Miss Toose^'s Mission" and "L

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THE LIBRARY

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THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

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BY THE AUTHOR OF * MISS TOOSEY'S MISSION" AND "LADDIE."

BOSTON:

ROBERTS BROTHERS. 1884.

In one Volume, Price 75 cents. MISS TOOSEY'S MISSION

AND

LADDIE.

ROBERTS BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS.^

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CONTENTS.

- CHAPTER I.

PAGE

" The Poor, old Grandfather ! " 5

CHAPTER II. Reading the Will 17

CHAPTER III. A Sore Heart 32

CHAPTER IV. Plans for the Future 40

CHAPTER V. An Opening 54

CHAPTER VI. The Last Day in the Old Home 65

CHAPTER VII. Slowmill 76

CHAPTER VIII. Tip Cat 88

CHAPTER IX. The New Life 99

CHAPTER X. Weekly Bills 109

CHAPTER XI. Tipton Farm 121

622821

iv CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XII. Ways and Means ....

CHAPTER XIII. A Visit to Bristol

CHAPTER XIV. Notice to Leave ....... . ...... IS1

CHAPTER XV. The Flitting ..... :. . . .- ....... l63

CHAPTER XVI. Tea at the Grange .............. i?4

CHAPTER XVII. Letty's Birthday .............. 194

CHAPTER XVIII. An Unexpected Meeting ........... 205

CHAPTER XIX. *' Tip Cat, Remember Your Promise." ....... 217

CHAPTER XX. To the Rescue .............. 230

CHAPTER XXI. Poor Dick ................ 241

CHAPTER XXII. Getting Well . .............. 254'

CHAPTER XXIII. Dick's Obstinacy .............. 266

CHAPTER XXIV. " For my Sake." .............. 275

TIP CAT.

• CHAPTER I.

" THE POOR, OLD GRANDFATHER ! "

WHEN there was a funeral at a house on the other side of the street, Letty and Sybil were allowed to stand at the nursery window, and watch all that went on, though nurse would not allow them to have the window open and to lean out, as she and Martha did, to see it turn the corner into the square, but the children saw a good deal, and, for weeks after, fun- erals was their favorite game, and they even per- suaded nurse to dress the doll Sybil had on her birth- day as a widow.

So it seemed very hard to the children that when there was a funeral at their own house, the nursery blinds were kept closely drawn down, and they were

6 TIP CAT.

not allowed to raise even one little corner to peep out, though they heard nurse telling Martha that it was the finest funeral there had been for years, and though she and Martha disappeared into the night nursery, and locked the door, and Letty and Sybil were almost sure that they were having a look them- selves, though they would not allow the children to do so.

It was the children's grandfather who died, and nurse said they were very 'eartless because they did not cry when she told them he was dead, though she sniffed a good deal herself behind the corner of her apron, and gave them each a clean pocket-handker- chief for the same purpose ; and Letty and Sybil both tried their best, and thought of the doll he had given them, and of the grapes he put on their plate when they came down to dessert ; but though they blinked their eyes very hard, they kept quite dry, and just then the kitten jumped up at nurse's apron string and made them laugh, and nurse said they were 'eartless ; and when she went on to tell them that Mr. Dick was coming home, it was no use the children trying to look sad any longer, and it was as much as they could do to resist dancing round the room. Dick was their own brother, and quite grown up, but not grown

" THE *POOR, OLD GRANDPA THER." 7

up dull like most people ; he was not too old to enjoy a game of blind man's buff, or feeding the ducks in the Serpentine, or a long afternoon in the Zoological Gardens with a really satisfactory time devoted to the monkeys ; and it was not only just to please the children, with a sort of kind, patient endurance, like most grown up people, which spoils half the pleasure, but because he liked it himself ; and when he took them to the Pantomime he always took three seats in a row, and sat between his two little sisters, so that they should all see just the same ; and he laughed quite as much and much louder than either of them instead of putting the little ones in front and retiring to the back of the box, and yawning like Uncle Tom. Dick was at Oxford when his grandfather died, and they telegraphed for him to come at once. Old Mr. Lucas died very suddenly. He seemed quite wetl when he came in to dinner, and Letty< and Sybil had their white frocks put on, and went down to dessert as usual ; and they did not notice that he was silent, for he always was so, and the little girls never remembered on any occasion his saying more to them than, " Good girl, good girl ! " and patting them on the head, as if he were thinking of anything in the world except his little granddaughters. Sybil

8 TIP CAT.

fancied that he said, " bless you," as she kissed his gray whisker, but Letty did not hear him.

He went into the library behind the dining-room after dinner, as he generally did when he was alone, and had his coffee taken to him there, and when Jen- kins went in to ask if he wanted anything more, he was writing letters at the table, and there they found him next morning, dead, apd lys head had fallen for- ward on to a letter he had jjus't begun to Dick. " My dear Dick," and that was allN(( J

Dick always kept that blotted sheet among his most precious possessions, and when people said that the old man had dealt unfairly with him and the little girls, and blamed him, and it was hard to find an answer for them in a very sore heart, Dick

would get out the" -paper and look at it with tears in

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his eyes and say, " Poor old fellow, he meant to set

it right ; it wasn't his fault."

The old grandfather was certainly very fond of Dick, though he was nearly as silent with him as he was with the little girls ; but Dick was used to him, and would chatter away to him about his school life and the fun he had, and the friends, and the fights, and the mischief, without being discouraged by only receiving a grunt or an absent, preoccupied look for

"THE POOR, OLD GRANDFATHER." 9

all response. And Dick was very fond of him ; the boy had been sent home from India when he was quite a baby, so the dull, old house in Bedford Place had been the only home he had ever known, and the silent, grave, old grandfather had taken the place of his parents, for long letters on foreign paper cannot replace daily intercourse, however kind and loving they may be. Dick was quite a big boy when Letty and Sybil came home to England, and he was just going to leave school. Four little baby brothers had been born between Dick and Letty, but they had all died, and the poor mother kept the two little girls with her as long as she dared, and it nearly broke her heart parting from them, and the children will never for- get how she looked when she said, " Good-bye, my darlings ; love one another, and be good to grand- papa and brother Dick till I come home."

It was only six months afterwards that the news came that both Colonel and Mrs. Lucas had died of cholera, Dick told the little girls. He came up into the nursery and took them on his knees and put his arms round them, and they each rested her head on his shoulder. They were very little then and did not understand, it was all so strange ; and they did not cry, for Dick said that father and mother

io TIP CAT.

were not farther off, for heaven was nearer than India.

" But, Dick," Letty said, wistfully, " they won't ever come home now ? "

" They've gone home," he answered ; " and we'll go home too, some day."

The only people who did not like Dick were Uncle Tom and Aunt Maria. Uncle Tom was Colonel Lucas's younger brother, and he had always been the steady, hard-working, industrious one ; and, while the Colonel was extravagant and reckless and wild, and got into debt over aW over again,

Uncle Tom was always quiet and well-behaved and

J never gave old Mr. Lucas any trouble,-^nd married

Aunt Maria, who was a good deal older than him- self and had a large fortune. Uncle Tom had been a partner in the bank for some years, and was very well off, and had a very elegant house in Regent's Park and two little girls, whom Letty and Sybil cor- dially disliked, as they were very prim and well-be- haved, and were constantly held up as examples of lady-like conduct by nurse and Martha. But as Uncle Tom was so rich and comfortable, it seemed very strange that he should have been so displeased when his father offered to have Dick to live with

" THE POOR, OLD GRANDPA THER." 1 1

him, for the Colonel had very little money, and had married a wife without a penny, though she was beautiful and good. But nevertheless Uncle Tom seemed to grudge every penny that was spent on the boy's education, and he was quite angry at the idea of his being sent to Oxford. He never ventured to say anything to the old man about it, but he showed what he felt to Dick plainly enough) and nothing made him so furious as when any one spoke of Dick as his grandfather's heir.

But to go back to the day that the old man died. Dick was telegraphed for ; but as he was away from Oxford that day, he did not get the message till the afternoon, and it was quite the evening before he came into the nursery with such a real look of sorrow in his face that the children were 'eartless no longer, but ran to him crying and clung round his neck sobbing. They had never seen any one grown up cry before, for their mother's tears at parting had been hidden away under smiles that were a hundred times more sad, and as for nurse's sniffing behind her apron, they were not taken in by that ; but the little choke in Dick's voice as he said, " The poor, old grandfather," touched the hearts that nurse had thought so very hard and unfeeling.

12 TIP CAT.

They sat all cuddled up together in the rocking chair, just as they had done when the news came from India that their father and mother had gone home, only the arms that clung round Dick's neck were longer, and there was down on the cheeks against which the children's pressed.

Uncle Tom had come in the morning, and had stood by the nursery table, where Letty and Sybil had been arranging the Noah's Ark animals in pairs to follow the funeral of one of the elephants, whom nurse had stepped on and fatally injured in the morn- ing. He leant his hands on the table and kept sway- ing backwards and forwards, and the children were so afraid that he would upset the giraffes, who were very unsteady on their feet, that they did not pay much attention to what he said about afflictive dis- pensations and decrees of Providence.

In the afternoon Aunt Maria arrived, and was present when the milliner came to take orders for the mourning, much to nurse's irritation. It was as much as either nurse or the milliner could do to answer civilly when Aunt Maria insisted on modera- tion in the depth of crape and the quality of para- matta, when, as nurse remarked in an aside to the milliner, " It's the poor little dears' own Gran'pa,

"THE POOR, OLD GRANDFATHER!" 13

and made of money ! " to which the milliner replied, with a sigh, " Yes, poor dear gentleman."

But though nurse managed to restrain her feelings in the nursery, it was a different matter when Aunt Maria went downstairs to speak about the servants' mourning, and there was a regular scene with Mrs. Treasure, the cook-housekeeper, who had ruled supreme for twenty years, and knew to a halfpenny the amount that propriety demanded should be spent on servants' mourning in well-regulated establish- ments. This was not the first time that she and Aunt Maria had had a battle royal, as that lady had felt herself called upon, more than once, to enter a protest against the reckless extravagance that ruled in the kitchen in Bedford Place, but had, on each occasion, been obliged to retire before Mrs. Treas- ure's determined front ; and when she appealed to the master of the house, a very absent-minded grunt was all she got out of him after nearly half an hour's solemn accusation, and only Dick, who was present on the occasion, saw a little twinkle in the old man's eye when the discomfited lady took her departure, which showed that he had not been altogether so in- attentive as Aunt Maria had thought.

To-day, however, Mrs. Treasure was not so entire-

14 TIP CAT.

ly self-possessed as on former occasions, so that she did not reply to Mrs. Tom Lucas with the " Yes, mum," " No, mum," " Really, mum," which were almost as inscrutable and irritating as her master's grunts. She had been really overcome by the sud- den death of her old master, whom she had served faithfully according to her lights, at any rate not al- lowing any one else to rob him, and you might, as the children heard her tell nurse, have knocked her down with a feather, which expression impressed them strongly, as Mrs. Treasure was a very substantial person, standing peculiarly square and firm on her feet. So, on this occasion, she forgot herself and the character she was bound to keep up before " the gals," who were listening giggling behind the pantry door, and she gave Aunt Maria a piece of her mind, and told her that now the old master was gone, they looked to Mr. Dick as their master, and they " wouldn't stand any interference, were it ever so," at which Aunt Maria turned a pale green, and swept out of the kitchen with as much dignity as she could com- mand, leaving Mrs. Treasure to subside into hysterics on one of the kitchen chairs, which lasted so long, and required such constant attention from her sym- pathising fellow-servants, with smelling-salts and

"THE POOR, OLD GRANDFATHER!" 15

burnt feathers, and patting the palms of her hands, and applying water outwardly and peppermint inward- ly to bring her to, that nurse and Martha were both called down to help in the difficult process of restora- tion, and that was how it was that Letty and Sybil were alone in the nursery when Dick came in.

I think it was the news of his arrival that ultimately roused Mrs. Treasure, and nothing would do but that she must prepare dinner for him with her own hands. " As sha'n't feel no difference if I can help it, and always liked curry from a child, bless him ! " Jenkins too bustled about, fetching up choice wine from the cellar and laying the dinner with its usual pompous accessories of solid plate and old-fashioned cut glass in the gloomy dining-room, where evening after evening the old grandfather had dined by him- self in solitary state.

But Dick sat with the children in the nursery, only lighted by the big, blazing fire, which shone on the robins on the wall-paper and the colored pictures from the Illustrated pinned on the walls, and on the doll's house in the corner, with Noah's ark standing on the top of it, and by and by, when Martha came running up to put on the kettle for tea — for tea time had been quite forgotten in the prevailing ex-

1 6 TIP CAT.

citement in the house — Dick asked them to bring his dinner up there, and he and the children had quite a merry tea dinner after all, when their eyes were dried ; for Dick did not seem to think it wrong to laugh, or expect every one to speak very low, and sigh at the end of each sentence, as nurse did.

READING THE WILL. 17

CHAPTER II.

READING THE WILL.

DURING the four days that passed after their grandfather's death and before the funeral, the chil- dren saw very little of Dick. There was a great deal to be arranged, and every one turned to Dick for directions. Mr. Murchison, the lawyer, was there every day with Dick and Uncle Tom, looking through the papers in the library. Mr. Murchison was an old friend of Mr. Lucas's, and used often to come and dine with him, and he was fond of Dick and kind to the little girls, for whom he brought little, oblong, wooden boxes of rose lozenges, and whom he had now and then to tea in his chambers in Bedford Row.

But this week the children thought he was not at all nice or pleasant, when by chance they came across him, for he hardly took any notice of them,

1 8 TIP CAT.

and would not look at a gutta-percha face they had bought, just because it was like one of his clerks. He seemed in a great fuss and anxiety, and Dick too got to look troubled, though he did not tell the little girls the reason when he came, as he always did, into the nursery in the evening. But servants always know what is going on in a house in some mysterious way, without intentional prying or eavesdropping, and it was soon generally known in the house that old Mr. Lucas's will could not be found, and that unless it was, all the money would go to Uncle Tom, and Dick would have nothing.

Though Letty and Sybil heard nurse talking about it, they did not at all understand what it would mean to them and Dick, but they felt the relief when, the day before the funeral, they heard the library door open and Mr. Murchison's voice raised in much more cheerful tones than it had been, and Dick's answering in the same key.

The nursery door was open and the house so quiet that the children could hear quite plainly what they said.

