With a weary and yet a pleased smile, and with an
action as if he stretched his little figure out to
rest, the child heaved his body on the sustaining
arm, and seeking Rokesmith’s face with his lips,
said:
‘A kiss for the boofer lady.’
Having now bequeathed all he had to dispose of, and
arranged his affairs in this world, Johnny, thus speaking,
left it.
A SUCCESSOR
Some of the Reverend Frank Milvey’s brethren
had found themselves exceedingly uncomfortable in
their minds, because they were required to bury the
dead too hopefully. But, the Reverend Frank, inclining
to the belief that they were required to do one or
two other things (say out of nine-and-thirty) calculated
to trouble their consciences rather more if they would
think as much about them, held his peace.
Indeed, the Reverend Frank Milvey was a forbearing
man, who noticed many sad warps and blights in the
vineyard wherein he worked, and did not profess that
they made him savagely wise. He only learned that
the more he himself knew, in his little limited human
way, the better he could distantly imagine what Omniscience
might know.
Wherefore, if the Reverend Frank had had to read the
words that troubled some of his brethren, and profitably
touched innumerable hearts, in a worse case than Johnny’s,
he would have done so out of the pity and humility
of his soul. Reading them over Johnny, he thought
of his own six children, but not of his poverty, and
read them with dimmed eyes. And very seriously
did he and his bright little wife, who had been listening,
look down into the small grave and walk home arm-in-arm.
There was grief in the aristocratic house, and there
was joy in the Bower. Mr Wegg argued, if an orphan
were wanted, was he not an orphan himself; and could
a better be desired? And why go beating about
Brentford bushes, seeking orphans forsooth who had
established no claims upon you and made no sacrifices
for you, when here was an orphan ready to your hand
who had given up in your cause, Miss Elizabeth, Master
George, Aunt Jane, and Uncle Parker?
Mr Wegg chuckled, consequently, when he heard the
tidings. Nay, it was afterwards affirmed by a
witness who shall at present be nameless, that in
the seclusion of the Bower he poked out his wooden
leg, in the stage-ballet manner, and executed a taunting
or triumphant pirouette on the genuine leg remaining
to him.
John Rokesmith’s manner towards Mrs Boffin at
this time, was more the manner of a young man towards
a mother, than that of a Secretary towards his employer’s
wife. It had always been marked by a subdued affectionate
deference that seemed to have sprung up on the very
day of his engagement; whatever was odd in her dress
or her ways had seemed to have no oddity for him;
he had sometimes borne a quietly-amused face in her
company, but still it had seemed as if the pleasure
her genial temper and radiant nature yielded him,
could have been quite as naturally expressed in a
tear as in a smile. The completeness of his sympathy
with her fancy for having a little John Harmon to
protect and rear, he had shown in every act and word,
and now that the kind fancy was disappointed, he treated
it with a manly tenderness and respect for which she
could hardly thank him enough.
