Kitabı oku: «My Doggie and I», sayfa 4
“Are you—I beg pardon—are you quite sure? Have you seen Miss McTougall since she—”
“Miss McTougall!” exclaimed the doctor, with a laugh. “D’you mean my little Jenny by that dignified title?”
“Well, of course, I did not know her name, and she is not very large; but I brought her down the shoot with such violence that—”
An explosion of laughter from the doctor stopped me as I entered a large library, the powerful lights of which at first dazzled me.
“Here, Dobson, let me introduce you to the man who has saved my whole family, and who has mistaken Miss Blythe for my Jenny!—Why, sir,” he continued, turning to me, “the bundle you brought down so unceremoniously is only my governess. Ah! I’d give twenty thousand pounds down on the spot if she were only my daughter. My Jenny will be a lucky woman if she grows up to be like her.”
“I congratulate you, Mr Mellon,” said the City man, shaking me warmly by the hand.
“You have acted with admirable promptitude—which is most important at a fire—and they tell me that the header you took into the escape, with Miss Blythe in your arms, was the finest acrobatic feat that has been seen off the stage.”
“I say, Dobson, where have you stowed my wife and the children? I want to introduce him to them.”
“In the dining-room,” returned the City man. “You see, I thought it would be more agreeable that they should be all together until their nerves are calmed, so I had mattresses, blankets, etcetera, brought down. Being a bachelor, as you know, I could do nothing more than place the wardrobes of my domestics at the disposal of the ladies. The things are not, indeed, a very good fit, but—this way, Mr Mellon.”
The City man, who was tall and handsome, ushered his guests into what he styled his hospital, and there, ranged in a row along the wall, were five shakedowns, with a child on each. Seldom have I beheld a finer sight than the sparkling lustre of their ten still glaring eyes! Two pleasant young domestics were engaged in feeding the smaller ones with jam and pudding. We arrange the words advisedly, because the jam was, out of all proportion, too much for the pudding. The elder children were feeding themselves with the same materials, and in the same relative proportions. Mrs McTougall, in a blue cotton gown with white spots, which belonged to the housemaid, reclined on a sofa; she was deadly pale, and the expression of horror was not quite removed from her countenance.
Beside her, administering restoratives, sat Miss Blythe, in a chintz dress belonging to the cook, which was ridiculously too large for her. She was dishevelled and flushed, and looked so pleasantly anxious about Mrs McTougall that I almost forgave her having robbed me of my doggie.
“Miss Blythe, your deliverer!” cried the little doctor, who seemed to delight in blowing my trumpet with the loudest possible blast; “my dear, your preserver!”
I bowed in some confusion, and stammered something incoherently. Mrs McTougall said something else, languidly, and Miss Blythe rose and held out her hand with a pleasant smile.
“Well, if this isn’t one of the very jolliest larks I ever had!” exclaimed Master Harry from his corner, between two enormous spoonfuls.
“Hah!” exclaimed Master Jack.
He could say no more. He was too busy!
We all laughed, and, much to my relief, general attention was turned to the little ones.
“You young scamps!—the ‘lark’ will cost me some thousands of pounds,” said the doctor.
“Never mind, papa. Just go to the bank and they’ll give you as much as you want.”
“More pooding!” demanded Master Job. The pleasant-faced domestic hesitated.
“Oh! give it him. Act the banker on this occasion, and give him as much as he wants,” said the doctor.
“Good papa!” exclaimed the overjoyed Jenny; “how I wis’ we had a house on fire every night!”
Even Dolly crowed with delight at this, as if she really appreciated the idea, and continued her own supper with increased fervour.
Thus did that remarkable family spend the small hours of that morning, while their home was being burned to ashes.
Chapter Seven
My Circumstances begin to Brighten
“Robin,” said old Mrs Willis from her bed, in the wheeziest of voices.
“Who’s Robin, granny?” demanded young Slidder, in some surprise, looking over his shoulder as he stooped at the fire to stir a pan of gruel.
“You are Robin,” returned the old lady following up the remark with a feeble sneeze. “I can’t stand Slidder. It is such an ugly name. Besides, you ought to have a Christian name, child. Don’t you like Robin?”