"Well, that's a comfort! I began to think it might have been destroyed, which would have been a mighty bad job for you, Master Dick. That's your

READING THE WILL. 19

grandfather all over, a good man of business as ever lived, poor fellow ; fastened up and dated and dock- eted ' My last Will and Testament.' Oh, I know well enough all about it, for I drew it myself. I'll call in on my way to the office and tell Mr. Tom that it's come to hand."

And then Dick came springing upstairs, three steps at a time, with a slackening of pace as he passed the door of that silent room, and came into the nursery with his face beaming free of all the trouble that had gathered there before.

" It's all right," he said, "it's found," as if he had told the little girls all about the missing will, and the search for it ; and they did not pretend not to under- stand, but were as glad as he was about if.

Dick talked more that evening than he had ever done before of what he meant to do. The clvldren had imagined that Dick would step at once into grandfather's place, and live always in Bedford Place, and go every day to the bank, only not stop there so long as grandfather, but come in soon enough to take them out. They had made up their minds that they would dine late every day with Dick, and that most likely they should go once a week at least, if not every day, to the pantomime, and quite as often to

20 TIP CAT.

the Zoological Gardens. So they were a little dis- appointed when he said that he should go back to Oxford, perhaps as soon as next week, and that he thought he should try and find some place in the country where Letty and Sybil could go with nurse and Martha, and where he could come whenever he could get away, for he would not be parted for long together from his little sisters ; and when Oxford was done with, and he came back to London and was called to the Bar, they should all live together again, and Letty and Sybil should keep house for brother Dick.

It did not quite satisfy the children's minds, as it was too far in the future, and Dick also mentioned governesses and masters as part of the programme ; but when they had arranged some- of the details of the future establishment, and had settled that Letty should have the keys because she was the eldest, but that they should take it by turns to pour out Dick's coffee and sit at the end of the table, and that they would not both go out with him always, because it was nicer going in a hansom than a four-wheeler, the prospect grew very attractive and did not seem so very distant after all.

Next day was the funeral, and, as I have said,

READING THE WILL. 21

Letty and Sybil were not allowed to watch it from the nursery windows, nor to open the nursery door and look over the banisters to catch a glimpse of anything passing below. Uncle Tom and Dick were the chief mourners, and there were some cousins and nephews of the old man, and some old friends and the doctor, and Mr. Murchison.

There seemed a smell everywhere of black kid gloves and crape, and the little girls sat up very stiff in their black frocks, which, in spite of Aunt Maria's injunctions of moderation, displayed as deep a woe as crape could express, and were so stiff and rough to the hands and round the throat that they certainly" did not represent the luxury of woe.

After the funeral had been gone about half an hour, and when it was too late to see anything of it, the blinds were drawn up in all the rooms, making everything look coarse and glaring after the subdued half-light they had been seen in during the last few days.

The children were hungry, and as they heard symptoms of luncheon being laid in the dining-room, and nurse was out of the way, they thought they would go for a voyage of discovery. The door of their grandfather's room was open, and they stopped

22 TIP CAT.

and looked in. Dick had done all he could to prevent the children having an unreasonable terror of death, and nurse had done all she could to give them that terror ; and they took hold of each other's hands as they looked in with a sort of awe. They had often been in there before in the old man's life time,when he was not there, and now it was just the same as it had always been : all the furniture unaltered and in the same places, and yet the room looked empty, as it had never looked before, and the children ran on with a wish to escape from the emptiness that only death can leave, and to be nearer the life that sounded from below with the cheerful clinking of glass and china, and opening doors and brisk foot- steps.

But they had only just reached the dining-room, and had only given one rapid survey of the table, and had not had time to help themselves even to one of the little, round dinner-rolls perched on the top of each of the mitre-shaped dinner-napkins, when a cab drove up to the door, and Aunt Maria's face appear- ing at the cab window sent them hurrying upstairs again and past the open, empty room without a thought of its awfulness.

So they had to wait patiently till nurse brought up

READING THE WILL. 23

their dinner, and told them that luncheon was going on iu the dining-room, and that when it was over the will was to be read in the library.

" Shall we go down ? " asked Letty ; but nurse shook her head and said that little girls were not wanted on such occasions. But she was wrong, for the little girls had only just said their grace and taken off their pinafores, when Dick came up to fetch them, and they went down, each holding one of his hands, which made it rather a squeeze to get down stairs.

He was looking a little bit vexed and worried. Some of the nephews and cousins who came to the funeral were poor, and could not help, poor souls, feeling a little envious of Dick, with whom life seemed going so much more smoothly than it ever had done with them, and now and then through lun- cheon, a word or a look would show what they felt, and wounded Dick's kind, gentle heart that would have made the whole world rich and happy and good if he could.

In the library they were all assembled when Dick and his little sisters came in. There was an- other lady present beside Aunt Maria. t A niece of old Mr. Lucas, a depressed, rather mouldy-looking widow, who sniffed at any pause in the conversa-

24 TIP CAT.

tion and echoed all Aunt Maria's opinions almost before she had heard what they were. Aunt Maria sat very upright in an arm-chair, and beckoned to the children to come to her when they came in ; but they pretended not to see her signal, but followed Dick to his chair rather behind Mr. Murchison, who sat up to the table with some papers before him. Mrs. Treasure and Jenkins were also there, Mrs. Treasure resplendent in creaking mourning, with her handkerchief in her hand and with eyes that care- fully avoided Aunt Maria, though she sat directly opposite. Uncle Tom sat on the other side of Mr. Murchison, looking rather sulky, and as the children looked from one face to another of the assembled company, they all appeared to them cross, or dull, or tired, or sad, all except Dick, who smiled and put his arms round his little sisters as they stood on either side of him, while Mr. Murchison, after a few remarks, began with slow, precise fingers to break the seals of the paper in his hand and untie the red tape with which it was fastened.

" Our old friend," he said, " was always a good man of business, a capital man of business, the order and arrangement of his papers might really be an ex- ample to many of us, eh, master Dick ? And when he gave me instructions for the will, by Jove, sir, a

READING THE WILL. 25

lawyer himself could not have done it better, though I say it. To be sure it was simple enough, but he had thought of everything, and nothing, had escaped his memory. It was really quite a treat to do busi- ness with such a man." And here Mr. Murchison drew the paper out of the covering and began unfold- ing the sheet of foolscap, with a little glance round at the attentive faces whose eyes watched every movement. " He was certainly the best man of

bus ," and here he suddenly stopped, and his

mouth dropped open with a jerk, and his eyebrows rose, giving his eyes, for once, a chance of looking out, without being obscured by shaggy, grey hair, which they did, though his double eye-glasses fell from the bridge of his nose with a resounding thud on the paper which made every one start. And then he got up from his chair and settled his eye-glasses again on his nose with a hand that trembled, and he turned to the window as if to get more light on the subject. There was not much light to be sure in the room, but there was too much on the foolscap paper to allow any doubt even for a second. There was no signature to the will.

It was Dick who said it first, his arms tightened round his little sisters for a moment and then he spoke, " It is not signed."

26 TIP CAT,

There was a moment's silence and then a voice from the other side of the room said, " Then it is worth nothing." It was Aunt Maria, and Mrs. Bush, the depressed widow, hastened to echo the words, " Then it is worth " but was frightened into si- lence by the glare with which Mr. Murchison turned round on her.

Then he went back to that useless examination turning and twisting the paper as if he did not know (who better ?) that without the signature the will was not worth the paper it was written on. There was the sort of silence just then which people describe as one in which you could hear a pin drop, but Dick broke it. He put Letty and Sybil gently away from him and stood up, and his face was very white and did not look as young as it had done a minute ago, and his voice was a little husky.

" Of course," he said, " it is worth nothing if it is not signed, and we must ask Mr. Murchison to read the other will, which will hold good now."

But Mr. Murchison could not take it as calmly as Dick appeared to do ; any one to look at him might have thought that it was he who had lost a large inheritance for want of a few shaky lines of an old man's writing.

READING THE WILL. 27

" It's a mistake," he said, " the most extraordi- nary mistake I ever knew in my life. Mr. Tom, I never thought your father was failing in mind before, but he must have been. And to think that he should have kept the old will when he knew as well as I do that it was waste paper as soon as another was made. Oh, what fools people are ! " the old lawyer burst out, flinging down the unsigned will and running his fingers through his gray hair as if he would tear it out.

Uncle Tom sat rubbing one fat hand over the other and staring vacantly before him with his mouth in a whistling position, while the eyes of all the others were fixed on the lawyer with various expressions.

Dick had sat down again, and his hands, which the children held, were cold, and his lips dry, but he said, " We had better hear the old will, sir."

The old will had been found pushed away in a pigeon-hole in the library, with some old diaries and letters of no value except as recalling old times ; it was discblored and dirty, and there was a splash of ink on the back, and the ink had grown pale in the twenty-two years that had passed since it was written.

Mr. Murchison had drawn that too, and remem-

28 TIP CAT.

*

bered the time\well, before Dick was born and when the old man had just paid off Captain Lucas's debts for the third time, and declared it should be the last penny the ungrateful, extravagant son should get out of him, and that all he had should go to Tom, who had never given him half an hour's trouble or anxiety in his life, " or pleasure either," the old man had added in one of his rare moments of confidence, with a smile and a sigh for the scapegrace son whom he loved in spite of all. Mr. Murchison's hand shook as he unfolded the old paper, and his voice was so unsteady in reading it that Aunt Maria had to lean forward and put her hand to her ear to catch the full significance of the words that bequeathed all the old man's real and personal estate to his dear son Thomas Lucas. There were a few small legacies, and io/. to each of the servants in his service at the time of his death. Mrs. Treasure and Jenkins had been young servants then, but they were old when that unsigned will had been drawn, and their master had left them a handsome legacy each, but' now they were entitled to no more than little Lucy, the kitchen maid, who had only been in the place three weeks. I think they felt it more, or perhaps realized it more, even than Dick did, and Mrs. Treasure lost all her

READING THE WILL. 29

portly defiance of manner, and went out of the room looking quite shabby and old and stooping, followed by Jenkins, who went off to the pantry and then and there got tipsy in cold blood, a thing he had never done in his life before.

When Mr. Murchison had finished reading he sat quite still, leaning back in his chair, and Dick also said nothing while the cousins and nephews edged their chairs nearer to one another and began talking' in under-tones, with glances towards Uncle Tom and Dick.

And then Uncle Tom, who had been fidgeting his feet and clearing his throat nervously for some min- utes, got up and leaned across the table to Dick.

" Dick," he said, " it shan't make any difference to you, my boy. We know what he meant to do for you, and "

But just then Aunt Maria came in between, and Uncle Tom's outstretched hand dropped to his side and his voice died away. She was tying her bonnet- strings and buttoning her cloak.

" It is getting late, Tom," she said, " and we must be going home. I think we had better take a night to consider what it is right to do under the circum- stances. Good-by, Dick. Good-by, little girls."

30 TIP CA T.

She kissed Letty before the child saw what she was going to do, but Sybil saw what was coming, and ducked her head so as to receive Aunt Maria's peck on the back of her neck. She stood a minute at the door while Uncle Tom fumbled under the table for his gloves, and she looked round the room with a glance of proprietorship that struck even the children as something new, as if it all belonged to her, Sybil said ; and she examined a spot of grease on the bookcase and rubbed it off, just as she would have done at home, and she felt the material of the thick curtain over the door as if to see what it might fetch.

Dick got up with his usual courtesy to show her out and put her into the cab, having always been used in his grandfather's time to act the host, but to-day Aunt Maria did not appear to notice his offer of politeness, and the color rushed up into Dick's face, at this first hint, that he was no longer master in the old house.

The sympathy he met with from the cousins was almost more painful, and when one of them declared that he had been shamefully treated, and that the old man must have been a lunatic, and that if he were Dick he would go to law about it and have his rights, Dick could hardly resist kicking him, but he forbore,

READING THE WILL. 31

and only said that his grandfather was the best and wisest man he knew, and the poor cousin went home more contented with the little, shabby house at Cam- berwell, and the anxious wife and six children who made such a pitiful struggle to be genteel on ^150 a year, compared with the prospects of the young fellow who had suddenly exchanged riches for pov- erty. Mr. Murchison's grim silence was much more soothing to poor Dick, but even he soon took his de- parture, and the little girls went up to the nursery to tea, and Dick was left alone.

32 TIP CAT.

CHAPTER III.

A SORE HEART.

DICK did not come up to the nursery tea that evening as he generally did, and nurse insisted on the children going to bed early, principally because she wanted to join the conclave in the kitchen, who were discussing the events of the day. There was not one of the servants who was not heartily sorry for Dick and the two little girls, a great deal more sorry for the children than they were for themselves, for they did not understand all the difference that missing signature made to them ; but in spite of the servants' pity there was somehow an alteration in their behavior that the children felt without under- standing it. I do not think that Letty and Sybil would have been shuffled off to bed an hour earlier than usual if the will had been different, and when Sybil said she was thirsty and asked for some milk, nurse said there was none up stairs, and gave her

A SORE HEART. 33

some water, instead of sending Martha down for some.

It was just the same with Dick. They were all so fond of him and so sorry for him, but the feeling that he was no longer the young master crept unin- tentionally into all they did, and perhaps he was unusually sensitive just then, and noticed little things he would not have thought of in former days ; but the tears came pricking into his eyes when there was no spoon put for him to eat his soup with at dinner, and when the potatoes were burnt, though he was never one to think much of state and for- mality, or to care about little niceties of food or cook- ery, and he had more than a suspicion that poor old Jenkins had been taking more than was good for him, and that Mrs Treasure was hysterical, which would account for everything.

I suppose it was because the children had gone to bed earlier than usual that Letty and Sybil could not sleep, and, after a while, Sybil came stealing across and got into Letty's bed, and they talked with all the more satisfaction because they knew that talking after they were in bed was strictly forbidden. But there was no one to hear them, for nurse and Martha were both down stairs ; and by and by Sybil

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fancied that the kitten had got at nurse's work-basket and was tangling the reels of cotton ; so the children felt it to be their duty to get up and put a stop to such reckless havoc as pussy was sure to work, and when they got into the day-nursery, though they found nothing of the sort going on, and that much maligned animal fast asleep in front of the fire, still they did not return forthwith to bed, but drew their little chairs up to the fender, and warmed their toes with the delightful feeling that they were doing something utterly unallowable.

" You see," said Sybil, " we can get back into bed directly we hear nurse coming upstairs."

