The Parent's Assistant; Or, Stories for Children. Edgeworth Maria
turn it now was to command. Franklin ran upstairs to awaken Mrs. Pomfret, whose terror of fire was so great that she came from her room almost out of her senses, whilst he, with the greatest presence of mind, recollected where he had seen two large tubs of water, which the maids had prepared the night before for their washing, and seizing the wet linen which had been left to soak, he threw them upon the flames. He exerted himself with so much good sense, that the fire was presently extinguished.
Everything was now once more safe and quiet. Mrs. Pomfret, recovering from her fright, postponed all inquiries till the morning, and rejoiced that her mistress had not been awakened, whilst Corkscrew flattered himself that he should be able to conceal the true cause of the accident.
'Don't you tell Mrs. Pomfret where you found the candle when you came into the room,' said he to Franklin. 'If she asks me, you know I must tell the truth,' replied he. 'Must!' repeated Felix, sneeringly; 'what, you must be a tell-tale!' 'No, I never told any tales of anybody, and I should be very sorry to get any one into a scrape; but for all that I shall not tell a lie, either for myself or anybody else, let you call me what names you will.' 'But if I were to give you something that you would like,' said Corkscrew – 'something that I know you would like?' repeated Felix. 'Nothing you can give me will do,' answered Franklin, steadily; 'so it is useless to say any more about it – I hope I shall not be questioned.' In this hope he was mistaken; for the first thing Mrs. Pomfret did in the morning was to come into the room to examine and deplore the burnt curtains, whilst Corkscrew stood by, endeavouring to exculpate himself by all the excuses he could invent.
Mrs. Pomfret, however, though sometimes blinded by her prejudices, was no fool; and it was absolutely impossible to make her believe that a candle which had been left on the hearth, where Corkscrew protested he had left it, could have set curtains on fire which were at least six feet distant. Turning short round to Franklin, she desired that he would show her where he found the candle when he came into the room. He took up the candlestick; but the moment the housekeeper cast her eye upon it, she snatched it from his hands. 'How did this candlestick come here? This was not the candlestick you found here last night,' cried she. 'Yes, indeed it was,' answered Franklin. 'That is impossible,' retorted she, vehemently, 'for I left this candlestick with my own hands, last night, in the hall, the last thing I did, after you,' said she, turning to the butler, 'was gone to bed – I'm sure of it. Nay, don't you recollect my taking this japanned candlestick out of your hand, and making you to go up to bed with the brass one, and I bolted the door at the stair-head after you?'
This was all very true; but Corkscrew had afterwards gone down from his room by a back staircase, unbolted that door, and, upon his return from the alehouse, had taken the japanned candlestick by mistake upstairs, and had left the brass one in its stead upon the hall table.
'Oh, ma'am,' said Felix, 'indeed you forget; for Mr. Corkscrew came into my room to desire me to call him betimes in the morning, and I happened to take particular notice, and he had the japanned candlestick in his hand, and that was just as I heard you bolting the door. Indeed, ma'am, you forget.' 'Indeed, sir,' retorted Mrs. Pomfret, rising in anger, 'I do not forget; I'm not come to be superannuated yet, I hope. How do you dare to tell me I forget?' 'Oh, ma'am,' cried Felix, 'I beg your pardon, I did not – I did not mean to say you forgot, but only I thought, perhaps, you might not particularly remember; for if you please to recollect – ' 'I won't please to recollect just whatever you please, sir! Hold your tongue; why should you poke yourself into this scrape; what have you to do with it, I should be glad to know?' 'Nothing in the world, oh nothing in the world; I'm sure I beg your pardon, ma'am,' answered Felix, in a soft tone; and, sneaking off, left his friend Corkscrew to fight his own battle, secretly resolving to desert in good time, if he saw any danger of the alehouse transactions coming to light.
