Our Mutual Friend
my dear, and Mr Rokesmith, that when I first named to my husband my
thoughts of adopting a little orphan boy in remembrance of John Harmon,
I further named to my husband that it was comforting to think that how
the poor boy would be benefited by John’s own money, and protected from
John’s own forlornness.’
‘Hear, hear!’ cried Mr Boffin. ‘So she did. Ancoar!’
‘No, not Ancoar, Noddy, my dear,’ returned Mrs Boffin, ‘because I am
going to say something else. I meant that, I am sure, as much as
I still mean it. But this little death has made me ask myself the
question, seriously, whether I wasn’t too bent upon pleasing myself.
Else why did I seek out so much for a pretty child, and a child quite to
my liking? Wanting to do good, why not do it for its own sake, and put
my tastes and likings by?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Bella; and perhaps she said it with some little
sensitiveness arising out of those old curious relations of hers towards
the murdered man; ‘perhaps, in reviving the name, you would not have
liked to give it to a less interesting child than the original. He
interested you very much.’
‘Well, my dear,’ returned Mrs Boffin, giving her a squeeze, ‘it’s kind
of you to find that reason out, and I hope it may have been so, and
indeed to a certain extent I believe it was so, but I am afraid not to
the whole extent. However, that don’t come in question now, because we
have done with the name.’
‘Laid it up as a remembrance,’ suggested Bella, musingly.
‘Much better said, my dear; laid it up as a remembrance. Well then; I
have been thinking if I take any orphan to provide for, let it not be
a pet and a plaything for me, but a creature to be helped for its own
sake.’
‘Not pretty then?’ said Bella.
‘No,’ returned Mrs Boffin, stoutly.
‘Nor prepossessing then?’ said Bella.
‘No,’ returned Mrs Boffin. ‘Not necessarily so. That’s as it may happen.
A well-disposed boy comes in my way who may be even a little wanting in
such advantages for getting on in life, but is honest and industrious
and requires a helping hand and deserves it. If I am very much in
earnest and quite determined to be unselfish, let me take care of HIM.’
Here the footman whose feelings had been hurt on the former occasion,
appeared, and crossing to Rokesmith apologetically announced the
objectionable Sloppy.
The four members of Council looked at one another, and paused. ‘Shall he
be brought here, ma’am?’ asked Rokesmith.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Boffin. Whereupon the footman disappeared, reappeared
presenting Sloppy, and retired much disgusted.
The consideration of Mrs Boffin had clothed Mr Sloppy in a suit of
black, on which the tailor had received personal directions from
Rokesmith to expend the utmost cunning of his art, with a view to the
concealment of the cohering and sustaining buttons. But, so much
more powerful were the frailties of Sloppy’s form than the strongest
resources of tailoring science, that he now stood before the Council,
a perfect Argus in the way of buttons: shining and winking and gleaming
and twinkling out of a hundred of those eyes of bright metal, at the
dazzled spectators. The artistic taste of some unknown hatter had
furnished him with a hatband of wholesale capacity which was fluted
behind, from the crown of his hat to the brim, and terminated in a black
bunch, from which the imagination shrunk discomfited and the reason
revolted. Some special powers with which his legs were endowed, had
already hitched up his glossy trousers at the ankles, and bagged them at
the knees; while similar gifts in his arms had raised his coat-sleeves
from his wrists and accumulated them at his elbows. Thus set forth, with
the additional embellishments of a very little tail to his coat, and a
yawning gulf at his waistband, Sloppy stood confessed.
‘And how is Betty, my good fellow?’ Mrs Boffin asked him.
‘Thankee, mum,’ said Sloppy, ‘she do pretty nicely, and sending her
dooty and many thanks for the tea and all faviours and wishing to know
the family’s healths.’
‘Have you just come, Sloppy?’
‘Yes, mum.’
‘Then you have not had your dinner yet?’
‘No, mum. But I mean to it. For I ain’t forgotten your handsome orders
that I was never to go away without having had a good ’un off of meat
and beer and pudding—no: there was four of ’em, for I reckoned ’em
up when I had ’em; meat one, beer two, vegetables three, and which was
four?—Why, pudding, HE was four!’ Here Sloppy threw his head back,
opened his mouth wide, and laughed rapturously.
‘How are the two poor little Minders?’ asked Mrs Boffin.
‘Striking right out, mum, and coming round beautiful.’
Mrs Boffin looked on the other three members of Council, and then said,
beckoning with her finger:
‘Sloppy.’
‘Yes, mum.’
‘Come forward, Sloppy. Should you like to dine here every day?’
‘Off of all four on ’em, mum? O mum!’ Sloppy’s feelings obliged him to
squeeze his hat, and contract one leg at the knee.
‘Yes. And should you like to be always taken care of here, if you were
industrious and deserving?’
‘Oh, mum!—But there’s Mrs Higden,’ said Sloppy, checking himself in his
raptures, drawing back, and shaking his head with very serious meaning.
‘There’s Mrs Higden. Mrs Higden goes before all. None can ever be better
friends to me than Mrs Higden’s been. And she must be turned for, must
Mrs Higden. Where would Mrs Higden be if she warn’t turned for!’ At the
mere thought of Mrs Higden in this inconceivable affliction, Mr Sloppy’s
countenance became pale, and manifested the most distressful emotions.
‘You are as right as right can be, Sloppy,’ said Mrs Boffin ‘and far be
it from me to tell you otherwise. It shall be seen to. If Betty Higden
can be turned for all the same, you shall come here and be taken care of
for life, and be made able to keep her in other ways than the turning.’
