that he did
very right; that they did not really want the key, and had only asked for
it just to try if he would keep his word. “Shake hands,” said Corkscrew,
“I am glad to find you out to be an honest fellow!”
“I am sorry you did not think me an honest fellow before, Mr. Corkscrew,”
said Franklin, giving his hand rather proudly, and he walked away.
“We shall make no hand of this prig,” said Corkscrew.
“But we’ll have the key from him in spite of all his obstinacy,” said
Felix; “and let him make his story good as he can afterwards. He shall
repent of these airs. To-night I’ll watch him, and find out where he
hides the key; and when he’s asleep we’ll get it without thanking him.”
This plan Felix put into execution. They discovered the place where
Franklin kept the key at night, stole it whilst he slept, took off the
impression in wax, and carefully replaced it in Franklin’s trunk, exactly
where they found it.
Probably our young readers cannot guess what use they could mean to make
of this impression of the key in wax. Knowing how to do mischief is very
different from wishing to do it: and the most innocent persons are
generally the least ignorant. By means of the impression, which they had
thus obtained, Corkscrew and Felix proposed to get a false key made by
Picklock, a smith who belonged to their gang of house-breakers; and with
this false key knew they could open the door whenever they pleased.
Little suspecting what had happened, Franklin, the next morning went to
unlock the house door, as usual; but finding the key entangled in the
lock, he took it out to examine it, and perceived a lump of wax sticking
in one of the wards. Struck with this circumstance, it brought to his
mind all that had passed the preceding evening, and being sure that he
had no wax near the key, he began to suspect what had happened; and he
could not help recollecting what he had once heard Felix say, that “give
him but a halfpenny worth of wax, and he could open the strongest lock
that ever was made by hands.”
All these things considered, Franklin resolved to take the key just as it
was, with the wax sticking to it, to his mistress.
“I was not mistaken when I thought I might trust _you_ with this key,”
said Mrs. Churchill, after she had heard his story. “My brother will be
here to-day, and I shall consult him. In the meantime, say nothing of
what has passed.”
Evening came, and after tea Mr. Spencer sent for Franklin upstairs. “So,
Mr. Franklin,” said he, “I’m glad to find you are in such high _trust_ in
this family.” Franklin bowed. “But you have lost, I understand, the
pleasure of going to the play to-night.”
“I don’t think anything—much, I mean, of that, sir,” answered Franklin,
smiling.
“Are Corkscrew and Felix _gone_ to the play?”
“Yes; half an hour ago, sir.”
“Then I shall look into his room, and examine the pantry and the plate
that is under his care.”
When Mr. Spencer came to examine the pantry, he found the large salvers
and cups in a basket behind the door, and the other things placed so as
to be easily carried off. Nothing at first appeared in Corkscrew’s
bedchamber, to strengthen their suspicions, till, just as they were going
to leave the room, Mrs. Pomfret exclaimed, “Why, if there is not Mr.
Corkscrew’s dress coat hanging up there! and if here isn’t Felix’s fine
cravat that he wanted in such a hurry to go to the play! Why, sir, they
can’t be gone to the play. Look at the cravat. Ah! upon my word I am
afraid they are not at the play. No, sir, you may be sure that they are
plotting with their barbarous gang at the alehouse; and they’ll certainly
break into the house to-night. We shall all be murdered in our beds, as
sure as I’m a living woman, sir; but if you’ll only take my advice—”
“Pray, good Mrs. Pomfret,” Mr. Spencer observed, “don’t be alarmed.”
“Nay, sir, but I won’t pretend to sleep in the house, if Franklin isn’t
to have a blunderbuss, and I a _baggonet_.”
“You shall have both, indeed, Mrs. Pomfret; but don’t make such a noise,
for everybody will hear you.”
The love of mystery was the only thing which could have conquered Mrs.
Pomfret’s love of talking. She was silent, and contented herself the
rest of the evening with making signs, looking _ominous_, and stalking
about the house like one possessed with a secret.
Escaped from Mrs. Pomfret’s fears and advice, Mr. Spencer went to a shop
within a few doors of the alehouse, which he heard Corkscrew frequented,
and sent to beg to speak to the landlord. He came; and, when Mr. Spencer
questioned him, confessed that Corkscrew and Felix were actually drinking
in his house with two men of suspicious appearance; that, as he passed
through the passage, he heard them disputing about a key; and that one of
them said, “Since we’ve got the key, we’ll go about it to-night.” This
was sufficient information. Mr. Spencer, lest the landlord should give
them information of what was going forwards, took him along with him to
Bow Street.
A constable and proper assistance was sent to Mrs. Churchill’s. They
stationed themselves in a back parlour which opened on a passage leading
to the butler’s pantry, where the plate was kept. A little after
midnight they heard the hall door open. Corkscrew and his accomplices
went directly to the pantry; and there Mr. Spencer and the constable
immediately secured them, as they were carrying off their booty.
