after a pause, during which, as they clung together, the two girls had been watching the fish, one of which rose to the surface, and, with its little gasping lips touched lightly the pinky finger-tip Patty placed beneath the water.
“Sometimes,” continued Janet, “it is so dull, so lonesome, in spite of the busy noises coming from the street. Wragg is kind, and so is poor old Mrs Winks; but – but,” hesitated the girl, “there are times when I don’t wish to be with them. He is often away for hours together, and one cannot always be at music; and then it is that I like to go down-stairs, and be with the little prisoned birds and things. And somehow they seem to know me, and flutter and leap to welcome me when I come. But you don’t think it childish?”
“Childish? No!” was the reply, as Patty again dipped a finger to have it saluted by the fish. “I love to come and feed the birds myself; but I would take them, if I could, all far away into the bright happy country, and then open the cage-doors and set them free one by one – one by one. How they would leap, and dart, and flutter as they felt the soft air waiting for them! I think it would be real happiness to see the little things leave off beating their breasts as they tried to get out; and then to listen to them singing from some tree!”
“Or else see some cruel hawk come and seize one,” said Janet, bitterly.
“Heigho! perhaps yes,” sighed Patty; “there’s always something to make life unhappy.”
“I like the goldfish,” said Janet, without seeming to heed the sigh. “They always put me in mind of lying there – just there!” and she pointed to a corner by the window, “when I was little and could not walk, but only lay there all day with my back aching, as I stretched out my hands to touch one of the little bright things as they sailed so easily round and round. I must have been very very little when he bought the first to please me. But Patty, Patty!” she exclaimed, as she peered in the other’s eyes, “what made you sigh, and say that there was always something to make you unhappy?”
Patty was silent, and gazed thoughtfully at the fish, as another, seeking the food so often given, rose and touched her finger.
“What did you mean?” said Janet again, bending forward to gaze in the soft grey eyes. “It was not because I spoke of the hawk?”
Patty shook her head.
“Well, perhaps not altogether – I mean, I don’t know,” she said, in a slow hesitating way. “But really I must go home now; I promised not to be very long.”
Janet watched her eagerly, then, as if to change the subject, kissed her affectionately, and thanked her for what she had done below, ending, at Patty’s wish, by putting on her bonnet and accompanying her friend back to Duplex Street, D. Wragg being charged with a message for Monsieur Canau, who, according to custom on such occasions, came for his adopted daughter in the evening.
Volume One – Chapter Fifteen.
Husband and Wife
Nimrod may have been a mighty hunter in his day, but he was never anything to compare with Jared Pellet, who for twenty long years – that is to say, years of the ordinary length – had engaged in the chase of one savage, long-fanged, dire, snarling brute of a wolf, a hungry grinning wretch, grey and grim, and ever licking his thin gums. Old and lank he was, but a very giant in endurance; and very often circumstances were reversed, the hunter becoming the hunted, when it took all Jared’s strength and courage to keep the wolf at bay.
That wolf had lain down his long, lean, hungry form at Jared’s door when he married, and, on and off, he had been there ever since. What were Nimrod’s feats to hunting or keeping at bay a wolf for twenty long years? Jared Pellet had done all this, and was ready to keep up the struggle with the wolf Poverty so long as he had breath left in his body.
They were busy in Duplex Street as usual. Jared was wax-ending a cracked clarionet, pausing every now and then to apply the reed to his lips and breathe out such a wail as would have produced goose-skin upon a stranger. Here, though it had no effect upon Mrs Jared, who was stitching hard, nor upon Patty, bending over her work, there was another present who winced slightly, namely, Janet, who was paying one of her many visits to her friend; and as each wail arose, she drew in her breath between her set teeth and slightly knitted her brow. Then catching Patty’s eye, the latter smiled and rose, and the two girls left the room to husband and wife.
“Ah!” said Mrs Jared, as soon as they were alone, “I do wish poor Canau would leave that horrid place.”
“Used to it, and won’t,” said Jared, supplementing his speech with a dismal “too-hoo” from the clarionet.
“I don’t like to be unkind to poor Janet,” said Mrs Jared; “but I’m always in dread of something happening when Patty goes there.”
“Too-hoo, too-roo, roo-roo,” blew Jared from the half-cobbled instrument. “Hen’s anxiety about her chicks!”
“Chicks! yes;” said Mrs Jared with a sigh, her thought’s current turned. “It is such a drawback having so many children, as well as the anxiety; what with the doctor and the nurse, and dear, dear, the extravagance of the old things, it is really dreadful; and when I’m up-stairs and can’t help myself, I do so fidget about the expense. The tea that goes when Patty is not there is really infamous. I’m sure it’s never used. And when you buy black at three shillings, and green at four, Mr Timson’s best, it worries you terribly. If ever – you know what I mean – and I wanted one again poor Mrs Nimmer had promised to come, if I’d set her free on Saturdays for dusting, and, of course, on Sundays, and now she’s ill.”
From the wail which now arose from the clarionet it might have been supposed that Mrs Nimmer had been dead, but Jared did not speak.
“Oh, dear!” sighed Mrs Jared, “if we did not have so many children!”
“What’s the good of grumbling?” grunted Jared; and then there was silence, only broken by the clicking of needle against thimble.
“When was she taken ill?” said Mrs Jared then.
“What? Mrs Nimmer? – last week. Break up, I think. She’s past seventy.”
Mrs Jared sighed again, and then Jared took up the ball as he went on busily cleaning the keys of the instrument.
“Children are expensive luxuries. Costly; they do eat so furiously; and I don’t believe there ever were such children as ours to eat – bless ’em. Poor folks’ children ought to be born without appetites, instead of coming into the world with a double share. Some people do, I think, reckon the poor to be a different race to their noble selves; and if they are to be so looked on, it does seem a pity that Nature don’t take the matter up and cover them with feathers or wool. What a saving it would be if they’d only moult every year and come out in a new suit!”
“Jared, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!” said his wife.
“So I am, my dear,” said Jared, screwing up his face; “but it was you who grumbled. ‘Like as the arrows in the hand of a giant;’ and ‘Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them.’ That’s it, isn’t it? But they didn’t pay rent and rates and taxes in those days, and every man had his own freehold in the land of Israel. Ah! there was no Duplex Street in the land in those days.”
“Nor no Decadia,” said Mrs Jared, tartly.
“No,” said Jared, “nor no St Runwald’s. By the way, I wonder who used to mend their musical instruments at that time.”
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