The house was very quiet, and the children soon grew tired of sitting by the fire, and felt disposed for further adventures.

" I wonder where Dick is," Letty said, " and why he did not come and talk to us this evening ? but I daresay he would if nurse had not made us go to bed."

" I wish he would come now," said Sybil. " Oh, Letty ! let's go and find him. I dare say he's in the library, and very dull all by himself, and thinks we're asleep. Nurse won't know. We'll creep down on tiptoe, and make Dick come up here with us."

A SORE HEART. 35

No sooner said than done. They found their dressing-gowns and little slippers, and because Sybil thought that the kitten would be frightened at being left all alone, they took her with them.' They passed the door of -their grandfather's bedroom very fast, for it was a little way open, and Letty fancied she heard a sound inside, and was not sure there was not light shining through the crack.

But when they reached the library they found, to their disappointment, that Dick was not there. He must have been sitting there, for there was a news- paper lying by the arm-chair and some letters in Dick's writing on the table, but he was not there. Neither was he in the dining-room, where the re- mains of dinner were still spread on the table.

" Perhaps he has gone out," whispered Sybil.

But no ; there was his hat in the hall.

" Can he have gone to bed so early ? "

Dick's bedroom was on the same floor as old Mr. Lucass,' and just as they got to his door, pussy, who had been struggling a good deal all the way, escaped from Sybil's hold and ran right into the old man's room ; and before the children had time to think what they were about, they had followed her in. There was some one there, and they stood thunder

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struck, hardly knowing if nurse or a ghost were most to be feared or expected, and Dick (for it was he) looking up, saw two little things in scarlet dressing gowns, with rough heads and big, round eyes staring at him aghast. And well they might, for Dick looked up at them with a face that was not a bit like the Dick they knew and loved — the bright, happy, trust- ing Dick, fearless and frank.

His candle stood on the toilet-table, guttering, with a thief in it, and he was sitting with his arms stretched out across the table and his head on his arms, and behind was the window with the blind drawn up all crooked, showing the foggy night out- side and" the dark houses opposite, giving an unut- terably dreary effect to the room. His face was quite of a piece with the room ; so sad and hopeless, and set and grey : but it cleared and altered in a moment — the moment he saw his little sisters — and he held out his arms and they rushed into them.

" Oh, Dick ! we've been looking for you every- where ; oh, Dick, come away from this horrid room ; come into the nursery."

"All right," he said, "you two little scarlet ghosts. They told me you were in bed an hour ago."

" So we were, Dick ; but we couldn't sleep, and we wanted you."

A SORE HEART. 37

" Come along then,"

He took Sybil up in his arms and held Letty's hand ; but before they left the room he stopped by the empty bed, and spoke very soft and gently : " Dear, dear old grandfather, we know it was all a mistake ; we quite understand, Letty, Sybil, and I. You meant to do all that was kind and generous for us ; and whatever people may say, we shall always be grateful and loving in our thought of you."

That half-hour before nurse came bustling up and swept the two little girls off to bed again, was wonder- fully soothing to Dick's poor, sore, sick young heart, though Sybil fell asleep in his arms and Letty only rested her soft cheek against his arm as she sat in her little chair by his side, and looked up with great, loving eyes and said, " Poor old Dick ! dear old Dick ! " without understanding one fraction of all the weight that was settling down on her young brother.

He had been feeling so bad, and bitter and resent- ful. When all the relations were gone, and even Mr. Murchison had left, with only a few words, being too upset and overwhelmed even to express the deep sympathy he felt, and Dick was left alone, and sat over his comfortless dinner in the great, gloomy dining-room, trying to realise his new situation and

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to put away the bright future that only a couple of hours before seemed so certainly his, and that now was utterly impossible, it seemed incredible that he was no longer the Dick Lucas, Christ Church, Ox- ford, who was going to take his degree next year and be called to the Bar the year after ; to whom society was opening its doors and making itself as delight- ful as it can to a young man of good looks, good manners, and plenty of money ; that those luxurious rooms at Oxford were no longer his, that the thorough- bred hunter he had bought only the other day, and only ridden once, must pass into other hands, and that the few little bills that had seemed a mere flea bite to confess to the liberal old grandfather, must now be scrutinized and commented on by Aunt Maria looking through Uncle Tom's eyes and speaking with his tongue. What could he do ? Where could he turn?"

"I am so young," he said, with that terrible self- pity that saps the strength more than anything else. "-And there are the two little girls."

But after that quiet half-hour in the nursery with Sybil's gentle sleeping breath coming and going against his cheek, and Letty's soft little fingers strok- ing and fondling his, half the bitterness seemed gone.

A SORE HEART. 39

" I am so young," he said, using the very same words that had expressed all the pity and cruelty of it, half an hour before, but now expressed the com- fort. " I am so young and strong, there must be work I can do, and there are the two little girls, so I have something to work for."

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CHAPTER IV.

PLANS FOR THE FUTURE.

THERE was something hopeful and exhilarating about the weather next morning, and the servants thought some unexpected piece of good news must have come to Dick during the night, when they heard him whistling to himself over his dressing as light- hearted as a lark. He even felt surprised at himself when he looked in the glass that he was not haggard and heavy-eyed, with black care sitting visibly on his shoulders, touching his hair with grey, and drawing lines round mouth and eyes. On the contrary he looked uncommonly fresh and youthful, but what can you not do when you are young and in good health, and have had a perfectly good night, enlivened with dreams of a capital run with the hounds, when the February sky is blue even through London smoke and there is a breath of spring and violets in the air

PLANS FOR THE FUTURE. 41

that drives away all memory of the fogs that curtained you in only yesterday ?

Dick found a note on the breakfast table awaiting him from Uncle Tom, asking him to come round that morning to his house to talk over arrangements, as he had a touch of gout in one foot and could not get down to the bank that day. Dick shrewdly suspected that Uncle Tom's gout was brought on by Aunt Maria's anxiety to be present at any interview that might take place, and by her fixed determination to have a voice, and that a very ruling one, in any ar- rangements that might be made, and he would much rather have settled it. all with Uncle Tom alone in his room at the bank, or in Mr. Murchison's office, with the kind, old lawyer to put everything in its best light.

But there was no help for it ; gout is a circumstance to which we must all give way. So, breakfast being over, Dick called the little girls to put on their things and come with him.

Jenkins came into the hall to help him on with his overcoat ; the old man was looking very dilapidated after his last night's excess, and Dick, who guessed the cause of part of his miserable looks, had taken no notice of his sigh as he handed the coffee, or his

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sniff over the fried bacon ; but now there was some- thing so appealing in the old man's dejected face that Dick took hold of the unsteady hand that was fumbling with his coat and shook it warmly.

" Cheer up, old friend," he said ; " there are better days in store for us all yet, never fear ! " which sent the old man shuffling off sobbing into the pantry, hardly hearing Dick's concluding words, " but I don't think whisky will bring them any the quicker." But I think the kindness and the shake of the hand carried the moral straighter to his heart than any words could have done.

Letty and Sybil came running down stairs, pulling on obstinate, new, black gloves in a violent and reck- less manner in their haste to be off, and the three set off very cheerfully, though the children experi- enced the first pinch of their fallen fortunes when Dick refused to buy them each a bunch of violets from the basket that was offered temptingly at the corner. They passed the cabstand too with firm resolution, not to be shaken by the most insinuating touching of hats or raising of whips from friendly cabbies, and Dick felt as if he were already two shil- lings the richer for the saved cab-hire.

There was plenty of time ; they were all good

PLANS FOR THE FUTURE. 43

walkers, and Dick's pride would not swallow an om- nibus just at present — poor, silly fellow ; though Letty and Sybil grew silent towards the end cf the walk and dragged back a good deal, stoutly denying, how- ever, all the time that they were the least tired.

They found Uncle Tom established in the arm- chair in the dining-room, with one of his feet swathed in flannel and laid up on a chair, and Aunt Maria mounting guard over the sufferer with her knitting and with all the outward marks of a patient and long- suffering wife, ready to attend to the slightest wish of her irritable lord and master.

There was no doubt that Uncle Tom was thor- oughly uncomfortable and ill at ease, but whether this was from the gout or from what he had to say to Dick, is not, I think, doubtful, even though it had been persistently pointed out to him during the watches of the night, that what he was going to pro- pose was the best, and wisest, and most generous, and, in fact, the only course to take. But the words were not very sweet to Uncle Tom's lips and he would gladly have turned over in his bed and gone to sleep and left his wife and Dick to fight it out to- gether; and the sound of Aunt Maria's knitting needles, which had a little, vicious click peculiar to

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themselves, made him so nervous, that the groan he gave vent to every now and then was by no means unprovoked, though not by the twinges of gout to which Dick attributed them, and which were really of the very slightest description.

"Well, Dick," he said, after the preliminaries about health and weather had been got through, " it must have been a very great surprise to you the way matters went yesterday. So it was to all — eh, my dear ? " appealing to his wife, who was, however, too • busy counting the stitches on one of her needles to make any answer. So he had to turn back to Dick, who replied that it certainly was a great surprise.

" It comes very hard on you, Dick ; as, of course, it will make some difference in your prospects."

" Of course," said Dick. " All the difference in the world."

He spoke so cheerfully, that Uncle Tom went on more easily and with less humming and hawing. " I'm glad to see you take it so well, for your aunt and I have been saying how hard it comes on you to give up Oxford, though we were never in favor of your going there in the first instance."

A moment before, Dick would have said that he had known from the very first that Oxford was now

PLANS FOR THE FUTURE. 45

quite out of the question, and that even if Uncle Tom, with startling and unexpected generosity, had offered to let him remain till he had taken his degree, he would, on no account, have agreed to do so at his expense, but still there must have been lurking some- where undetected in his inmost heart a hope that things might after all turn out differently, for, at those words of Uncle Tom's, a dull pain awoke in his heart that only the uprooting* of a hope can cause. But he only laughed, and neither Uncle Tom nor Aunt Maria loved him well enough to notice the harshness of that laugh, and only Letty, who had declined to go to the nursery with Sybil, glanced up quickly at his face as if she heard something unusual. But there was nothing to be read there, then or after- wards, while Uncle Tom unfolded the plans he and Aunt Maria had sketched out during the night, and Dick only said, " To be sure," and " Of course," and " Thank you, sir," with such quiet submission that Aunt Maria looked sharply at him, more than once, to see if there were any concealed sarcasm, in the thanks for what, even she could not help feeling, was not a very generous proposal.

Dick was to have a place in the bank with a salary of ioo/. a year.

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Dick writhed a little as Aunt Maria pointed out that it was out of pure kindness (she could not quite bring out the word charity) that his uncle took him on, as no extra clerk was wanted, and he would not be of the slightest use for morlths, if at all, as young men who had been brought up in idle, extravagant habits very rarely become good men of business ; but he only said he would do his best and was awfully obliged ; and he tried not to think of the clerks, on whom he had hitherto looked down, and whom he had patronized in an easy, good-natured way with a sublime, assured feeling of superiority and who would now be his equals, if not his super- iors.

Uncle Tom's spirits quite rose at the quiet and satisfactory way in which he was getting through the business, and Dick's attention wandered a little from the arrangements for the sale of the furniture in Bed- ford Place and the letting of the house, the details of which were to be left to Mr. Murchison, though that gentleman was in no favor with Aunt Maria at pres- ent. As she told Dick, she could not have much confidence in a man who expressed himself in such an unprofessional and ungentlemanlike way as he had done over the unsigned will ; but Uncle Tom

PLANS FOR THE FUTURE. 47

had declared that it would be impossible to put the business into other hands, so paying the lawyer out must be left till another day.

Dick would have to find lodgings for himself in the neighborhood of Lucas's Bank. " And I ought to caution you, Dick," said Aunt Maria, " that your means will not allow of any extravagance."

" No, you will have to be careful," said Uncle Tom, " for though there will be the 50^. a year from

your father's estate "

' " But there are the little girls ! " said Dick, sud- denly arousing to the fact that he had forgotten Letty and Sybil, and grown selfish in his trouble ; " there are the little girls."

And Uncle Tom also roused to the consciousness that he was not out of the wood yet, and that per- haps this might be the most difficult part of it.

" I was coming to them," he said. " Letty, run away to the nursery."

But Letty only drew closer to Dick.

" Your aunt and I have thought a great deal about the children, and though your aunt was anxious " (here Uncle Tom gave a swallow as if the words stuck in his throat) " to have them to bring up with Ellen and Grace " (here Letty squeezed Dick's

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hand, in horror, very hard), " we felt there were a good many objections, and that it was our duty to consider first what would be for the good of our own children."

" Certainly," agreed Dick.

" So your aunt has consented to give up her wish, and she has got particulars of a school which we think would be very suitable."

" Indeed," said Dick, with a reassuring pat to a trembling little hand clinging to his arm.

" It seems an excellently managed establishment, and the terms are very moderate."

"They are "rather young for school yet," said Dick.

" Not at all, not at all," said Aunt Maria ; " they have been shamefully spoiled, and no doubt are very backward. Grace and Ellen at their age were well advanced, and it is high time they should be learning something, if they are to support themselves when they grow up."

" What ? " said Dick. He could hardly believe his ears, and he turned to Aunt Maria such a look of amazement, and spoke so suddenly and sharply that it quite startled her, and caused her to drop half a dozen stitches off her needles ; and she went on

PLANS FOR THE FUTURE. 49

irritably with her eyes fixed on the knitting as she picked up the stitches, which prevented her seeing the storm signals that were rising in Dick's face, compressed lips, rising color, and eyes that flashed and clouded in a manner very unlike their usual kind good-nature. But Uncle Tom saw them, and grew so nervous that he actually hoisted his gouty foot down off the chair and drummed on the ground with it, which may have shown either the intensity of his mental, or the slightness of his bodily sufferings.

" We must not close our eyes to the future," Aunt Maria went on ; " of course the little girls will have to earn their livings, as they are entirely unpro- vided for, and it is quite our duty, whatever the cost may be, to give them the means of doing so by a thoroughly good education."

Dick said nothing ; he was looking at little Letty, who, being tired with her walk, looked more delicate and fragile and like Dresden china than ever, with less rose-leaf color in her cheeks and a serious, wistful look in her great, soft eyes as they turned from Aunt Maria to Dick, trying to understand what was said.

And just then Sybil came slipping in ; she had quarrelled with Ellen and Grace in the nursery be-

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cause they had said that Dick was a beggar, and would have to sweep a crossing, and, I am sorry to say, she had slapped Ellen's face and pinched Grace's arm, and, finding after this that the nursery was too hot to hold her, had come to find protection with Dick.