The boy chuckled a little as he stirred the gruel.
“Vell, I ain’t had it long enough to ’ave made up my mind on the p’int, but you may call me wot you please, granny, s’long as you don’t swear. I’ll answer to Robin, or Bobin, or Dobin, or Nobin, or Flogin—no, by the way, I won’t answer to Flogin. I don’t like that. But why call me Robin?”
“Ah!” sighed the old woman, “because I once had a dear little son so named. He died when he was about your age, and your kindly ways are so like his that—”
“Hallo, granny!” interrupted Slidder, standing up with a look of intense surprise, “are you took bad?”
“No. Why?”
“’Cause you said suthin’ about my ways that looks suspicious.”
“Did I, Robin? I didn’t mean to. But as I was saying, I’d like to call you Robin because it reminds me of my little darling who is now in heaven. Ah! Robin was so gentle, and loving, and tender, and true, and kind. He was a good boy!”
A wheezing, which culminated in another feeble sneeze, here silenced the poor old thing.
For some minutes after that Slidder devoted himself to vigorous stirring of the gruel, and to repressed laughter, which latter made him very red in the face, and caused his shoulders to heave convulsively. At last he sought relief in occasional mutterings.
“On’y think!” he said, quoting Mrs Willis’s words, in a scarcely audible whisper, “‘so gentle, an’ lovin’, an’ tender, an’ true, an’ kind’—an’ sitch a good boy too—an’ my kindly ways is like his, are they? Well, well, Mrs W, it’s quite clear that a loo-natic asylum must be your native ’ome arter this.”
“What are you muttering about, Robin?”
“Nuffin’ partikler, granny. On’y suthin’ about your futur’ prospec’s. The gruel’s ready, I think. Will you ’ave it now, or vait till you get it?”
“There—even in your little touches of humour you’re so like him!” said the old woman, with a mingled smile and sneeze, as she slowly rose to a sitting posture, making a cone of the bedclothes with her knees, on which she laid her thin hands.
“Come now, old ’ooman,” said Slidder seriously, “if you go on jokin’ like that you’ll make me larf and spill your gruel—p’raps let it fall bash on the floor. There! Don’t let it tumble off your knees, now; I’d adwise you to lower ’em for the time bein’. Here’s the spoon; it ain’t as bright as I could wish, but you can’t expect much of pewter; an’ the napkin—that’s your sort; an’ the bit of bread—which it isn’t too much for a ’ealthy happetite. Now then, granny, go in and win!”
“So like,” murmured the old woman, as she gazed in Slidder’s face. “And it is so good of you to give up your play and come to look after a helpless old creature like me.”
“Yes, it is wery good of me,” assented the boy, with an air of profound gravity; “I was used to sleep under a damp archway or in a wet cask, now I slumbers in a ’ouse by a fire, under a blankit. Vunce on a time I got wittles any’ow—sometimes didn’t get ’em at all; now I ’ave ’em riglar, as well as good, an’ ’ot. In wot poets call ‘the days gone by’—an’ nights too, let me tell you—I wos kicked an’ cuffed by everybody, an’ ’unted to death by bobbies. Now I’m—let alone! ’Eavenly condition—let alone! sometimes even complimented with such pleasant greetings as ‘Go it, Ginger!’ or ‘Does your mother know you’re out?’ Oh yes, granny! I made great sacrifices, I did, w’en I come ’ere to look arter you!”
Mrs Willis smiled, sneezed, and began her gruel. Slidder, who looked at her with deep interest, was called away by a knock at the door. Opening it he beheld a tall footman, with a parcel in his hand.
“Does a Mrs Willis live here?” he asked.
“No,” replied Slidder; “a Mrs Willis don’t live here, but the Mrs Willis—the on’y one vurth speakin’ of—does.”
“Ah!” replied the man, with a smile—for he was an amiable footman—“and I suppose you are young Slidder?”
