Robert Michael Ballantyne
Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished: A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure
Chapter Three.
Poverty Manages to Board out her Infant for Nothing
On the night of the day about which we have been writing, a woman, dressed in “unwomanly rags” crept out of the shadow of the houses near London Bridge. She was a thin, middle-aged woman, with a countenance from which sorrow, suffering, and sin had not been able to obliterate entirely the traces of beauty. She carried a bundle in her arms which was easily recognisable as a baby, from the careful and affectionate manner in which the woman’s thin, out-spread fingers grasped it.
Hurrying on to the bridge till she reached the middle of one of the arches, she paused and looked over. The Thames was black and gurgling, for it was intensely dark, and the tide half ebb at the time. The turbid waters chafed noisily on the stone piers as if the sins and sorrows of the great city had been somehow communicated to them.
But the distance from the parapet to the surface of the stream was great. It seemed awful in the woman’s eyes. She shuddered and drew back.
“Oh! for courage—only for one minute!” she murmured, clasping the bundle closer to her breast.
The action drew off a corner of the scanty rag which she called a shawl, and revealed a small and round, yet exceedingly thin face, the black eyes of which seemed to gaze in solemn wonder at the scene of darkness visible which was revealed. The woman stood between two lamps in the darkest place she could find, but enough of light reached her to glitter in the baby’s solemn eyes as they met her gaze, and it made a pitiful attempt to smile as it recognised its mother.
“God help me! I can’t,” muttered the woman with a shiver, as if an ice-block had touched her heart.
She drew the rag hastily over the baby’s head again, pressed it closer to her breast, retraced her steps, and dived into the shadows from which she had emerged.
This was one of the “lower orders” to whom Sir Richard Brandon had such an objection, whom he found it, he said, so difficult to deal with, (no wonder, for he never tried to deal with them at all, in any sense worthy of the name), and whom it was, he said, useless to assist, because all he could do in such a vast accumulation of poverty would be a mere drop in the bucket. Hence Sir Richard thought it best to keep the drop in his pocket where it could be felt and do good—at least to himself, rather than dissipate it in an almost empty bucket. The bucket, however, was not quite empty—thanks to a few thousands of people who differed from the knight upon that point.
The thin woman hastened through the streets as regardless of passers-by as they were of her, until she reached the neighbourhood of Commercial Street, Spitalfields.
Here she paused and looked anxiously round her. She had left the main thoroughfare, and the spot on which she stood was dimly lighted. Whatever she looked or waited for, did not, however, soon appear, for she stood under a lamp-post, muttering to herself, “I must git rid of it. Better to do so than see it starved to death before my eyes.”
Presently a foot-fall was heard, and a man drew near. The woman gazed intently into his face. It was not a pleasant face. There was a scowl on it. She drew back and let him pass. Then several women passed, but she took no notice of them. Then another man appeared. His face seemed a jolly one. The woman stepped forward at once and confronted him.
“Please, sir,” she began, but the man was too sharp for her.
“Come now—you’ve brought out that baby on purpose to humbug people with it. Don’t fancy you’ll throw dust in my eyes. I’m too old a cock for that. Don’t you know that you’re breaking the law by begging?”
“I’m not begging,” retorted the woman, almost fiercely.
“Oh! indeed. Why do you stop me, then?”
“I merely wished to ask if your name is Thompson.”
“Ah hem!” ejaculated the man with a broad grin, “well no, madam, my name is not Thompson.”
“Well, then,” rejoined the woman, still indignantly, “you may move on.”
She had used an expression all too familiar to herself, and the man, obeying the order with a bow and a mocking laugh, disappeared like those who had gone before him.
For some time no one else appeared save a policeman. When he approached, the woman went past him down the street, as if bent on some business, but when he was out of sight she returned to the old spot, which was near the entrance to an alley.
At last the woman’s patience was rewarded by the sight of a burly little elderly man, whose face of benignity was unmistakably genuine. Remembering the previous man’s reference to the baby, she covered it up carefully, and held it more like a bundle.
Stepping up to the newcomer at once, she put the same question as to name, and also asked if he lived in Russell Square.
“No, my good woman,” replied the burly little man, with a look of mingled surprise and pity, “my name is not Thompson. It is Twitter—Samuel Twitter, of Twitter, Slime and—, but,” he added, checking himself, under a sudden and rare impulse of prudence, “why do you ask my name and address?”