" The school is at Camberwell, and the present opportunity is most favorable, as there are some vacancies, and Miss Primmer is willing to take two sisters at a reduction, and no doubt she might be induced to lower her terms still more on the under- standing that when they get older they shall assist in the teaching and needlework. She has a good many gentlemen's children among the pupils, as the school is principally intended for the daughters of the clergy and people in distressed circumstances. They are all dressed alike, and the feeding is, I am told, very good — plain, of course, but plentiful."

Here at last she paused for Dick, to express his satisfaction, and as he made no remark she looked up. " Well ? " she said, " don't you think it will do very well ? "

" No," Dick answered. His voice trembled a little, but he was doing his best to answer quietly, and to keep his temper. " No, I don't think it would

PLANS FOR THE FUTURE. 51

do for my sisters at all. I will not let them go to a charity school."

I think Aunt Maria was taken by surprise ; he had listened so quietly, and being, as I have said, absorbed in her knitting, she had not seen from his face that he was not taking it well, so perhaps this was some slight excuse for her losing her temper, as she did, completely.

(l His sisters, indeed ! Why were his sisters better than any other penniless children ? Perhaps he would find the money to put them to a first-class school, or keep them at home, cockered up in the ridiculous luxury they have been accustomed to. Charity school ! forsooth ! And what was it but charity in future that would put bread in their mouths and clothes on their backs ? My word ! it was fine to hear beggars talk ! " And so she ran on, work- ing herself up into a fury that was only increased by Uncle Tom's little attempts to soothe her — " But, my dear — Maria, my love — I am sure that Dick — " and by Dick's persistent silence, for he would not forget that he was a gentleman, however hard he found it to remember that she was a lady.

All the same he was very angry ; no doubt it was very foolish of him, and it would have been better

$2 TIP CAT.

for him and the little girls to keep on good terms with their relations ; but young blood is hot, and he could not endure the thought of his little, delicate, dainty sisters having to scramble and shift for them- selves at a rough-and-ready charity school. So, at the first break in the torrent of words, he turned to his uncle : " I was in too great a hurry, sir," he said, " to accept the offer of a seat in your bank. I think on consideration I must decline it. I mean to keep my sisters with me, and must try and find a situation that will not separate us."

"Wait a bit, Dick," entreated Uncle Tom, but was snuffed out in a moment by his wife, and col- lapsed groaning into his arm-chair.

" Oh ! don't press it on him, no doubt it's not nearly good enough for him ; no doubt he can command any situation he pleases, and it is only an insult to offer him anything less than a partnership ! "

Dick was pretty well at the end of his patience by this time, and Letty had begun to cry, and Sybil was much inclined to follow suit, and he often wondered afterwards how he managed to keep silence and make his escape without letting his indignation boil over into hasty words ; but somehow it was done, and he found himself walking at a tremendous rate

PLANS FOR THE FUTURE. 53

along one of the side paths in Regent's Park, quite oblivious as to where he was going, or that he was going so fast that Sybil and Letty had to run to keep up with him, and were out of breath and tired.

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. CHAPTER V.

AN OPENING.

"I'VE been and gone and done it now," Dick said an hour later, as he came into Mr. Murchison's quiet office in Lincoln's Inn Fields. He said it with "a laugh, but Mr. Murchison, pushing away the papers in which he had been entirely engrossed, and looking up at Dick's face, was not taken in by his joking manner.

" Have you been and gone and had luncheon ? " asked the old man in reply.

" Luncheon ? Yes — no — I breakfasted late," said poor Dick, too full of his troubles to understand, as Mr. Murchison did, that hunger might be an aggra- vation of them.

" Well, perhaps you won't mind coming round with me while I have mine ? I find I can't get along without a square meal in the middle of the day," said that cunning old sinner, who had only just come

AN OPENING. 55

back ten minutes ago from his luncheon, which was always of the most spare condition.

Dick could not well refuse to accompany him, nor could he decline to take any part of the plentiful meal that Mr. Murchison ordered for himself — much to the amazement of the waiter, who was used to the old lawyer's small appetite and regular, precise tastes.

So Dick took up his knife and fork just for polite- ness' sake, and to amuse himself while his old friend lunched, and he amused himself to so much purpose that in twenty minutes he felt twice. the man he had been, and much less inclined to look on the tragic side of life ; and he gave Mr. Murchison a very dif- ferent account of what had passed in the morning to what he would have done before luncheon, and even found excuses for Aunt Maria, and blamed and laughed at himself for having been made so furious by the scolding of an angry woman.

But not the softening effects of a good luncheon, nor the wise counsels of the old lawyer, could bring him to reconsider his determination, and to accept the place offered him in the bank, or to allow his aunt any voice in the disposal of the little girls. He might, perhaps, though I rather doubt it, have been

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induced to eat humble pie for himself ; but when it was a question of serving out that bitter portion to Letty and Sybil, his whole soul rose in revolt. He threw up his head, with his teeth set, and his nostrils dilating, and clenched his hands, " for all the world," said Mr. Murchison, " as if I were Mrs. Tom Lucas, and you were going to knock me down."

In his inmost heart the old lawyer could not be angry with the boy for his sensitive pride for his little sisters, though he rated him soundly for being headstrong and self-willed, and for quarrelling with his bread and butter, feeling himself all the time that if his bread had to be buttered by Mrs. Tom Lucas he would rather go without even to starvation ; for he had no love for that lady, and guessed that Dick would have fared much better at his uncle's hands if it had not been for her influence.

Lawyers see so much of the dark and dirty side of human nature,. I often wonder how any of them can keep any faith in goodness and truth and high-mind- edness.

" And now," Dick said, " what am I to do ? "

They were back in Lincoln's Inn Fields by this time, in Mr. Murchison's room — such a quaint, curi- ous room at the back of the house, so quiet that you

AN OPENING. 57

could scarcely guess you were within a stone's throw of the ceaseless traffic of Holborn, and lighted by a skylight with colored panes introduced, surrounded by handsome, heavy plaster mouldings and cornices of the last century. The marble mantlepiece was richly carved with fauns and naked boys carrying bunches of grapes — but I do not know why I should mention all these details, except because they were always associated in Dick's mind with the plans for his future life which were debated on that occasion.

" What am I to do ? "

The old lawyer sat drumming reflectively on his blotting-paper, and on a blue letter written in a crab- bed, curious hand that lay upon it. He had it in his heart to say, " I have no chick nor child of my own, and a large balance at my banker's that grows every year without giving me either pleasure or profit, and I am willing to take your grandfather's place to you and the little girls, and will do as much as he was able and intended to do, or perhaps even more, and make my old age happier and brighter and fuller of interest than any other part of my life has been." But it was utterly impossible to him to say the words ; he had always been so prudent and business-like and far-sighted that he could not do a

$8 TIP CAT.

rash, open-handed act of generosity on the spur of the moment, like any short-sighted, inconsiderate mortal. Well, they say fools rush in where angels fear to tread, but sometimes, it seems to me, the fools get the best of it; and the old lawyer in his lonely chambers in his solitary old age, even with the consolation of that ever-increasing balance at his banker's, was inclined, sometimes, to wish that he had not been so wise.

" I'm afraid I'm not good for much," said Dick. " Aunt Maria says I shall never make a good man of business ; but I'll do my best. I write a pretty good hand, you know, and I'm not such a duffer at figures as some fellows. What have you got there ? "

For Mr. Murchison was unfolding the blue letter before him with a doubtful, hesitating air, which roused Dick's curiosity.

" It's a letter I received this morning, strangely enough, from an old client of mine at Slowmill. He's a( solicitor, and he writes to ask if I can send him a clerk. He has a managing clerk, who has been with him for years, and has all the business at his fingers' ends ; but he wants another to take the place of a nephew who has gone to the bad. He wants a gentlemanly young fellow who writes a good

AN OPENING. 59

hand. The fact of the matter is, he is bringing out a big legal work, and it's more a sort of secretary he wants than anything else. He has been at it this twenty years, and I don't believe it's any nearer completion than it was ten years ago. It needs a lot of patience, I can tell you. He thinks of nothing else, and he kept that young nephew of his so close at it that he broke down and went to the bad — got into debt, forged his uncle's name, and made off. No, Dick ; it wouldn't do for you," answering the eager look in Dick's eyes before it was put into" words. "It would wear you out, body and soul. You don't know what a place Slowmill is, or what a slave-driver old Burgess is when he's mounted on his hobby."

" Do you think I should go to the bad like the nephew ? " said Dick. " I don't feel as if I had much go- left in me either way. Won't you speak a word for me ? " he went on eagerly. " It would be so fine to tell Uncle Tom that I have found a situa. tion, and take the children right away. I don't much mind what I do, or how little I get for it, as long as I'm out of sight. I was thinking as I came along that I shouldn't mind a groom's place ; for I do know something about horses. By Jove ! if Letty

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and Sybil were only boys, I'd do it and we could live over the stables, and be as jolly as sand-boys ; but, of course, with the girls it wouldn't do. What does the old beggar offer ? — I beg his pardon — Mr. Bur- gess, didn't you call him ? "

" The salary is not much," said Mr. Murchison. " In fact, I hardly think it worth your taking."

"'Beggars musn't be choosers,'" said Dick. "I had that instilled into me this morning, and I'm not likely to forget it. What's the figure ? "

" The salary to a competent person would be 8o/. It's absurd," said Mr. Murchison, folding up the letter and stowing it away in his pocket ; " not to be thought of."

" Wait a bit," urged Dick. " It's not so bad, after all — only twenty pounds less than Uncle Tom offered me, and thought he was doing the handsome with a vengeance. What's twenty pounds more or less, if you come to think of it ? " ( Experience had not taught him that 2o/. more may make little difference, but 2o/. less matters infinitely more.) " I call it un- commonly good for a beginner. But do you think I've a chance ? such a lot of fellows will be after it. Look here, couldn't you write a line for me to take down, and I'd interview the old fellow ? Oh, don't

AN OPENING. 6 1

you be afraid ! I'll make him think me a second Solomon. I'll roar as softly as any sucking dove. I shouldn't have time to run down this afternoon," consulting his watch ; " but I could go to-morrow morning."

But Mr. Murchison still hesitated. " You have not a notion what a dull place Slowmill is."

" So much the better. Even on 8o/. a year we could not afford much society."

" There's not a gentleman but Burgess in the place."

" Perhaps if there were they might not think much of a lawyer's clerk. Look here, I don't expect to find a bed of roses anywhere ; but I'd rather bear the thorns out of sight. Now, sit down and write a letter of recommendation for me ; make the best of a bad job, old friend, and paint my portrait in the colors you think would be most taking, and I'll give you a specimen of my patience by not interrupting till it's done."

And so Dick sat, with his hands dug deep down into his trousers' pockets, and his eyes fixed on the dull coals in the grate, that crumbled and died into ashes as his bright hopes and ambitions had done ; or on the dancing boys carved on the mantlepiece,

62 TIP CAT.

who had grinned and capered before many a dull eye and heavy, broken heart in the lawyer's office.

It was a long business, writing that letter, but at last it was done, and Dick went off with it in his pocket in capital spirits. In the evening he was up in the nursery describing to the little girls the cot- tage they would live in at Slowmill and the pleasures of country life, busily counting his chickens before they are hatched, when a ring at the bell and old Jenkins, puffing and blowing up stairs, an- nounced that Mr. Tom Lucas had come to see his nephew.

He had had a hard time of it since the morning, and I hardly know how he had managed to make his escape and come to Bedford Place. His gouty foot was still in a slipper, but there was no other sign of the malady of the morning, and he got up quite briskly from his chair when his nephew came into the library and went forward to meet him.

" I can't stop a minute," he said ; " but I just wanted to say that you must not be in a hurry or take too seriously anything your aunt said this morning. She has been very much upset, and she's a martyr to her nerves — positively a martyr — Dick."

He might have added, " And so am I ; " but Dick

AN OPENING. 63

mentally added it for him, only he altered the word nerves into temper.

" When she has one of her nervous attacks she really hardly knows what she's about. There's not a kinder-hearted woman than your Aunt Maria in London. 'Pon my word there's not, Dick."

There was something so deprecating and appeal- ing in Uncle Tom's manner, that Dick, in the soft- ness of his heart, would have liked to agree in his opinion of Aunt Maria's virtues ; but he was still too sore and smarting from the morning's castigation to be anything but sincere, so he assured his uncle that it was all right and no bones broken.

Uncle Tom gave a sigh of relief and turned to go. "Then you'll come round to the bank to-morrow morning, and we'll settle when you shall begin work ; and as for the children, we need not be in any hurry about them for the present."

Dick had thought what a fine thing it would be to tell his uncle that he had another situation and was quite independent of him and Aunt Maria ; but now he felt quite a twinge of compunction at upsetting the other's relief and satisfaction, more especially as Uncle Tom was looking worn and tired, and limped a little as he walked to the door.

64 TIP CA T.

" Here, take my arm," he said, " and let me help you out to the cab. You should not have come out, sir; you will have made your foot worse again." And when he had put him into the cab and told the man where to drive, he fired off his parting shot quickly.

" I'm afraid I can't come to the bank to-morrow, for I've heard of a situation at Slowmill that I must go and see after,"

"Eh! What? What? What?"

" A situation as clerk, which seems likely to suit me, and where I can take the little girls. Good night, and thank you, sir."

That drive up to Regent's Park was not a pleasant one to Uncle Tom, and, by the time he reached home, he was so groaning and miserable that he was only fit to hobble up to bed.

" And serve him right too ! " said Aunt Maria.

THE LAST DA Y IN THE OLD HOME. 65

CHAPTER VI.

THE LAST DAY IN THE OLD HOME.

" HE won't get it," said Aunt Maria, " mark my words, it was just a piece of flourish. Take my advice and just let him alone for a bit till he learns that good situations are not as plentiful as blackberries, and we shall soon have him up here singing a very differ- ent tune and glad to fall in with anything we may propose. And meantime, of course, the servants must be dismissed and the sale of the furniture put in hand, and that will help to bring my young gentle- man to his senses,"

I do not think that Uncle Tom could have carried out his wife's instructions so exactly . if it had not been for a fortnight's attack of illness which happened to him then, partly gout, but mostly nervous irritabil- ity and vexation of spirit. Whatever the exact na- ture of^his complaint may have been, he really was bond

66 TIP CAT.

fide ill, and in the doctor's and Aunt Maria's hands, and had to transact his business at home ; and dur- ing one or two interviews which he had with Mr. Murchison, that gentleman was so extremely taciturn and morose that nothing was to be got out of him except the very driest business arrangements, and he was also apparently afflicted with deafness whenever Aunt Maria was out of the room and Uncle Tom ventured a question in a low voice about Dick and the children.