Corkscrew could make but very blundering excuses for himself; and, conscious of guilt, he turned pale, and appeared so much more terrified than butlers usually appear when detected in a lie, that Mrs. Pomfret resolved, as she said, to sift the matter to the bottom. Impatiently did she wait till the clock struck nine, and her mistress's bell rang, the signal for her attendance at her levee. 'How do you find yourself this morning, ma'am?' said she, undrawing the curtains. 'Very sleepy, indeed,' answered her mistress in a drowsy voice; 'I think I must sleep half an hour longer – shut the curtains.' 'As you please, ma'am; but I suppose I had better open a little of the window shutter, for it's past nine.' 'But just struck.' 'Oh dear, ma'am, it struck before I came upstairs, and you know we are twenty minutes slow – Lord bless us!' exclaimed Mrs. Pomfret, as she let fall the bar of the window, which roused her mistress. 'I'm sure I beg your pardon a thousand times – it's only the bar – because I had this great key in my hand.' 'Put down the key, then, or you'll knock something else down; and you may open the shutters now, for I'm quite awake.' 'Dear me! I'm so sorry to think of disturbing you,' cried Mrs. Pomfret, at the same time throwing the shutters wide open; 'but, to be sure, ma'am, I have something to tell you which won't let you sleep again in a hurry. I brought up this here key of the house door for reasons of my own, which I'm sure you'll approve of; but I'm not come to that part of my story yet. I hope you were not disturbed by the noise in the house last night, ma'am.' 'I heard no noise.' 'I am surprised at that, though,' continued Mrs. Pomfret, and proceeded to give a most ample account of the fire, of her fears and her suspicions. 'To be sure, ma'am, what I say is, that without the spirit of prophecy one can nowadays account for what has passed. I'm quite clear in my own judgment that Mr. Corkscrew must have been out last night after I went to bed; for, besides the japanned candlestick, which of itself I'm sure is strong enough to hang a man, there's another circumstance, ma'am, that certifies it to me – though I have not mentioned it, ma'am, to no one yet,' lowering her voice – 'Franklin, when I questioned him, told me that he left the lantern in the outside porch in the court last night, and this morning it was on the kitchen table. Now, ma'am, that lantern could not come without hands; and I could not forget about that, you know; for Franklin says he's sure he left the lantern out.' 'And do you believe him?' inquired her mistress. 'To be sure, ma'am – how can I help believing him? I never found him out in the least symptom of a lie since ever he came into the house; so one can't help believing in him, like him or not.' 'Without meaning to tell a falsehood, however,' said the lady, 'he might make a mistake.' 'No, ma'am, he never makes mistakes; it is not his way to go gossiping and tattling; he never tells anything till he's asked, and then it's fit he should. About the sirloin of beef, and all, he was right in the end, I found, to do him justice; and I'm sure he's right now about the lantern – he's always right.'
Mrs. Churchill could not help smiling.
'If you had seen him, ma'am, last night in the midst of the fire – I'm sure we may thank him that we were not burned alive in our beds – and I shall never forget his coming to call me. Poor fellow! he that I was always scolding and scolding, enough to make him hate me. But he's too good to hate anybody; and I'll be bound I'll make it up to him now.' 'Take care that you don't go from one extreme into another, Pomfret; don't spoil the boy.' 'No, ma'am, there's no danger of that; but I'm sure if you had seen him last night yourself, you would think he deserved to be rewarded.' 'And so he shall be rewarded,' said Mrs. Churchill; 'but I will try him more fully yet.' 'There's no occasion, I think, for trying him any more, ma'am,' said Mrs. Pomfret, who was as violent in her likings as in her dislikes. 'Pray desire,' continued her mistress, 'that he will bring up breakfast this morning; and leave the key of the house door, Pomfret, with me.'
When Franklin brought the urn into the breakfast-parlour, his mistress was standing by the fire with the key in her hand. She spoke to him of his last night's exertions in terms of much approbation. 'How long have you lived with me?' said she, pausing; 'three weeks, I think?' 'Three weeks and four days, madam.' 'That is but a short time; yet you have conducted yourself so as to make me think I may depend upon you. You know this key?' 'I believe, madam, it is the key of the house door.' 'It is; I shall trust it in your care. It is a great trust for so young a person as you are.' Franklin stood silent, with a firm but modest look. 'If you take the charge of this key,' continued his mistress, 'remember it is upon condition that you never give it out of your own hands. In the daytime it must not be left in the door. You must not tell anybody where you keep it at night; and the house door must not be unlocked after eleven o'clock at night, unless by my orders. Will you take charge of the key upon these conditions?' 'I will, madam, do anything you order me,' said Franklin, and received the