第 46 页

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 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 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 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 square-folded 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, 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 introduce Mr

Abel Garland, sir--his young master; my articled pupil, sir, and most

particular friend:--my most particular friend, sir,' repeated the

Notary, drawing out his silk handkerchief and flourishing it about his

face.

'Your servant, sir,' said the stranger gentleman.

'Yours, sir, I'm sure,' replied Mr Abel mildly. 'You were wishing to

speak to Christopher, sir?'

'Yes, I was. Have I your permission?'

'By all means.'

'My business is no secret; or I should rather say it need be no secret

here,' said the stranger, observing that Mr Abel and the Notary were