An inspiration of affection for a half-drunken carter
going his way led to Mr Riderhood’s being elevated
on a high heap of baskets on a waggon, and pursuing
his journey recumbent on his back with his head on
his bundle. Bradley then turned to retrace his
steps, and by-and-by struck off through little-traversed
ways, and by-and-by reached school and home.
Up came the sun to find him washed and brushed, methodically
dressed in decent black coat and waistcoat, decent
formal black tie, and pepper-and-salt pantaloons,
with his decent silver watch in its pocket, and its
decent hair-guard round his neck: a scholastic
huntsman clad for the field, with his fresh pack yelping
and barking around him.
Yet more really bewitched than the miserable creatures
of the much-lamented times, who accused themselves
of impossibilities under a contagion of horror and
the strongly suggestive influences of Torture, he
had been ridden hard by Evil Spirits in the night that
was newly gone. He had been spurred and whipped
and heavily sweated. If a record of the sport
had usurped the places of the peaceful texts from Scripture
on the wall, the most advanced of the scholars might
have taken fright and run away from the master.
Chapter 12
MEANING MISCHIEF
Up came the sun, steaming all over London, and in
its glorious impartiality even condescending to make
prismatic sparkles in the whiskers of Mr Alfred Lammle
as he sat at breakfast. In need of some brightening
from without, was Mr Alfred Lammle, for he had the
air of being dull enough within, and looked grievously
discontented.
Mrs Alfred Lammle faced her lord. The happy pair
of swindlers, with the comfortable tie between them
that each had swindled the other, sat moodily observant
of the tablecloth. Things looked so gloomy in
the breakfast-room, albeit on the sunny side of Sackville
Street, that any of the family tradespeople glancing
through the blinds might have taken the hint to send
in his account and press for it. But this, indeed,
most of the family tradespeople had already done,
without the hint.
‘It seems to me,’ said Mrs Lammle, ’that
you have had no money at all, ever since we have been
married.’
‘What seems to you,’ said Mr Lammle, ’to
have been the case, may possibly have been the case.
It doesn’t matter.’
Was it the speciality of Mr and Mrs Lammle, or does
it ever obtain with other loving couples? In
these matrimonial dialogues they never addressed each
other, but always some invisible presence that appeared
to take a station about midway between them. Perhaps
the skeleton in the cupboard comes out to be talked
to, on such domestic occasions?
‘I have never seen any money in the house,’
said Mrs Lammle to the skeleton, ‘except my
own annuity. That I swear.’
‘You needn’t take the trouble of swearing,’
said Mr Lammle to the skeleton; ’once more,
it doesn’t matter. You never turned your
annuity to so good an account.’
Copyrights
Our Mutual Friend from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