“I am Mister Slidder, sir! And I would ’ave you remember,” said the urchin, with dignity, “that every Englishman’s ’ouse is his castle, and that neither imperence nor flunkies ’as a right to enter.”
“Indeed!” exclaimed the man, with affected surprise, “then I’m afraid this castle can’t be a strong one, or it ain’t well guarded, for ‘Imperence’ got into it somehow when you entered.”
“Good, good!” returned the boy, with the air of a connoisseur; “that’s worthy of the East End. You should ’ave bin one of us.—Now then, old six-foot! wot’s your business?”
“To deliver this parcel.”
“’And it over, then.”
“But I am also to see Mrs Willis, and ask how she is.”
“Walk in, then, an’ wipe your feet. We ain’t got a door-mat to-day. It’s a-comin’, like Christmas; but you may use the boards in the meantime.”
The footman turned out to be a pleasant, gossipy man, and soon won the hearts of old Mrs Willis and her young guardian. He had been sent, he said, by a Dr McTougall with a parcel containing wine, tea, sugar, rice, and a few other articles of food, and with a message that the doctor would call and see Mrs Willis that afternoon.
“Deary me, that’s very kind,” said the old woman; “but I wonder why he sent such things to me, and who told him I was in want of ’em?”
“It was a young gentleman who rescued most of the doctor’s family from a fire last night. His name, I believe, is Mellon—”
“Wot! Doctor John Mellon?” exclaimed Slidder, with widening eyes.
“Whether he’s John or doctor I cannot tell. All I know is that he’s Mister Mellon, and he’s bin rather knocked up by— But, bless me, I forgot: I was to say nothing about the—the fire till Dr McTougall had seen you. How stoopid of me; but things will slip out!”
He stopped abruptly, and placed his brown paper parcel on the bed.
“Now, I say, look here, Mister Six-foot or wotever’s your name,” said Slidder, with intense eagerness. “It’s of no use your tyin’ up the mouth o’ the bag now. The cat’s got out an’ can’t be got in again by no manner o’ means. Just make a clean breast of it, an’ tell it all out like a man,—there’s a good feller! If you don’t, I’ll tell Dr McTougall that you gave me an’ the old lady a full, true, an’ partikler account o’ the whole affair, from the fust bustin’ out o’ the flames, an’ the calling o’ the ingines, to the last crash o’ the fallin’ roof, and the roastin’ alive of the ’ousehold cat. I will, as sure as you’re a six-foot flunkey!”
Thus adjured and threatened, the gossipy footman made a clean breast of it. He told them how that I had acted like a hero at the fire, and then, after giving, in minute detail, an account of all that the reader already knows, he went on to say that the whole family, except Dr McTougall, was laid up with colds; that the governess was in a high fever; that the maid-servants, having been rescued on the shoulders of firemen from the attics, were completely broken down in their nerves; and that I had received an injury to my right leg, which, although I had said nothing about it on the night of the fire, had become so much worse in the morning that I could scarcely walk across the room. In these circumstances, he added, Dr McTougall had agreed to visit my poor people for me until I should recover.
“You see,” continued the footman, “I only heard a little of their conversation. Dr McTougall was saying when I come into the room: ‘Well, Mr Mellon,’ he said, ‘you must of necessity remain where you are, and you could not, let me tell you, be in better quarters. I will look after your patients till you are able to go about again—which won’t be long, I hope—and I’ll make a particular note of your old woman, and send her some wine and things immediately.’ I suppose he meant you, ma’am,” added the footman, “but having to leave the room again owing to some of the children howling for jam and pudding, I heard no more.”
Having thus delivered himself of his tale and parcel, the tall footman took his leave with many expressions of good-will.
