Was it strange that the wretched man should take this
heavily to heart? Perhaps he had taken the boy
to heart, first, through some long laborious years;
perhaps through the same years he had found his drudgery
lightened by communication with a brighter and more
apprehensive spirit than his own; perhaps a family
resemblance of face and voice between the boy and
his sister, smote him hard in the gloom of his fallen
state. For whichsoever reason, or for all, he
drooped his devoted head when the boy was gone, and
shrank together on the floor, and grovelled there,
with the palms of his hands tight-clasping his hot
temples, in unutterable misery, and unrelieved by a
single tear.
Rogue Riderhood had been busy with the river that
day. He had fished with assiduity on the previous
evening, but the light was short, and he had fished
unsuccessfully. He had fished again that day with
better luck, and had carried his fish home to Plashwater
Weir Mill Lock-house, in a bundle.
A FEW GRAINS OF PEPPER
The dolls’ dressmaker went no more to the business-premises
of Pubsey and Co. in St Mary Axe, after chance had
disclosed to her (as she supposed) the flinty and
hypocritical character of Mr Riah. She often
moralized over her work on the tricks and the manners
of that venerable cheat, but made her little purchases
elsewhere, and lived a secluded life. After much
consultation with herself, she decided not to put
Lizzie Hexam on her guard against the old man, arguing
that the disappointment of finding him out would come
upon her quite soon enough. Therefore, in her
communication with her friend by letter, she was silent
on this theme, and principally dilated on the backslidings
of her bad child, who every day grew worse and worse.
‘You wicked old boy,’ Miss Wren would
say to him, with a menacing forefinger, ’you’ll
force me to run away from you, after all, you will;
and then you’ll shake to bits, and there’ll
be nobody to pick up the pieces!’
At this foreshadowing of a desolate decease, the wicked
old boy would whine and whimper, and would sit shaking
himself into the lowest of low spirits, until such
time as he could shake himself out of the house and
shake another threepennyworth into himself. But
dead drunk or dead sober (he had come to such a pass
that he was least alive in the latter state), it was
always on the conscience of the paralytic scarecrow
that he had betrayed his sharp parent for sixty threepennyworths
of rum, which were all gone, and that her sharpness
would infallibly detect his having done it, sooner
or later. All things considered therefore, and
addition made of the state of his body to the state
of his mind, the bed on which Mr Dolls reposed was
a bed of roses from which the flowers and leaves had
entirely faded, leaving him to lie upon the thorns
and stalks.
On a certain day, Miss Wren was alone at her work,
with the house-door set open for coolness, and was
trolling in a small sweet voice a mournful little
song which might have been the song of the doll she
was dressing, bemoaning the brittleness and meltability
of wax, when whom should she descry standing on the
pavement, looking in at her, but Mr Fledgeby.