Mrs. Churchill and Pomfret had spent the night at the house of an
acquaintance in the same street. “Well, ma’am,” said Mrs. Pomfret, who
had heard all the news in the morning, “the villains are all safe, thank
God. I was afraid to go to the window this morning; but it was my luck
to see them all go by to gaol. They looked so shocking! I am sure I
never shall forget Felix’s look to my dying day! But poor Franklin!
ma’am; that boy has the best heart in the world. I could not get him to
give a second look at them as they passed. Poor fellow! I thought he
would have dropped; and he was so modest, ma’am, when Mr. Spencer spoke
to him, and told him he had done his duty.”
“And did my brother tell him what reward I intend for him?”
“No, ma’am, and I’m sure Franklin thinks no more of _reward_ than I do.”
“I intend,” continued Mrs. Churchill, “to sell some of my old useless
plate, and to lay it out in an annuity for Franklin’s life.”
“La, ma’am!” exclaimed Mrs. Pomfret, with unfeigned joy, “I’m sure you
are very good; and I’m very glad of it.”
“And,” continued Mrs. Churchill, “here are some tickets for the play,
which I shall beg you, Pomfret, to give him, and to take him with you.”
“I am very much obliged to you, indeed, ma’am; and I’ll go with him with
all my heart, and choose such plays as won’t do no prejudice to his
morality. And, ma’am,” continued Mrs. Pomfret, “the night after the fire
I left him my great Bible and my watch, in my will; for I never was more
mistaken at the first in any boy in my born days; but he has won me by
his own _deserts_, and I shall from this time forth love all the
_Villaintropic_ folks for his sake.”
SIMPLE SUSAN.
CHAPTER I.
Waked as her custom was, before the day,
To do the observance due to sprightly May.
DRYDEN.
IN a retired hamlet on the borders of Wales, between Oswestry and
Shrewsbury, it is still the custom to celebrate the 1st of May.
The children of the village, who look forward to this rural festival with
joyful eagerness, usually meet on the last day of April to make up their
nosegays for the morning and to choose their queen. Their customary
place of meeting is at a hawthorn, which stands in a little green nook,
open on one side to a shady lane, and separated on the other side by a
thick sweet-brier and hawthorn hedge from the garden of an attorney.
[Picture: Simple Susan]
This attorney began the world with nothing, but he contrived to scrape
together a good deal of money, everybody knew how. He built a new house
at the entrance of the village, and had a large, well fenced garden, yet,
notwithstanding his fences, he never felt himself secure. Such were his
litigious habits, and his suspicious temper, that he was constantly at
variance with his simple and peaceable neighbours. Some pig, or dog, or
goat, or goose was for ever trespassing. His complaints and his
extortions wearied and alarmed the whole hamlet. The paths in his fields
were at length unfrequented, his stiles were blocked up with stones or
stuffed with brambles and briers, so that not a gosling could creep
under, or a giant get over them. Indeed, so careful were even the
village children of giving offence to this irritable man of the law, that
they would not venture to fly a kite near his fields lest it should
entangle in his trees, or fall upon his meadow.
Mr. Case, for this was the name of our attorney, had a son and a
daughter, to whose education he had not time to attend, as his whole soul
was intent upon accumulating for them a fortune. For several years he
suffered his children to run wild in the village; but suddenly, on his
being appointed to a considerable agency, he began to think of making his
children a little genteel. He sent his son to learn Latin; he hired a
maid to wait upon his daughter Barbara; and he strictly forbade her
thenceforward to keep company with any of the poor children, who had
hitherto been her playfellows. They were not sorry for this prohibition,
because she had been their tyrant rather than their companion. She was
vexed to observe that her absence was not regretted, and she was
mortified to perceive that she could not humble them by any display of
airs and finery.
There was one poor girl, amongst her former associates, to whom she had a
peculiar dislike,—Susan Price, a sweet tempered, modest, sprightly,
industrious lass, who was the pride and delight of the village. Her
father rented a small farm, and, unfortunately for him, he lived near
Attorney Case.
Barbara used often to sit at her window, watching Susan at work.
Sometimes she saw her in the neat garden raking the beds, or weeding the
borders; sometimes she was kneeling at her beehive with fresh flowers for
her bees; sometimes she was in the poultry yard, scattering corn from her
sieve amongst the eager chickens; and in the evening she was often seated
in a little honeysuckle arbour, with a clean, light, three-legged deal
table before her, upon which she put her plain work.
Susan had been taught to work neatly by her good mother, who was very
fond of her, and to whom she was most gratefully attached.
Mrs. Price was an intelligent, active, domestic woman; but her health was
not robust. She earned money, however, by taking in plain work; and she
was famous for baking excellent bread and breakfast cakes. She was
respected in the village, for her conduct as a wife and as a mother, and
all were eager to show her attention. At her door the first branch of
hawthorn was always placed on May morning, and her Susan was usually
Queen of the May.
It was now time to choose the Queen. The setting sun shone full upon the
pink blossoms of the hawthorn, when the merry group assembled upon their
little green. Barbara was now walking in sullen state in her father’s
garden. She heard the busy voices in the lane, and she concealed herself
behind the high hedge, that she might listen to their conversation.
