sudden alacrity. 'Now, what are you waiting for? Are you going to
keep the gentleman expecting us all day? haven't you no manners?'
With this remonstrance, the melancholy man, who was no other than
Mr Thomas Codlin, pushed past his friend and brother in the craft,
Mr Harris, otherwise Short or Trotters, and hurried before him to
the single gentleman's apartment.
'Now, my men,' said the single gentleman; 'you have done very well.
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What will you take? Tell that little man behind, to shut the
door.'
'Shut the door, can't you?' said Mr Codlin, turning gruffly to his
friend. 'You might have knowed that the gentleman wanted the door
shut, without being told, I think.'
Mr Short obeyed, observing under his breath that his friend seemed
unusually 'cranky,' and expressing a hope that there was no dairy
in the neighbourhood, or his temper would certainly spoil its
contents.
The gentleman pointed to a couple of chairs, and intimated by an
emphatic nod of his head that he expected them to be seated.
Messrs Codlin and Short, after looking at each other with
considerable doubt and indecision, at length sat down--each on the
extreme edge of the chair pointed out to him--and held their hats
very tight, while the single gentleman filled a couple of glasses
from a bottle on the table beside him, and presented them in due
form.
'You're pretty well browned by the sun, both of you,' said their
entertainer. 'Have you been travelling?'
Mr Short replied in the affirmative with a nod and a smile. Mr
Codlin added a corroborative nod and a short groan, as if he still
felt the weight of the Temple on his shoulders.
'To fairs, markets, races, and so forth, I suppose?' pursued the
single gentleman.
'Yes, sir,' returned Short, 'pretty nigh all over the West of
England.'
'I have talked to men of your craft from North, East, and South,'
returned their host, in rather a hasty manner; 'but I never lighted
on any from the West before.'
'It's our reg'lar summer circuit is the West, master,' said Short;
'that's where it is. We takes the East of London in the spring and
winter, and the West of England in the summer time. Many's the
hard day's walking in rain and mud, and with never a penny earned,
we've had down in the West.'
'Let me fill your glass again.'
'Much obleeged to you sir, I think I will,' said Mr Codlin,
suddenly thrusting in his own and turning Short's aside. 'I'm the
sufferer, sir, in all the travelling, and in all the staying at
home. In town or country, wet or dry, hot or cold, Tom Codlin
suffers. But Tom Codlin isn't to complain for all that. Oh, no!
Short may complain, but if Codlin grumbles by so much as a word--
oh dear, down with him, down with him directly. It isn't his place
to grumble. That's quite out of the question.'
'Codlin an't without his usefulness,' observed Short with an arch
look, 'but he don't always keep his eyes open. He falls asleep
sometimes, you know. Remember them last races, Tommy.'
'Will you never leave off aggravating a man?' said Codlin. 'It's
very like I was asleep when five-and-tenpence was collected, in one
round, isn't it? I was attending to my business, and couldn't have
my eyes in twenty places at once, like a peacock, no more than you
could. If I an't a match for an old man and a young child, you
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an't neither, so don't throw that out against me, for the cap fits
your head quite as correct as it fits mine."
'You may as well drop the subject, Tom,' said Short. 'It isn't
particular agreeable to the gentleman, I dare say.'
'Then you shouldn't have brought it up,' returned Mr Codlin; 'and
I ask the gentleman's pardon on your account, as a giddy chap that
likes to hear himself talk, and don't much care what he talks
about, so that he does talk.'
Their entertainer had sat perfectly quiet in the beginning of this
dispute, looking first at one man and then at the other, as if he
were lying in wait for an opportunity of putting some further
question, or reverting to that from which the discourse had
strayed. But, from the point where Mr Codlin was charged with
sleepiness, he had shown an increasing interest in the discussion:
which now attained a very high pitch.
'You are the two men I want,' he said, 'the two men I have been
looking for, and searching after! Where are that old man and that
child you speak of?'
'Sir?' said Short, hesitating, and looking towards his friend.
'The old man and his grandchild who travelled with you--where are
they? It will be worth your while to speak out, I assure you; much
better worth your while than you believe. They left you, you say--
at those races, as I understand. They have been traced to that
place, and there lost sight of. Have you no clue, can you suggest
no clue, to their recovery?'
'Did I always say, Thomas,' cried Short, turning with a look of
amazement to his friend, 'that there was sure to be an inquiry
after them two travellers?'
'YOU said!' returned Mr Codlin. 'Did I always say that that 'ere
blessed child was the most interesting I ever see? Did I always
say I loved her, and doated on her? Pretty creetur, I think I hear
her now. "Codlin's my friend," she says, with a tear of gratitude
a trickling down her little eye; "Codlin's my friend," she says--
"not Short. Short's very well," she says; "I've no quarrel with
Short; he means kind, I dare say; but Codlin," she says, "has the
feelings for my money, though he mayn't look it."'
