A Little World. Fenn George Manville
at the doll, then at its donor, and then, half laughing, half crying, she looked pitifully in Tim’s face, before once more throwing herself, sobbing loudly, in his arms, where she clung tightly, as the little man patted her head, and smoothed and caressed her.
“I thought she’d have liked it,” muttered Tim, looking down upon the little head in a disconcerted way, his face growing more and more puckered as he rocked himself to and fro, humming the snatch of some old ditty, treating the suffering little one as though she were a baby. By slow degrees the sobs ceased, and Tim seemed more puzzled than ever, when the child raised her head, and gazed in his face, her little wan aspect seeming to make her years older as she kissed him, saying —
“Please put it away now.”
Tim stared hard at the little thin face, as with one hand he reluctantly placed the doll beneath the cloth shreds, holding her tightly with the other, till, in a strange old-fashioned way, she kissed him again, saying —
“It was very kind of you.” And then she slipped out of his arms, crossed the room to the glass, and smoothed her hair, wetted Tim’s sponge, and removed the tear marks from her face, placing too the cool grateful water against the smarting weals upon her arms. Afterwards she returned to her task and went on polishing the metal lid, a sob rising at intervals to make Tim Ruggles flinch.
Tim’s work was again in hand, but progressing very, very slowly as he then sat musing, and wondering whose child the little one was; also whether she would be fetched away, a proceeding which he dreaded, in spite of the pain it gave him to see her suffer. “I’ve no spirit to stop it,” he muttered, “though it nips me horribly. I suppose it’s from stitching so much that I ain’t like most men. It’s all right though, I s’pose; she knows best. – Here, I say, though, my wig and pickles, we shall have the missus home directly,” he cried, fiercely, “and no work done. Now then, bustle; polish away;” and he set the example of industry by snatching up the trousers in course of making, and sewing more fiercely than ever.
Volume One – Chapter Ten.
My Duty towards my Neighbour
“Now then,” said Tim Ruggles, “we mustn’t have no more sobbing and sighing, you know, but get on with working, and eddication, and what not, before some one comes home, and goes off. Now what were we doing last, my pretty?”
“Reading,” said little Pine, absently.
“Mistake,” said Tim. “It was cate – cate – well, what was it?”
“Chism,” said the child; “catechism.”
“Right,” said Tim. “Now, let’s see; it was duty towards my neighbour, and if we don’t look sharp as a seven – between we shall never get through that beautiful little bit. Eddication, my pretty, is the concrete, atop of which they build society; and if I’d been an eddicated man and known a few things – ”
“But you know everything, don’t you?” queried Pine.
“Well, no, my dear, not quite,” said Tim, rubbing one side of his nose, and gazing in a a comical way at the child.
“But you are very clever, ain’t you.”
“Oh, dear me, no; not at all,” said Tim; “leastwise, without it’s in trousis, and there I ain’t so much amiss. But come, I say, this won’t do; this is catechism wrong side out, so go on.”
Then slowly on to the accompaniment of the metal polishing – the lid being by this time succeeded by a brass candlestick – and the sharp click of Tim’s needle, the portion of catechism under consideration progressed till it was brought to a full stop over the words, “Succour my father and mother,” when Tim was, to use his own words, quite knocked off his perch by the child’s question —
“Who is my mother?”
“Why – er – er – why, mother, you know,” replied Tim.
The child shook her head thoughtfully, and now speaking, now stopping to rub at the bright metal, said —
“No, no! not her – not her! My own – my own dear mother could not, would not beat me so. I think it must be some one who comes when I’m half asleep, and I can see her blue eyes, and feel her long curls round my face when she kisses me, and then it is that I wake up; and,” she continued dreamily, “I’m not sure whether she does come, for she is not there then, and when I whisper, no one answers; and do you know whether she comes, or whether I dream she does, that must be my mother, for no one else would come and kiss me like that.”
“Why, I do,” remonstrated Tim, “lots o’ times.”
“Yes, yes! you do!” said the child, smiling, “but I know when it’s you, and I can’t help thinking – ”
“Here, I say,” exclaimed Tim, “this isn’t catechism. This won’t do, my pretty, you mustn’t talk like that. Now, then, go on, – ‘Succour my father’ – ”
“Succour – succour,” continued the child, “my father and mother. Is she gone to heaven, and does she come to look at me in the night, and kiss me? I don’t think that she would whip me so, and – and – oh! pray don’t beat me for it. I can’t help it. Oh! I can’t help it,” and then once again, the little thin hands were pressed upon the quivering lips to thrust back the bitter heart-wrung wail that would make itself heard. No child’s cry; but the moaning of a bruised heart, forced and rendered premature in its feelings by the long course of cruelty to which it had been subjected. A stranger might have listened, and then have gone away believing that his feelings had been moved to pity by the anguished utterances of a woman in distress.
Tim hopped from his board, half bewildered, and quite in trouble, to kiss and caress the child, smoothing her hair, patting her cheeks, and holding her tightly to his breast.
“Come, my pretty,” he whispered, “you mustn’t, you know. It does hurt me so, and ain’t I as good as a father? And didn’t you promise me as you’d love me very, very much? And now you’re raining down tears, and melting all the sugar out of a fellow’s nature till you’ll make him cross as – Polish away, my pretty.”
With two bounds Tim was back in his place, and little Pine again bent over her task; for there was a heavy step upon the staircase, and as it stopped at the door, Tim grunted, and slowly shuffled off his board to replace his iron in the fire after giving it a loud clink upon the stand.
“Now, my dear,” said Tim, loudly, “we ain’t getting on so fast as we oughter. ‘Bear no malice.’”
“‘Bear no malice,’” repeated the child, looking up at him, with a quaint smile upon her little pinched lips.
“‘Nor hatred in my heart,’” said Tim; and then dolefully, “why don’t you look at your work?”
“‘Nor hatred in my heart,’” said the child, whose little face, then again upturned, showed that, if there were truth in looks, malice or hatred had never entered her breast.
“Louder, ever so much,” whispered Tim, “and don’t yer get whipped whilst I’m at Pellet’s, there’s a pet. ‘Keep my hands from picking and stealing,’” he continued, aloud.
“‘From picking and stealing,’” said the child, softly.
“She’d better, that’s all I can say,” came from the doorway; and Mrs Ruggles closed the portal, and then swung round again, right about face, and confronted her husband, “perhaps some one else will keep his tongue from evil-speaking, lying, and so on.”
“I’m blessed,” muttered Tim, “that’s rather hot.”
“Of course it is,” exclaimed Mrs Ruggles, who only caught the latter part of the sentence, and applied it to the fire. “Such waste of coals. I suppose that girl’s been shovelling them on as if they cost nothing.”
“No, my dear – me – it was me,” said Tim, who well enough knew that the fire had been made up by Mrs Ruggles herself: but he was a terrible liar.
“Then you ought