“Where’s Susan?” were the first unwelcome words which she overheard.
“Ay, where’s Susan?” repeated Philip, stopping short in the middle of a
new tune that he was playing on his pipe. “I wish Susan would come! I
want her to sing me this same tune over again; I have not it yet.”
“And I wish Susan would come, I’m sure,” cried a little girl, whose lap
was full of primroses. “Susan will give me some thread to tie up my
nosegays, and she’ll show me where the fresh violets grow; and she has
promised to give me a great bunch of her double cowslips to wear
to-morrow. I wish she would come.”
“Nothing can be done without Susan! She always shows us where the nicest
flowers are to be found in the lanes and meadows,” said they. “She must
make up the garlands; and she shall be Queen of the May!” exclaimed a
multitude of little voices.
“But she does not come!” said Philip.
Rose, who was her particular friend, now came forward to assure the
impatient assembly, “that she would answer for it Susan would come as
soon as she possibly could, and that she probably was detained by
business at home.”
The little electors thought that all business should give way to theirs,
and Rose was dispatched to summon her friend immediately.
“Tell her to make haste,” cried Philip. “Attorney Case dined at the
Abbey to-day—luckily for us. If he comes home and finds us here, maybe
he’ll drive us away; for he says this bit of ground belongs to his
garden: though that is not true, I’m sure; for Farmer Price knows, and
says, it was always open to the road. The Attorney wants to get our
playground, so he does. I wish he and his daughter Bab, or Miss Barbara,
as she must now be called, were a hundred miles off, out of our way, I
know. No later than yesterday she threw down my nine-pins in one of her
ill-humours, as she was walking by with her gown all trailing in the
dust.”
“Yes,” cried Mary, the little primrose-girl, “her gown is always
trailing. She does not hold it up nicely, like Susan; and with all her
fine clothes she never looks half so neat. Mamma says she wishes I may
be like Susan, when I grow up to be a great girl, and so do I. I should
not like to look conceited as Barbara does, if I was ever so rich.”
“Rich or poor,” said Philip, “it does not become a girl to look
conceited, much less _bold_, as Barbara did the other day, when she was
at her father’s door without a hat upon her head, staring at the strange
gentleman who stopped hereabout to let his horse drink. I know what he
thought of Bab by his looks, and of Susan, too; for Susan was in her
garden, bending down a branch of the laburnum-tree, looking at its yellow
flowers, which were just come out; and when the gentleman asked her how
many miles it was from Shrewsbury, she answered him so modest!—not
bashful, like as if she had never seen nobody before—but just right; and
then she pulled on her straw hat, which was fallen back with her looking
up at the laburnum, and she went her ways home; and the gentleman says to
me, after she was gone, ‘Pray, who is that neat, modest girl—?’ But I
wish Susan would come,” cried Philip, interrupting himself.
Susan was all this time, as her friend Rose rightly guessed, busy at
home. She was detained by her father’s returning later than usual. His
supper was ready for him nearly an hour before he came home; and Susan
swept up the ashes twice, and twice put on wood to make a cheerful blaze
for him; but at last, when he did come in, he took no notice of the blaze
or of Susan; and when his wife asked him how he did, he made no answer,
but stood with his back to the fire, looking very gloomy. Susan put his
supper upon the table, and set his own chair for him; but he pushed away
the chair and turned from the table, saying—“I shall eat nothing, child!
Why have you such a fire to roast me at this time of the year?”
“You said yesterday, father, I thought, that you liked a little cheerful
wood fire in the evening; and there was a great shower of hail; your coat
is quite wet, we must dry it.”
“Take it, then, child,” said he, pulling it off—“I shall soon have no
coat to dry—and take my hat, too,” said he, throwing it upon the ground.
Susan hung up his hat, put his coat over the back of a chair to dry, and
then stood anxiously looking at her mother, who was not well; she had
this day fatigued herself with baking; and now, alarmed by her husband’s
moody behaviour, she sat down pale and trembling. He threw himself into
a chair, folded his arms, and fixed his eyes upon the fire.
Susan was the first who ventured to break silence. Happy the father who
has such a daughter as Susan!—her unaltered sweetness of temper, and her
playful, affectionate caresses, at last somewhat dissipated her father’s
melancholy.
He could not be prevailed upon to eat any of the supper which had been
prepared for him; however, with a faint smile, he told Susan that he
thought he could eat one of her guinea-hen’s eggs. She thanked him, and
with that nimble alacrity which marks the desire to please, she ran to
her neat chicken-yard; but, alas! her guinea-hen was not there—it had
strayed into the attorney’s garden. She saw it through the paling, and
timidly opening the little gate, she asked Miss Barbara, who was walking
slowly by, to let her come in and take her guinea-hen. Barbara, who was
at this instant reflecting, with no agreeable feelings, upon the
conversation of the village children, to which she had recently listened,
started when she heard Susan’s voice, and with a proud, ill-humoured look
and voice, refused her request.
“Shut the gate,” said Barbara, “you have no business in our garden; and
as for your hen, I shall keep it; it is always flying in here, and
plaguing us, and my father says it is a trespasser; and he told me I
might catch it and keep it the next time it got in, and it is in now.”
