toast just brown enough, the butter better than usual, and the bloaters prime; Totty declining to abdicate the throne she had ascended, one where she reigned supreme—her father’s knee, to wit; and at last there was peace in the front kitchen in Duplex Street.
“Did you ever hear such a noise, Mr. Ruggles?” said Mrs. Jared at length, her face now all smiles.
“Not my way often, ma’am,” said Tim, “at least—that is—we do have noises.”
Mrs. Jared looked significantly at her husband, and then sighed, when, after fidgeting in his chair, Tim said, “A little more sugar, if you please, ma’am.”
“Totty yikes oogar,” exclaimed the chubby delinquent, displaying her sorrow for her late act of piracy by making a grab at the hard roe upon her father’s plate—a delicacy but just set free from overlaying bones, but the plate was hot, and the little fingers suffered a sharp pang, when there was another outcry; but with that exception, the meal progressed in peace to the end, when Jared threw himself back in his chair, and set himself to amuse Totty, by turning his inflated cheeks into drums for that young lady to belabour with sticky fists.
But it was at supper time, when the little ones were in bed and Jared and Tim had concluded their tasks, that there was the real peace. For now, up-stairs by the fireside, a pipe was produced for Tim, and two weak glasses of gin and water were mixed—Mrs. Jared indulging in occasional sips from her husband’s portion, while, under the influence of his own, Tim grew communicative respecting his own home, and the present Mrs. Ruggles, and on Patty making some enquiry respecting little Pine, he laid down his pipe, rubbed his hands softly together, and looked very serious as he replied to her question.
“For my part,” said Mrs. Jared, “I don’t hold with such sharp correction of children as you say Mrs. Ruggles administers.”
Tim did not speak, but his eye fell upon a small cane above the chimney-piece. His glance was detected by Mrs. Jared, who exclaimed:
“You need not look at that, Mr. Ruggles, for it is never used, only talked about; at least,” she said, correcting herself, “very seldom. I don’t think it right to be harsh to children, only firm; and if you begin with firmness, they will seldom require further correction.”
“Spare the rod, spoil the child,” said Tim, softly exhaling a column of smoke.
“Stuff!” said Mrs. Jared, sharply; “do you mean to say that my children are spoiled, Mr. Ruggles?”
“No, ma’am,” said the little tailor, earnestly; “I never saw a better behaved family.—Nor a bigger,” he said to himself.
“But Solomon said so, my dear,” said Jared, drily.
“Then Solomon ought to have been ashamed of himself,” said Mrs. Jared, tartly; “and it must have been when he was nearly driven mad by some of his own children. He said plenty of good things, but I don’t consider that one of them; and besides, with all his wisdom, he was not perfect. Between ourselves, I wonder, Mr. Ruggles, that you allow it. When the little thing came after you the other day, even her little neck was marked, and as to her arms—why Patty went up—stairs and cried about them. I’m only a plain-spoken woman, and really, sometimes, I wonder that you ever married again, and you must excuse me for saying so.”
“I often wonder at it myself,” thought Tim Ruggles, as he sat poking at his frizzy hair with the stem of his pipe, and looking very intently into his gin and water: all at once, though, he exclaimed:
“I’ll tell you how it was!”
But before telling them how it was, he refilled and lit his pipe, sat thoughtfully for a few minutes, and then refreshed himself with a sip of his gin and water.
Volume One—Chapter Twelve.
Tim’s Ditty.
“You see, ma’am,” said Tim Ruggles, looking very mysterious, “that little one’s name was Prosperine or Propserpine, I’m not sure which, unless I look at where we’ve got it written down. I’m not sure it ain’t Proserpine; but at all events it’s a long awkward name, and we took to calling her Pine. I married the present Mrs. Ruggles to take her in charge and mind her. And she does take care of her, and brings her up in the way she should go. You should hear her say her Catechism,” said Tim, looking proudly at Mrs. Jared.
“I’d rather hear her say she loved your wife, Mr. Ruggles,” said Mrs. Jared, quietly.
Tim was disconcerted, but not beaten.
“But she does, ma’am, and me too, wonderful, for Mrs. Ruggles is only just a little too strict, and I don’t like to interfere; for you know, ma’am, that’s a child of mystery—that is, like Fatherless Fanny, as maybe you’ve read of; and no doubt she’ll come to be in a big spear of life. She—that’s Mrs. Ruggles, you know, ma’am—says that we’ll do what’s right by the child, ma’am, and what can I say against that, when Mrs. Ruggles is such a clever woman?”
“I don’t quite like such cleverness,” said Mrs. Jared.
“You see I want to do what is right, ma’am,” said Tim, “and somehow that’s rather hard sometimes. But I was going to tell you, ma’am, we used to live in South Molton Street, and though I’ve no children of my own now, ma’am, when my poor first wife was alive there used to be one regularly every year, and the wife that proud of it, she didn’t know what to do for a few months; and then a time would come when we’d stand side by side looking at the little weeny, waxy features, lying in the bit of a coffin, and the wife fit to break her heart because they were all taken away again so soon. Not one lived, ma’am; and though we were poor, and at times very much pushed for a job and a little money, that used to be our greatest trouble, and I’ve seen my poor wife look that hungry and envious of a lodger on the first floor—quite a lady she was—who lived alone there with her baby, that nothing could be like it.
“But she was a good woman, God bless her!” said Tim, in a low voice, and as he spoke he put his hand to his bald head, as if raising his hat; “and sometimes I think, ma’am, that there aren’t such a wonderful number of good women in this world. I never knew what money we had, and what money we hadn’t, but used to put it in her hands as I brought it home from the shop, and I always knew that she’d make it go as far as money would go, and I didn’t want no more. Nothing like letting your wife keep the purse, sir,” he said, turning to Jared—“always makes her feel proud of the confidence.
“But it came to pass at one time, ma’am, that we were so put to it, that I couldn’t put a bit of confidence in Mrs. Ruggles, ma’am—my first—for times were that hard with strikes that there was not a stroke of work to be got for anybody. We tried all we knew, and I scraped and pledged and sold, till it seemed that the next thing to do would be to go into the workhouse, when one day came a knock at our back-room door, and we both started, feeling sure that it was the landlord to tell us we must go, for we were behindhand with the rent. But no; who should come in but the first floor lodger, with her little one; and to make a long story short, what she wanted was for my lass to take care of her, because she was going abroad with her husband, and my wife was to be paid for doing it.
“And do you think she would? Why, she snatched hungrily at the little thing; and poor as we were, would have