Of course Uncle Tom knew that the sen-ants had received their legacies and wages, and been dis- charged, and that the house was already partly dis- mantled after the first day's sale ; for Mrs. Tom had commented severely on the wages that that idle stuck- up nurse had received for doing nothing, and had also bought in the dining-room carpet and a sofa, on which she had looked with envy for some time past ; but still he experienced a decided shock when, the day he was able to go out, he drove to the bank by a circuitous route which took him by Bedford Place.

A hearth rug was hanging from the balcony, display- ing a bill of the sale, which also fluttered on either side of the door, at which a group of greasy Jewish- looking men stood, as if they were quite the masters

THE LAST DA Y IN THE OLD HOME. 67

of the situation. The steps, which had been Mrs. Treasure's pride and glory in their spotless whiteness, were now dirty, and littered with straw and bits of paper, and on the pavement, waiting to be carried off in the van yawning to receive it, and with an aggressive- ly clear "Lot 25" stuck on its arm, stood the big leather arm-chair in which he had so often seen his old father sitting.

The Jewish gentlemen fastened on Uncle Tom as their natural prey, concluding him to be a simple- minded bidder ; but he paid no attention to their nasal civilities, but went in, and up the stairs, in spite of his limping foot, to the nursery, as if he ex- pected still to find the two little girls arranging the Noah's Ark animals along the table, and turning two smiling little faces towards him as he came in as they had done the last time he was there, on the day of the old man's death.

It was as desolate as an empty robin's nest in the snow, and Uncle Tom turned and hurried away, wondering why he had come, and what he expected to find, and wishing he could forget Lot 94, " rock- ing chair and high fire-guard," or Lot 97, " Noah's Ark and doll's house," which came persistently be- tween him and his writing all the day.

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Nor did he get much consolation from Mr. Mur- chison, on whom he called in the afternoon, for the lawyer was up to his eyes in work, and could only spare a minute to tell Mr. Tom Lucas that his nephew had left London the week before for Slowmill, where he believed he had a good situation, and had taken his sisters with him, and had desired him, Mr. Murchison, to tell his uncle that he would write to him very shortly.

"What has he done about his rooms at Oxford and his bills there ? "

. " All settled, my dear sir ; but you'll excuse me, I have an appointment at four, and you know what business is, so I need not apologize."

" Good day to you," said Mr. Tom Lucas, wrath- fully, with a firm determination to put his business forthwith into other hands — a determination which Mr. Murchison read plainly in the other's sulky face and voice, and answered by a mental snap of the fingers and " Don't care if you do \ "

Those Oxford bills of Dick's had come in like a hailstorm as soon as his present circumstances be- came known, and Mr. Murchison and Dick had more than one battle over them, as the lawyer maintained that Mr. Tom Lucas ought clearly to pay them, and

THE LAST DA Y IN THE OLD HOME 69

Dick as stoutly persisted that he ought not and should not. Luckily Dick's birthday had been shortly be- fore, and the old man had sent him a handsome cheque ; and his rooms at Oxford were full of pretty things. He had been a bit of a collector of bric-a- brac and old china, and had a few pictures which were worth something, though of course not half what he originally gave for them ; but Dick had plenty of friends at Oxford, and the sale was well managed, and the dealers did not have it alt their own way ; so when it was over there was enough money to pay off all the bills and leave a little over to start Dick's housekeeping at Slowmill.

I think the old lawyer's heart bled the most of the two over the dispersion of all the pretty things that the spoilt young favorite of fortune had gathered round him. Dick kept a very brave face and laughed at the old lawyer's groans and grunts, and quite per- suaded the little girls and almost persuaded himself that it was all a good piece of fun.

Letty and Sybil received a great deal of commisera- tion from the servants during the few days that elapsed between the funeral and their leaving Bedford Place. They agreed that if nurse and Martha had always been so kind in the matter of buttered toast for tea,

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and amiable on the subject of untidy nurseries and dirty pinafores, they should have been a great deal more sorry to say good-by to them. As for Mrs. Treasure, they had always been very fond of her, but they had never before enjoyed such complete freedom to run in and out of the kitchen and explore into cupboards and larder and scullery ; and they availed themselves fully of it, which may, perhaps, have accounted for the dirty pinafores to which nurse was so unusually lenient.

There was not one of the servants who did not protest, and some of them with tears in their eyes, that if ever Mr. Dick came back to London and needed their services, they would come to him even if it were u from the Injes itself ; " and old Jenkins begged and entreated to come with him to Skwmill, leaving the matter of wages to be decided in the future. For one and all of the servants felt convinced that everything must come right in the future ; there could not but "be a bright prospect for Dick, even though the clouds might be thick just now overhead ; in the midst of all his troubles there was a brightness in his face and a confidence in his manner that might even now have justified the brown-faced gipsy girls, who had plagued him at Ascot and Henley with requests

THE LAST DAY IN THE OLD HOME. 71

to tell his fortune, in saying, " Sure, it's a lucky face you have, 'my pretty gentleman ! "

It was difficult to impress on Jenkins that not only were wages out of the* question, but that even the mere keep of an extra person was more than his very limited income would allow ; and when at last it was made plain to him, he sat looking at Dick quite aghast for five minutes in silence, and then got up and bolted out of the room without saying a word. Dick thought he had gone to conceal his emotion, and gave a little smile and a sigh to himself at the queer contortions of the old man's working face.

It was the last evening in the dear old home, that had often seemed dull and dingy to the young man, but now was full of kindly memories and homelike associations. His portmanteau was half packed, and the little girls' box was already standing strapped in the hall ; the rooms were partly dismantled, and the dining-room furniture was already adorned with the lot tickets in preparation for the sale. Some of the servants had left already, and only two remained to see the last of the young master and the little girls.

Mr. Murchison had been with Dick most of the evening, and they had smoked a cigar together, or rather Dick had smoked a short briar-wood pipe,

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for he had eschewed cigars, and suchlike extrava- gances.

Mr. Murchison had been very jolly that evening, and so had Dick ; they had told capital stories, and had laughed till they had wondered at one another and themselves, and had parted with a joke and a smile, as if all the evening their hearts had not been aching away, in most perfect sympathy.

Jenkins listened a minute or two at the library door after Mr. Murchison had gone ; he had heard the laughing, and been puzzled by it. " Gentlefolks has queer ways," he said, as he shook his old head, with its forty years' experience of those ways, gained in his office of butler ; " it don't seem much of a laughing matter to me."

But when he opened the door softly and caught sight of Dick's head lying on his arms in an attitude of deep despondency, he knew that hearts gentle or simple are of the same nature all the world over, and that Dick's heart was sinking down very low in spite of his most strenuous efforts to keep it up.

Of course Dick grew very red when he found the old man's compassionate eye fixed upon him, and he pretended that he was only leaning over the table to pick something up, and that he was sleepy and had

THE LAST DA Y IN THE OLD HOME. 73

a bit of a cold. But Jenkins was not to be deceived, and after all Dick found that it was rather a relief- not to keep up that ghastly attempt at cheerfulness any longer ; so he made the old man come and sit down and have a talk, and it was then that Jenkins, as I have said, made the proposal to accompany him to Slowmill, and, on hearing Dick's answer beat a precipitate retreat without a word of explanation. He was not gone long, but returned rather gasping and out of breath, and dusty, as if he had been bur- rowing in the bowels of the earth, and glancing ner- vously over his shoulder right and left, to make sure that he was not observed, and then from inside his coat he produced, done up in many wrappers, a greasy, savings bank book, and, with a choking voice, and tears standing in his eyes, pushed it into Dick's hand, saying, "'Twere honestly come by, not a penny as I hadn't a right to. I might have robbed the old master every day of the week and no one been any the wiser, but it wasn't my way, and I never touched a penny but what was mine. Ever since the will came out all wrong I've made up my mind as I'd leave the money to you when I died ; but there ! I never guessed things had got so bad with you, so you'd best have it now, as it ain't no good waiting

74 TIP CAT.

till I'm gone. Lor bless you ! I've a deal of life left in me yet ; I'll take another place and save as much again, maybe, before I'm laid on the shelf, and 'twere all saved in your gran'pa's service, so, if you ain't the best right to it, I don't know who has."

He was talking very fast, and running one sen- tence into another, to keep down a gasp that was rising in his throat, and he thrust his hands deep into his pockets to hide how they were trembling, and he interrupted himself in the very middle of a sen- tence, and bid his young master " Good night " in a would-be jocular way, and went out whistling a cracked air in a minor key with his quivering old lips.

It cost him a great deal to part with that precious book, every entry in which he had by heart, and in which every small sum of interest that had been added had been gloated over with the keenest satis- faction ; indeed it had almost taken the place of a child to the solitary old man, and it was like sacri- ficing an only son when he put the book into Dick's hand and went away bereaved.

But it was only for a minute, for before he had reached the pantry door Dick was after him, and the old man's hands, with the precious book in them, were

THE LAST DA Y IN THE OLD HOME. 75

being shaken in Dick's strong affectionate young grasp, till the book was crumpled and the hands tingling.

" Did you think I'd take it? " Dick said, in a very husky, choked voice. " Good old friend, God bless you ! And I can't thank you, or I shall make such a confounded fool of myself, there'll be no end of it."

And away he bolted up stairs three steps at a time and locked himself into his room, leaving Jenkins sobbing and stroking out the crumpled pages %of his precious book, half disappointed, half relieved, and not knowing how acts of self-sacrificing love are en- tered in another account, and interest of untold value added.

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CHAPTER VII.

SLOWMILL.

LETTY and Sybil had from the first taken a very hopeful view of the move to Slowmill ; at their age every change has infinite possibilities of amusement and when the change involved entire freedom from the tyranny of nurse and Martha, and the constant company of Dick, they felt that nothing was left to be desired. They shed a few natural tears over the widely-expanded nostrils of the rocking-horse, and made their mouths very painty by diligently kissing each of the Noah's Ark animals, even down to the grasshoppers and ladybirds ; but when the cab was at the door, and their box and Dick's portmanteau safely on the top, they were in a fever to be off, and could hardly spare a farewell look on the pleasant nursery which had been their home nearly as long as the}' could remember.

SLOWMILL. 77

Dick even was young enough to be infected by the children's good spirits, and Jenkins, standing solitary on the door step, saw three such smiling faces drive away in the cab that he gave a little win- try smile himself, in spite of the tears in his eyes.

The journey, too, was delightful, the third-class carriage having all the charm of novelty, and Mrs. Treasure having provided such a store of cakes and tarts and sandwiches, as allowed not only plenty for themselves but enough to supply their fellow travellers liberally, and even to offer some to the guard when he came to clip the tickets.

They were a little tired by the time they reached Slowmill, for, after the railway journey, came three miles in a very jolting omnibus, in company with a very stout old woman, who was precipitated first on Letty and then on Sybil, till they were flattened both in mind and body.

But when they arrived at Slowmill, and the omni- bus stopped before Mr. Tysoe's, and Mr. Tysoe came out himself in his white apron, and smiling as only he was capable of, to lift the little girls out, they forgot their flatness and fatigue in a moment, and were full of eager delight and satisfac- tion at their new quarters.

7§ TIP CA T.

Slowmill is built in the shape of a Y, and just at the corner where the three roads meet is situated the shop of Tysoe, grocer and tea-dealer as is an- nounced over the door in large mottled china letters, and the same legend is recorded in bits of peel on a brown sugar ground in one of the windows. Ty- soe's business has been established in Slowmill from father to son for four generations, and though, of late years, a new grocer had started in High Street with plate glass windows and co-operative prices, and the figure of a Chinaman with a noddirig head in the window, Tysoe can afford to treat him with the contempt he deserves, for he makes no way in the world of Slowmill.

At one side of Tysoe's shop-front is a private door, very tall and narrow, with a knocker so high up that Letty and Sybil would require the assistance of an um- brella to operate on it ; but there was no need of such aid on their arrival, for the door stood open, and Mrs. Tysoe's portly figure and chestnut wig more than filled up the opening, as she stood hospitably to re- ceive them, having to retire gracefully and carefully backwards before any one else could enter the pas- sage, and turn herself round in the shop before conducting the lodgers up the very steep stairs that

SLOWMILL. 79

led to the sitting-room over the shop that was des- tined for their occupation.

The children were unfeignedly delighted with everything ; with the paper on the walls of the pas- sage and staircase, which represented a fox hunt and a huntsman leaping a five-barred gate, which, when- ever the paper joined, presented interesting combi- nations of 'headless horses and mutilated dogs ; with the beautifully cut yellow paper that protected the gilt of the looking glass ; with the water lily under a glass shade that stood on the rather rickety table in the window ; with the portrait of Mrs. Tysoe in her youth, in black satin and curls, which did not appear to the little girls at all the same color as her present coiffure ; with the amber glass candlesticks on the mantlepiece, and with the hand-screens painted by Miss Tysoe at boarding school, with flowers of pe- culiar shape and unusual color.

The window commanded a fine view, as Mrs. Ty- soe pointed out, of all that went on in the town, which at present seemed to be very little, as a dog stretched at full length in the sun in the very middle of the street was the only living thing visible, and conveyed the idea of the utter absence of any fear of being run over by a passing vehicle. " But on mar.

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ket days," Mrs. Tysoe said "as is Fridays, it's sur- prising what a deal of coming and going there be."

The tea things were laid on the round table in the middle of the room, and Mrs. Tysoe left them to hasten the appearance of tea, after showing them their bedrooms, which lay at the back of the house — "over the cheese-room," as she told them, though Dick thought she might have saved herself the trouble, as the smell was quite sufficient to proclaim the fact.

The very smell was an additional attraction to the little girls and they could not in the least understand why Dick caught them both into his arms directly Mrs. Tysoe was gone and held them tightly to him and swallowed as if the smell of cheese were solid and he could not get it down. It was such a regular grown-up bedroom that the little girls were to have, with a feather bed and drab moreen curtains bound with pale green, and hooks behind the door to hang short frocks at a giddy height above the floor, and a wash- ing stand that did not condescend to short stature like the one in the nursery at home, but raised the great heavy jug to such a distance above some people's heads as made it a serious question how it could ever be lifted down by two, or even four, little trembling hands.