Then Barbara called to her maid, Betty, and bid her catch the mischievous
hen.
“Oh, my guinea-hen! my pretty guinea-hen!” cried Susan, as they hunted
the frightened, screaming creature from corner to corner.
“Here we have got it!” said Betty, holding it fast by the legs.
“Now pay damages, Queen Susan, or good-bye to your pretty guinea-hen,”
said Barbara, in an insulting tone.
“Damages! what damages?” said Susan; “tell me what I must pay.”
“A shilling,” said Barbara.
“Oh, if sixpence would do!” said Susan; “I have but sixpence of my own in
the world, and here it is.”
“It won’t do,” said Barbara, turning her back.
“Nay, but hear me,” cried Susan; “let me at least come in to look for its
eggs. I only want _one_ for my father’s supper; you shall have all the
rest.”
“What’s your father, or his supper to us? is he so nice that he can eat
none but guinea-hen’s eggs?” said Barbara. “If you want your hen and
your eggs, pay for them, and you’ll have them.”
“I have but sixpence, and you say that won’t do,” said Susan with a sigh,
as she looked at her favourite, which was in the maid’s grasping hands,
struggling and screaming in vain.
Susan retired disconsolate. At the door of her father’s cottage she saw
her friend Rose, who was just come to summon her to the hawthorn bush.
“They are all at the hawthorn, and I am come for you. We can do nothing
without _you_, dear Susan,” cried Rose, running to meet her, at the
moment she saw her. “You are chosen Queen of the May—come, make haste.
But what is the matter? why do you look so sad?”
“Ah!” said Susan, “don’t wait for me; I can’t come to you, but,” added
she, pointing to the tuft of double cowslips in the garden, “gather those
for poor little Mary; I promised them to her, and tell her the violets
are under a hedge just opposite the turnstile, on the right as we go to
church. Good-bye! never mind me; I can’t come—I can’t stay, for my
father wants me.”
“But don’t turn away your face; I won’t keep you a moment; only tell me
what’s the matter,” said her friend, following her into the cottage.
“Oh, nothing, not much,” said Susan; “only that I wanted the egg in a
great hurry for father, it would not have vexed me—to be sure I should
have clipped my guinea-hen’s wings, and then she could not have flown
over the hedge; but let us think no more about it, now,” added she,
twinkling away a tear.
When Rose, however, learnt that her friend’s guinea-hen was detained
prisoner by the attorney’s daughter, she exclaimed, with all the honest
warmth of indignation, and instantly ran back to tell the story to her
companions.
“Barbara! ay; like father, like daughter,” cried Farmer Price, starting
from the thoughtful attitude in which he had been fixed, and drawing his
chair closer to his wife.
“You see something is amiss with me, wife—I’ll tell you what it is.” As
he lowered his voice, Susan, who was not sure that he wished she should
hear what he was going to say, retired from behind his chair. “Susan,
don’t go; sit you down here, my sweet Susan,” said he, making room for
her upon his chair; “I believe I was a little cross when I came in first
tonight; but I had something to vex me, as you shall hear.
“About a fortnight ago, you know, wife,” continued he, “there was a
balloting in our town for the militia; now at that time I wanted but ten
days of forty years of age; and the attorney told me I was a fool for not
calling myself plump forty. But the truth is the truth, and it is what I
think fittest to be spoken at all times come what will of it. So I was
drawn for a militiaman; but when I thought how loth you and I would be to
part, I was main glad to hear that I could get off by paying eight or
nine guineas for a substitute—only I had not the nine guineas—for, you
know, we had bad luck with our sheep this year, and they died away one
after another—but that was no excuse, so I went to Attorney Case, and,
with a power of difficulty, I got him to lend me the money; for which, to
be sure, I gave him something, and left my lease of our farm with him, as
he insisted upon it, by way of security for the loan. Attorney Case is
too many for me. He has found what he calls a flaw in my lease; and the
lease, he tells me, is not worth a farthing, and that he can turn us all
out of our farm to-morrow if he pleases; and sure enough he will please,
for I have thwarted him this day, and he swears he’ll be revenged of me.
Indeed, he has begun with me badly enough already. I’m not come to the
worst part of my story yet—”
Here Farmer Price made a dead stop; and his wife and Susan looked up in
his face, breathless with anxiety.
“It must come out,” said he, with a short sigh; “I must leave you in
three days, wife.”
“Must you?” said his wife, in a faint, resigned voice. “Susan, love,
open the window.” Susan ran to open the window, and then returned to
support her mother’s head. When she came a little to herself she sat up,
begged that her husband would go on, and that nothing might be concealed
from her. Her husband had no wish indeed to conceal anything from a wife
he loved so well; but, firm as he was, and steady to his maxim, that the
truth was the thing the fittest to be spoken at all times, his voice
faltered, and it was with great difficulty that he brought himself to
speak the whole truth at this moment.
