Our Mutual Friend
were so many like them all over the country, that one might have thought
the whole were but one restless edifice with the locomotive gift of
Aladdin’s palace. They were in a neighbourhood which looked like a toy
neighbourhood taken in blocks out of a box by a child of particularly
incoherent mind, and set up anyhow; here, one side of a new street;
there, a large solitary public-house facing nowhere; here, another
unfinished street already in ruins; there, a church; here, an immense
new warehouse; there, a dilapidated old country villa; then, a medley
of black ditch, sparkling cucumber-frame, rank field, richly cultivated
kitchen-garden, brick viaduct, arch-spanned canal, and disorder of
frowziness and fog. As if the child had given the table a kick, and gone
to sleep.
But, even among school-buildings, school-teachers, and school-pupils,
all according to pattern and all engendered in the light of the latest
Gospel according to Monotony, the older pattern into which so many
fortunes have been shaped for good and evil, comes out. It came out in
Miss Peecher the schoolmistress, watering her flowers, as Mr Bradley
Headstone walked forth. It came out in Miss Peecher the schoolmistress,
watering the flowers in the little dusty bit of garden attached to her
small official residence, with little windows like the eyes in needles,
and little doors like the covers of school-books.
Small, shining, neat, methodical, and buxom was Miss Peecher;
cherry-cheeked and tuneful of voice. A little pincushion, a little
housewife, a little book, a little workbox, a little set of tables and
weights and measures, and a little woman, all in one. She could write
a little essay on any subject, exactly a slate long, beginning at the
left-hand top of one side and ending at the right-hand bottom of the
other, and the essay should be strictly according to rule. If Mr Bradley
Headstone had addressed a written proposal of marriage to her, she would
probably have replied in a complete little essay on the theme exactly a
slate long, but would certainly have replied Yes. For she loved him. The
decent hair-guard that went round his neck and took care of his decent
silver watch was an object of envy to her. So would Miss Peecher have
gone round his neck and taken care of him. Of him, insensible. Because
he did not love Miss Peecher.
Miss Peecher’s favourite pupil, who assisted her in her little
household, was in attendance with a can of water to replenish her little
watering-pot, and sufficiently divined the state of Miss Peecher’s
affections to feel it necessary that she herself should love young
Charley Hexam. So, there was a double palpitation among the double
stocks and double wall-flowers, when the master and the boy looked over
the little gate.
‘A fine evening, Miss Peecher,’ said the Master.
‘A very fine evening, Mr Headstone,’ said Miss Peecher. ‘Are you taking
a walk?’
‘Hexam and I are going to take a long walk.’
‘Charming weather,’ remarked Miss Peecher, ‘FOR a long walk.’
‘Ours is rather on business than mere pleasure,’ said the Master. Miss
Peecher inverting her watering-pot, and very carefully shaking out the
few last drops over a flower, as if there were some special virtue in
them which would make it a Jack’s beanstalk before morning, called for
replenishment to her pupil, who had been speaking to the boy.
‘Good-night, Miss Peecher,’ said the Master.
‘Good-night, Mr Headstone,’ said the Mistress.
The pupil had been, in her state of pupilage, so imbued with the
class-custom of stretching out an arm, as if to hail a cab or omnibus,
whenever she found she had an observation on hand to offer to Miss
Peecher, that she often did it in their domestic relations; and she did
it now.
‘Well, Mary Anne?’ said Miss Peecher.
‘If you please, ma’am, Hexam said they were going to see his sister.’
‘But that can’t be, I think,’ returned Miss Peecher: ‘because Mr
Headstone can have no business with HER.’
Mary Anne again hailed.
‘Well, Mary Anne?’
‘If you please, ma’am, perhaps it’s Hexam’s business?’
‘That may be,’ said Miss Peecher. ‘I didn’t think of that. Not that it
matters at all.’
Mary Anne again hailed.
‘Well, Mary Anne?’
‘They say she’s very handsome.’
‘Oh, Mary Anne, Mary Anne!’ returned Miss Peecher, slightly colouring
and shaking her head, a little out of humour; ‘how often have I told you
not to use that vague expression, not to speak in that general way? When
you say THEY say, what do you mean? Part of speech They?’
Mary Anne hooked her right arm behind her in her left hand, as being
under examination, and replied:
‘Personal pronoun.’
‘Person, They?’
‘Third person.’
‘Number, They?’
‘Plural number.’
‘Then how many do you mean, Mary Anne? Two? Or more?’
‘I beg your pardon, ma’am,’ said Mary Anne, disconcerted now she came
to think of it; ‘but I don’t know that I mean more than her brother
himself.’ As she said it, she unhooked her arm.
‘I felt convinced of it,’ returned Miss Peecher, smiling again. ‘Now
pray, Mary Anne, be careful another time. He says is very different from
they say, remember. Difference between he says and they say? Give it
me.’
Mary Anne immediately hooked her right arm behind her in her left
hand—an attitude absolutely necessary to the situation—and replied:
‘One is indicative mood, present tense, third person singular, verb
active to say. Other is indicative mood, present tense, third person
plural, verb active to say.’
‘Why verb active, Mary Anne?’
‘Because it takes a pronoun after it in the objective case, Miss
Peecher.’
‘Very good indeed,’ remarked Miss Peecher, with encouragement. ‘In fact,
could not be better. Don’t forget to apply it, another time, Mary Anne.’
