beaten by himself, that is to say, by his own good nature, and what was more, he seemed so little put out in consequence, that he rode home the rest of the way with his arm round his wife’s waist—but then, certainly it was dark.
“There, there!” exclaimed Jared at last; “go to bed, Patty, and let’s have no more tears.”
He spoke kindly; but Patty could not be consoled, for she told herself that she had been very, very wicked, and if dear father only knew that she had almost held out her lips to be kissed, he would never, never, forgive her. So she sobbed on.
“Why, what is the matter?” exclaimed Jared at last, for Patty had thrown herself on her knees at her mother’s feet, and was crying almost hysterically in her lap. “What are you crying for?”
“Oh! oh! oh!” sobbed poor Patty, whose conscience would not let her rest until she had made a full confession of her sin, “I did-id-id-n’t try to stop him.”
“Humph!” grunted Jared, and the eyes of husband and wife met over their weeping girl, whose sobs after confession grew less laboured and hysterical.
The next day Harry Clayton called at Duplex Street, and the next day, and again after two days, and then once more after a week, but only to see Mrs. Jared, who never admitted the visitor beyond the door-sill. She was civil and pleasant; but he must call when Mr. Jared Pellet was at home, which he did at last and was ushered into the front parlour.
Jared was in his shirt sleeves, and had an apron on, for he was busy covering pianoforte hammers, and there was a very different scent in the place to that in Mrs. Richard’s drawing-room, for Jared’s glue-pot was in full steam.
Had Mr. Harry Clayton received permission from his parents to call? This from Jared very courteously, but quite en prince, though his fingers were gluey.
No, from the young man, very humbly, he had neither received nor asked permission; but if Mr. Jared would not let him see Miss Pellet before he went, he should leave town bitter, sorrowful, and disappointed; for there had been a great quarrel at home, and though he was of age, Mr. Richard Pellet wished to treat him like a child.
Only a shake of the head from Jared at this.
Would Mr. Jared be so cruel as to refuse to let him bid Miss Pellet good-bye?
Yes, Jared Pellet would, even though his wife had entered, and was looking at him with imploring eyes. For Jared had a certain pride of his own, and a respect for his brother’s high position. And besides, he told himself bitterly that it was not meet that the stepson of a Croesus should marry with “a beggar’s brat.”
So Jared would keep to his word, and Mrs. Jared could only sympathise with the young man, holding the while, though by a strange contradiction, to her husband.
Harry gave vent to a good deal of romantic saccharine stuff of twenty-one vintage, interspersed with the sea saltism of “true as the needle to the pole,” and various other high-flown sentiments, which mode of expressing himself, tending as it did to show his admiration for her daughter, and coming from a fine, handsome, and manly young suitor, Mrs. Jared thought very nice indeed; but she diluted its strength with a few tears of her own.
Jared was obstinate though, and would not look; he only screwed up his lips and covered pianoforte hammers at express speed, making his fingers sticky and wasting felt; for every hammer had to be re-covered when Harry had taken his departure.
Harry was gone, with one hand a little sticky from the touch of Jared’s gluey fingers, as he said, “Good-bye,” and one cheek wet with Mrs. Jared’s tears, as he saluted her reverently, as if she had been his mother.
“But a nice lad, dear,” said Mrs. Jared, wiping her eyes.
“Yes; I dare say,” said Jared, stirring his glue round and round; “but mighty fond of kissing.”
Then husband and wife thought of the strange tie growing out of the new estrangement, and also of the fact that they must be growing old, since their child was following in their own steps—in the footprints of those who had gone before since Adam first gazed upon the fair face of the woman given to be his companion and solace in the solitude that oppressed him.
And where was Patty?
Down upon her knees in her little bedroom, whither she had fled on hearing that voice, sobbing tremendously, as if her fluttering heart would break—her handkerchief being vainly used to silence the emotion.
Poor Mrs. Jared was quite disconcerted by her child’s reproachful looks when she told her that it might be but a passing fancy, that their position was so different, that years and distance generally wrought changes, and she must learn to govern her heart.
Just as if it were possible that such a man as Harry Clayton—so bold, so frank, so handsome, so—so—so—so—everything—could ever alter in the least. So Patty cried and then laughed, and said she was foolish, and then cried again, and behaved in a very extravagant way, hoping that Harry would write and tell her, if only just once more, that he loved her.
But Harry did not write, for he was a man of honour, and he had promised that he would not until he had permission; while Jared, thinking all this over again and again in his musing moods when sitting before his reflector, felt convinced that he had acted justly, and time alone must show what the young people’s future was to be.
The breach remained wider than ever between the brothers; for Richard Pellet said grandly to his wife—standing the while with his back to the fire, and chinking sovereigns in his pockets—that it was quite impossible to do anything for people who were such fools, and so blind to their own interests; and Mrs. Richard, who was on the whole a good-natured woman, but had not room in her brain for more than one idea at a time, thought her new relatives very dreadful people, for they had driven her poor boy away a month or two sooner than he would have gone, though in that respect Richard did not show much sympathy, since he was rather glad to be rid of his stepson.
Volume One—Chapter Eight.
Little Pine and her Teacher.
Carnaby Street, Golden Square, where the private doors have their jambs ornamented with series of bell-pulls like the stops of an organ, and the knockers seem intended to form handles that shall lift up and display rows of keys; but generally speaking, the doors stand open, and the sills bear a row of as many children as can squeeze themselves in. The population is dense and the odours are many, but the prevailing smell is that described by a celebrated character as of warm flat-irons, the ear corroborating nose and palate, for an occasional chink hints that the iron—not a flat one—has been placed upon its stand, while the heavy dull thump, thump, tells that some garment is being pressed. For this is one of the strongholds of the London tailors, and the chances are that the cloth cut upon the counter of Poole has been built into shape in Carnaby Street.
It was in the first floor back, and in two small rooms, that Tim Ruggles—always Tim, though christened Timothy—a steady-going, hard—working, Dutch clock kind of man, carried on the trade popular in the district, with his family of a wife and a little girl. He considered the two rooms ample—the larger serving for parlour, kitchen, workshop, and bedroom for little Pine, the other being devoted exclusively to sleeping purposes.
But