The fact was this. Case met Farmer Price as he was coming home,
whistling, from a new ploughed field. The attorney had just dined at
_The Abbey_. The Abbey was the family seat of an opulent baronet in the
neighbourhood, to whom Mr. Case had been agent. The baronet died
suddenly, and his estate and title devolved to a younger brother, who was
now just arrived in the country, and to whom Mr. Case was eager to pay
his court, in hopes of obtaining his favour. Of the agency he flattered
himself that he was pretty secure; and he thought that he might assume
the tone of command towards the tenants, especially towards one who was
some guineas in debt, and in whose lease there was a flaw.
Accosting the farmer in a haughty manner, the attorney began with, “So,
Farmer Price, a word with you, if you please. Walk on here, man, beside
my horse, and you’ll hear me. You have changed your opinion, I hope,
about that bit of land—that corner at the end of my garden?”
“As how, Mr. Case?” said the farmer.
“As how, man! Why, you said something about its not belonging to me,
when you heard me talk of inclosing it the other day.”
“So I did,” said Price, “and so I do.”
Provoked and astonished at the firm tone in which these words were
pronounced, the attorney was upon the point of swearing that he would
have his revenge; but, as his passions were habitually attentive to the
_letter_ of the law, he refrained from any hasty expression, which might,
he was aware, in a court of justice, be hereafter brought against him.
“My good friend, Mr. Price,” said he, in a soft voice, and pale with
suppressed rage. He forced a smile. “I’m under the necessity of calling
in the money I lent you some time ago, and you will please to take
notice, that it must be paid to-morrow morning. I wish you a good
evening. You have the money ready for me, I daresay.”
“No,” said the farmer, “not a guinea of it; but John Simpson, who was my
substitute, has not left our village yet. I’ll get the money back from
him, and go myself, if so be it must be so, into the militia—so I will.”
The attorney did not expect such a determination, and he represented, in
a friendly, hypocritical tone to Price, that he had no wish to drive him
to such an extremity; that it would be the height of folly in him _to run
his head against a wall for no purpose_. “You don’t mean to take the
corner into your own garden, do you, Price?” said he.
“I?” said the farmer, “God forbid! it’s none of mine, I never take what
does not belong to me.”
“True, right, very proper, of course,” said Mr. Case; “but then you have
no interest in life in the land in question?”
“None.”
“Then why so stiff about it, Price? All I want of you to say—”
“To say that black is white, which I won’t do, Mr. Case. The ground is a
thing not worth talking of; but it’s neither yours nor mine. In my
memory, since the _new_ lane was made, it has always been open to the
parish; and no man shall inclose it with my good-will. Truth is truth,
and must be spoken; justice is justice, and should be done, Mr.
Attorney.”
“And law is law, Mr. Farmer, and shall have its course, to your cost,”
cried the attorney, exasperated by the dauntless spirit of this village
Hampden.
Here they parted. The glow of enthusiasm, the pride of virtue, which
made our hero brave, could not render him insensible. As he drew nearer
home, many melancholy thoughts pressed upon his heart. He passed the
door of his own cottage with resolute steps, however, and went through
the village in search of the man who had engaged to be his substitute.
He found him, told him how the matter stood; and luckily the man, who had
not yet spent the money, was willing to return it; as there were many
others drawn for the militia, who, he observed, would be glad to give him
the same price, or more, for his services.
The moment Price got the money, he hastened to Mr. Case’s house, walked
straight forward into his room, and laying the money down upon his desk,
“There, Mr. Attorney, are your nine guineas; count them; now I have done
with you.”
“Not yet,” said the attorney, jingling the money triumphantly in his
hand. “We’ll give you a taste of the law, my good sir, or I’m mistaken.
You forgot the flaw in your lease, which I have safe in this desk.”
“Ah, my lease,” said the farmer, who had almost forgot to ask for it till
he was thus put in mind of it by the attorney’s imprudent threat. “Give
me my lease, Mr. Case. I’ve paid my money; you have no right to keep the
lease any longer, whether it is a bad one or a good one.”
“Pardon me,” said the attorney, locking his desk, and putting the key
into his pocket, “possession, my honest friend,” cried he, striking his
hand upon the desk, “is nine points of the law. Good night to you. I
cannot in conscience return a lease to a tenant in which I know there is
a capital flaw. It is my duty to show it to my employer; or, in other
words, to your new landlord, whose agent I have good reasons to expect I
shall be; you will live to repent your obstinacy, Mr. Price. Your
servant, sir.”
Price retired with melancholy feelings, but not intimidated. Many a man
returns home with a gloomy countenance, who has not quite so much cause
for vexation.
When Susan heard her father’s story, she quite forgot her guinea-hen, and
her whole soul was intent upon her poor mother, who, notwithstanding her
utmost exertion, could not support herself under this sudden stroke of
misfortune.
In the middle of the night Susan was called up; her mother’s fever ran
high for some hours; but towards morning it abated, and she fell into a
soft sleep with Susan’s hand locked fast in hers.
Susan sat motionless, and breathed softly, lest she should disturb her.
