Dickens' Stories About Children Every Child Can Read Part 20

"I'll eat my breakfast before they're the death of me," said he. "I'd do that, if I was going to be strung up to that there gallows as there is over there directly arterward. I'll beat the s.h.i.+vers so far, I'll bet you a guinea."

He was gobbling mince-meat, meat-bone, bread, cheese, and pork-pie all at once, staring distrustfully while he did so at the mist all round, and often stopping--even stopping his jaws--to listen. Some real or fancied sound, some clink upon the river or breathing of beasts upon the marsh, now gave him a start, and he said, suddenly:

"You're not a false imp? You brought no one with you?"

"No, sir! No!"

"Nor told n.o.body to follow you?"

"No!"

"Well," said he, "I believe you. You'd be but a fierce young hound indeed, if at your time of life you should help to hunt a wretched warmint, hunted as near death and dunghill as this poor wretched warmint is!"

Something clicked in his throat, as if he had works in him like a clock, and was going to strike. And he smeared his ragged, rough sleeve over his eyes.

Pitying his desolation, and watching him as he gradually settled down upon the pie, Pip made bold to say, "I am glad you enjoy it."

"Did you speak?"

"I said I was glad you enjoyed it."

"Thankee, my boy--. I do."

Pip had often watched a large dog eating his food; and he now noticed a decided similarity between the dog's way of eating and the man's. The man took strong, sharp, sudden bites, just like the dog. He swallowed, or rather snapped up, every mouthful too soon and too fast; and he looked sideways here and there while he ate, as if he thought there was danger of somebody's coming to take the pie away. He was altogether too unsettled in his mind over it to enjoy it comfortably, Pip thought, or to have anybody to dine with him, without making a chop with his jaws at the visitor. In all of which particulars he was very like the dog.

Pip watched him trying to file the iron off his leg, and then being afraid of stopping longer away from home, he ran off.

Pip pa.s.sed a wretched morning, expecting every moment that the disappearance of the pie would be found out. But Mrs. Joe was too much taken up with preparing the dinner, for they were expecting visitors, and were to have a superb dinner, consisting of a leg of pickled pork and greens, and a pair of roast stuffed fowls, a mince-pie, and a pudding.

Just at the end of the dinner Pip thought his time had come to be found out, for his sister said graciously to her guests--

"You must taste a most delightful and delicious present I have had. It's a pie, a savory pork-pie."

Pip could bear it no longer, and ran for the door, and there ran head foremost into a party of soldiers with their muskets, one of whom held out a pair of handcuffs to him, saying, "Here you are, look sharp, come on." But they had not come for him, they only wanted Joe to mend the handcuffs, for they were on the search for two convicts who had escaped and were somewhere hid in the marshes. This turned the attention of Mrs.

Joe from the disappearance of the pie, without which she had come back, in great astonishment. When the handcuffs were mended the soldiers went off, accompanied by Joe and one of the visitors, and Joe took Pip and carried him on his back.

Pip whispered, "I hope, Joe, we shan't find them," and Joe answered, "I'd give a s.h.i.+lling if they had cut and run, Pip."

But the soldiers soon caught them, and one was the wretched man who had talked with Pip; and once when he looked at Pip, the child shook his head to try and let him know he had said nothing.

But the convict, without looking at anyone, told the sergeant he wanted to say something to prevent other people being under suspicion, and said he had taken some "wittles" from the blacksmith's. "It was some broken wittles, that's what it was, and a dram of liquor, and a pie."

"Have you happened to miss such an article as a pie, blacksmith?"

inquired the sergeant.

"My wife did, at the very moment when you came in. Don't you know, Pip?"

"So," said the convict, looking at Joe, "you're the blacksmith, are you?

Then, I'm sorry to say, I've eat your pie."

"G.o.d knows you're welcome to it," said Joe. "We don't know what you have done, but we wouldn't have you starved to death for it, poor miserable fellow-creature. Would us, Pip?"

Then the boat came, and the convicts were taken back to their prison, and Joe carried Pip home.

Some years after, some mysterious friend sent money for Pip to be educated and brought up as a gentleman; but it was only when Pip was quite grown up that he discovered this mysterious friend was the wretched convict who had frightened him so dreadfully that cold, dark Christmas eve. He had been sent to a far away land, and there had grown rich; but he never forgot the little boy who had been kind to him.

X.

TODGERS'.

THIS is the story of a visit made by Mr. Pecksniff, a very pompous man, and his two daughters Miss Mercy and Miss Charity, to the boarding-house kept by Mrs. Todgers, in London; and a call while there on Miss Pinch, a governess or young lady teaching in a rich family.

Mr. Pecksniff with his two beautiful young daughters looked about him for a moment, and then knocked at the door of a very dingy building, even among the choice collection of dingy houses around, on the front of which was a little oval board, like a tea-tray, with this inscription--"Commercial Boarding-house: M. Todgers."

It seemed that M. Todgers was not up yet, for Mr. Pecksniff knocked twice and rang three times without making any impression on anything but a dog over the way. At last a chain and some bolts were withdrawn with a rusty noise, and a small boy with a large red head, and no nose to speak of, and a very dirty boot on his left arm, appeared; who (being surprised) rubbed the nose just mentioned with the back of a shoe-brush, and said nothing.