Repeating these words with great emotion, Mr Codlin rubbed the
bridge of his nose with his coat-sleeve, and shaking his head
mournfully from side to side, left the single gentleman to infer
that, from the moment when he lost sight of his dear young charge,
his peace of mind and happiness had fled.
'Good Heaven!' said the single gentleman, pacing up and down the
room, 'have I found these men at last, only to discover that they
can give me no information or assistance! It would have been
better to have lived on, in hope, from day to day, and never to
have lighted on them, than to have my expectations scattered thus.'
'Stay a minute,' said Short. 'A man of the name of Jerry--you
know Jerry, Thomas?'
'Oh, don't talk to me of Jerrys,' replied Mr Codlin. 'How can I
care a pinch of snuff for Jerrys, when I think of that 'ere darling
child? "Codlin's my friend," she says, "dear, good, kind Codlin,
as is always a devising pleasures for me! I don't object to
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Short," she says, "but I cotton to Codlin." Once,' said that
gentleman reflectively, 'she called me Father Codlin. I thought I
should have bust!'
'A man of the name of Jerry, sir,' said Short, turning from his
selfish colleague
to their new acquaintance, 'wot keeps a company
of dancing dogs, told me, in a accidental sort of way, that he had
seen the old gentleman in connexion with a travelling wax-work,
unbeknown to him. As they'd given us the slip, and nothing had
come of it, and this was down in the country that he'd been seen,
I took no measures about it, and asked no questions--But I can, if
you like.'
'Is this man in town?' said the impatient single gentleman. 'Speak
faster.'
'No he isn't, but he will be to-morrow, for he lodges in our
house,' replied Mr Short rapidly.
'Then bring him here,' said the single gentleman. 'Here's a
sovereign a-piece. If I can find these people through your means,
it is but a prelude to twenty more. Return to me to-morrow, and
keep your own counsel on this subject--though I need hardly tell
you that; for you'll do so for your own sakes. Now, give me your
address, and leave me.'
The address was given, the two men departed, the crowd went with
them, and the single gentleman for two mortal hours walked in
uncommon agitation up and down his room, over the wondering heads
of Mr Swiveller and Miss Sally Brass.
CHAPTER 38
Kit--for it happens at this juncture, not only that we have
breathing time to follow his fortunes, but that the necessities of
these adventures so adapt themselves to our ease and inclination as
to call upon us imperatively to pursue the track we most desire to
take--Kit, while the matters treated of in the last fifteen
chapters were yet in progress, was, as the reader may suppose,
gradually familiarising himself more and more with Mr and Mrs
Garland, Mr Abel, the pony, and Barbara, and gradually coming to
consider them one and all as his particular private friends, and
Abel Cottage, Finchley, as his own proper home.
Stay--the words are written, and may go, but if they convey any
notion that Kit, in the plentiful board and comfortable lodging of
his new abode, began to think slightingly of the poor fare and
furniture of his old dwelling, they do their office badly and
commit injustice. Who so mindful of those he left at home--albeit
they were but a mother and two young babies--as Kit? What
boastful father in the fulness of his heart ever related such
wonders of his infant prodigy, as Kit never wearied of telling
Barbara in the evening time, concerning little Jacob? Was there
ever such a mother as Kit's mother, on her son's showing; or was
there ever such comfort in poverty as in the poverty of Kit's
family, if any correct judgment might be arrived at, from his own
glowing account!
And let me linger in this place, for an instant, to remark that if
ever household affections and loves are graceful things, they are
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graceful in the poor. The ties that bind the wealthy and the proud
to home may be forged on earth, but those which link the poor man
to his humble hearth are of the truer metal and bear the stamp of
Heaven. The man of high descent may love the halls and lands of
his inheritance as part of himself: as trophies of his birth and
power; his associations with them are associations of pride and
wealth and triumph; the poor man's attachment to the tenements he
holds, which strangers have held before, and may to-morrow occupy
again, has a worthier root, struck deep into a purer soil. His
household gods are of flesh and blood, with no alloy of silver,
gold, or precious stone; he has no property but in the affections
of his own heart; and when they endear bare floors and walls,
despite of rags and toil and scanty fare, that man has his love of
home from God, and his rude hut becomes a solemn place.