The woman gave an almost hysterical laugh at having been so successful in her somewhat clumsy scheme, and, without uttering another word, darted down the alley. She passed rapidly round by a back way to another point of the same street she had left—well ahead of the spot where she had stood so long and so patiently that night. Here she suddenly uncovered the baby’s face and kissed it passionately for a few moments. Then, wrapping it in the ragged shawl, with its little head out, she laid it on the middle of the footpath full in the light of a lamp, and retired to await the result.
When the woman rushed away, as above related, Mr Samuel Twitter stood for some minutes rooted to the spot, lost in amazement. He was found in that condition by the returning policeman.
“Constable,” said he, cocking his hat to one side the better to scratch his bald head, “there are strange people in this region.”
“Indeed there are, sir.”
“Yes, but I mean very strange people.”
“Well, sir, if you insist on it, I won’t deny that some of them are very strange.”
“Yes, well—good-night, constable,” said Mr Twitter, moving slowly forward in a mystified state of mind, while the guardian of the night continued his rounds, thinking to himself that he had just parted from one of the very strangest of the people.
Suddenly Samuel Twitter came to a full stop, for there lay the small baby gazing at him with its solemn eyes, apparently quite indifferent to the hardness and coldness of its bed of stone.
“Abandoned!” gasped the burly little man.
Whether Mr Twitter referred to the infant’s moral character, or to its being shamefully forsaken, we cannot now prove, but he instantly caught the bundle in his arms and gazed at it. Possibly his gaze may have been too intense, for the mild little creature opened a small mouth that bore no proportion whatever to the eyes, and attempted to cry, but the attempt was a failure. It had not strength to cry.
The burly little man’s soul was touched to the centre by the sight. He kissed the baby’s forehead, pressed it to his ample breast, and hurried away. If he had taken time to think he might have gone to a police-office, or a night refuge, or some such haven of rest for the weary, but when Twitter’s feelings were touched he became a man of impulse. He did not take time to think—except to the extent that, on reaching the main thoroughfare, he hailed a cab and was driven home.
The poor mother had followed him with the intention of seeing him home. Of course the cab put an end to that. She felt comparatively easy, however, knowing, as she did, that her child was in the keeping of “Twitter, Slime and —.” That was quite enough to enable her to trace Mr Twitter out. Comforting herself as well as she could with this reflection, she sat down in a dark corner on a cold door-step, and, covering her face with both hands, wept as though her heart would break.
Gradually her sobs subsided, and, rising, she hurried away, shivering with cold, for her thin cotton dress was a poor protection against the night chills, and her ragged shawl was—gone with the baby.
In a few minutes she reached a part of the Whitechapel district where some of the deepest poverty and wretchedness in London is to be found. Turning into a labyrinth of small streets and alleys, she paused in the neighbourhood of the court in which was her home—if such it could be called.
“Is it worth while going back to him?” she muttered. “He nearly killed baby, and it wouldn’t take much to make him kill me. And oh! he was so different—once!”
While she stood irresolute, the man of whom she spoke chanced to turn the corner, and ran against her, somewhat roughly.
“Hallo! is that you?” he demanded, in tones that told too clearly where he had been spending the night.
“Yes, Ned, it’s me. I was just thinking about going home.”
“Home, indeed—’stime to b’goin’ home. Where’v you bin? The babby ’ll ’v bin squallin’ pretty stiff by this time.”
“No fear of baby now,” returned the wife almost defiantly; “it’s gone.”
“Gone!” almost shouted the husband. “You haven’t murdered it, have you?”
“No, but I’ve put it in safe keeping, where you can’t get at it, and, now I know that, I don’t care what you do to me.”
“Ha! we’ll see about that. Come along.”
He seized the woman by the arm and hurried her towards their dwelling.
It was little better than a cellar, the door being reached by a descent of five or six much-worn steps. To the surprise of the couple the door, which was usually shut at that hour, stood partly open, and a bright light shone within.
“Wastin’ coal and candle,” growled the man with an angry oath, as he approached.
“Hetty didn’t use to be so extravagant,” remarked the woman, in some surprise.
As she spoke the door was flung wide open, and an overgrown but very handsome girl peered out.
“Oh! father, I thought it was your voice,” she said. “Mother, is that you? Come in, quick. Here’s Bobby brought home in a cab with a broken leg.”
On hearing this the man’s voice softened, and, entering the room, he went up to a heap of straw in one corner whereon our little friend Bobby Frog—the street-Arab—lay.
