"And, as I said before, you never knowing what it was to have hot dinners on Sundays," retorted Mrs Purkis. "No, not if I know it, Joseph. We've been man and wife now turned of thirty year, and never once yet did I give you a cold Sunday-dinner. If I don't know my duty as a wife by this time it's a pity."

Mrs Purkis turned very red in the face as she spoke, and, after the fashion of her husband, shook her head and nodded it, till Mr Purkis, who, if he did not make a G.o.d of his gastric region, certainly yielded it the deference due to a monarch, owned that there was something in what she said, when her face resumed its natural hue, which was only a warm pink.

"But it would have been a deal nicer for some things," said Mr Purkis, who still hung about the subject.

"And a deal nastier for other things, Joseph," retorted his wife; "and that makes six of one and half-a-dozen of the other."

"Just so, my dear," said Mr Purkis, making his first and last attempt at a joke--"six of one in pounds, and half-a-dozen of the other in shillings--six guineas a year, and what you could have made besides, and a very nice thing too."

"And you growling and grumbling because your Sunday-dinner was always cold," said Mrs Purkis, resorting once more to her carnal fortification.

"But I don't know, now, but what that would have been better," said the beadle, indulging in a habit which he had learned of a stout alderman and magistrate, who believed in its awe-inspiring qualities, and often tried it on small pickpockets, while Mr Purkis was so pleased with it that he always wore it with his beadle's uniform, and practised it frequently upon Ichabod Gunnis, though with so little effect that the said young gentleman only imitated him as soon as his back was turned, frowning, blowing out his cheeks, and then letting them collapse again.

"I don't know, my dear," said Mr Purkis, "but what it would have been better than to have had that woman always pottering about in my church."

"And never even had the decency to call in and thank us for the pains we took," said Mrs Purkis, "or to drop in occasional for a friendly cup o'

tea, and a mossle of toast, as anybody else would; or come in and sit down sociably as poor Mrs Nimmer would, and ready at any time to take up a bit o' needlework, or a stocking, and have a quiet chat."

"Well," said Mr Purkis, whose thoughts were evidently running quite as much upon Sunday-dinners as upon pew-openers, "it's of no use to grumble, for what's done can't be undone. But when Christmas comes, if she pushes herself forward so much, I'll let her know--see if I don't I'm not going to put up with so much of her interference, I can tell her."

"The more you give way, the more give you may," said Mrs Purkis, rhythmically.

"Why, she'll want to be beadle next, and clerk too," said Mr Purkis, indignantly, and growing so warm that he had to wipe inside his shirt-collar as well as dab his head; "says all the Amens now, she does, louder than the poor old gentleman--reg'lar drowns him in the litany, and makes herself that conspickyus that it's a wonder Mr Gray can't see through her, instead of taking her into favour. Not that I mind a bit-- not I. Mr Timson don't like her, though; and you see if he gives her a Christmas-box, same as he used Mrs Nimmer--pound o' best black, and a quarter o' green--he always give her reg'lar."

"Ah! same as he gives us," sighed Mrs Purkis, "and as good tea as ever stood on a hob to draw."

Volume 1, Chapter XIX.

RICHARD'S SECRET.

Time glided on, and the brothers Pellet did not meet. There was estrangement too between Richard Pellet and his stepson, who came up during his vacations, but only to leave home again in disgust. For the fact was, Richard Pellet looked upon him as being in the way,--a manner he had of considering all those who were not of present use to him in his designs. So Harry Clayton saw but little of Norwood.

He made calls in Duplex Street at intervals, but always in vain, for Jared remained inflexible, and received the young man in a way which chilled him, and sent him away declaiming against people's hard-heartedness. Never once was Patty visible, for she followed out the role she had been taught, and had in consequence many a bitter cry in secret.

Would she have liked to see Henry Clayton? That, too, she kept secret; and fate seemed to fight on Richard Pellet's side, for somehow the young people never encountered, in spite of the long hours which Harry loitered about Clerkenwell, till he knew every bra.s.s plate by heart in the neighbourhood, without counting the signboards that he read till he was weary.

The effect of all these crosses upon Harry Clayton was to quite change the young man's disposition; from being light-hearted and cheerful, he grew stern and quiet, almost morose. He determined at last, in a fit of anger, after a call at Duplex Street and a vain application to Richard Pellet for money, that he would turn dissipated, and began at once.

His first plunge was into billiards, but he gave the game up at the end of a week. Rowing followed, and he almost lived upon the river in gaudy-coloured flannels. But that soon palled upon him, and at the end of a month a cold business-like letter from Richard Pellet, advising him curtly to take to business, for his late father's settlements would not permit of the expenses of a college life, settled the affair. The consequence was, that. Harry knit his brows, went down to Norwood, and announced his intention of staying up at Cambridge and reading for honours.

The result was a quarrel, and Richard Pellet slammed the door as he went out, bound for the city. Mrs Richard kissed her son, and said she hoped he would be a good boy and obey Mr Pellet, who was all that was wise and clever, and then Harry said good-bye, and went off with an aching heart to make a last call at Duplex Street.

It was the old story; Jared received him kindly, and shook hands when they parted, but there were no ladies visible.

