For the rest he is a quiet lodger, full of handy shifts
and devices as before mentioned, able to cook and
clean for himself as well as to carpenter, and developing
social inclinations after the shades of evening have
fallen on the court. At those times, when he
is not visited by Mr. Guppy or by a small light in
his likeness quenched in a dark hat, he comes out
of his dull room—where he has inherited
the deal wilderness of desk bespattered with a rain
of ink—and talks to Krook or is “very
free,” as they call it in the court, commendingly,
with any one disposed for conversation. Wherefore,
Mrs. Piper, who leads the court, is impelled to offer
two remarks to Mrs. Perkins: firstly, that if
her Johnny was to have whiskers, she could wish ’em
to be identically like that young man’s; and
secondly, “Mark my words, Mrs. Perkins, ma’am,
and don’t you be surprised, Lord bless you,
if that young man comes in at last for old Krook’s
money!”
The Smallweed Family
In a rather ill-favoured and ill-savoured neighbourhood,
though one of its rising grounds bears the name of
Mount Pleasant, the Elfin Smallweed, christened Bartholomew
and known on the domestic hearth as Bart, passes that
limited portion of his time on which the office and
its contingencies have no claim. He dwells in
a little narrow street, always solitary, shady, and
sad, closely bricked in on all sides like a tomb,
but where there yet lingers the stump of an old forest
tree whose flavour is about as fresh and natural as
the Smallweed smack of youth.
There has been only one child in the Smallweed family
for several generations. Little old men and
women there have been, but no child, until Mr. Smallweed’s
grandmother, now living, became weak in her intellect
and fell (for the first time) into a childish state.
With such infantine graces as a total want of observation,
memory, understanding, and interest, and an eternal
disposition to fall asleep over the fire and into
it, Mr. Smallweed’s grandmother has undoubtedly
brightened the family.
Mr. Smallweed’s grandfather is likewise of the
party. He is in a helpless condition as to his
lower, and nearly so as to his upper, limbs, but his
mind is unimpaired. It holds, as well as it ever
held, the first four rules of arithmetic and a certain
small collection of the hardest facts. In respect
of ideality, reverence, wonder, and other such phrenological
attributes, it is no worse off than it used to be.
Everything that Mr. Smallweed’s grandfather
ever put away in his mind was a grub at first, and
is a grub at last. In all his life he has never
bred a single butterfly.