“Hallo! Bobby, wot’s wrong with ’ee? You ain’t used to come to grief,” said the father, laying his hand on the boy’s shoulder, and giving him a rough shake.
Things oftentimes “are not what they seem.” The shake was the man’s mode of expressing sympathy, for he was fond of his son, regarding him, with some reason, as a most hopeful pupil in the ways of wickedness.
“It’s o’ no use, father,” said the boy, drawing his breath quickly and knitting his brows, “you can’t stir me up with a long pole now. I’m past that.”
“What! have ’ee bin runned over?”
“No—on’y run down, or knocked down.”
“Who did it? On’y give me his name an’ address, an’ as sure as my name’s Ned I’ll—”
He finished the sentence with a sufficiently expressive scowl and clenching of a huge fist, which had many a time done great execution in the prize ring.
“It wasn’t a he, father, it was a she.”
“Well, no matter, if I on’y had my fingers on her windpipe I’d squeeze it summat.”
“If you did I’d bang your nose! She didn’t go for to do it a-purpose, you old grampus,” retorted Bobby, intending the remark to be taken as a gentle yet affectionate reproof. “A doctor’s bin an’ set my leg,” continued the boy, “an’ made it as stiff as a poker wi’ what ’e calls splints. He says I won’t be able to go about for ever so many weeks.”
“An’ who’s to feed you, I wonder, doorin’ them weeks? An’ who sent for the doctor? Was it him as supplied the fire an’ candle to-night?”
“No, father, it was me,” answered Hetty, who was engaged in stirring something in a small saucepan, the loose handle of which was attached to its battered body by only one rivet; the other rivet had given way on an occasion when Ned Frog sent it flying through the doorway after his retreating wife. “You see I was paid my wages to-night, so I could afford it, as well as to buy some coal and a candle, for the doctor said Bobby must be kept warm.”
“Afford it!” exclaimed Ned, in rising wrath, “how can ’ee say you can afford it w’en I ’aven’t had enough grog to half screw me, an’ not a brown left. Did the doctor ask a fee?”
“No, father, I offered him one, but he wouldn’t take it.”
“Ah—very good on ’im! I wonder them fellows has the cheek to ask fees for on’y givin’ advice. W’y, I’d give advice myself all day long at a penny an hour, an’ think myself well off too if I got that—better off than them as got the advice anyhow. What are you sittin’ starin’ at an’ sulkin’ there for?”
This last remark was addressed gruffly to Mrs Frog, who, during the previous conversation, had seated herself on a low three-legged stool, and, clasping her hands over her knees, gazed at the dirty blank walls in blanker despair.
The poor woman realised the situation better than her drunken husband did. As a bird-fancier he contributed little, almost nothing, to the general fund on which this family subsisted. He was a huge, powerful fellow, and had various methods of obtaining money—some obvious and others mysterious—but nearly all his earnings went to the gin-palace, for Ned was a man of might, and could stand an enormous quantity of drink. Hetty, who worked, perhaps we should say slaved, for a firm which paid her one shilling a week, could not manage to find food for them all. Mrs Frog herself with her infant to care for, had found it hard work at any time to earn a few pence, and now Bobby’s active little limbs were reduced to inaction, converting him into a consumer instead of a producer. In short, the glaring fact that the family expenses would be increased while the family income was diminished, stared Mrs Frog as blankly in the face as she stared at the dirty blank wall.
And her case was worse, even, than people in better circumstances might imagine, for the family lived so literally from hand to mouth that there was no time even to think when a difficulty arose or disaster befell. They rented their room from a man who styled it a furnished apartment, in virtue of a rickety table, a broken chair, a worn-out sheet or two, a dilapidated counterpane, four ragged blankets, and the infirm saucepan before mentioned, besides a few articles of cracked or broken crockery. For this accommodation the landlord charged ninepence per day, which sum had to be paid every night before the family was allowed to retire to rest! In the event of failure to pay they would have been turned out into the street at once, and the door padlocked. Thus the necessity for a constant, though small, supply of cash became urgent, and the consequent instability of “home” very depressing.
To preserve his goods from the pawnbroker, and prevent a moonlight flitting, this landlord had printed on his sheets the words “stolen from —” and on the blankets and counterpane were stamped the words “stop thief!”
Mrs Frog made no reply to her husband’s gruff question, which induced the man to seize an empty bottle, as being the best way of rousing her attention.
