Mother-Meg; or, The Story of Dickie's Attic. Catharine Shaw
was useless to put Dickie down to walk, for he had seen all day that the child was very ill. His light weight, however, was not a great trouble, for he was very small for his age, and now was so thin and emaciated with hardship that the man doubted if he should ever carry him again.
"I wish yer'd git some one else," he exclaimed at last, for some remnants of humanity were left in his heart, and he had not carried that tender little mite for six months without some feeling as near akin to love as he was capable of.
His wife turned on him sharply. "Yer know we can't! There's lots o' reasons why 'e is the best one as we can git. Look at them soft brown curls of 'is, what allers takes the ladies, and 'is small size for carryin'; and then yer know as well as I do as 'is mother's dead, and 'is father ain't of no account, and is glad to git a pint or two in return for our havin' 'im. I wish you wouldn't be such a simpleton, George."
The man sighed. Long ago he had given up contending with his imperious wife, but sometimes as now, he walked along morosely, and his thoughts were best known to himself.
"I'd save 'im from it if I could," he muttered to himself, "but I've thought that 'afore, and it ain't no use. Still I shan't forgit—though I ain't no good at anythink now."
They had now reached London Bridge, and soon after turned down one of the narrow streets leading from the main thoroughfare, and again under a long low archway running beneath the first floor rooms of one of the houses, and so emerged into a court squalid and forlorn, which contained the house they called home.
Just as they were turning in at the door a crippled child of some thirteen or fourteen years came down the stairs to meet them. She silently held out her arms for little Dickie, and without vouchsafing more than one dark look at the woman's face, and then another hopeless one at her little brother's, she slowly ascended again, step by step, till weary and panting she laid him down on an old mattress in the corner of the crowded room where she lived.
"Dickie," she moaned, burying her face in his neck, where the soft waves of his golden-brown hair felt like silk against it, "Dickie, are they goin' to kill you right out? Dickie——!"
CHAPTER II.
THE WEDDING-DAY.
MEAN to take care of you, my girl; leastways I'll do my best."
The words were spoken by a man of about twenty-five, in a workman's dress, as he led his bride in at the door of her future home.
"I know that," she answered, looking up almost wistfully, for there had been a different tone in the ending of his sentence to that in which it had begun.
"It's not such a place as I should like to ha' brought you to, Meg; but work's been slack, and—there, you know all that!"
Meg stepped in and looked around; her glance was shy and somewhat fearful. Should she be afraid to see what her young husband had prepared for her?
She clasped his hand tightly, and the firm pressure in return reassured her. Whatever it might be, love had done it from beginning to end.
For Meg had come out of the sweet country with its sunny meadows, and cowslips and buttercups. She had left, fifty miles away, the dear fragrant garden, where only this morning her mother had gathered such a posie as had never been seen before; she had left the cottage where every china mug and shepherdess was like a bit of her life; she had left the situation in the grand house at the end of her mother's garden, where she had lived for four years in the midst of every luxury. And this is what she had come to: two small rooms in a high London house, in one of the streets turning out of a wide but gone-down thoroughfare near London Bridge.
The rooms were on the second floor, and looked out front and back, and as her husband ushered her in and closed the door, she knew she had come home.
He led her to the fire, where already a kettle was singing blithely, placed there in readiness by some one as yet unknown to Meg, and then he put his arm round her and whispered,
"Does it all seem very different to what you thought, my dear?"
"Oh, no," said Meg, leaning against his shoulder and looking round; "it's ever so nice. And how could you think of all these things by yourself, Jem?"
He laughed nervously, and her glance continued to take in all the things one by one. The little chiffonier which he had bought at a second-hand shop with such pride, because Meg's mother had one just like it; the bright-burning grate, with its little oven and boiler; the two American arm-chairs, looking so inviting by it; the large rag hearthrug, the strips of clean carpet on each side of the table, the red table-cloth, the freshly-scrubbed shelves, on which quite an array of pretty new crockery was set out.
Yes, it was home. Meg looked up in her husband's face with a satisfied glance.
"It is beautiful," she said, taking possession of it all with her heart. Hers and his, their home, for as long as God willed it.
Perhaps something of that thought shone in the man's eyes as he stooped to kiss her upturned face.
So Meg put down her bunch of home flowers, and looked round for something to put them in.
"They are too many for a vase," she said, "or a jug either. I wonder if there's a basin?"
Jem went to a cupboard in the corner and produced a nice-sized one, neither too large nor too small.
"Oh!" said Meg, gratified; "what a lot of basins and things, Jem; I shall make you some puddings in those."
"I reckon you will," he answered smiling.
She bent over her flowers, touching them with soft tender touch, for she loved each one, and he stood looking on.
Could this sweet girl really belong to him? Then a thought came over him with a pang, of what the women grew into around them—the toiling, hard-working, ill-fed, sometimes ill-used women.
"But Meg will never grow like that," he thought; "not while I love her, and God loves her; and His love is a never-ending love."
"Ain't you going in t'other room to take off yer bonnet, my dear?" he asked; "or are the flowers too precious?"
"Don't you see," she answered, smiling, "my bonnet won't fade, and these will; so I thought I would do them first."
"I told mother to come and take a cup o' tea with us at five o'clock; it must be near that now."
He drew out a clumsy, old-fashioned watch from his pocket and glanced at it.
"It wants nigh on twenty minutes to, my girl, so if we mean to get out our things we must be quick."
"These are done now," she answered, gathering up the bits and putting them into the fire, where they crackled up into a blaze and made the kettle boil up in good earnest.
So she took off her bonnet, and when she came back Jem had put a small square hamper on the table ready for her to open.
"Do you think mother would like to see what my mistress has given me?" she asked a little timidly; for "mother" was a new word to her lips; hitherto it had always been "your mother."
"I dare say she would, Meg; and tea don't matter for a few minutes."
So Meg left the hamper untouched and went