“Now, granny,” remarked young Slidder, as he untied the parcel, and spread its contents on the small deal table, “I’ve got a wague suspicion that the ’ouse w’ich ’as gone to hashes is the wery ’ouse in w’ich Dr Mellon put his little dog last night. ’Cause why? Ain’t it the same identical street, an’ the same side o’ the street, and about the same part o’ the street? An’ didn’t both him and me forgit to ask the name o’ the people o’ the ’ouse, or to look at the number—so took up was we with partin’ from Punch? Wot more nat’ral than for him to go round on ’is way back to look at the ’ouse—supposin’ he was too late to call? Then, didn’t that six-footer say a terrier dog was reskooed from the lower premises? To be sure there’s many a terrier dog in London, but then didn’t he likewise say that the gov’ness o’ the family is a pretty gal? Wot more likely than that she’s my young lady? All that, you see, granny, is what the magistrates would call presumptuous evidence. But I’ll go and inquire for myself this wery evenin’ w’en you’re all settled an comf’rable, an’ w’en I’ve got Mrs Jones to look arter you.”
That evening, accordingly, when Robin Slidder—as I shall now call him—was away making his inquiries, Dr McTougall called on Mrs Willis. She was very weak and low at the time. The memory of her lost Edie had been heavy upon her, and she felt strangely disinclined to talk. The kindly doctor did not disturb her more than was sufficient to fully investigate her case.
When about to depart he took Mrs Jones into the passage.
“Now, my good woman,” he said, “I hope you will see the instructions you heard me give to Mrs Willis carried out. She is very low, but with good food and careful nursing may do well. Can you give her much of your time?”
“La, sir! yes. I’m a lone woman, sir, with nothin’ to do but take care of myself; an’ I’m that fond of Mrs Willis—she’s like my own mother.”
“Very good. And what of this boy who has come to live with her? D’you think he is steady—to be depended on?”
“Indeed I do, sir!” replied Mrs Jones, with much earnestness. “Though he did come from nowheres in partiklar, an’ don’t b’long to nobody, he’s a good boy, is little Slidder, and a better nurse you’ll not find in all the hospitals.”
“I wish I had found him at home. Will you give him this card, and tell him to call on me to-morrow morning between eight and nine? Let him ask particularly for me—Dr McTougall. I’m not in my own house, but in a friend’s at present; I was burnt out of my house last night.”
“Oh, sir!” exclaimed Mrs Jones with a shocked expression.
“Yes; accidents will happen, you know, to the most careful among us, Mrs Jones,” said the little doctor, with a smile, as he drew on his gloves. “Good evening. Take care of your patient now; I’m much interested in her case—because of the young doctor who visits her sometimes.”
“Dr Mellon?” exclaimed the woman.
“Yes. You know him?”
“Know him! I should think I do! He has great consideration for the poor. Ah! he is a gentleman, is Mr Mellon!”
“He is more than a gentleman, Mrs Jones,” said the little doctor with a kindly nod, as he turned and hurried away.
It may perhaps seem to savour of vanity and egotism my recording this conversation, but I do it chiefly for the purpose of showing how much of hearty gratitude there is for mere trifles among the poor, for the woman who was thus complimentary to me never received a farthing of money from my hands, and I am not aware of having ever taken any notice of her, except now and then wishing her a respectful good-evening, and making a few inquiries as to her health.
That night Dr McTougall came to me, on returning from his rounds, to report upon my district. I was in bed at the time, and suffering considerable pain from my bruised and swollen limb. Dumps was lying at my feet—dried, refreshed, and none the worse for his adventures. I may mention that I occupied a comfortable room in the house of the “City man,” who insisted on my staying with him until I should be quite able to walk to my lodgings. As Dr McTougall had taken my district, a brief note to Mrs Miff, my landlady, relieved my mind of all anxieties, professional and domestic, so that my doggie and I could enjoy ourselves as well as the swollen leg would permit.
“My dear young friend,” said the little doctor, as he entered, “your patients are all going on admirably, and as I mean to send my assistant to them regularly, you may make your mind quite easy. I’ve seen your old woman too, and she is charming. I don’t wonder you lost your heart to her. Your young protégé, however, was absent—the scamp!—but he had provided a good nurse to take his place in the person of Mrs Jones.”
“I know her—well,” said I; “she is a capital nurse. Little Slidder has, I am told, been here in your absence, but unfortunately the maid who opened the door to him would not let him see me, as I happened to be asleep at the time. However, he’ll be sure to call again. But you have not told me yet how Miss Blythe is.”