“Come, you let mother alone, dad,” suggested Bobby, “she ain’t a-aggrawatin’ of you just now.”
“Why, mother,” exclaimed Hetty, who was so busy with Bobby’s supper, and, withal, so accustomed to the woman’s looks of hopeless misery that she had failed to observe anything unusual until her attention was thus called to her, “what ever have you done with the baby?”
“Ah—you may well ask that,” growled Ned.
Even the boy seemed to forget his pain for a moment as he now observed, anxiously, that his mother had not the usual bundle on her breast.
“The baby’s gone!” she said, bitterly, still keeping her eyes on the blank wall.
“Gone!—how?—lost? killed? speak, mother,” burst from Hetty and the boy.
“No, only gone to where it will be better cared for than here.”
“Come, explain, old woman,” said Ned, again laying his hand on the bottle.
As Hetty went and took her hand gently, Mrs Frog condescended to explain, but absolutely refused to tell to whose care the baby had been consigned.
“Well—it ain’t a bad riddance, after all,” said the man, as he rose, and, staggering into a corner where another bundle of straw was spread on the floor, flung himself down. Appropriately drawing two of the “stop thief” blankets over him, he went to sleep.
Then Mrs Frog, feeling comparatively sure of quiet for the remainder of the night, drew her stool close to the side of her son, and held such intercourse with him as she seldom had the chance of holding while Bobby was in a state of full health and bodily vigour. Hetty, meanwhile, ministered to them both, for she was one of those dusty diamonds of what may be styled the East-end diggings of London—not so rare, perhaps, as many people may suppose—whose lustre is dimmed and intrinsic value somewhat concealed by the neglect and the moral as well as physical filth by which they are surrounded.
“Of course you’ve paid the ninepence, Hetty?”
“Yes, mother.”
“You might ’ave guessed that,” said Bobby, “for, if she ’adn’t we shouldn’t ’ave bin here.”
“That and the firing and candle, with what the doctor ordered, has used up all I had earned, even though I did some extra work and was paid for it,” said Hetty with a sigh. “But I don’t grudge it, Bobby—I’m only sorry because there’s nothing more coming to me till next week.”
“Meanwhile there is nothing for this week,” said Mrs Frog with a return of the despair, as she looked at her prostrate son, “for all I can manage to earn will barely make up the rent—if it does even that—and father, you know, drinks nearly all he makes. God help us!”
“God will help us,” said Hetty, sitting down on the floor and gently stroking the back of her mother’s hand, “for He sent the trouble, and will hear us when we cry to Him.”
“Pray to Him, then, Hetty, for it’s no use askin’ me to join you. I can’t pray. An’ don’t let your father hear, else he’ll be wild.”
The poor girl bent her head on her knees as she sat, and prayed silently. Her mother and brother, neither of whom had any faith in prayer, remained silent, while her father, breathing stertorously in the corner, slept the sleep of the drunkard.
Chapter Four.
Samuel Twitter astonishes Mrs Twitter and her Friends
In a former chapter we described, to some extent, the person and belongings of a very poor man with five thousand a year. Let us now make the acquaintance of a very rich one with an income of five hundred.
He has already introduced himself to the reader under the name of Samuel Twitter.
On the night of which we write Mrs Twitter happened to have a “few friends” to tea. And let no one suppose that Mrs Twitter’s few friends were to be put off with afternoon tea—that miserable invention of modern times—nor with a sham meal of sweet warm water and thin bread and butter. By no means. We have said that Samuel Twitter was rich, and Mrs Twitter, conscious of her husband’s riches, as well as grateful for them, went in for the substantial and luxurious to an amazing extent.
Unlimited pork sausages and inexhaustible buttered toast, balanced with muffins or crumpets, was her idea of “tea.” The liquid was a secondary point—in one sense—but it was always strong. It was the only strong liquid in fact allowed in the house, for Mr Twitter, Mrs Twitter, and all the little Twitters were members of the Blue Ribbon Army; more or less enthusiastic according to their light and capacity.
The young Twitters descended in a graduated scale from Sammy, the eldest, (about sixteen), down through Molly, and Willie, and Fred, and Lucy, to Alice the so-called “baby”—though she was at that time a remarkably robust baby of four years.
Mrs Twitter’s few friends were aware of her tendencies, and appreciated her hospitality, insomuch that the “few” bade fair to develop by degrees into many.