The rushlight, which stood beside the bed, was now burnt low; the long
shadow of the tall wicker chair flitted, faded, appeared, and vanished,
as the flame rose and sunk in the socket. Susan was afraid that the
disagreeable smell might waken her mother; and, gently disengaging her
hand, she went on tiptoe to extinguish the candle. All was silent: the
grey light of the morning was now spreading over every object; the sun
rose slowly, and Susan stood at the lattice window, looking through the
small leaded, cross-barred panes at the splendid spectacle. A few birds
began to chirp; but, as Susan was listening to them, her mother started
in her sleep, and spoke unintelligibly. Susan hung up a white apron
before the window to keep out the light, and just then she heard the
sound of music at a distance in the village. As it approached nearer,
she knew that it was Philip playing upon his pipe and tabor. She
distinguished the merry voices of her companions “carolling in honour of
the May,” and soon she saw them coming towards her father’s cottage, with
branches and garlands in their hands. She opened quick, but gently, the
latch of the door, and ran out to meet them.
“Here she is!—here’s Susan!” they exclaimed, joyfully. “Here’s the Queen
of the May.” “And here’s her crown!” cried Rose, pressing forward; but
Susan put her finger upon her lips, and pointed to her mother’s window.
Philip’s pipe stopped instantly.
“Thank you,” said Susan, “my mother is ill; I can’t leave her, you know.”
Then gently putting aside the crown, her companions bid her say who
should wear it for her.
“Will you, dear Rose?” said she, placing the garland upon her friend’s
head. “It’s a charming May morning,” added she, with a smile; “good-bye.
We sha’n’t hear your voices or the pipe when you have turned the corner
into the village; so you need only stop till then, Philip.”
“I shall stop for all day,” said Philip: “I’ve no mind to play any more.”
“Good-bye, poor Susan. It is a pity you can’t come with us,” said all
the children; and little Mary ran after Susan to the cottage door.
“I forgot to thank you,” said she, “for the double cowslips; look how
pretty they are, and smell how sweet the violets are in my bosom, and
kiss me quick, for I shall be left behind.” Susan kissed the little
breathless girl, and returned softly to the side of her mother’s bed.
“How grateful that child is to me, for a cowslip only! How can I be
grateful enough to such a mother as this?” said Susan to herself, as she
bent over her sleeping mother’s pale countenance.
Her mother’s unfinished knitting lay upon a table near the bed, and Susan
sat down in her wicker arm-chair, and went on with the row, in the middle
of which her hand stopped the preceding evening. “She taught me to knit,
she taught me everything that I know,” thought Susan, “and the best of
all, she taught me to love her, to wish to be like her.”
Her mother, when she awakened, felt much refreshed by her tranquil sleep,
and observing that it was a delightful morning, said, “that she had been
dreaming she heard music; but that the drum frightened her, because she
thought it was the signal for her husband to be carried away by a whole
regiment of soldiers, who had pointed their bayonets at him. But that
was but a dream, Susan; I awoke, and knew it was a dream, and I then fell
asleep, and have slept soundly ever since.”
How painful it is to awake to the remembrance of misfortune. Gradually
as this poor woman collected her scattered thoughts, she recalled the
circumstances of the preceding evening. She was too certain that she had
heard from her husband’s own lips the words, “_I must leave you in three
days_”; and she wished that she could sleep again, and think it all a
dream.
“But he’ll want, he’ll want a hundred things,” said she, starting up. “I
must get his linen ready for him. I’m afraid it’s very late. Susan, why
did you let me lie so long?”
“Everything shall be ready, dear mother; only don’t hurry yourself,” said
Susan. And indeed her mother was ill able to bear any hurry, or to do
any work this day. Susan’s affectionate, dexterous, sensible activity
was never more wanted, or more effectual. She understood so readily, she
obeyed so exactly; and when she was left to her own discretion, judged so
prudently, that her mother had little trouble and no anxiety in directing
her. She said that Susan never did too little, or too much.
Susan was mending her father’s linen, when Rose tapped softly at the
window, and beckoned to her to come out. She went out. “How does your
mother do, in the first place?” said Rose.
“Better, thank you.”
“That’s well, and I have a little bit of good news for you besides—here,”
said she, pulling out a glove, in which there was money, “we’ll get the
guinea-hen back again—we have all agreed about it. This is the money
that has been given to us in the village this May morning. At every door
they gave silver. See how generous they have been—twelve shillings, I
assure you. Now we are a match for Miss Barbara. You won’t like to
leave home; I’ll go to Barbara, and you shall see your guinea-hen in ten
minutes.”
Rose hurried away, pleased with her commission, and to accomplish her
business. Miss Barbara’s maid Betty was the first person that was
visible at the attorney’s house. Rose insisted upon seeing Miss Barbara
herself, and she was shown into a parlour to the young lady, who was
reading a dirty novel, which she put under a heap of law papers as they
entered.
“Dear, how you _startled_ me! Is it only you?” said she to her maid; but
as soon as she saw Rose behind the maid, she put on a scornful air.
“Could not ye say I was not at home, Betty? Well, my good girl, what
brings you here? Something to borrow or beg, I suppose.”
