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London, and appeared to have no little curiosity touching their farther

destination. The child parried her inquiries as well as she could, and

with no great trouble, for finding that they appeared to give her pain,

the old lady desisted.

'These two gentlemen have ordered supper in an hour's time,' she said,

taking her into the bar; 'and your best plan will be to sup with them.

Meanwhile you shall have a little taste of something that'll do you

good, for I'm sure you must want it after all you've gone through

to-day. Now, don't look after the old gentleman, because when you've

drank that, he shall have some too.'

As nothing could induce the child to leave him alone, however, or to

touch anything in which he was not the first and greatest sharer, the

old lady was obliged to help him first. When they had been thus

refreshed, the whole house hurried away into an empty stable where the

show stood, and where, by the light of a few flaring candles stuck

round a hoop which hung by a line from the ceiling, it was to be

forthwith exhibited.

And now Mr Thomas Codlin, the misanthrope, after blowing away at the

Pan's pipes until he was intensely wretched, took his station on one

side of the checked drapery which concealed the mover of the figures,

and putting his hands in his pockets prepared to reply to all questions

and remarks of Punch, and to make a dismal feint of being his most

intimate private friend, of believing in him to the fullest and most

unlimited extent, of knowing that he enjoyed day and night a merry and

glorious existence in that temple, and that he was at all times and

under every circumstance the same intelligent and joyful person that

the spectators then beheld him. All this Mr Codlin did with the air of

a man who had made up his mind for the worst and was quite resigned;

his eye slowly wandering about during the briskest repartee to observe

the effect upon the audience, and particularly the impression made upon

the landlord and landlady, which might be productive of very important

results in connexion with the supper.

Upon this head, however, he had no cause for any anxiety, for the whole

performance was applauded to the echo, and voluntary contributions were

showered in with a liberality which testified yet more strongly to the

general delight. Among the laughter none was more loud and frequent

than the old man's. Nell's was unheard, for she, poor child, with her

head drooping on his shoulder, had fallen asleep, and slept too soundly

to be roused by any of his efforts to awaken her to a participation in

his glee.

The supper was very good, but she was too tired to eat, and yet would

not leave the old man until she had kissed him in his bed. He, happily

insensible to every care and anxiety, sat listening with a vacant smile

and admiring face to all that his new friend said; and it was not until

they retired yawning to their room, that he followed the child up

stairs.

It was but a loft partitioned into two compartments, where they were to

rest, but they were well pleased with their lodging and had hoped for

none so good. The old man was uneasy when he had lain down, and begged

that Nell would come and sit at his bedside as she had done for so many

nights. She hastened to him, and sat there till he slept.

There was a little window, hardly more than a chink in the wall, in her

room, and when she left him, she opened it, quite wondering at the

silence. The sight of the old church, and the graves about it in the

moonlight, and the dark trees whispering among themselves, made her

more thoughtful than before. She closed the window again, and sitting

down upon the bed, thought of the life that was before them.

She had a little money, but it was very little, and when that was gone,

they must begin to beg. There was one piece of gold among it, and an

emergency might come when its worth to them would be increased a

hundred fold. It would be best to hide this coin, and never produce it

unless their case was absolutely desperate, and no other resource was

left them.

Her resolution taken, she sewed the piece of gold into her dress, and

going to bed with a lighter heart sunk into a deep slumber.

CHAPTER 17

Another bright day shining in through the small casement, and claiming

fellowship with the kindred eyes of the child, awoke her. At sight of

the strange room and its unaccustomed objects she started up in alarm,

wondering how she had been moved from the familiar chamber in which she

seemed to have fallen asleep last night, and whither she had been

conveyed. But, another glance around called to her mind all that had

lately passed, and she sprung from her bed, hoping and trustful.

It was yet early, and the old man being still asleep, she walked out

into the churchyard, brushing the dew from the long grass with her

feet, and often turning aside into places where it grew longer than in

others, that she might not tread upon the graves. She felt a curious

kind of pleasure in lingering among these houses of the dead, and read

the inscriptions on the tombs of the good people (a great number of

good people were buried there), passing on from one to another with

increasing interest.

It was a very quiet place, as such a place should be, save for the

cawing of the rooks who had built their nests among the branches of

some tall old trees, and were calling to one another, high up in the

air. First, one sleek bird, hovering near his ragged house as it swung

and dangled in the wind, uttered his hoarse cry, quite by chance as it

would seem, and in a sober tone as though he were but talking to

himself. Another answered, and he called again, but louder than

before; then another spoke and then another; and each time the first,

aggravated by contradiction, insisted on his case more strongly. Other

voices, silent till now, struck in from boughs lower down and higher up

and midway, and to the right and left, and from the tree-tops; and

others, arriving hastily from the grey church turrets and old belfry

window, joined the clamour which rose and fell, and swelled and dropped

again, and still went on; and all this noisy contention amidst a

skimming to and fro, and lighting on fresh branches, and frequent

change of place, which satirised the old restlessness of those who lay

so still beneath the moss and turf below, and the strife in which they

had worn away their lives.

Frequently raising her eyes to the trees whence these sounds came down,

and feeling as though they made the place more quiet than perfect

silence would have done, the child loitered from grave to grave, now

stopping to replace with careful hands the bramble which had started

from some green mound it helped to keep in shape, and now peeping

through one of the low latticed windows into the church, with its

worm-eaten books upon the desks, and baize of whitened-green mouldering

from the pew sides and leaving the naked wood to view. There were the

seats where the poor old people sat, worn spare, and yellow like

themselves; the rugged font where children had their names, the homely

altar where they knelt in after life, the plain black tressels that

bore their weight on their last visit to the cool old shady church.

