‘And then he asked my name, did he, pa?’
’Then he asked your name, my dear, and mine;
and on other Sunday mornings, when we walked his way,
we saw him again, and—and really that’s
all.’
As that was all the rum and water too, or, in other
words, as R. W. delicately signified that his glass
was empty, by throwing back his head and standing
the glass upside down on his nose and upper lip, it
might have been charitable in Mrs Wilfer to suggest
replenishment. But that heroine briefly suggesting
‘Bedtime’ instead, the bottles were put
away, and the family retired; she cherubically escorted,
like some severe saint in a painting, or merely human
matron allegorically treated.
‘And by this time to-morrow,’ said Lavinia
when the two girls were alone in their room, ’we
shall have Mr Rokesmith here, and shall be expecting
to have our throats cut.’
‘You needn’t stand between me and the
candle for all that,’ retorted Bella. ’This
is another of the consequences of being poor!
The idea of a girl with a really fine head of hair,
having to do it by one flat candle and a few inches
of looking-glass!’
’You caught George Sampson with it, Bella, bad
as your means of dressing it are.’
’You low little thing. Caught George Sampson
with it! Don’t talk about catching people,
miss, till your own time for catching—as
you call it—comes.’
‘Perhaps it has come,’ muttered Lavvy,
with a toss of her head.
‘What did you say?’ asked Bella, very
sharply. ‘What did you say, miss?’
Lavvy declining equally to repeat or to explain, Bella
gradually lapsed over her hair-dressing into a soliloquy
on the miseries of being poor, as exemplified in having
nothing to put on, nothing to go out in, nothing to
dress by, only a nasty box to dress at instead of a
commodious dressing-table, and being obliged to take
in suspicious lodgers. On the last grievance
as her climax, she laid great stress—and
might have laid greater, had she known that if Mr Julius
Handford had a twin brother upon earth, Mr John Rokesmith
was the man.
BOFFIN’S BOWER
Over against a London house, a corner house not far
from Cavendish Square, a man with a wooden leg had
sat for some years, with his remaining foot in a basket
in cold weather, picking up a living on this wise:—Every
morning at eight o’clock, he stumped to the corner,
carrying a chair, a clothes-horse, a pair of trestles,
a board, a basket, and an umbrella, all strapped together.
Separating these, the board and trestles became a
counter, the basket supplied the few small lots of
fruit and sweets that he offered for sale upon it and
became a foot-warmer, the unfolded clothes-horse displayed
a choice collection of halfpenny ballads and became
a screen, and the stool planted within it became his
post for the rest of the day. All weathers saw
the man at the post. This is to be accepted in