Harry looked sterner, and felt sterner of purpose as he came away, and these troubles were the turning-point in the young man's career, for henceforward he seemed to cast youth and its frivolities behind, so as to be untrammelled in the firmer purposes of life.

He was wandering slowly and thoughtfully along, wondering as to what the future would bring forth. He told himself that he was certainly very fond of Patty, and though she had perhaps never since given to him a thought, yet he would be true to his intentions, and in spite of her humble position, if she proved to be as he believed she would, no difference of station should interfere.

"No," he said, half aloud; "not even if I get to be senior wrangler,"-- of which, by the way, there did not seem to be much probability. Then his thoughts turned to Richard Pellet, and it seemed to him that his father's affairs had somehow got into a state of strange confusion. He could get no satisfactory explanation. One thing was evident, and that was that Richard Pellet had full influence over his wife, and that nothing save recourse to law would enforce a full declaration of how matters stood.

"And I can't do that," muttered Harry. Then he began going over once more his mother's marriage, and wondered how she could have been so weak as to marry one so hard, and close, and cold.

Just then he saw a Hansom cab stop a short distance from him, out of which stepped Richard Pellet, who paid his driver, and, without seeing his stepson, strode off hastily, making his way through the gloomy streets of Pentonville.

Harry hesitated for a while, feeling half tempted to follow, but he turned off the next moment to seek his hotel.

Meanwhile Richard Pellet hurried on, his way lying through streets that seemed to be the favourite playgrounds of the roaming children of the neighbourhood. And here he walked as if he felt a peculiar spite against every child he pa.s.sed. He kicked this one's top half across the road; he purposely obliterated the chalked-out hopscotch marks with his feet; nearly knocked down a boy carrying a shawl-swathed infant,--not that there was much force needed, for the weight of the shawl-swathed nearly overbalanced its porter; and he ended by treading upon a thin girl's toes.

Another turn or two, and he was in a pleasant street rejoicing in the name of Borton, at whose end there was a pleasing glimpse to be obtained of the great jail with its blank walls, and the low hum of Tullochgorum Road murmured on the ear.

Richard stopped at a dingy sleepy-looking house, with its blinds down, and knocked a slinking kind of double knock, as if afraid of its being heard by any one outside the house. It was a double knock certainly, but it had a mean degraded sound about it, beside which a poor man's single thump would have sounded ma.s.sive and grand.

After waiting for a reasonable s.p.a.ce he knocked a second time, when, after fidgeting about upon the door-step, glancing up and down the street, and acting after the fashion of a man troubled with the impression that every one is watching him, he was relieved by the door being opened a very little way, and a sour-looking woman confronting him.

Upon seeing who was her visitor, the woman admitted him to stand for a minute or two upon the shabby worn oil-cloth of the badly-lighted pa.s.sage before ushering him into a damp earthy-smelling parlour, over whose windows were drawn Venetian blinds of a faded sickly green, the bar-like laths giving a prison aspect to the place.

"Send her down?" said the woman, shortly, as she removed a handkerchief from her face and looked toothache.

"Yes," was the curt gruff reply; but the woman held her handkerchief to the aching tooth and remained waiting, when Richard Pellet drew out his pocket-book and pa.s.sed a piece of crisp paper to the woman.

The paper was taken, carefully examined, and then seemed to have an anodyne effect upon the toothache of its recipient, who folded it carefully small and then tied it in a knot in one corner of the dingy pocket-handkerchief, after the fashion of elderly ladies from the country who ride in omnibuses, and then seek in such corners for the small coin wherewith to pay the fare. In this case, though, the tying-up was followed by the deposit of the handkerchief in its owner's bosom, the act been accompanied by a grim nod which said plainly enough, "that's safe."

The woman left the room; there was the sound of the key being drawn from the front door, pattering of steps on the oil-cloth, and then she re-appeared.

"'Taint my fault, you know," she said, in a hoa.r.s.e voice; "it's him--he made me write. I'd keep her to the end, but he says that we won't have it any more. It's a fool's trick, for she never leaves her room."

"It's plain enough," said Richard, contemptuously, "you want more money."

The woman smiled grimly. "He says he won't have it any more," was all she said.

"What reason does he give?" said Richard, sharply.

"Oh!" said the woman, "he says that it has got about that we keep a mad woman in the house without having a license; and the neighbours talk, and there will be a summons about it some time or another. He hates to go out, he says--just as if that matters. Don't you think it might be managed after all? I don't want to part with her."

"Yes--no," said Richard Pellet, correcting himself. "You've thrown up a good thing, and now I shall make another arrangement."

"Well," said the woman, in surly tones, "I was obliged to write--he made me. But you've no call to complain; she's been here now best part of nine years, and always well taken care of, and at a lower rate than you would have paid at a private asylum. You ought to have let me have the child as well. No one could have kept her closer."

"What?" said Richard, harshly.

"Well, that was only once; and I took precious good care that she did not play me such a trick a second time. She wasn't away long, though,"

said the woman, laughing.

"There! send her down," said Richard Pellet, impatiently.

"I don't mind telling you, now," said the woman, not heeding the remark, "she's very little trouble; sits and works all day long without speaking."

"Humph!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Richard Pellet; "now that there's no more money to be made by contrary statements, you can be honest."

"Well," said the woman, "other people may find out things for themselves. n.o.body taught me."