May every ambassador—every ambassador in as good a cause—answer with as
much dignity and moderation as Rose replied to Barbara upon the present
occasion. She assured her, that the person from whom she came did not
send her either to beg or borrow; that she was able to pay the full value
of that for which she came to ask; and, producing her well filled purse,
“I believe that this is a very good shilling,” said she. “If you don’t
like it, I will change it, and now you will be so good as to give me
Susan’s guinea-hen. It is in her name I ask for it.”
“No matter in whose name you ask for it,” replied Barbara, “you will not
have it. Take up your shilling, if you please. I would have taken a
shilling yesterday, if it had been paid at the time properly; but I told
Susan, that if it was not paid then, I should keep the hen, and so I
shall, I promise her. You may go back, and tell her so.”
The attorney’s daughter had, whilst Rose opened her negotiation, measured
the depth of her purse with a keen eye; and her penetration discovered
that it contained at least ten shillings. With proper management she had
some hopes that the guinea-hen might be made to bring in at least half
the money.
Rose, who was of a warm temper, not quite so fit a match as she had
thought herself for the wily Barbara, incautiously exclaimed, “Whatever
it costs us, we are determined to have Susan’s favourite hen; so, if one
shilling won’t do, take two; and if two won’t do, why, take three.”
The shillings sounded provoking upon the table, as she threw them down
one after another, and Barbara coolly replied, “Three won’t do.”
“Have you no conscience, Miss Barbara? Then take four.” Barbara shook
her head. A fifth shilling was instantly proffered; but Bab, who now saw
plainly that she had the game in her own hands, preserved a cold, cruel
silence. Rose went on rapidly, bidding shilling after shilling, till she
had completely emptied her purse. The twelve shillings were spread upon
the table. Barbara’s avarice was moved, she consented for this ransom to
liberate her prisoner.
Rose pushed the money towards her; but just then, recollecting that she
was acting for others more than for herself, and doubting whether she had
full powers to conclude such an extravagant bargain, she gathered up the
public treasure, and with newly-recovered prudence observed that she must
go back to consult her friends. Her generous little friends were amazed
at Barbara’s meanness, but with one accord declared that they were most
willing, for their parts, to give up every farthing of the money. They
all went to Susan in a body, and told her so. “There’s our purse,” said
they; “do what you please with it.” They would not wait for one word of
thanks, but ran away, leaving only Rose with her to settle the treaty for
the guinea-hen.
There is a certain manner of accepting a favour, which shows true
generosity of mind. Many know how to give, but few know how to accept a
gift properly. Susan was touched, but not astonished, by the kindness of
her young friends, and she received the purse with as much simplicity as
she would have given it.
“Well,” said Rose, “shall I go back for the guinea-hen?”
“The guinea-hen!” said Susan, starting from a reverie into which she had
fallen, as she contemplated the purse. “Certainly I _do_ long to see my
pretty guinea-hen once more; but I was not thinking of her just then—I
was thinking of my father.”
Now Susan had heard her mother often, in the course of this day, wish
that she had but money enough in the world to pay John Simpson for going
to serve in the militia instead of her husband. “This, to be sure, will
go but a little way,” thought Susan; “but still it may be of some use to
my father.” She told her mind to Rose, and concluded by saying,
decidedly, that “if the money was given to her to dispose of as she
pleased, she would give it to her father.”
“It is all yours, my dear, good Susan,” cried Rose, with a look of warm
approbation. “This is so like you—but I’m sorry that Miss Bab must keep
your guinea-hen. I would not be her for all the guinea-hens, or guineas
either, in the whole world. Why, I’ll answer for it, the guinea-hen
won’t make her happy, and you’ll be happy _even_ without; because you are
good. Let me come and help you to-morrow,” continued she, looking at
Susan’s work, “if you have any more mending work to do—I never liked work
till I worked with you. I won’t forget my thimble or my scissors,” added
she, laughing—“though I used to forget them when I was a giddy girl. I
assure you I am a great hand at my needle, now—try me.”
Susan assured her friend that she did not doubt the powers of her needle,
and that she would most willingly accept of her services, but that
_unluckily_ she had finished all the needle work immediately wanted.
“But do you know,” said she, “I shall have a great deal of business
to-morrow; but I won’t tell you what it is that I have to do, for I am
afraid I shall not succeed; but if I do succeed, I’ll come and tell you
directly, because you will be so glad of it.”
Susan, who had always been attentive to what her mother taught her, and
who had often assisted her when she was baking bread and cakes for the
family at the Abbey, had now formed the courageous, but not presumptuous
idea, that she could herself undertake to bake a batch of bread. One of
the servants from the Abbey had been sent all round the village in the
morning in search of bread, and had not been able to procure any that was
tolerable. Mrs. Price’s last baking failed for want of good barm. She
was not now strong enough to attempt another herself; and when the
brewer’s boy came with eagerness to tell her that he had some fine fresh
yeast, she thanked him, but sighed, and said it would be of no use to
her. Accordingly she went to work with much prudent care, and when her
bread the next morning came out of the oven, it was excellent; at least
her mother said so, and she was a good judge. It was sent to the Abbey;
and as the family there had not tasted any good bread since their arrival
in the country, they also were earnest and warm in its praise. Inquiries
were made from the housekeeper, and they heard, with some surprise, that
this excellent bread was made by a young girl only twelve years old.
