Part 1 (2/2)
”What is poor folk to do, my lady?” asked the woman, ”there's no work, and there's no food; and surely we'd be better to get a bit of broken victuals or a copper from some Christian gentleman than to starve at home, like rats in a hole!”
”Well, well,” said the gentleman with a ponderous sigh, ”it makes one's heart ache, Clarissa. Here, my good woman, go home now and buy some food and coals, and get that poor child warm.”
He gave her a s.h.i.+lling and pa.s.sed on, and the woman, catching sight of a policeman whom she recognized bearing down upon them, they hastily turned the other way and set off in the direction of London Bridge as fast as they could go.
The man knew it was useless to put d.i.c.kie 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 hards.h.i.+p 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 d.i.c.kie, 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.
”d.i.c.kie,” she moaned, burying her face in his neck, where the soft waves of his golden-brown hair felt like silk against it, ”d.i.c.kie, are they goin' to kill you right out? d.i.c.kie----!”
[Ill.u.s.tration]
[Ill.u.s.tration]
CHAPTER II.
THE WEDDING-DAY.
”I 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 rea.s.sured 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 b.u.t.tercups. 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.
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