‘Even as to that, mum,’ answered the ecstatic Sloppy, ‘the turning might
be done in the night, don’t you see? I could be here in the day, and
turn in the night. I don’t want no sleep, I don’t. Or even if I any ways
should want a wink or two,’ added Sloppy, after a moment’s apologetic
reflection, ‘I could take ’em turning. I’ve took ’em turning many a
time, and enjoyed ’em wonderful!’
On the grateful impulse of the moment, Mr Sloppy kissed Mrs Boffin’s
hand, and then detaching himself from that good creature that he might
have room enough for his feelings, threw back his head, opened his mouth
wide, and uttered a dismal howl. It was creditable to his tenderness of
heart, but suggested that he might on occasion give some offence to the
neighbours: the rather, as the footman looked in, and begged pardon,
finding he was not wanted, but excused himself; on the ground ‘that he
thought it was Cats.’
Chapter 11
SOME AFFAIRS OF THE HEART
Little Miss Peecher, from her little official dwelling-house, with its
little windows like the eyes in needles, and its little doors like the
covers of school-books, was very observant indeed of the object of her
quiet affections. Love, though said to be afflicted with blindness, is
a vigilant watchman, and Miss Peecher kept him on double duty over Mr
Bradley Headstone. It was not that she was naturally given to playing
the spy—it was not that she was at all secret, plotting, or mean—it
was simply that she loved the irresponsive Bradley with all the
primitive and homely stock of love that had never been examined or
certificated out of her. If her faithful slate had had the latent
qualities of sympathetic paper, and its pencil those of invisible ink,
many a little treatise calculated to astonish the pupils would have come
bursting through the dry sums in school-time under the warming influence
of Miss Peecher’s bosom. For, oftentimes when school was not, and her
calm leisure and calm little house were her own, Miss Peecher would
commit to the confidential slate an imaginary description of how, upon
a balmy evening at dusk, two figures might have been observed in the
market-garden ground round the corner, of whom one, being a manly form,
bent over the other, being a womanly form of short stature and some
compactness, and breathed in a low voice the words, ‘Emma Peecher, wilt
thou be my own?’ after which the womanly form’s head reposed upon the
manly form’s shoulder, and the nightingales tuned up. Though all unseen,
and unsuspected by the pupils, Bradley Headstone even pervaded the
school exercises. Was Geography in question? He would come triumphantly
flying out of Vesuvius and Aetna ahead of the lava, and would boil
unharmed in the hot springs of Iceland, and would float majestically
down the Ganges and the Nile. Did History chronicle a king of men?
Behold him in pepper-and-salt pantaloons, with his watch-guard round
his neck. Were copies to be written? In capital B’s and H’s most of the
girls under Miss Peecher’s tuition were half a year ahead of every other
letter in the alphabet. And Mental Arithmetic, administered by Miss
Peecher, often devoted itself to providing Bradley Headstone with a
wardrobe of fabulous extent: fourscore and four neck-ties at two and
ninepence-halfpenny, two gross of silver watches at four pounds fifteen
and sixpence, seventy-four black hats at eighteen shillings; and many
similar superfluities.
The vigilant watchman, using his daily opportunities of turning his eyes
in Bradley’s direction, soon apprized Miss Peecher that Bradley was more
preoccupied than had been his wont, and more given to strolling about
with a downcast and reserved face, turning something difficult in his
mind that was not in the scholastic syllabus. Putting this and that
together—combining under the head ‘this,’ present appearances and the
intimacy with Charley Hexam, and ranging under the head ‘that’ the
visit to his sister, the watchman reported to Miss Peecher his strong
suspicions that the sister was at the bottom of it.
‘I wonder,’ said Miss Peecher, as she sat making up her weekly report on
a half-holiday afternoon, ‘what they call Hexam’s sister?’
Mary Anne, at her needlework, attendant and attentive, held her arm up.
‘Well, Mary Anne?’
‘She is named Lizzie, ma’am.’
‘She can hardly be named Lizzie, I think, Mary Anne,’ returned Miss
Peecher, in a tunefully instructive voice. ‘Is Lizzie a Christian name,
Mary Anne?’
Mary Anne laid down her work, rose, hooked herself behind, as being
under catechization, and replied: ‘No, it is a corruption, Miss
Peecher.’
‘Who gave her that name?’ Miss Peecher was going on, from the mere force
of habit, when she checked herself; on Mary Anne’s evincing theological
impatience to strike in with her godfathers and her godmothers, and
said: ‘I mean of what name is it a corruption?’
‘Elizabeth, or Eliza, Miss Peecher.’
‘Right, Mary Anne. Whether there were any Lizzies in the early Christian
Church must be considered very doubtful, very doubtful.’ Miss Peecher
was exceedingly sage here. ‘Speaking correctly, we say, then, that
Hexam’s sister is called Lizzie; not that she is named so. Do we not,
Mary Anne?’
‘We do, Miss Peecher.’
‘And where,’ pursued Miss Peecher, complacent in her little transparent
fiction of conducting the examination in a semiofficial manner for Mary
Anne’s benefit, not her own, ‘where does this young woman, who is called
but not named Lizzie, live? Think, now, before answering.’
‘In Church Street, Smith Square, by Mill Bank, ma’am.’
‘In Church Street, Smith Square, by Mill Bank,’ repeated Miss Peecher,
as if possessed beforehand of the book in which it was written. Exactly
so. And what occupation does this young woman pursue, Mary Anne? Take
time.’
‘She has a place of trust at an outfitter’s in the City, ma’am.’
‘Oh!’ said Miss Peecher, pondering on it; but smoothly added, in a
confirmatory tone, ‘At an outfitter’s in the City. Ye-es?’