Oh! if those who rule the destinies of nations would but remember
this--if they would but think how hard it is for the very poor to
have engendered in their hearts, that love of home from which all
domestic virtues spring, when they live in dense and squalid masses
where social decency is lost, or rather never found--if they
would but turn aside from the wide thoroughfares and great houses,
and strive to improve the wretched dwellings in bye-ways where only
Poverty may walk--many low roofs would point more truly to the
sky, than the loftiest steeple that now rears proudly up from the
midst of guilt, and crime, and horrible disease, to mock them by
its contrast. In hollow voices from Workhouse, Hospital, and jail,
this truth is preached from day to day, and has been proclaimed for
years. It is no light matter--no outcry from the working vulgar--
no mere question of the people's health and comforts that may be
whistled down on Wednesday nights. In love of home, the love of
country has its rise; and who are the truer patriots or the better
in time of need--those who venerate the land, owning its wood, and
stream, and earth, and all that they produce? or those who love
their country, boasting not a foot of ground in all its wide
domain!
Kit knew nothing about such questions, but he knew that his old
home was a very poor place, and that his new one was very unlike
it, and yet he was constantly looking back with grateful
satisfaction and affectionate anxiety, and often indited squarefolded
letters to his mother, enclosing a shilling or eighteenpence
or such other small remittance, which Mr Abel's liberality enabled
him to make. Sometimes being in the neighbourhood, he had leisure
to call upon her, and then great was the joy and pride of Kit's
mother, and extremely noisy the satisfaction of little Jacob and
the baby, and cordial the congratulations of the whole court, who
listened with admiring ears to the accounts of Abel Cottage, and
could never be told too much of its wonders and magnificence.
Although Kit was in the very highest favour with the old lady and
gentleman, and Mr Abel, and Barbara, it is certain that no member
of the family evinced such a remarkable partiality for him as the
self-willed pony, who, from being the most obstinate and
opinionated pony on the face of the earth, was, in his hands, the
meekest and most tractable of animals. It is true that in exact
proportion as he became manageable by Kit he became utterly
ungovernable by anybody else (as if he had determined to keep him
in the family at all risks and hazards), and that, even under the
guidance of his favourite, he would sometimes perform a great
variety of strange freaks and capers, to the extreme discomposure
of the old lady's nerves; but as Kit always represented that this
was only his fun, or a way he had of showing his attachment to his
employers, Mrs Garland gradually suffered herself to be persuaded
into the belief, in which she at last became so strongly confirmed,
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that if, in one of these ebullitions, he had overturned the chaise,
she would have been quite satisfied that he did it with the very
best intentions.
Besides becoming in a short time a perfect marvel in all stable
matters, Kit soon made himself a very tolerable gardener, a handy
fellow within doors, and an indispensable attendant on Mr Abel, who
every day gave him some new proof of his confidence and
approbation. Mr Witherden the notary, too, regarded him with a
friendly eye; and even Mr Chuckster would sometimes condescend to
give him a slight nod, or to honour him with that peculiar form of
recognition which is called 'taking a sight,' or to favour him with
some other salute combining pleasantry with patronage.
One morning Kit drove Mr Abel to the Notary's office, as he
sometimes did, and having set him down at the house, was about to
drive off to a livery stable hard by, when this same Mr Chuckster
emerged from the office door, and cried 'Woa-a-a-a-a-a!'--dwelling
upon the note a long time, for the purpose of striking terror into
the pony's heart, and asserting the supremacy of man over the
inferior animals.
'Pull up, Snobby,' cried Mr Chuckster, addressing himself to Kit.
'You're wanted inside here.'
'Has Mr Abel forgotten anything, I wonder?' said Kit as he
dismounted.
'Ask no questions, Snobby,' returned Mr Chuckster, 'but go and see.
Woa-a-a then, will you? If that pony was mine, I'd break him.'
'You must be very gentle with him, if you please,' said Kit, 'or
you'll find him troublesome. You'd better not keep on pulling his
ears, please. I know he won't like it.'
To this remonstrance Mr Chuckster deigned no other answer, than
addressing Kit with a lofty and distant air as 'young feller,' and
requesting him to cut and come again with all speed. The 'young
feller' complying, Mr Chuckster put his hands in his pockets, and
tried to look as if he were not minding the pony, but happened to
be lounging there by accident.
Kit scraped his shoes very carefully (for he had not yet lost his
reverence for the bundles of papers and the tin boxes,) and tapped
at the office-door, which was quickly opened by the Notary himself.
'Oh! come in, Christopher,' said Mr Witherden.
'Is that the lad?' asked an elderly gentleman, but of a stout,
bluff figure--who was in the room.
'That's the lad,' said Mr Witherden. 'He fell in with my client,
Mr Garland, sir, at this very door. I have reason to think he is
a good lad, sir, and that you may believe what he says. Let me
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