style="font-size:15px;"> ‘Justice,’ suggested Toby.
‘Ah!’ he said. ‘If that’s the name they give him. This Justice. And tomorrow will try whether there’s better fortun’ to be met with, somewheres near London. Good night. A Happy New Year!’
‘Stay!’ cried Trotty, catching at his hand, as he relaxed his grip. ‘Stay! The New Year never can be happy to me, if we part like this. The New Year never can be happy to me, if I see the child and you go wandering away, you don’t know where, without a shelter for your heads. Come home with me! I’m a poor man, living in a poor place; but I can give you lodging for one night and never miss it. Come home with me! Here! I’ll take her!’ cried Trotty, lifting up the child. ‘A pretty one! I’d carry twenty times her weight, and never know I’d got it. Tell me if I go too quick for you. I’m very fast. I always was!’ Trotty said this, taking about six of his trotting paces to one stride of his fatigued companion; and with his thin legs quivering again, beneath the load he bore.
‘Why, she’s as light,’ said Trotty, trotting in his speech as well as in his gait; for he couldn’t bear to be thanked, and dreaded a moment’s pause; ‘as light as a feather. Lighter than a Peacock’s feather—a great deal lighter. Here we are and here we go! Round this first turning to the right, Uncle Will, and past the pump, and sharp off up the passage to the left, right opposite the public-house. Here we are and here we go! Cross over, Uncle Will, and mind the kidney pieman at the corner! Here we are and here we go! Down the Mews here, Uncle Will, and stop at the black door, with “T. Veck, Ticket Porter,” wrote upon a board; and here we are and here we go, and here we are indeed, my precious. Meg, surprising you!’
With which words Trotty, in a breathless state, set the child down before his daughter in the middle of the floor. The little visitor looked once at Meg; and doubting nothing in that face, but trusting everything she saw there; ran into her arms.
‘Here we are and here we go!’ cried Trotty, running round the room, and choking audibly. ‘Here, Uncle Will, here’s a fire you know! Why don’t you come to the fire? Oh here we are and here we go! Meg, my precious darling, where’s the kettle? Here it is and here it goes, and it’ll bile in no time!’
Trotty really had picked up the kettle somewhere or other in the course of his wild career and now put it on the fire: while Meg, seating the child in a warm corner, knelt down on the ground before her, and pulled off her shoes, and dried her wet feet on a cloth. Ay, and she laughed at Trotty too—so pleasantly, so cheerfully, that Trotty could have blessed her where she kneeled; for he had seen that, when they entered, she was sitting by the fire in tears.
‘Why, father!’ said Meg. ‘You’re crazy tonight, I think. I don’t know what the Bells would say to that. Poor little feet. How cold they are!’
‘Oh, they’re warmer now!’ exclaimed the child. ‘They’re quite warm now!’
‘No, no, no,’ said Meg. ‘We haven’t rubbed ’em half enough. We’re so busy. So busy! And when they’re done, we’ll brush out the damp hair; and when that’s done, we’ll bring some colour to the poor pale face with fresh water; and when that’s done, we’ll be so gay, and brisk, and happy—!’
The child, in a burst of sobbing, clasped her round the neck; caressed her fair cheek with its hand; and said, ‘Oh Meg! Oh dear Meg!’
Toby’s blessing could have done no more. Who could do more!
‘Why, father!’ cried Meg, after a pause.
‘Here I am and here I go, my dear!’ said Trotty.
‘Good Gracious me!’ cried Meg. ‘He’s crazy! He’s put the dear child’s bonnet on the kettle, and hung the lid behind the door!’
‘I didn’t go for to do it, my love,’ said Trotty, hastily repairing this mistake. ‘Meg, my dear?’
Meg looked towards him and saw that he had elaborately stationed himself behind the chair of their male visitor, where with many mysterious gestures he was holding up the sixpence he had earned.
‘I see, my dear,’ said Trotty, ‘as I was coming in, half an ounce of tea lying somewhere on the stairs; and I’m pretty sure there was a bit of bacon too. As I don’t remember where it was exactly, I’ll go myself and try to find ’em.’
With this inscrutable artifice, Toby withdrew to purchase the viands he had spoken of, for ready money, at Mrs. Chickenstalker’s; and presently came back, pretending he had not been able to find them, at first, in the dark.
‘But here they are at last,’ said Trotty, setting out the tea-things, ‘all correct! I was pretty sure it was tea, and a rasher. So it is. Meg, my pet, if you’ll just make the tea, while your unworthy father toasts the bacon, we shall be ready, immediate. It’s a curious circumstance,’ said Trotty, proceeding in his cookery, with the assistance of the toasting-fork, ‘curious, but well known to my friends, that I never care, myself, for rashers, nor for tea. I like to see other people enjoy ’em,’ said Trotty, speaking very loud, to impress the fact upon his guest, ‘but to me, as food, they’re disagreeable.’
Yet Trotty sniffed the savour of the hissing bacon—ah!—as if he liked it; and when he poured the boiling water in the teapot, looked lovingly down into the depths of that snug cauldron, and suffered the fragrant steam to curl about his nose, and wreathe his head and face in a thick cloud. However, for all this, he neither ate nor drank, except at the very beginning, a mere morsel for form’s sake, which he appeared to eat with infinite relish, but declared was perfectly uninteresting to him.
No. Trotty’s occupation was, to see Will Fern and Lilian eat and drink; and so was Meg’s. And never did spectators at a city dinner or court banquet find such high delight in seeing others feast: although it were a monarch or a pope: as those two did, in looking on that night. Meg smiled at Trotty, Trotty laughed at Meg. Meg shook her head, and made belief to clap her hands, applauding Trotty; Trotty conveyed, in dumb-show, unintelligible narratives of how and when and where he had found their visitors, to Meg; and they were happy. Very happy.
‘Although,’ thought Trotty, sorrowfully, as he watched Meg’s face; ‘that match is broken off, I see!’
‘Now, I’ll tell you what,’ said Trotty after tea. ‘The little one, she sleeps with Meg, I know.’
‘With good Meg!’ cried the child, caressing her. ‘With Meg.’
‘That’s right,’ said Trotty. ‘And I shouldn’t wonder if she kiss Meg’s father, won’t she? I’m Meg’s father.’
Mightily delighted Trotty was, when the child went timidly towards him, and having kissed him, fell back upon Meg again.
‘She’s as sensible as Solomon,’ said Trotty. ‘Here we come and here we—no, we don’t—I don’t mean that—I—what was I saying, Meg, my precious?’
Meg looked towards their guest, who leaned upon her chair, and with his face turned from her, fondled the child’s head, half hidden in her lap.
‘To be sure,’ said Toby. ‘To be sure! I don’t know what I’m rambling on about, tonight. My wits are wool-gathering, I think. Will Fern, you come along with me. You’re tired to death, and broken down for want of rest. You come along with me.’ The man still played with the child’s curls, still leaned upon Meg’s chair, still turned away his face. He didn’t speak, but in his rough coarse fingers, clenching
