Pollyooly. Edgar Jepson
her duty and done it well.
For the next twenty days Pollyooly retained her two posts of laundress undisturbed. Five or six times the Honorable John Ruffin and Mr. Gedge-Tomkins inquired how her aunt was; and she replied that she was no better. Mrs. Meeken was more frequent in her inquiries, and she received the same answer.
But Pollyooly was not happy; always the fear of the inevitable discovery hung upon her spirit, sometimes depressing it for as long as ten minutes at a time. She was on the way to develop a cleft between her eyebrows from her frequent anxious frowns. Most children would have taken a fortnight's security as a guarantee that her secret would remain for ever undiscovered; but Pollyooly had too active an imagination; and the dreadful fear of finding herself and the Lump adrift on the world was always with her.
In the meantime she was doing everything in her power to provide against the evil day of discovery, but her power was not great. The rent of their attic was three shillings a week, the Lump's milk cost another shilling and twopence, since her aunt had held a pint of milk a day to be a necessity for a child of two; and Pollyooly adhered firmly to the practice. The stale bread, the bacon-fat, which the Honorable John Ruffin spurned, and Mr. Gedge-Tomkins got no chance of spurning, and an occasional uneaten egg, made the chief part of their food; and there was sometimes a red-letter day when too many brandies and sodas on the top of too much champagne made even his beloved bacon abhorrent to the Honorable John Ruffin, and Pollyooly brought home six slices of untouched bacon and two boiled, but uneaten eggs.
But in spite of these heavy demands on her slender purse, Pollyooly had contrived to raise the twenty-two shillings bequeathed by her aunt to thirty-four shillings and sixpence; and she reckoned that, even if the evil day of discharge came upon her at once, she could support the pair of them for another month, or even five weeks, while she sought work in the place of the posts she had lost.
On the afternoon of the twenty-first day she brought the toddling Lump out of the house to escort him to gardens on the Thames Embankment in which he was wont to take the fresh air which kept him chubby, and passed Mrs. Meeken a few steps from their door. The sight of Mrs. Meeken in Alsatia was disquieting enough; but the look of cunning triumph which that good lady bestowed on her, as she passed, was more disquieting still, and stirred in Pollyooly a strong qualm of uneasiness. The sun was shining too brightly for the uneasiness to last; but if she had known how Mrs. Meeken had been spending her time, no sunshine would have eased her mind.
Mrs. Meeken was one of the genuine, old-fashioned Temple laundresses, who apparently earned that title by washing nothing, not even themselves. She was slovenly, dirty, dishonest, and gin-sodden. Indeed, from her aroma she might have been a perambulating juniper tree. She had resented bitterly the intrusion of Hannah Bride into No. 75 in the King's Bench Walk, because she had expected on the death of her no less gin-sodden crony, Hannah Bride's predecessor, to obtain herself the post of laundress to the Honorable John Ruffin and Mr. Gedge-Tomkins. She could not, indeed, have done the work of four sets of chambers, but that would not have distressed her at all, as long as she was drawing the money, and enjoying double the quantity of gin. Her original bitterness had been increased by a distinct lack of sociability on the part of Hannah Bride, who had not only failed to treat her to gin, but had refused to come and be treated, with a contemptuous asperity exceedingly galling to a highly spirituous woman. Her rival's prolonged absence from her work had awakened in Mrs. Meeken the strong hope that she was too ill to return, and that the coveted posts would at last fall to her lot.
Mrs. Meeken was not an active woman, naturally, since gin in excess does not tend to conserve the energy even of the sprightly; and sprightly, even in her bright, unwashed youth, Mrs. Meeken had never been. But her passionate desire for gin had urged her to a splendid effort. She had torn herself for a whole hour from the public bar of the Prince of Wales' Head, an old-time tavern, grown flamboyant with the years, which she and several of her friends used as a club in which to spend their thirsty afternoons, and had betaken herself to Alsatia in search of information about her sick supplanter.