Dick unstrapped their box for them, and, lifting

SLOWMILL. 8 1

the lid, looked rather forlornly at the closely packed contents of mysterious little garments — frills and tucks and embroideries, and pink and blue ribbons — in which nurse's and Martha's skillful hands had ar- rayed his little sisters, and turned them out such dainty little ladies. Already even some of the trim- ness and crispness had gone from their appearance. Letty's face had a smear across it, and Sybil's hat was crushed in on one side, but they did not at all share in Dick's helpless dismay, but began at once dipping and burrowing into the box, and seemed so bustling and capable, that Dick left them to their own devices to get ready for tea, and heard such screams of laughter and running about and chattering that he felt any pity or assistance was quite uncalled for.

They were almost too busy to come in to tea, but when Dick threatened to begin pouring it out with- out them they made their appearance, though their toilettes were not quite complete, as one of Letty's shoes had got lost in the melee, and Sybil's hair was parted very much on one side. They had also for- gotten their pinafores ; but this, I think, was inten- tional— as a sign of their emancipation from nursery tyranny.

Letty was to pour out tea, but the big metal tea

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pot was so heavy that Dick had to come to the rescue, as likewise he was obliged to do with the large black-handled knives and forks which, under the little girls' guidance, made magic passes at the mutton chops, without producing any effect on those substantial articles.

But it was all delightful — the whiff of brown sugar and bacon that pervaded everything ; the tinkle of the little bell in the shop, when customers came from time to time ; and the clacket of pattens on the pavement outside — all added to the charm. They had once had a toy given them representing a grocer's shop, with half-a-dozen little drawers con- taining rice and coffee, etc., and a counter with a very infirm pair of scales in which one coffee berry far outweighed all the tiny weights, and a wooden man with a red face and a white apron, on a stand behind the counter. But the stock-in-trade was soon eaten or otherwise disposed of, and nurse would not replace it, and they found beads and slate pencils were dull substitutes to make believe with. But here they were brought in contact with a real shop, and might, perhaps, be allowed sometimes to go be- hind the counter and scoop tea and sugar out of those inexhaustible stores, or poke the taster into

SLOWMILL. 83

the very heart of a cheese, or pull down string from that patent sort of arrangement above the counter. There was no end to the possibilities that every whiff from the shop suggested to their lively imaginations ; and they chattered away so fast that Dick had no time to feel melancholy or the children themselves to feel tired till tea was over, and all three established on the slippery horse-hair sofa, and Mrs. Tysoe was clear- ing away tea and talking to Dick. Then silence fell on the active little tongues, and first one head pressed against Dick's arm and then the other, and long lashes drooped over sleepy eyes, and Mrs. Tysoe's voice grew indistinct and very like nurse's, and sleep's magic hand wafted them in a second back to the old night nursery, without the aid of the jolting omnibus and third-class carriage ; and when they heard some one say, " Let me put the little dears to bed, sir, as .have had children of my own/' they did not resent the indignity, as they might have done an hour before, but let Mrs. Tysoe lead them off and assist largely in their undressing, and at last, lift them into the bed which seemed too high to be scaled by such weary little bodies, and finally tuck them up and give them each a loud, smacking kiss, which did a great deal to take away the forlorn-

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ness which is apt to creep over any one when bed- time comes in new quarters.

There was no one to do the same by Dick even if it would have produced the same effect on him, so, being left to his own devices, he went out to have a look round and a pipe ; but the rain had come on and the Slowmill people seemed to go to bed early, and he came back feeling damp and depressed, and inclined to pity himself and to think of life as if it were one of those long straight roads to be found in France, leading on dull and monotonous, with only a heap of stones or a row of stiff poplars to break the dreary straight lines, till it is lost in the distance, instead of the pleasant up and down English road, dipping into shady valleys or mounting sunny heath- lands, crossing babbling streams, or winding through parks and woods and meadows — which most of our lives resemble, thank God ; or as if it were one bitter potion to be drained at a draught, instead of being, as it is, so mercifully divided into little daily doses, some of them bitter enough, no doubt, but many of them sweet even in the saddest lot.

He found Mr. Tysoe putting up his shutters, and that worthy man followed him upstairs under the pretence of showing him a bit of news in th.e Slow-

SLOWMILL. 85

mill Gazette, which was several days old in the Lon- don papers, but really to have a little bit of gossip, which Mr. Tysoe dearly loved.

It was quite impossible to feel heroic or depressed in Joe Tysoe's presence, he was so sleek and smil- ing and pleased with himself and all the world. There is certainly something in the sale of cheese that produces a good effect on the temper and manners. Did you ever come across a surly, ill-tempered cheesemonger ? I never did. They may be a trifle deceitful and flattering sometimes, but never cross- grained or sour.

He had a very pink complexion, and sandy hair brushed up into a cockatoo tuft, and light blue, twinkling, sympathetic eyes, and a mouth that watered and smacked constantly, as if the taste of that last prime Cheddar, or full-flavored Cheshire, lingered still on his palate. He had seen trouble, too, in his time, for his father had died when Joe was almost a boy, and had left his mother and two sisters to his care, and when his sisters had married he had taken to wife one of the Miss Fullers at the " George," and she had died after only two years of married bliss (that is her funeral card with a weeping willow and a broken column and a barrel-bodied urn on it, that is

6 TIP CAT.

framed and hangs over the mantelpiece in the par- lor). That happened years ago, but Joe Tysoe does not seem inclined to give her a successor, though there is a great deal of giggling among the farmers' daughters who come into Slowmill on market days, and more subdued flutter among the young ladies of the congregation when Mr. Tysoe comes into chapel on Sunday evenings, in his black frock-coat and blue necktie.

" But," as he told Dick that first evening, " the late Mrs. Tysoe were an angel, and that sensitive as 'twere quite surprising. There's a many good points in the fair sex," said Mr. Tysoe, turning his head a little on one side, as if he were contemplating the beauties of a ripe Stilton, " but you don't often find 'em sensitive."

" Ah ! " said Dick, surprised that Mr. Tysoe should have found the fair sex hard-hearted and im- pervious to his attractions, " perhaps you don't do them justice."

" Now the dear departed were a parable, that's what she were, and that sensitive over cheese as I'd trust her even afore myself ; and often's the time as she's said, ' Joe,' (says she, ' let them cheeses bide ' or ' Take to him, Joe,' and she were always in the

SLOWMILL. 87

right of it, and if that ain't being uncommon sensitive, I'd like to know what is," said Mr. Tysoe with proud conviction. " And when you shows me another fit to hold a candle to her, I'll show you the second Mrs. Tysoe."

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CHAPTER VIII.

<

TIP CAT.

THERE was a great deal of dissent in Slowmill. The Tysoes, as I said in the last chapter, went to chapel, having been Wesleyans for several genera- tions, and Mrs! Tysoe was a little vexed when she found that her new lodger intended to go to church, as she had pictured to herself conducting Dick and the little girls to their seat in the chapel, under the curious and admiring glances that would be cast at them, and the slight, but touching allusion to be- reavement that Mr. Parkins, the minister, would in- troduce into his prayer at sight of the crape on the children's hats. Perhaps she would look over a hymn-book with Dick, and she would certainly hold a hand of each little girl as they went out of chapel. And so she felt quite disappointed when Dick de- clared his intention of going to church and taking Letty and Sybil with him ; and she was still further annoyed to find that he had not upheld the honor

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and glory of her lodgings, but had sat in one of the free seats among the snuffy old men from the alms- houses, though half the pews in the church were empty, and though Mr. Thoyts, the ironmonger, in- vited him into his seat.

He also greatly shocked Mrs. Tysoe's prejudices by taking the little girls for a walk on Sunday after- noon. Dick was quite willing to fall in with all the arrangements of the house for the observance of the Sabbath, and made no complaint as to his bath re- maining unemptied and his boots uncleaned, and he cheerfully partook of a scrupulously cold dinner without even a hot potato to relieve the frigidity of the meal ; but he felt that a whole afternoon in the little sitting-room, with the smell of dinner hanging about and blending with the odors of the shop, and with the sun pouring in at the window, was more than he could stand. The American chair with the crochet antimacassar on the back, which was the only easy-chair in the room, was not conducive to sleep, and the newspapers he had brought with him had been carefully put away by Mrs. Tysoe, and a few volumes of the Tract Magazines put in their place, with Bunyan's Holy War to amuse the chil- dren.

90 TIP CAT.

So Dick told the little girls to put on their hats and come out for a turn, and as they passed the door of the parlor behind the shop, they ran the gauntlet of Mrs. Tysoe's disapproving glances as she sat at the table, very upright, in her Sunday cap, with a large Bible open before her, and Joe opposite, in his shirt-sleeves, with a red spotted handkerchief over his head, which nodded backwards and forwards in a spasmodic manner that threatened occasionally to dislocate his neck.

Outside, the street looked a little more lively than it had done the night before, as there were parties of children hurrying to the various dissenting Sunday schools, leaving a whiff of peppermint and hair-oil as they passed, and clusters of hobbledehoys, with shining faces and billycock hats, knocking their heels against the edge of the pavement, waiting to be taken in tow by the servant girls who came waggling along in all the glories of their Sunday out, and with whom they pair off and spend all the afternoon, walk- ing out of step and hardly speaking a word, but ap- parently to their mutual satisfaction.

Dick and the little girls soon left these interesting couples and Slowmill itself behind them, and taking the first turning from the main road that looked in-

TIP CAT. 91

teresting, went along a winding road under great elm trees, whose branches met and interlaced over- head, which, in summer, must have cast a thick shade, but now only made a delicate lace work against the pale blue February sky, and let the sunlight through in patches on the sandy road and on the glossy ivy in the hedge.

This road brought them, after a time, to a pretty lodge and a park gate, through which Letty and Sybil were anxious to turn, but Dick persuaded them to come further, and they were rewarded by coming to a stile and a footpath that led them to a delight- ful little wood, through which a stream ran, crossed by a plank bridge. The stream was clear, and showed the rich brown oak-leaves lying in layers at the bottom, and the little girls found an interesting family of frogs on the bank, who, they intuitively understood, required assistance to reach the water ; so Dick sat down on the plank to wait till this man- oeuvre was accomplished, dropping pebbles slowly into the stream, which caused a rippling eddy on the smooth surface, a momentary disturbance on the oak leaf carpet, and a little cloud of mud to rise in the water, and then the pebble disappeared and the water was clear again.

92 TIP CAT.

That idle occupation of dropping pebbles, and a shaft of sunlight that came through the trees on the water, had combined to conjure up a vision of the river at Commemoration time, and a picnic at Nune- ham, and a girl's face that had smiled at him through a pleasant sunny afternoon, and that had grown a little pensive and thoughtful as the moon rose over the beeches and turned the oars silver as they gently dipped and rose. Kathie, she was called, Kathie Dumbleton, and her cousin Jack had been Dick's great chum.

Dick had had a good many flirtations in his time, very innocent, harmless episodes, that had not cost a wakeful night or a heartache to either of the parties concerned, and his feeling for Kathie Dumbleton had only been a shade or two more intense than for half-a-dozen others, and most likely would soon have been superseded by as many more but for the sud- den change in his fortunes, which had taken him clear out of the way of temptation of the kind, and had accordingly deepened the last impression made on his susceptible fancy, till it threatened to touch his heart and become indelible.

Jack had taken his degree and gone out to India the year before, having some good civil appointment,

TIP CAT. 93

so he had heard nothing as yet of Dick's sudden change of circumstances, and perhaps never might, for Dick was a poor correspondent at the best of times, and had not the heart now to write and say how entirely all his prospects in life were altered.

" She will go to Commemoration," Dick told him- self, " and some other fellow will row her up the river, and put on her shawl, and all the rest of it, confound him ! and she won't even remember the existence of poor Dick Lucas, or if she does, and the fellows tell her how I have come to grief, she

will say "

" I'll trouble you to get out of the road." Dick was rudely awakened from his day-dream by a rough, imperious voice, and became aware that a tall man was standing close by, waiting to cross the bridge. His appearance by no means justified the commanding tone of his voice, for his shabby velve- teen coat and gaiters looked like a gamekeeper's, and his big hob-nailed shoes like a ploughboy's, and the felt hat he wore was so battered and weather- stained that a scarecrow might have been ashamed of it. He had a long, untrimmed, grey moustache and deep-set eyes of a light color unusual with such a dark complexion, which gave a sort of wolfish ex-

94 TIP CAT.

pression to his face as he stood looking down at Dick, an expression which was strangely repeated in the face of the big, rough, surly- looking sheep-dog at his heels.

Dick scrambled to his feet to make way for him with, " I beg your pardon, sir," and lifted his hat, for in spite of the man's shabby clothes and his rough, countrified accent, he recognized the new comer as a gentleman.

" You'll be good enough to tell Mrs. Vivian that this path is private." went on the tall man, " and not part of the park."

" I shall be happy to take any message, but I have not the pleasure of knowing Mrs. Vivian."

" Ain't you stopping at Tipton Grange ? "

" I never heard of such a place."

" Well, where on earth do you come from then ? "

Dick was beginning to get a little nettled at the man's hectoring manner. "That," he said, "is my business. If this is a private path, and I am tres- passing, I can only say I did not know it and go some other way. Sybil ! Letty ! " he called, " I'm going back. Are you ready ? "

" Oh, Dick, wait a minute, there are four more frogs with such poor, dry, dusty bodies."

TIP CAT. 95

" Never mind the frogs. I can't wait."

"We won't be a minute, really we won't, but they will go -hopping off quite the wrong way, and Sybil don't like taking them up under their arms, they're so awfully soft. And Dick, may we take one dar- ling little one home with us ? It's the smallest little frog, and we're afraid it's lost its mother, and we could keep it in our bedroom."

Letty came climbing up the steep bank from the stream as she spoke, with her face turned up so bright and smiling and entreating, that Dick found it a hard matter to say a decided no and tell her to fetch Sybil at once and say good-by to the frogs.

" But you'll bring us back another day to see how they're getting on ; there's one we've called Uncle Tom because he's so like, and we think he's got the gout, so we may come back another day soon, mayn't we ? "

" No," said Dick, " we must find another place for frogs, for this is private, and we're trespassing ?"