Everything told of long use and quiet slow decay; the very bell-rope in

the porch was frayed into a fringe, and hoary with old age.

She was looking at a humble stone which told of a young man who had

died at twenty-three years old, fifty-five years ago, when she heard a

faltering step approaching, and looking round saw a feeble woman bent

with the weight of years, who tottered to the foot of that same grave

and asked her to read the writing on the stone. The old woman thanked

her when she had done, saying that she had had the words by heart for

many a long, long year, but could not see them now.

'Were you his mother?' said the child.

'I was his wife, my dear.'

She the wife of a young man of three-and-twenty! Ah, true! It was

fifty-five years ago.

'You wonder to hear me say that,' remarked the old woman, shaking her

head. 'You're not the first. Older folk than you have wondered at the

same thing before now. Yes, I was his wife. Death doesn't change us

more than life, my dear.'

'Do you come here often?' asked the child.

'I sit here very often in the summer time,' she answered, 'I used to

come here once to cry and mourn, but that was a weary while ago, bless

God!'

'I pluck the daisies as they grow, and take them home,' said the old

woman after a short silence. 'I like no flowers so well as these, and

haven't for five-and-fifty years. It's a long time, and I'm getting

very old.'

Then growing garrulous upon a theme which was new to one listener

though it were but a child, she told her how she had wept and moaned

and prayed to die herself, when this happened; and how when she first

came to that place, a young creature strong in love and grief, she had

hoped that her heart was breaking as it seemed to be. But that time

passed by, and although she continued to be sad when she came there,

still she could bear to come, and so went on until it was pain no

longer, but a solemn pleasure, and a duty she had learned to like. And

now that five-and-fifty years were gone, she spoke of the dead man as

if he had been her son or grandson, with a kind of pity for his youth,

growing out of her own old age, and an exalting of his strength and

manly beauty as compared with her own weakness and decay; and yet she

spoke about him as her husband too, and thinking of herself in

connexion with him, as she used to be and not as she was now, talked of

their meeting in another world, as if he were dead but yesterday, and

she, separated from her former self, were thinking of the happiness of

that comely girl who seemed to have died with him.

The child left her gathering the flowers that grew upon the grave, and

thoughtfully retraced her steps.

The old man was by this time up and dressed. Mr Codlin, still doomed

to contemplate the harsh realities of existence, was packing among his

linen the candle-ends which had been saved from the previous night's

performance; while his companion received the compliments of all the

loungers in the stable-yard, who, unable to separate him from the

master-mind of Punch, set him down as next in importance to that merry

outlaw, and loved him scarcely less. When he had sufficiently

acknowledged his popularity he came in to breakfast, at which meal they

all sat down together.

'And where are you going to-day?' said the little man, addressing

himself to Nell.

'Indeed I hardly know--we have not determined yet,' replied the child.

'We're going on to the races,' said the little man. 'If that's your

way and you like to have us for company, let us travel together. If

you prefer going alone, only say the word and you'll find that we

shan't trouble you.'

'We'll go with you,' said the old man. 'Nell--with them, with them.'

The child considered for a moment, and reflecting that she must shortly

beg, and could scarcely hope to do so at a better place than where

crowds of rich ladies and gentlemen were assembled together for

purposes of enjoyment and festivity, determined to accompany these men

so far. She therefore thanked the little man for his offer, and said,

glancing timidly towards his friend, that if there was no objection to

their accompanying them as far as the race town--

'Objection!' said the little man. 'Now be gracious for once, Tommy,

and say that you'd rather they went with us. I know you would. Be

gracious, Tommy.'

'Trotters,' said Mr Codlin, who talked very slowly and ate very

greedily, as is not uncommon with philosophers and misanthropes;

'you're too free.'

'Why what harm can it do?' urged the other.

'No harm at all in this particular case, perhaps,' replied Mr Codlin;

'but the principle's a dangerous one, and you're too free I tell you.'

'Well, are they to go with us or not?'

'Yes, they are,' said Mr Codlin; 'but you might have made a favour of

it, mightn't you?'

The real name of the little man was Harris, but it had gradually merged

into the less euphonious one of Trotters, which, with the prefatory

adjective, Short, had been conferred upon him by reason of the small

size of his legs. Short Trotters however, being a compound name,

inconvenient of use in friendly dialogue, the gentleman on whom it had

been bestowed was known among his intimates either as 'Short,' or

'Trotters,' and was seldom accosted at full length as Short Trotters,

except in formal conversations and on occasions of ceremony.

Short, then, or Trotters, as the reader pleases, returned unto the

remonstrance of his friend Mr Thomas Codlin a jocose answer calculated

to turn aside his discontent; and applying himself with great relish to

the cold boiled beef, the tea, and bread and butter, strongly impressed

upon his companions that they should do the like. Mr Codlin indeed

required no such persuasion, as he had already eaten as much as he

could possibly carry and was now moistening his clay with strong ale,

whereof he took deep draughts with a silent relish and invited nobody

to partake--thus again strongly indicating his misanthropical turn of

mind.

Breakfast being at length over, Mr Codlin called the bill, and charging

the ale to the company generally (a practice also savouring of

misanthropy) divided the sum-total into two fair and equal parts,

assigning one moiety to himself and friend, and the other to Nelly and

her grandfather. These being duly discharged and all things ready for

their departure, they took farewell of the landlord and landlady and

resumed their journey.

And here Mr Codlin's false position in society and the effect it