“Well, I’ve not had time to tell you,” replied the doctor, with a smile. “I’m sorry to say she is rather feverish; the excitement and exposure to the night air were a severe trial to her, for although she is naturally strong, it is not long since she recovered from a severe illness. Nothing, however, surprises me so much as the way in which my dear wife has come through it all. It seems to have given her quite a turn in the right direction. Why, she used to be as timid as a mouse! Now she scoffs at burglars. After what occurred last night she says she will fear nothing under the sun. Isn’t it odd? As for the children, I’m afraid the event has roused all that is wild and savage in their natures! They were kicking up a horrible shindy when I passed the dining-room—the hospital, as Dobson calls it—so I opened the door and peeped in. There they were, all standing up on their beds, shouting ‘Fire! fire! p’leece! p’leece!—engines! escapes! Come qui-i-i-ck!’
“‘Silence!’ I shouted.
“‘Oh, papa!’ they screamed, in delight, ‘what do you think we’ve had for supper?’
“‘Well, what?’
“‘Pudding and jam-pudding and jam—nearly all jam!’
“Then they burst again into a chorus of yells for engines and fire-escapes, while little Dolly’s voice rang high above the rest ‘Pudding and dam!—all dam!—p’leece! p’leece! fire and feeves!’ as I shut the door.
“But now, a word in your ear before I leave you for the night. Perhaps it may not surprise you to be told that I have an extensive practice. After getting into a new house, which I must do immediately, I shall want an assistant, who may in course of time, perhaps, become a partner. D’you understand? Are you open to a proposal?”
“My dear sir,” said I, “your kindness is very great, but you know that I am not yet—”
“Yes, yes, I know all about that. I merely wish to inject an idea into your brain, and leave it there to fructify. Go to sleep now, my dear young fellow, and let me wish you agreeable dreams.”
With a warm squeeze of the hand, and a pleasant nod, my new friend said good-night, and left me to my meditations.
Chapter Eight
Little Slidder Resists Temptation Successfully, and I Become Enslaved
“Pompey,” said I, one afternoon, while reclining on the sofa in Dobson’s drawing-room, my leg being not yet sufficiently restored to admit of my going out— “Pompey, I’ve got news for you.”
To my surprise my doggie would not answer to that name at all when I used it, though he did so when it was used by Miss Blythe.
“Dumps!” I said, in a somewhat injured tone.
Ears and tail at once replied.
“Come now, Punch,” I said, rather sternly; “I’ll call you what I please—Punch, Dumps, or Pompey—because you are my dog still, at least as long as your mistress and I live under the same roof; so, sir, if you take the Dumps when I call you Pompey, I’ll punch your head for you.”
Evidently the dog thought this a very flat jest, for he paid no attention to it whatever.
“Now, Dumps, come here and let’s be friends. Who do you think is coming to stay with us—to stay altogether? You’ll never guess. Your old friend and first master, little Slidder, no less. Think of that!”
Dumps wagged his tail vigorously; whether at the news, or because of pleasure at my brushing the hair off his soft brown eyes, and looking into them, I cannot tell.
“Yes,” I continued, “it’s quite true. This fire will apparently be the making of little Slidder, as well as you and me, for we are all going to live and work together. Isn’t that nice? Evidently Dr McTougall is a trump, and so is his friend Dobson, who puts this fine mansion at his disposal until another home can be got ready for us.”
I was interrupted at this point by an uproarious burst of laughter from the doctor himself, who had entered by the open door unobserved by me. I joined in the laugh against myself, but blushed, nevertheless, for man does not like, as a rule, to be caught talking earnestly either to himself or to a dumb creature.
“Why, Mellon,” he said, sitting down beside me, and patting my dog, “I imagined from your tones, as I entered, that you were having some serious conversation with my wife.”
“No; Mrs McTougall has not yet returned from her drive. I was merely having a chat with Dumps. I had of late, in my lodgings, got into a way of thinking aloud, as it were, while talking to my dog. I suppose it was with an unconscious desire to break the silence of my room.”
