“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.”
I confess that I was much surprised, but not a little gratified, by the very decided manner in which Slidder avowed his determination to stand fast by the poor old woman in whom I had been led to take so strong an interest. Hitherto I had felt some uncertainty as to how far I could depend on the boy’s affection for Mrs Willis, and his steadiness of purpose; now I felt quite sure of him.
Dr McTougall felt as I did in the matter, and so did his friend the City man. I had half expected that Dobson would have laughed at us for what he sometimes styled our softness, because he had so much to do with sharpers and sharp practice, but I was mistaken. He quite agreed with us in our opinion of my little waif, and spoke admiringly of those who sought, through evil and good report, to rescue our “City Arabs” from destruction. And Dobson did more than speak: he gave liberally out of his ample fortune to the good cause.
That evening, just after the gas was lighted, while I was lying on the sofa thinking of these things, and toying with Dumps’s ears, the door opened and Mrs McTougall entered, with Miss Blythe leaning on her arm. It was the first time she had come down to the drawing-room since her illness. She was thin, and pale, but to my mind more beautiful than ever, for her brown eyes seemed to grow larger and more lustrous as they beamed upon me.
I leaped up, sending an agonising shoot of pain through my leg, and hastened to meet her. Dumps, as if jealous of me, sprang wildly on before, and danced round his mistress in a whirlwind of delight.
“I am so glad to see you, Miss Blythe,” I stammered; “I had feared the consequences of that terrible night—that rude descent. You—you—are better, I—”
“Thank you; very much better,” she replied, with a sweet smile; “and how shall I ever express my debt of gratitude to you, Mr Mellon?”
She extended her delicate hand. I grasped it; she shook mine heartily.
That shake fixed my fate. No doubt it was the simple and natural expression of a grateful heart for a really important service; but I cared nothing about that. She blushed as I looked at her, and stooped to pat the jealous and impatient Dumps.
“Sit here, darling, on this easy-chair,” said Mrs McTougall; “you know the doctor allows you only half an hour—or an hour at most—to-night; you may be up longer to-morrow. There; and you are not to speak much, remember.—Mr Mellon, you must address yourself to me. Lilly is only allowed to listen.
“Yes, as you truly said, Mr Mellon,” continued the good lady, who was somewhat garrulous, “her descent was rough, and indeed, so was mine. Oh! I shall never forget that rough monster into whose arms you thrust me that awful night; but he was a brave and strong monster too. He just gathered me up like a bundle of clothes, and went crashing down the blazing stair, through fire and smoke—and through bricks and mortar too, it seemed to me, from the noise and shocks. But we came out safe, thank God, and I had not a scratch, though I noticed that my monster’s hair and beard were on fire, and his face was cut and bleeding. I can’t think how he carried me so safely.”
“Ah! the firemen have a knack of doing that sort of thing,” said I, speaking to Mrs McTougall, but looking at Lilly Blythe.
“So I have heard. The brave, noble men,” said Lilly, speaking to Mrs McTougall, but looking at me.
I know not what we conversed about during the remainder of that hour. Whether I talked sense or nonsense I cannot tell. The only thing I am quite sure of is that I talked incessantly, enthusiastically, to Mrs McTougall, but kept my eyes fixed on Lilly Blythe all the time; and I know that Lilly blushed a good deal, and bent her pretty head frequently over her “darling Pompey,” and fondled him to his heart’s content.
That night my leg violently resented the treatment it had received. When I slept I dreamed that I was on the rack, and that Miss Blythe, strange to say, was the chief tormentor, while Dumps quietly looked on and laughed—yes, deliberately laughed—at my sufferings.
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