Her effort had been gloriously rewarded. She had learned to her infinite amazement and delight that Hannah Bride had been dead for more than three weeks. She argued, very justly, that Pollyooly would not have withheld this fact from her unless she were also withholding it from her employers, that she was keeping her aunt's posts under false pretenses. With infinite joy she saw her way to take a vicarious vengeance on her detested supplanter. Glorious visions of unlimited gin floated before the rheumy vision of what she had of a mind.
Mrs. Meeken has since, with some alcoholic suddenness, been taken to her mothers. The good sociologist can not regard the world as much the worse for her loss.
It was about six o'clock that evening, what time Pollyooly, unconscious of her doom, was peacefully washing the sleepy Lump before putting him to bed, that the Honorable John Ruffin became aware, chiefly through the medium of his olfactory nerve, of the presence of Mrs. Meeken waiting at his door, and gave a curt, but grudging, assent to her request for an interview. He led the way into his sitting-room, lighted the gas, and surveyed his visitor with an expression of considerable disfavor.
"If you please, sir, it's about that little gel what does your work, sir, that I've been wyting to speak to you, sir. It bein' only my plyne dooty, sir," said Mrs. Meeken.
"Your duty would be plain," said the Honorable John Ruffin, looking critically at Mrs. Meeken's ill-favored face.
"Yes, sir; it were; an' what I've come to tell yer, sir, is as that there little gel 'as bin deceivin' you, sir, most shameful—the hartful little 'uzzy, she is," said Mrs. Meeken, with an admirable display of virtuous indignation.
"How rarely do we find beauty and virtue conjoined," said the Honorable John Ruffin sadly, but in a guarded tone.
"You mye well say so, sir," said Mrs. Meeken piously. "An' when I 'eard this very afternoon as ever was as 'ow that little 'uzzy's aunt was dead, an' 'ad been dead this three weeks, an' you knowin' nothink about it, Hi sez to myself, 'Not a single wink of sleep will you get this night, Maria Meeken, knowin' as 'ow those two poor gentlemen are bein' hart fully deceived, hunless you hups an' houts wiv it."
"In matter of morals one should never wait," said the Honorable John Ruffin sententiously. "I congratulate you, Mrs. Meeken, on the speed with which you have performed this painful duty. Good evening."
Mrs. Meeken's face fell; and she looked at him with a sudden, uneasy surprise. Then she said, "You'll be wantin' a laundress, sir."
"You are wrong, Mrs. Meeken—what I shall be wanting—what I am wanting is a valet," said the Honorable John Ruffin, in a very firm voice.
"And well did I know it," said Mrs. Meeken, cheering up. "An' offen an' offen 'ave I said to myself, 'If Mr. Ruffin would let me walet them there rooms of 'is, 'e wouldn't know 'isself, or them."
Another whiff of Mrs. Meeken struck on the sensitive nostrils of the Honorable John Ruffin, and he shuddered. "I can well believe it," he said coldly. "But I am afraid that the proprieties would not permit of my being valeted by a married woman."
"But Hi'm a widder, sir—a lone widder," said Mrs. Meeken.
"Thrice fortunate Mr. Meeken," said the Honorable John Ruffin. "But there would be even less propriety in a widowed valet than a married one."
"But you'll be wantin' some one to attend to you, sir. That there little 'uzzy can't do rooms like these properly. She can't keep them clean—not what I calls clean," cried Mrs. Meeken, persisting in her effort to realize her golden vision of gin.
"I should think that very likely indeed," said the Honorable John Ruffin. "But it is wiser to endure the evils we have than to fly to those we smell. Good evening, Mrs. Meeken. You will find the front door open. I left it open."
Gathering from his tone that she had failed in her mission, a change came over the spirit of Mrs. Meeken. She lost the generous air of the philanthropist and regarded the young man she had striven to benefit, with a bitter scowl. Then she took two steps toward the door, paused, and said, with a bitterness of tone which matched her scowl, that had she been