“No doubt, no doubt,” replied the doctor, with a touch of sympathy in his tone. “You must have been rather lonely in that attic of yours. And yet do you know, I sometimes sigh for the quiet of such an attic! Perhaps when you’ve been some months under the same roof with these miniature thunderstorms, Jack, Harry, Job, Jenny, and Dolly, you’ll long to go back to the attic.”
A tremendous thump on the floor overhead, followed by a wild uproar, sent the doctor upstairs—three steps at a stride. I sat prudently still till he returned, which he did in a few minutes, laughing.
“What d’you think it was?” he cried, panting. “Only my Dolly tumbling off the chest of drawers. My babes have many pleasant little games. Among others, cutting off the heads of dreadful traitors is a great favourite. They roll up a sheet into a ball for the head. Then each of them is led in turn to the scaffold, which is the top of a chest of drawers. One holds the ball against the criminal’s shoulders, another cuts it off with a wooden knife, a basket receives it below, then one of them takes it out, and, holding it aloft shouts ‘Behold the head of a traitor!’ It seems that four criminals had been safely decapitated, and Dolly was being led to the fatal block, when she slipped her foot and fell to the ground, overturning Harry and a chair in her descent. That was all.”
“Not hurt, I hope?”
“Oh no! They never get hurt—seriously hurt, I mean. As to black-and-blue shins, scratches, cuts, and bumps, they may be said to exist in a perpetually maimed condition.”
“Strange!” said I musingly, “that they should like to play at such a disagreeable subject.”
“Disagreeable!” exclaimed my friend, “pooh! that’s nothing. You should see them playing at the horrors of the Inquisition. My poor wife sometimes shudders at the idea that we have been gifted with five monsters of cruelty, but any one can see with half an eye that it is a fine sense of the propriety of retributive justice that influences them.”
“Any one who chooses to go and look at the five innocent faces when they are asleep,” said I, laughing, “can see with a quarter of an eye that you and Mrs McTougall are to be congratulated on the nature of your little ones.”
“Of course we are, my dear fellow,” returned the doctor with enthusiasm. “But—to change the subject—has little Slidder been here to-day?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Ah! there he is” said the doctor, as, at that instant, the door-bell rang; “there is insolence in the very tone of his ring. He has pulled the visitor’s bell, too, and there goes the knocker! Of all the imps that walk, a London street-boy is—” The sentence was cut short by the opening of the door and the entrance of my little protégé. He had evidently got himself up for the occasion, for his shoeblack uniform had been well brushed, his hands and face severely washed, and his hair plastered well down with soap-and-water.
“Come in, Slidder—that’s your name, isn’t it?” said the doctor.
“It is, sir—Robin Slidder, at your sarvice,” replied the urchin, giving me a familiar nod. “’Ope your leg ain’t so cranky as it wos, sir. Gittin’ all square, eh?”
I repressed a smile with difficulty as I replied— “It is much better, thank you. Attend to what Dr McTougall has to say to you.”
“Hall serene,” he replied, looking with cool urbanity in the doctor’s face, “fire away!”
“You’re a shoeblack, I see,” said the doctor.
“That’s my purfession.”
“Do you like it?”
“Vell, w’en it’s dirty weather, with lots o’ mud, an’ coppers goin’, I does. W’en it’s all sunshine an’ starwation, I doesn’t.”
“My friend Mr Mellon tells me that you’re a very good boy.”
Little Slidder looked at me with a solemn, reproachful air.
“Oh! what a wopper!” he said.
We both laughed at this.
“Come, Slidder,” said I, “you must learn to treat us with more respect, else I shall have to change my opinion of you.”
“Wery good, sir, that’s your business, not mine. I wos inwited here, an’ here I am. Now, wot ’ave you got to say to me?—that’s the p’int.”
“Can you read and write?” resumed the doctor.
“Cern’ly not,” replied the boy, with the air of one who had been insulted; “wot d’you take me for? D’you think I’m a genius as can read an’ write without ’avin’ bin taught or d’you think I’m a monster as wos born readin’ an’ writin’? I’ve ’ad no school to go to nor nobody to putt me there.”