" You needn't be in such a hurry," growled the man, who had been standing silently on the bridge looking down at the child with those strange light eyes of his. " If you're not visitors at the Grange it don't matter. If I don't look sharply after them I

96 TIP CAT.

shouldn't have a bit of peace or privacy. I've had gushing young ladies sketching my old house, though it's so ugly they couldn't make it worse even in those things they call sketches ; and jackanapes of young men shooting right into my poultry yard, and fishing in my duck-pond — the idiots ! And prying women taking refuge from a thunderstorm and poking their noses all over my place, and the old lady herself sending to ask my advice and borrow my horses. I flatter myself I've taught them better by this time, but when I saw you there I thought madam was up to some of her old tricks again."

"Well," said Dick, "I'm just going. Come, Letty." For Letty was gravely regarding the old man with a sort of fascinated curiosity, a scrutiny that was returned by the deep-set eyes above, while every now and then they turned a quick look at Dick as if they were comparing the two faces and seeking something in both.

" Didn't I say you needn't be in such a hurry ? What did you say your name was? "

" I didn't say."

The man gave a jerk of irritation to his shoulders, but just then a scream from Sybil interrupted the conversation.

TIP CAT. 97

" Oh, Dick ! Letty ! Dick ! there's a horrid great ugly dog, and he's killed one of the frogs. Go away ! Go away ! Oh Dick ! "

Letty and Dick both flew to the rescue, followed by the man from whose side the sheep-dog had dis- appeared a moment before unnoticed^ and they found Sybil pushing away the creature's great grizzly head with all her might, while he looked at her with much the same curious look in his light eyes that his master had given to Letty.

A whistle from his master called the dog away in a second, and Sybil soon regained her composure, and Dick pronounced the frog, though flattened, not past all hope of recovery if put at once into the water and left in perfect quiet ; and as in the meantime the other frogs had hopped away, Letty and Sybil agreed to go back without further delay.

But as they came out on Co the road across the stile Letty fell back to pick some red and yellow ivy leaves, and Dick, looking round, saw that the old man had followed them and was speaking to her.

" Letty, Letty ! " he called, and she ran on, turn- ing at the stile to nod and wave her hand to the strange looking couple, master and dog, standing watching her.

98 TIP CAT.

" What did he say to you ? "

" He asked what my name was and I told him, and he said it was a pretty name and that we might come and see the frogs whenever we like, and that if we go on through the wood we shall come to his house, and he has »some young ducks and lots of things to show us. And then I asked what his name was, and he said — what do you think, Dick ? such a funny name—' Tip Cat.' "

THE NE W LIFE. 99

CHAPTER IX.

THE NEW LIFE.

MR. BURGESS'S house was a large, dull, red-brick house in High Street, and his offices lay behind, opening out of a little steep side-street, with a flour mill and some stables just opposite. You had to go up a narrow flight of wooden stairs to reach the offices, which were on the first floor, and at the top found yourself in the outer office, where the office boy and Mr. Macintosh sat, and out of this led Mr. Lupton's room and Mr. Burgess's, the latter of which communicated with the house.

Mr. Lupton was the head clerk of whom Mr. Murchison had spoken as managing most of the busi- ness, and in his room Dick was to sit, except when Mr. Burgess wanted him.

Dick did not find either Mr. Lupton or Mr.

ioo TIP CAT.

•

Macintosh inclined to received him very warmly, or to do much to put him in the way of his new work ; for the latter had quite counted on taking Fred •Burgess's place, and felt himself aggrieved and passed over when, as he said, "a chap^rom London was put over his head who knew no more of business than- a baby, and gave himself all the airs of a swell."

Mr. Lupton's disinclination to Dick was from a different cause. Young Mr. Fred, as the nephew was called in the office and in Slowmill generally, had carried on a strong flirtation with Bessie Lupton, the old clerk's pretty daughter, and wild and dis- sipated as old Lupton knew the young man to be he had encouraged the flirtation, and built on it a day dream of the future when Mr. Fred would have suc- ceeded his uncle in the business, and his Bessie would be mistress of the red-brick house adjoining, and Burgess and Lupton would be the name on the door-plate.

With this end in view he had put up with much from Mr. Fred, with a great deal of insolence and personal rudeness, as well as with his unpunctuality and want of attention to business, sometimes staying on himself after hours to make up for the work the young man had neglected, while Mr. Fred was play-

THE. NEW LIFE.

ing billiards at the Swan, or away at coursing matches with some of the fast young farmers in the neighbor- hood, and more than once he had lent him some money when he was in difficulties and had exhausted his uncle's patience. But it had all led to nothing but disappointment and vexation and loss ; Bessie was broken-hearted, his money was gone, and Mr. Burgess was inclined to lay "some of the blame on him. You may be sure that after this Mr. Lupton was not inclined to be indulgent to Dick, especially as Dick was a very different style to Mr. Fred, and did not show the slightest inclination to console Bessie's broken heart — which, I fancy, was quite open to consolation.

Mr. Burgess was disposed to like Dick, Mr. Murchison had spoken so strongly in his favor, and he was so gentlemanly and respectful in his manner, and so patient during the long hours of copying and writing from dictation, over which his nephew had fumed and fidgeted, and he was not always pulling out his watch or whistling under his breath or draw- ing on the blotting paper, as Fred had done ; and the only fault to be found at all was his tendency to look out of window when seven o'clock ap- proached to see if his two little sisters had come to

102 TIP CAT.

meet him, as they generally did ; and the only occa- sion on which he suggested that it was time to leave off, was one wet evening, when a large umbrella was to be seen standing patiently at the corner very near the ground and sent whirling round when any one passed by and knocked against it.

" Of course," Mr. Burgess told himself, " it is a case of new broom at present, and by the time he gets to know every worthless young scamp in the place it will be a very different matter."

But Dick did not seem inclined to make friends ; he had made heaps at Oxford, and some might have objected to him there, that he was not very particu- lar. On the whole, I think it was more by good for- tune than by discrimination that he had known a good set, for any one who was good-natured and liked him, he liked in return ; but now the change in his for- tunes seemed to have made him more fastidious. Certainly he had no fancy for the company in the Swan — the sporting doctor, Dr. Lee, and his partner Mr. Shore, and the two managing clerks at the brewery and two or three at the bank. They all called themselves gentlemen, though Mr. Murchison said there were no gentlemen in Slowmill, and Dick was in- clined to think he was more correct in his estimate

THE NE W LIFE. 103

than they were, and he responded so coolly to their ci- vilities that they very soon set him. down as a stuck- up prig, and left him to himself.

The Miss Shores, of whom there were five, who spent most of their time in walking up and down High Street, or looking out of window, and the Miss Aliens, the mill-owner's daughters, tried their fasci- nations on Dick in vain, and he ran the gauntlet of the Shores' windows without turning a hair, and even met the five in their most elaborate toilets, walking abreast, with no more interest than if they had been five charity children or five perambulators.

Something of Dick's story had crept out in Slow- mill, and the young ladies of the town agreed that it was quite romantic and like a novel, and that he must be awfully interesting, and for the first few days it was wonderful how many occasions for calling at Mr. Tysoe's shop arose, or how often they were passing Mr. Burgess's just when office hours were over and Dick coming out. But he presented such an impenetrable front of indifference that they soon grew discouraged, and, as a fresh clerk appeared at the bank the following week, of a more susceptible nature than Dick, they gave the latter up as a bad job, declaring that he was really too low, as he had

104 TIPCAT.

been seen sitting in the parlor behind the shop, smoking a pipe with the grocer, and he actually let those little girls ride about in Tysoe's cart !

They had not the intelligence to attack Dick through his little sisters. I think kindness to them would have covered a multitude of vulgarities, curled fringes, waggling crinolettes, and country-town airs and graces ; and the Tysoes won Dick's heart alto- gether, for Mrs. Tysoe took the children at once into her motherly care, while the little grocer seemed never tired of their society, and found them endless occupation and amusement.

The first morning, when Dick went off to the office he left them with a very heavy heart. One day had been enough to make him sick to death of that little sitting-room with nothing to do, and he judged the children's feelings by his own ; but he might have spared the pity he expended on them, for when he came in at dinner time, he found they had had a most delightful morning, as busy as bees, with Mr. Tysoe, unpacking a large case of goods that had just arrived from Bristol, grinding coffee, nipping white sugar into lumps, and turning cheeses, and they besieged him with entreaties to let them go for a drive in the afternoon with Mr. Tysoe.

THE NEW LIFE. 105

Three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, Mr. Tysoe's cart drove round Slow- mill and its neighborhood to deliver parcels and to call for orders. It was a high spring cart with red wheels, and it was drawn by a large rawboned gray horse, with big hairy feet, and a patient, long-suffer- ing temper, and having legs usually adorned with knee-caps, either for the prevention or cure of broken knees. On other occasions this horse did duty in the omnibus to and from the station ; so Tysoe's cart, even when most loaded with parcels, must have seemed easy work, especially under Tysoe's gentle driving, with long intervals of rest and a mouthful of grass at the various houses and farms while Tysoe indulged in gossip and mild flirtations with the in- mates.

Dick felt rather a qualm when he was asked by Letty and Sybil to give his consent to their going for a drive, and Mrs. Tysoe herself hardly thought it was the proper thing to do ; but the children were so urgent, and the afternoon so bright, and there was no one to take them for a walk, as Mrs. Tysoe had to keep the shop while her son was absent, that Dick could not find it in his heart to say no, and, later in the afternoon, he caught a glimpse from the office

106 TIP CAT.

•window of the cart as it stopped to deliver a parcel at Mr. Burgess's back door, with Letty holding the reins and Sybil the whip, and Tysoe sitting between beaming with good-nature.

Dick could not help wondering what Aunt Maria would say if she could see them ; but they looked so thoroughly pleased and delighted that he made up his mind that he would not worry about it, and that as long as they kept well and happy he would be content for the present.

As to their being happy, there was no doubt about that. Their life in Bedford Place when Dick was away, had been, in spite of its comfort, very monoto- nous, and everything at Slowmill was new and deeply interesting to them, and they chattered away all tea- time, and afterwards, with such bright eyes and flushed cheeks that Dick thought they would be too excited to sleep, till he looked into their room half an hour after Mrs. Tysoe had carried them off, and saw them fast asleep under the shade of the stuffy moreen curtains.

They had so much to tell Dick of their drive, and of the grey horse, which, from all accounts, was a marvel of spirit and speed, and which Mr. Tysoe had let them both drive. They had called at Tipton

THE NEW LIFE. 107

Grange and several other gentlemen's houses, and described them all entirely from a back-door point of view. There was a very nice cook at one place who was making tarts, and brought them each out one ; and there was a parrot in one kitchen, and a fierce dog in another, who broke his chain once, and tried to bite Mr. Tysoe. The little girls evidently thought that the servants were the real masters and mistresses of the houses, and I dare say they were not always very wide of the mark.

But the farms were the nicest places to go to, cheese farms with great sweet-smelling dairies, with milk-tins as bright, and shelves as white, and bricks as red and damp as tins and shelves and bricks can be, and as rubbing and scrubbing and washing can make them, and long, cool cheese rooms with rows of cheeses, some of them just out of the press, soft and moist, and others more hardened characters.

The roads to these farms were through meadows where large, white-faced, long-horned cows were feed- ing, and there was generally a yard full of grunting little pigs, or troops of gobbling turkeys, or something equally interesting and instructive. At each farm the children were hospitably welcomed, and refresh- ment of one kind or another offered — a drink of cool

io8 TIP CAT.

whey, or a crusty bit of home-baked bread, hot from the oven, or a waxy yellow apple that had stood all the winter on the turned-up wine glasses on the shelf in the best parlor.

" And who do you think we saw, Dick ? " Sybil ended. " Dont tell him, Letty, let him guess. Some one you know."

Dick's heart beat a little quicker. Could any one he knew have turned up, a ghost out of the old life, and have seen the children driving about in the cart, and perhaps asked questions, and wondered and pitied ?

" Who was it ? " he asked. " I'm bad at guessing." " It begins with a T, doesn't it, Letty ? and he

had some one with him beginning with a What

does Kaiser begin with, Letty?"

" I give it up, Syb ; I'm bad at spelling."

" Why, Tip Cat to be sure, and Kaiser's his dog."

WEEKLY BILLS. 109

CHAPTER X.

WEEKLY BILLS.

" WHO is this man, Tip Cat, the children talk of ? " asked Dick, one evening.

It was that evening towards the end of the first week, when some Argus eye had detected him smok- ing a pipe with Joe Tysoe in the parlor behind the shop.

" Well, he's a queer customer," said Mr. Tysoe ; " and it's queer too your asking about him just now, as he were in the shop not half an hour before you come in from Burgess's, asking much the same about you — where you come from, how your name was spelt, and goodness knows what all ; and when I tells you as he ain't been in the town, to my know- ledge, for nigh upon five years, you may be bound he's up to something."

" I'm sure I'm much obliged to him," said Dick ;

HO TIP CAT.