Well, Mrs Twitter had her few friends to tea, and conviviality was at its height. The subject of conversation was poverty. Mrs Loper, a weak-minded but amiable lady, asserted that a large family with 500 pounds a year was a poor family. Mrs Loper did not know that Mrs Twitter’s income was five hundred, but she suspected it. Mrs Twitter herself carefully avoided giving the slightest hint on the subject.
“Of course,” continued Mrs Loper, “I don’t mean to say that people with five hundred are very poor, you know; indeed it all depends on the family. With six children like you, now, to feed and clothe and educate, and with everything so dear as it is now, I should say that five hundred was poverty.”
“Well, I don’t quite agree with you, Mrs Loper, on that point. To my mind it does not so much depend on the family, as on the notions, and the capacity to manage, in the head of the family. I remember one family just now, whose head was cut off suddenly, I may say in the prime of life. A hundred and fifty a year or thereabouts was the income the widow had to count on, and she was left with five little ones to rear. She trained them well, gave them good educations, made most of their garments with her own hands when they were little, and sent one of her boys to college, yet was noted for the amount of time she spent in visiting the poor, the sick, and the afflicted, for whom she had always a little to spare out of her limited income. Now, if wealth is to be measured by results, I think we may say that that poor lady was rich. She was deeply mourned by a large circle of poor people when she was taken home to the better land. Her small means, having been judiciously invested by a brother, increased a little towards the close of life, but she never was what the world esteems rich.”
Mrs Twitter looked at a very tall man with a dark unhandsome countenance, as if to invite his opinion.
“I quite agree with you,” he said, helping himself to a crumpet, “there are some people with small incomes who seem to be always in funds, just as there are other people with large incomes who are always hard-up. The former are really rich, the latter really poor.”
Having delivered himself of these sentiments somewhat sententiously, Mr Crackaby,—that was his name,—proceeded to consume the crumpet.
There was a general tendency on the part of the other guests to agree with their hostess, but one black sheep in the flock objected. He quite agreed, of course, with the general principle that liberality with small means was beautiful to behold as well as desirable to possess—the liberality, not the small means—and that, on the other hand, riches with a narrow niggardly spirit was abominable, but then—and the black sheep came, usually, to the strongest part of his argument when he said “but then”—it was an uncommonly difficult thing, when everything was up to famine prices, and gold was depreciated in value owing to the gold-fields, and silver was nowhere, and coppers were changed into bronze,—exceedingly difficult to practise liberality and at the same time to make the two ends meet.
As no one clearly saw the exact bearing of the black sheep’s argument, they all replied with that half idiotic simper with which Ignorance seeks to conceal herself, and which Politeness substitutes for the more emphatic “pooh,” or the inelegant “bosh.” Then, applying themselves with renewed zest to the muffins, they put about ship, nautically speaking, and went off on a new tack.
“Mr Twitter is rather late to-night, I think?” said Mr Crackaby, consulting his watch, which was antique and turnipy in character.
“He is, indeed,” replied the hostess, “business must have detained him, for he is the very soul of punctuality. That is one of his many good qualities, and it is such a comfort, for I can always depend on him to the minute,—breakfast, dinner, tea; he never keeps us waiting, as too many men do, except, of course, when he is unavoidably detained by business.”
“Ah, yes, business has much to answer for,” remarked Mrs Loper, in a tone which suggested that she held business to be an incorrigibly bad fellow; “whatever mischief happens with one’s husband it’s sure to be business that did it.”
“Pardon me, madam,” objected the black sheep, whose name, by the way, was Stickler, “business does bring about much of the disaster that often appertains to wedded life, but mischief is sometimes done by other means, such, for instance, as accidents, robberies, murders—”
“Oh! Mr Stickler,” suddenly interrupted a stout, smiling lady, named Larrabel, who usually did the audience part of Mrs Twitter’s little tea parties, “how can you suggest such ideas, especially when Mr Twitter is unusually late?”
Mr Stickler protested that he had no intention of alarming the company by disagreeable suggestions, that he had spoken of accident, robbery, and murder in the abstract.
“There, you’ve said it all over again,” interrupted Mrs Larrabel, with an unwonted frown.
“But then,” continued Stickler, regardless of the interruption, “a broken leg, or a rifled pocket and stunned person, or a cut windpipe, may be applicable to the argument in hand without being applied to Mr Twitter.”
“Surely,” said Mrs Loper, who deemed the reply unanswerable.
In this edifying strain the conversation flowed on until the evening grew late and the party began to grow alarmed.