“I thought the School Board looked after such as you.”
“So they does, sir; but I’ve been too many for the school-boarders.”
“Then it’s your own fault that you’ve not been taught?” said the doctor, somewhat severely.
“Not at all,” returned the urchin, with quiet assurance. “It’s the dooty o’ the school-boarders to ketch me, an’ they can’t ketch me. That’s not my fault. It’s my superiority.”
My friend looked at the little creature before him with much surprise. After a few seconds’ contemplation and thought, he continued— “Well, Slidder, as my friend here says you are a good sort of boy, I am bound to believe him, though appearances are somewhat against you. Now, I am in want of a smart boy at present, to attend to the hall-door, show patients into my consulting-room, run messages—in short, make himself generally useful about the house. How would such a situation suit you?”
“W’y, doctor,” said the boy, ignoring the question, “how could any boy attend on your ’all-door w’en it’s burnt to hashes?”
“We will manage to have another door,” replied Dr McTougall, with a forbearing smile; “meanwhile you could practise on the door of this house.—But that is not answering my question, boy. How would you like the place? You’d have light work, a good salary, pleasant society below stairs, and a blue uniform. In short, I’d make a page-in-buttons of you.”
“Wot about the wittles?” demanded this remarkable boy.
“Of course you’d fare as well as the other servants,” returned the doctor, rather testily, for his opinion of my little friend was rapidly falling; I could see that, to my regret.
“Now give me an answer at once,” he continued sharply. “Would you like to come?”
“Not by no manner of means,” replied Slidder promptly.
We both looked at him in amazement.
“Why, Slidder, you stupid fellow!” said I, “what possesses you to refuse so good an offer?”
“Dr Mellon,” he replied, turning on me with a flush of unwonted earnestness, “d’you think I’d be so shabby, so low, so mean, as to go an’ forsake Granny Willis for all the light work an’ good salaries and pleasant society an’ blue-uniforms-with-buttons in London? Who’d make ’er gruel? Who’d polish ’er shoes every mornin’ till you could see to shave in ’em, though she don’t never put ’em on? Who’d make ’er bed an’ light ’er fires an’ fetch ’er odd bits o’ coal? An’ who’d read the noos to ’er, an’—”
“Why, Slidder,” interrupted Dr McTougall, “you said just now that you could not read.”
“No more I can, sir but I takes in a old newspaper to ’er every morning’, an’ sets myself down by the fire with it before me an’ pretends to read. I inwents the noos as I goes along; an you should see that old lady’s face, an’ the way ’er eyes opens we’n I’m a tapin’ off the murders an’ the ’ighway robberies, an’ the burglaries an’ the fires at ’ome, an’ the wars an’ earthquakes an’ other scrimmages abroad. It do cheer ’er up most wonderful. Of course, I stick in any hodd bits o’ real noos I ’appens to git hold of, but I ain’t partickler.”
“Apparently not,” said the doctor, laughing. “Well, I see it’s of no use tempting you to forsake your present position—indeed, I would not wish you to leave it. Some day I may find means to have old Mrs Willis taken better care of, and then—well, we shall see. Meanwhile, I respect your feelings. Good-bye, and give my regards to granny. Say I’ll be over to see her soon.”
“Stay,” said I, as the boy turned to leave, “you never told me that one of your names was Robin.”
“’Cause it wasn’t w’en I saw you last; I only got it a few days ago.”
“Indeed! From whom?”
“From Granny Willis. She gave me the name, an’ I likes it, an’ mean to stick by it—Good arternoon, gen’lemen. Ta, ta, Punch.”
At the word my doggie bounced from under my hand and began to leap joyfully round the boy.
“I say,” said Robin, pausing at the door and looking back, “she’s all right I ’ope. Gittin’ better?”
“Who do you mean?”
“W’y, the guv’ness, in course—my young lady.”
“Oh, yes! I am happy to say she is better,” said the doctor, much amused by the anxious look of the face, which had hitherto been the quintessence of cool self-possession. “But she has had a great shake, and will have to be sent to the country for change of air when we can venture to move her.”