"Still abed, my man?" asked Mr. Pecksniff.

"Still abed!" replied the boy. "I wish they was still abed. They're very noisy abed; all calling for their boots at once. I thought you was the paper, and wondered why you didn't shove yourself through the grating as usual. What do you want?"

Considering his years, which were tender, the youth may be said to have asked this question sternly, and in something of a defiant manner. But Mr. Pecksniff, without taking offense at his bearing, put a card in his hand, and bade him take that up-stairs, and show them in the meanwhile into a room where there was a fire.

Surely there never was, in any other borough, city, or hamlet, in the world, such a singular sort of a place as Todgers'. And surely London, to judge from that part of it which hemmed Todgers' round, and hustled it, and crushed it, and stuck its brick-and-mortar elbows into it, and kept the air from it, and stood perpetually between it and the light, was worthy of Todgers'.

There were more trucks near Todgers' than you would suppose a whole city could ever need; not trucks at work but a vagabond race, forever lounging in the narrow lanes before their masters' doors and stopping up the pa.s.s; so that when a stray hackney-coach or lumbering wagon came that way, they were the cause of such an uproar as enlivened the whole neighborhood, and made the very bells in the next church-tower ring again. In the narrow dark streets near Todgers', wine-merchants and wholesale dealers in grocery-ware had perfect little towns of their own; and, deep among the very foundations of these buildings, the ground was undermined and burrowed out into stables, where cart-horses, troubled by rats, might be heard on a quiet Sunday, rattling their halters, as disturbed spirits in tales of haunted houses are said to clank their chains.

To tell of half the queer old taverns that had a drowsy and secret existence near Todgers' would fill a goodly book; while a second volume no less in size might be given to an account of the quaint old guests who frequented their dimly-lighted parlors.

The top of the house was worthy of notice. There was a sort of terrace on the roof, with posts and fragments of rotten lines, once intended to dry clothes upon; and there were two or three tea-chests out there, full of earth, with forgotten plants in them, like old walking-sticks.

Whoever climbed to this observatory was stunned at first from having knocked his head against the little door in coming out; and, after that, was for the moment choked from having looked, perforce, straight down the kitchen chimney; but these two stages over, there were things to gaze at from the top of Todgers', well worth your seeing, too. For, first and foremost, if the day were bright, you observed upon the house-tops, stretching far away, a long dark path--the shadow of the tall Monument which stands in memory of the great fire in London many years before: and turning round, the Monument itself was close beside you, with every hair erect upon his golden head, as if the doings of the city frightened him. Then there were steeples, towers, belfries, s.h.i.+ning vanes and masts of s.h.i.+ps, a very forest. Gables, house-tops, garret-windows, wilderness upon wilderness. Smoke and noise enough for all the world at once.

After the first glance, there were slight features in the midst of this crowd of objects, which sprung out from the ma.s.s without any reason, as it were, and took hold of the attention whether the spectator would or no. Thus, the revolving chimney-pots on one great stack of buildings seemed to be turning gravely to each other every now and then, and whispering the result of their separate observation of what was going on below. Others, of a crooked-back shape, appeared to be maliciously holding themselves askew, that they might shut the prospect out and baffle Todgers'. The man who was mending a pen at an upper window over the way became of vast importance in the scene, and made a blank in it, ridiculously large in its size, when he went away. The fluttering of a piece of cloth upon the dyer's pole had far more interest for the moment than all the changing motion of the crowd. Yet even while the looker-on felt angry with himself for this, and wondered how it was the tumult swelled into a roar; the hosts of objects seemed to thicken and expand a hundredfold; and after gazing round him, quite scared, he turned into Todgers' again, much more rapidly than he came out; and ten to one he told M. Todgers afterwards that if he hadn't done so, he would certainly have come into the street by the shortest cut: that is to say, head-foremost.

So said the two Miss Pecksniffs, when they came down with Mrs. Todgers from the roof of the house; leaving the youthful porter to close the door and follow them down-stairs: who being of a playful temperament, and contemplating with a delight peculiar to his s.e.x and time of life any chance of das.h.i.+ng himself into small fragments, lingered behind to walk upon the wall around the roof.

It was the second day of their stay in London, and by this time the Misses Pecksniff and Mrs. Todgers were becoming very friendly, insomuch that the last-named lady had already told the story of three early disappointments in love; and had furthermore given her young friends a general account of the life, conduct, and character of Mr. Todgers: who, it seemed, had cut his life as a husband rather short, by unlawfully running away from his happiness, and staying for a time in foreign countries as a bachelor.

"Your pa was once a little particular in his attentions, my dears," said Mrs. Todgers, "but to be your ma was too much happiness denied me. You'd hardly know who this was done for, perhaps?"

She called their attention to an oval miniature, like a little blister, which was tacked up over the kettle-holder, and in which there was a dreamy shadowing forth of her own visage.

"It's a speaking likeness!" cried the two Misses Pecksniff.