“I do hope nothing has happened to him,” said Mrs Loper, with a solemnised face.
“I think not. I have seen him come home much later than this—though not often,” said the hostess, the only one of the party who seemed quite at ease, and who led the conversation back again into shallower channels.
As the night advanced, however, the alarm became deeper, and it was even suggested by Mrs Loper that Crackaby should proceed to Twitter’s office—a distance of three miles—to inquire whether and when he had left; while the smiling Mrs Larrabel proposed to send information to the headquarters of the police in Scotland Yard, because the police knew everything, and could find out anything.
“You have no idea, my dear,” she said, “how clever they are at Scotland Yard. Would you believe it, I left my umbrellar the other day in a cab, and I didn’t know the number of the cab, for numbers won’t remain in my head, nor the look of the cabman, for I never look at cabmen, they are so rude sometimes. I didn’t even remember the place where I got into the cab, for I can’t remember places when I’ve to go to so many, so I gave up my umbrellar for lost and was going away, when a policeman stepped up to me and asked in a very civil tone if I had lost anything. He was so polite and pleasant that I told him of my loss, though I knew it would do me no good, as he had not seen the cab or the cabman.
“‘I think, madam,’ he said, ‘that if you go down to Scotland Yard to-morrow morning, you may probably find it there.’
“‘Young man,’ said I, ‘do you take me for a fool!’
“‘No, madam, I don’t,’ he replied.
“‘Or do you take my umbrellar for a fool,’ said I, ‘that it should walk down to Scotland Yard of its own accord and wait there till I called for it?’
“‘Certainly not, madam,’ he answered with such a pleasant smile that I half forgave him.
“‘Nevertheless if you happen to be in the neighbourhood of Scotland Yard to-morrow,’ he added, ‘it might be as well to call in and inquire.’
“‘Thank you,’ said I, with a stiff bow as I left him. On the way home, however, I thought there might be something in it, so I did go down to Scotland Yard next day, where I was received with as much civility as if I had been a lady of quality, and was taken to a room as full of umbrellas as an egg’s full of meat—almost.
“‘You’d know the umbrellar if you saw it, madam,’ said the polite constable who escorted me.
“‘Know it, sir!’ said I, ‘yes, I should think I would. Seven and sixpence it cost me—new, and I’ve only had it a week—brown silk with a plain handle—why, there it is!’ And there it was sure enough, and he gave it to me at once, only requiring me to write my name in a book, which I did with great difficulty because of my gloves, and being so nervous. Now, how did the young policeman that spoke to me the day before know that my umbrellar would go there, and how did it get there? They say the days of miracles are over, but I don’t think so, for that was a miracle if ever there was one.”
“The days of miracles are indeed over, ma’am,” said the black sheep, “but then that is no reason why things which are in themselves commonplace should not appear miraculous to the uninstructed mind. When I inform you that our laws compel cabmen under heavy penalties to convey left umbrellas and parcels to the police-office, the miracle may not seem quite so surprising.”
Most people dislike to have their miracles unmasked. Mrs Larrabel turned from the black sheep to her hostess without replying, and repeated her suggestion about making inquiries at Scotland Yard—thus delicately showing that although, possibly, convinced, she was by no means converted.
They were interrupted at this point by a hurried knock at the street door.
“There he is at last,” exclaimed every one.
“It is his knock, certainly,” said Mrs Twitter, with a perplexed look, “but rather peculiar—not so firm as usual—there it is again! Impatient! I never knew my Sam impatient before in all our wedded life. You’d better open the door, dear,” she said, turning to the eldest Twitter, he being the only one of the six who was privileged to sit up late, “Mary seems to have fallen asleep.”
Before the eldest Twitter could obey, the maligned Mary was heard to open the door and utter an exclamation of surprise, and her master’s step was heard to ascend the stair rather unsteadily.
The guests looked at each other anxiously. It might be that to some minds—certainly to that of the black sheep—visions of violated blue-ribbonism occurred. As certainly these visions did not occur to Mrs Twitter. She would sooner have doubted her clergyman than her husband. Trustfulness formed a prominent part of her character, and her confidence in her Sam was unbounded.
Even when her husband came against the drawing-room door with an awkward bang—the passage being dark—opened it with a fling, and stood before the guests with a flushed countenance, blazing eyes, a peculiar deprecatory smile, and a dirty ragged bundle in his arms, she did not doubt him.