The housekeeper, who had known Susan from a child, was pleased to have an
opportunity in speaking in her favour. “She is the most industrious
little creature, ma’am, in the world,” said she to her mistress. “Little
I can’t so well call her now, since she’s grown tall and slender to look
at; and glad I am she is grown up likely to look at; for handsome is that
handsome does; she thinks no more of her being handsome than I do myself;
yet she has as proper a respect for herself, ma’am, as you have; and I
always see her neat, and with her mother, ma’am, or fit people, as a girl
should be. As for her mother, she dotes upon her, as well she may; for I
should myself if I had half such a daughter; and then she has two little
brothers; and she’s as good to them, and, my boy Philip says, taught ’em
to read more than the school-mistress, all with tenderness and good
nature; but, I beg your pardon, ma’am, I cannot stop myself when I once
begin to talk of Susan.”
“You have really said enough to excite my curiosity,” said her mistress;
“pray send for her immediately; we can see her before we go out to walk.”
The benevolent housekeeper despatched her boy Philip for Susan, who never
happened to be in such an _untidy_ state as to be unable to obey a
summons without a long preparation. She had, it is true, been very busy;
but orderly people can be busy and neat at the same time. She put on her
usual straw hat, and accompanied Rose’s mother, who was going with a
basket of cleared muslin to the Abbey.
The modest simplicity of Susan’s appearance and the artless propriety of
the answers she gave to all the questions that were asked her, pleased
the ladies at the Abbey, who were good judges of character and manners.
Sir Arthur Somers had two sisters, sensible, benevolent women. They were
not of that race of fine ladies who are miserable the moment they come to
_the country_; nor yet were they of that bustling sort, who quack and
direct all their poor neighbours, for the mere love of managing, or the
want of something to do. They were judiciously generous; and whilst they
wished to diffuse happiness, they were not peremptory in requiring that
people should be happy precisely their own way. With these dispositions,
and with a well informed brother, who, though he never wished to direct,
was always willing to assist in their efforts to do good, there were
reasonable hopes that these ladies would be a blessing to the poor
villagers amongst whom they were now settled.
As soon as Miss Somers had spoken to Susan, she inquired for her brother;
but Sir Arthur was in his study, and a gentleman was with him on
business.
Susan was desirous of returning to her mother, and the ladies therefore
would not detain her. Miss Somers told her, with a smile, when she took
leave, that she would call upon her in the evening at six o’clock.
It was impossible that such a grand event as Susan’s visit to the Abbey
could long remain unknown to Barbara Case and her gossiping maid. They
watched eagerly for the moment of her return, that they might satisfy
their curiosity. “There she is, I declare, just come into her garden,”
cried Bab; “I’ll run in and get it all out of her in a minute.”
Bab could descend, without shame, whenever it suited her purposes, from
the height of insolent pride to the lowest meanness of fawning
familiarity.
Susan was gathering some marigolds and some parsley for her mother’s
broth.
“So, Susan,” said Bab, who came close up to her before she perceived it,
“how goes the world with you to-day?”
“My mother is rather better to-day, she says, ma’am—thank you,” replies
Susan, coldly but civilly.
“_Ma’am_! dear, how polite we are grown of a sudden!” cried Bab, winking
at her maid. “One may see you’ve been in good company this morning—hey,
Susan? Come, let’s hear about it.”
“Did you see the ladies themselves, or was it only the housekeeper sent
for you?” said the maid.
“What room did you go into?” continued Bab. “Did you see Miss Somers, or
Sir Arthur?”
“Miss Somers.”
“La! she saw Miss Somers! Betty, I must hear about it. Can’t you stop
gathering those things for a minute, and chat a bit with us, Susan?”
“I can’t stay, indeed, Miss Barbara; for my mother’s broth is just
wanted, and I’m in a hurry.” Susan ran home.
“Lord, her head is full of broth now,” said Bab to her maid; “and she has
not a word for herself, though she has been abroad. My papa may well
call her _Simple Susan_; for simple she is, and simple she will be, all
the world over. For my part, I think she’s little better than a
downright simpleton. But, however, simple or not, I’ll get what I want
out of her. She’ll be able to speak, maybe, when she has settled the
grand matter of the broth. I’ll step in and ask to see her mother, that
will put her in a good humour in a trice.”
Barbara followed Susan into the cottage, and found her occupied with the
grand affair of the broth. “Is it ready?” said Bab, peeping into the pot
that was over the fire. “Dear, how savoury it smells! I’ll wait till
you go in with it to your mother; for I must ask her how she does
myself.”
“Will you please to sit down then, miss,” said Simple Susan, with a
smile; for at this instant she forgot the guinea-hen; “I have but just
put the parsley into the broth; but it soon will be ready.”
During this interval Bab employed herself, much to her own satisfaction
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