This said, Miss Peecher finished the watering of her flowers, and
went into her little official residence, and took a refresher of the
principal rivers and mountains of the world, their breadths, depths, and
heights, before settling the measurements of the body of a dress for her
own personal occupation.
Bradley Headstone and Charley Hexam duly got to the Surrey side of
Westminster Bridge, and crossed the bridge, and made along the Middlesex
shore towards Millbank. In this region are a certain little street
called Church Street, and a certain little blind square, called Smith
Square, in the centre of which last retreat is a very hideous church
with four towers at the four corners, generally resembling some
petrified monster, frightful and gigantic, on its back with its legs
in the air. They found a tree near by in a corner, and a blacksmith’s
forge, and a timber yard, and a dealer’s in old iron. What a rusty
portion of a boiler and a great iron wheel or so meant by lying
half-buried in the dealer’s fore-court, nobody seemed to know or to want
to know. Like the Miller of questionable jollity in the song, They cared
for Nobody, no not they, and Nobody cared for them.
After making the round of this place, and noting that there was a deadly
kind of repose on it, more as though it had taken laudanum than fallen
into a natural rest, they stopped at the point where the street and the
square joined, and where there were some little quiet houses in a row.
To these Charley Hexam finally led the way, and at one of these stopped.
‘This must be where my sister lives, sir. This is where she came for a
temporary lodging, soon after father’s death.’
‘How often have you seen her since?’
‘Why, only twice, sir,’ returned the boy, with his former reluctance;
‘but that’s as much her doing as mine.’
‘How does she support herself?’
‘She was always a fair needlewoman, and she keeps the stockroom of a
seaman’s outfitter.’
‘Does she ever work at her own lodging here?’
‘Sometimes; but her regular hours and regular occupation are at their
place of business, I believe, sir. This is the number.’
The boy knocked at a door, and the door promptly opened with a spring
and a click. A parlour door within a small entry stood open, and
disclosed a child—a dwarf—a girl—a something—sitting on a little low
old-fashioned arm-chair, which had a kind of little working bench before
it.
‘I can’t get up,’ said the child, ‘because my back’s bad, and my legs
are queer. But I’m the person of the house.’
‘Who else is at home?’ asked Charley Hexam, staring.
‘Nobody’s at home at present,’ returned the child, with a glib assertion
of her dignity, ‘except the person of the house. What did you want,
young man?’
‘I wanted to see my sister.’
‘Many young men have sisters,’ returned the child. ‘Give me your name,
young man?’
The queer little figure, and the queer but not ugly little face, with
its bright grey eyes, were so sharp, that the sharpness of the manner
seemed unavoidable. As if, being turned out of that mould, it must be
sharp.
‘Hexam is my name.’
‘Ah, indeed?’ said the person of the house. ‘I thought it might be. Your
sister will be in, in about a quarter of an hour. I am very fond of your
sister. She’s my particular friend. Take a seat. And this gentleman’s
name?’
‘Mr Headstone, my schoolmaster.’
‘Take a seat. And would you please to shut the street door first? I
can’t very well do it myself; because my back’s so bad, and my legs are
so queer.’
They complied in silence, and the little figure went on with its work of
gumming or gluing together with a camel’s-hair brush certain pieces
of cardboard and thin wood, previously cut into various shapes. The
scissors and knives upon the bench showed that the child herself had cut
them; and the bright scraps of velvet and silk and ribbon also strewn
upon the bench showed that when duly stuffed (and stuffing too was
there), she was to cover them smartly. The dexterity of her nimble
fingers was remarkable, and, as she brought two thin edges accurately
together by giving them a little bite, she would glance at the visitors
out of the corners of her grey eyes with a look that out-sharpened all
her other sharpness.
‘You can’t tell me the name of my trade, I’ll be bound,’ she said, after
taking several of these observations.
‘You make pincushions,’ said Charley.
‘What else do I make?’
‘Pen-wipers,’ said Bradley Headstone.
‘Ha! ha! What else do I make? You’re a schoolmaster, but you can’t tell
me.’
‘You do something,’ he returned, pointing to a corner of the little
bench, ‘with straw; but I don’t know what.’
‘Well done you!’ cried the person of the house. ‘I only make pincushions
and pen-wipers, to use up my waste. But my straw really does belong to
my business. Try again. What do I make with my straw?’
‘Dinner-mats?’
‘A schoolmaster, and says dinner-mats! I’ll give you a clue to my trade,
in a game of forfeits. I love my love with a B because she’s Beautiful;
I hate my love with a B because she is Brazen; I took her to the sign of
the Blue Boar, and I treated her with Bonnets; her name’s Bouncer, and
she lives in Bedlam.—Now, what do I make with my straw?’
‘Ladies’ bonnets?’
‘Fine ladies’,’ said the person of the house, nodding assent. ‘Dolls’.
I’m a Doll’s Dressmaker.’
‘I hope it’s a good business?’
The person of the house shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. ‘No.
Poorly paid. And I’m often so pressed for time! I had a doll married,
last week, and was obliged to work all night. And it’s not good for me,
on account of my back being so bad and my legs so queer.’
They looked at the little creature with a wonder that did not diminish,
and the schoolmaster said: ‘I am sorry your fine ladies are so
inconsiderate.’
‘It’s the way with them,’ said the person of the house, shrugging her
shoulders again. ‘And they take no care of their clothes, and they
never keep to the same fashions a month. I work for a doll with three
daughters. Bless you, she’s enough to ruin her husband!’ The person of