Pollyooly. Edgar Jepson
of the Honorable John Ruffin to what was right and proper, she would never have taken the trouble to inform him of Pollyooly's deceit.
The Honorable John Ruffin gazed calmly at her, unmoved and, to all seeming, ungrateful.
Mrs. Meeken advanced two more steps toward the door, paused again, and said truculently that she expected a gentleman who was a gentleman to reward her handsomely for the services she rendered him.
The Honorable John Ruffin smiled agreeably and said, "Virtue, Mrs. Meeken—virtue is its own reward."
Mrs. Meeken gazed for a moment at his placid face and with a snort expressive of a whole tumult of emotions, all of them unpleasant, left his room and his chambers.
She was compelled by the violence of the emotions his insensibility and ingratitude had awakened in her to descend the stairs at a considerable speed and betake herself to the very nearest tavern. There she revived her flagging energy and further inflamed her philanthropic ardor. Then she climbed the stairs again and awaited the coming of Mr. Gedge-Tomkins.
He received her information in a very different and far more gratifying spirit. Deceit, when applied to himself, he could not bear; and his righteous indignation at the conduct of Pollyooly matched Mrs. Meeken's own.
He expressed it in whirling words; and Mrs. Meeken, appreciated and appeased, heard him shout himself out, with a considerable pleasure.
Then she put forward her contention that a child of Pollyooly's tender years could not possibly keep his rooms in the immaculate condition a woman of her experience could. The contention appealed to the reason by which he guided his regular life; and after a short discussion in which they settled the matter of her wages, he engaged her in Pollyooly's place. It must, in all fairness, be urged in his excuse that he lacked the Honorable John Ruffin's sensitiveness of nostril.
Mrs. Meeken returned to the Prince of Wales' head in triumph, the proudest woman in London. She had vindicated the straight, undeceptive path and in performing this noble deed, gained the desire of her heart.
Pollyooly came to her work next morning unwitting of the misfortune which had befallen her. She only learned it from the sight, and smell, of Mrs. Meeken in Mr. Gedge-Tomkins' kitchen; and at that sight the hue of wild roses which faintly stained her clear pale cheeks faded from them utterly.
The good woman greeted her with a malevolent grin of triumph and said, "It's all up with you 'ere, you bryzen little 'uzzy. 'E's a-wytin' for you, 'e is; an' I wouldn't be in your shoes not for nothink, I wouldn't. In you go."
In Pollyooly went, and Mr. Gedge-Tomkins received her with a scowl and a terrible snort of indignation. His righteous wrath was much increased by the fact that for the last hour he had been engaged in preparing the defense of an uncommonly violent burglar, of whose guilt he himself was perfectly assured, and had found it extremely difficult to find any means by which he could possibly hope to convince any passably intelligent jury of his innocence. At the sight of Pollyooly, in his best forensic manner, he burst forthwith into a loud, but impassioned, harangue on the vileness of lying and deceit.
Pollyooly heard him patiently to the end of it; but since she prided herself on the veracity her aunt had so firmly instilled into her, her spirit began to glow; and she said with some heat, "I didn't tell any lie, sir; I wouldn't. I said that my aunt wasn't any better, and she wasn't. How could she be when she was dead?"
For a moment Mr. Gedge-Tomkins was taken aback by the justness of this reasoning; then he cried, with even more eloquent indignation, and an even redder face, "It was worse; you acted a lie—you deliberately acted a lie. Oh, I see a black future before you! If, at the age of twelve, you can form a dishonest plan of this kind, and carry it out with this—this cool and unswerving deliberation, at twenty you will be a callous and hardened criminal of the most abandoned type."
"It was for the Lump," said Pollyooly somewhat faintly, for she was shaken by the terrible picture he had painted.
"Not a word!" cried Mr. Gedge-Tomkins in a terrible voice. "I have done with you! I discharge you. Here is seven shillings—two shillings for your work from Saturday to to-day, and five shillings in lieu of a week's notice." And he banged down seven shillings on the table.
Pollyooly gave a little gasp of surprise and relief. Her spirit lightened. She had expected to be sent about her business with no money at all. She caught up the seven shillings quickly, said, "Good morning, sir," and hurried out of the room with it lest he should change his mind about paying it.
As she came down the passage, Mrs. Meeken said, "That'll learn you to go taking a honest woman's bread out of 'er mouf, you little 'uzzy. An' Mr. Ruffin is that wild, I'm afraid to go near him."
Pollyooly gazed at her perhaps ten seconds with eyes that blazed; then she made the hideous face of an unregenerate and unbroken spirit at her, and walked out of the door with a fine, defiant air.
But her heart was heavy within her as she swept and dusted the Honorable John Ruffin's sitting-room. The only bright spot in her future was the seven shillings in her pocket. That meant another eight days at least, perhaps ten, in which to seek work. All the while she cudgeled her small but active brain for a plan of getting work, but in vain. When she heard the Honorable John Ruffin in his bath, she retired to the kitchen in a panic, her little heart hammered so furiously against her ribs that she had to press her hand against it to quiet it.
She grilled his bacon with the greatest care, resolved that the last meal she cooked him should be as good as she could make it. She had parted from Mr. Gedge-Tomkins without a pang beyond that at losing five shillings a week; but the thought of leaving the Honorable John Ruffin filled her with regret. His unfailing kindliness, the gentleness with which he always spoke to her, the appreciation he always accorded to her careful efforts to grill his bacon to perfection, the flattering tributes he paid to her looks, even to her red hair, had filled her with a feeling stronger than liking for him. She was indeed coming to grow fond of him. Her childish admiration of him was immense; she listened to his talk, so often incomprehensible, with the most respectful admiration. It was but natural that she should look forward to his anger with acute distress. In her shrinking from it she kept him waiting for his breakfast a good three minutes.
Then she carried the dish of bacon into his sitting-room with shaking hands; but she was relieved to perceive, from a quick glance at his face, that he wore an air of serenity which seemed to promise that his anger would not be very dreadful. But when she had set the dish on the table, her heart failed her; and it was only by a violent effort that she refrained from bolting from the room, and began, with trembling, fumbling fingers, to gather up the scattered garments which he had decided not to wear that day.
He was not in a talkative humor that morning; and when she saw that he had finished his fourth slice of bacon, she went to the kitchen, put the two eggs into the water ready boiling for them, and turned the sand-glass upside down.
Just before the last of the sand had trickled from the top of it into the bottom, she took them out of the boiling water and carried them to him.
She had set them before him, and was taking away the dirty plate, when the Honorable John Ruffin said gravely, "A noble type of English womanhood, one Mrs. Meeken, has informed me that you have been deceiving me, Pollyooly."
Pollyooly gasped and flushed and stood still and stared at him with frightened eyes, plucking nervously at her frock.
"I will not disguise from you that your conduct has saddened me," he said in a mournful tone, breaking the top of one of the eggs. "It is on a par with the way in which your agreeable sex has always treated me. It is a sad blow—a bitter blow, indeed. Yet I should have known that your transcendent power of grilling bacon was incompatible with sterner virtues."
"I wouldn't have done it, not to you, sir, if it had only been me. But there was the Lump. And I knew that you wouldn't think that I could do for you as well as a grown-up laundress," said Pollyooly in a trembling voice; and she wrung her hands.
"The modesty of great minds. I might have expected it.