" but I don't see what business it is of his. Who is he ? "

" Well of course, his name ain't really Tip Cat,

though every one calls him so, and I didn't know as he was aware of it till he told little Miss as that were his name. Squire Tipton Cathcart is his name by rights, and all the Tipton property belongs to him, though he chooses to let it all and live in a little farm like a helmet. The old squire were a very dif- ferent sort. It were before my time, but I've often heard tell of him ; he had a pack of hounds, and kep' the whole place alive with a house always full of company, and plenty of goings on. He was thrown in the hunting field and killed, when this here Tip Cat, as they call him, was only a lad; so the place was let till he come of age, and the property were to be nursed up for him a bit, as the old squire had run through a lot of money in his time. But when he come of age he let the place again for seven years, and when these was over there was a great talk of his coming back, and folks said the good old times of Slowmill was coming back along with him. But all of a sudden we heard as the place was to be let again. There were all sorts of stories afloat about it ; some would have it as he'd lost his money

WEEKL Y BILLS.

at cards, and some as his lawyer had made off with

it, and some as the young lady he wanted had jilted

him. I don't think no one knew the real rights of

it, but anyhow the Grange was let again, and, after

another few years, he come back and settled in the

little home farm, with not a soul but an old corporal

from his regiment, who does all the work about the

place, for he won't have a petticoat inside his doors

— which favors the tale as he'd been served bad by

some young lady. He won't have nothing to do

with his neighbors ; he farms a little of his land, and

keeps a nice little bit of shooting, and is out with

the hounds most days. I calls there twice a week

with the groceries they use, which ain't much, but

it's not once in six months as I sees Tip Cat himself,

but only old Ridge, a surly old ruffian as ever

breathed ; but on Monday, as luck would have it,

just as we drives up to the gate up comes Tip Cat,

with his gun in his hand. I were just going to tell

the little Missies not to take no notice, as he don't

like to be looked at, and speaks rough now and then

if he's put out, when Miss Letty, she sings out,

' How de do, Tip Cat ! ' says she, ' is this where you

live ? ' I was just took all of a heap, and I'd a good

mind to drive right off before he'd time to get in a

112 TIP CAT.

rage ; but he took off his hat to the children as grand as milord, and said, ' Yes,' says he, ' this is my house. Are you come to see the ducks ? ' ' No, not to-day,' said Miss Letty, very important, as if she'd all the business in the world on her shoulders, ' we're busy. We've a lot of places to call at, and we've brought you. some mustard and black lead, nothing nice, but we'll come another day if you like.' I had to get out to take the parcels up to the door, and old Ridge was looking out some bottles as he wanted me to take back, so I was kep' a minute or two, and all the time I could hear the children chat- tering away to Tip Cat, and he answering back gruff, but kind and friendly like, leaning on the wall and looking at them as if he couldn't take his eyes off them, or as if he was taking their photographs, and his dog was sitting up on the wall close against him, staring just every bit the same. I'd never had such a near look at them before, and they are a queer-look- ing couple as ever I set eyes on ; but it's plain hc've took a fancy to the little Missies, and especially to Miss Letty — and no wonder ? " said Mr. Tysoe, " bless their dear little hearts ! It was too wet for the children to come along of me this afternoon, and they was disappointed, but mother, she let 'em help

If'EEA'L Y BILLS. 1 1 3

in the shop, weighing out quarters of tea against Friday, and they was as good as gold, only they al- ways wants to put a pinch too much, as don't answer when you've got to make a profit. Tip Cat was on the look out for them all the same, though he couldn't have thought I'd have brought them out raining cats and dogs ; and this evening he comes tramping in, as I told you, and asks no end of ques- tions, the main of them as I couldn't answer, and he left word as how he'd be glad to see you and the little ladies on Sunday if you liked to walk that way. I didn't say nothing about it before the mother," Joe Tysoe went on, lowering his voice as that lady's substantial tread sounded on the staircase, " as don't hold with visiting on the Sabbath. No more don't I," added Joe, trying to assume a severe and Puritanical expression ; " but I've heard tell as there's a deal of that sort of thing in London, and if you're used to a thing it don't seem so wrong."

Dick was inclined to resent Tip Cat's curiosity about him and the children, and he was rather glad when Letty and Sybil decided on going a different way on Sunday afternoon, to a lane where they had seen some early primroses.

OD Saturday afternoon Mr. Burgess asked Dick

J 14 TIP CAT.

if he would* like to have his salary paid weekly or quarterly. Dick had been wondering how this would be all the week ; he had a little money in hand for present use, but he had told Mrs. Tysoe that he would like to settle the bill weekly, and though she said it did not signify and it was all the same to her, he thought she would prefer it. But this was only to be done by receiving the salary weekly, and it went so very much against the grain to do this that when Mr. Burgess asked the question, Dick answered, " Thank you, sir, quarterly if you please," and then grew very red and hot and made several mistakes in the writing he was doing from dictation, and at last burst out, " I beg your pardon, sir, but if it's ajl the same to you, I should prefer having my money weekly."

" Whichever you please, whichever you please ; it makes no difference to me. I will tell Mr. Lupton to let you have it weekly."

Dick had been hoping that Mr. Burgess himself would make the payments, as Mr. Lupton took every opportunity of being disagreeable to him, and now took pains to let him know that his predecessor, Mr. Fred, had received his money quarterly like a gentle- man, as he, Mr. Lupton, himself did ; and Dick went home fingering the coins in his waistcoat

WEEKL Y BILLS. 1 1 5

pocket and feeling hot and humiliated, as if he had sunk to the level of the laboring men who passed him, slouching along with their wallets on their shoulders, carrying their week's earnings to the missus and turning in at the Swan to drink the first two- gence out of it. " After all," he said to himself, " there's no shame in being poor. It's the first money I've earned, anyhow, and, by Jove ! I think I've worked for it honestly."

" You'll let me have your bill, Mrs. Tysoe," he said that night, " on Monday morning ? I should like to pay regularly every week."

" I'll just get Joe to make it out then," she an- swered, " he always balances his books a Saturday night, and I've got it all down on the slate. Shall I put in the washing along with the rest ? "

" Yes please ; and that reminds me, Mrs. Tysoe, do you think you can find a better laundress ? I can't wear the shirts she has sent home. I don't know what on earth she's been doing to the fronts, and as for the collars, they're so limp that I put on half-a-dozen this morning before I found one I could wear. I don't know how she's done the children's things, but perhaps she's more used to that sort of thing than shirts."

Ii6 TIP CAT.

"Well," Mrs. Tysoe said, "she's a respectable, honest body as ever lived, is Eliza Dawes, and a widder woman and a long family and attends our chapel reg'lar. A Christian woman ; but, in course, if she don't give satisfaction we must try Mrs. Jones as washes for Dr. Lee, and were laundry-maid for years at the Grange. She ain't a woman as I likes, but she've done a deal of washing for gentle-folks, and knows how to charge I've heard tell."

" We musn't be extravagant, Mrs. Tysoe," said Dick, "but it's no economy to pay very little for washing shirts if you can't wear them when they're done. If Mr. Tysoe has time to make out the ac- count this evening will you let me have it ? I shall not be going to bed just yet."

An hour later Mrs. Tysoe tapped at the door and brought in the bill, startling Dick, who had the coins, given him that afternoon by Mr. Lupton, spread be- fore him on the table. He was looking at them with a sort of curiosity and wonder as to whether this money, earned by the sweat of his brow, could be of the same metal and stamp as the coin of which he had made so light in old days, it looked so different to the sovereigns and half-sovereigns that had slipped

WEEKL Y BILLS. 117

K

through his fingers so quickly and easily at Oxford and in London.

" I don't think you'll have to complain," Mrs* Tysoe said as she laid the folded paper down on the table. " I've kep' all the items down, and I've al- ways been counted a goodish manager."

" I'm sure I shall not," said Dick cheerfully ; " you've made us awfully comfortable, and we can't have been extravagant."

When Mrs. Tysoe had gone away, Dick opened the bill and looked at the total, and then ran his fingers quickly through his hair and caught up his pen and added up -the column and then examined the items. Yes, they were all of them correct, and none of them, as far as he could tell, overcharged. He could remember that neck of mutton and that steak, and the apples, sugar, potatoes, milk, and all the rest of it, and the addition was all right, and the total a month ago he would have thought wonderfully moderate for a. whole week's living for himself, let alone the little girls ; but it was more than his week's salary would pay, more than was comfortable to an income of 8o/. a year.

He could pay it, for, as I have said, he had a little money in hand from the sale of his Oxford be-

il8 TIP CAT.

longings ; but he had put that by as a sort of reserve, only to be drawn on in times of need, and, if possi- ble, added to with a view to schooling for the child- ren ; and the worst of it was he did not see how the expenses were to be lessened another week. He had been inclined to complain once or twice during the week on the subject of the plainness and want of variety in the fare — more for the children's sake than his own — and he 'could not think what things they could possibly do without, so as to bring the figure down to that i/. IQJ. that he had been admiring as his first earnings.

Anyhow, one thing was clear, that he could not afford to be fastidious over his shirts and collars, and it was quite a relief to him to get up and go into his bedroom and carefully pick out the collars he had rejected so scornfully that morning, and flatten out their limp edges and put them back in his drawer, to be worn when he had come to an end of his better-washed linen.

Then he went back to that fruitless adding up in the hope of reducing the amount ; but it was no good, and at last he fetched his poor little reserve store and made up the required sum, and, hear- ing the Tysoes still about, he went down, feeling

WEEKL Y BILLS. 1 1 9

that he should sleep better if the matter were off his mind.

The Tysoes were having a late bit of supper with some toasted cheese, which made the little parlor smell like a mouse-trap, when Dick opened the door, and Mr. Tysoe, with many apologies for taking such a liberty, invited Dick to sit down and take a bit, " as is a first-rate toaster and done to a turn."

But the bill had taken all Dick's appetite away, so he declined with thanks, and said he was sorry to disturb them, and put the bill and the little pile of money on the table by the mustard-poL

" I have rather a head-ache," he said, " to-night ; and that reminds me, Mrs. Tysoe, I think I should be better without any beer at dinner and supper, and I don't care for anything but bread and butter for my breakfast."

" Perhaps you're a bit bilious,'' said Mrs. Tysoe ; " and some folks as is that way inclined can't take not even a egg with their breakfast were it ever so ; but I'll get you a nice bloater for a change, and if you finds the beer sits too heavy, I'd try just a leetle drop of brandy and water, and I've some pills as I've always kep' by me" as saved my poor 'usban' times out of mind from yeller jaundice; and it's my firm

120 TIP CAT.

conviction if he'd atook 'em in his last illness, he might abeen here to this very day."

But Dick thought the bill had been enough of a pill for one day, and that it must be a very patent medicine to cure a pain in the pocket ; so he de- clined Mrs. Tysoe's course of treatment, and left them to finish their toasted cheese in peace.

TIPTON FARM. \ 2 1

CHAPTER XI.

TIPTON FARM.

IT was a beautiful Spring that year, and though the country round Slowmill is not particularly pretty or picturesque, it is a rare country for wild flowers, and, to Sybil and Letty who had always been in Lon- don at that time of the year, it was like fairyland as they followed the bright footsteps of the Spring through violets and primroses, and soft springing grass and dainty opening leaves and grey velvet willow buds, and thrushes' nests with warm, blue eggs, and young lambs frisking on thick, young legs, and fragile, pure anemones, and bluebells as blue as the sky above, where the larks were singing, and dewy cowslips, and the cuckoo's cheerful notes, till the meadows burst into a blaze of golden buttercups to welcome King Summer.

The little girls were quite happy. When Mr. Tysoe was going out, he always took them in his cart and set them down at some wood, or meadow,

122 TIP CAT.

or lane where there were flowers or nests or lambs, and picked them up on his return, and brought them home. On the days when he was not driving, Mrs. Tysoe used at first to take them out, but this the children found dull, as she preferred to keep to the pavements where she was likely to meet friends and acquaintances, and she walked very slowly, and a walk into the country did not at all fit in with her ideas of enjoyment ; so, on one occasion, when Mrs. Tysoe was indulging in a long gossip with a neigh- bor, and the little girls had grown tired of the only shop window within reach, which was an undertaker's, they took the law into their own hands and walked off independently .along the road past the church, and made their way triumphantly to the very wood where they had gone the first Sunday with Dick, and where they had first met Tip Cat ; and here, as good fortune would have it, they met Tip Cat again, and he took them on to his house, Tipton Farm, and regaled them with biscuits and milk, and showed them the young ducks and the calves and a family of pink-eyed, crafty ferrets ; and they passed altogether a most delightful afternoon, while poor Mrs. Tysoe was tearing about Slowmill, quite distracted at not being able to find them.

TIP TON FARM. 123

She was just on her way to Mr. Burgess's to break the alarming news to Dick, and to ask if the duck-pond by the churchyard had better be dragged, or the town crier sent out to proclaim their loss, when the two culprits appeared, having been conducted back as far as the town by Corporal Ridge, having received a cordial invitation from Tip Cat to come to Tipton Farm as often as they pleased, and having made up their minds to avail themselves of the invitation very often.

They were very sorry when they found how frightened and anxious Mrs. Tysoe had been, and still more when Dick was told of what they had done, and was vexed and worried about it.

" I thought I could trust you, Letty," he said, " and that I need not feel uneasy when I am at the office — and now I shall always be thinking you are wandering about the country by yourselves, and that you may get lost or run over. And poor Mrs. Tysoe is quite ill with running about to find you."

The two little girls were crying, you may be sure, long before Dick came to the end of his very mild scolding, and 'were on his knees, and clinging round his neck sobbing in deepest contrition.

" Oh, Dick, we're so sorry, we'll never do such a

124 TIP CAT.

naughty thing again if you'll only trust us ; and we went very steady, indeed we did, Dick, and when we heard a cart coming we climbed down quite into the ditch, not to be run over, and I took hold of Sybil's hand, and we walked quite slow and didn't run at all — but we won't never do it again, dear Dick, we won't if you'll only forgive us this once."

Poor Dick, it was himself he could not forgive, that he was not able to take better care of his little sisters, could not keep them in the position to which they were born, could not even keep down the weekly bills within the limits of his income. Those weekly bills were a perfect nightmare to poor Dick, and Saturday night, a time to be dreaded all through the week. Do what he would, the amount to be paid was always a little over what he received, and every week he had to draw from the small store which dwindled very rapidly under those weekly calls.

He could not blame Mrs. Tysoe in any way, her charges were certainly moderate and she was scrupu- lously honest, and there was nothing approaching ex- travagance that could be curtailed. Every week he hoped that the next bill might be less, but it always turned out that if they had saved in one item they had spent more in proportion on another. He could

TIP TON FARM. 125

not bear to stint or deny the children in the least, and he felt miserable if they did not eat as much as usual, or did not seem to like what was provided for' them.

As for himself, he was so young and strong and hearty, that even his unusually sedentary life and his nervous anxiety to make two ends meet, could not spoil his appetite, and he made such ravages on the bread and butter as made him look very ruefully at the loaf and pat when tea time was over.

Do what he would, he could not impress on Mrs. Tysoe how desperately poor they were ; when he said how necessary it was for them to be careful over every penny they spent, he always said it with a smile, and she fancied it was half a joke ; and the bill was paid so regularly every Saturday night and no ob- jection made to any of the charges, and when he left off this or that little luxury it was always on the plea that he would be better without it, and he was such a gentleman, and so unsuspicious and generous ! She had had many lodgers far better off than Dick who had carped over and criticised every item in the bill and had locked up every available article of food in the cheffonier — as is the way of certain wise people, who do not seem to consider that if a lodging-house

126 TIP CAT.

keeper is dishonest it is very easy to have two keys to any cupboard door in the house.

So though Mrs. Tysoe managed her best for Dick and the little girls, she did not realize how poor they were, which made it all the harder for him in his at- tempts to economise.

Letty and Sybil went down that evening with very tearful eyes to beg Mrs. Tysoe's pardon, and finding her quite recovered from her agitation and temporary displeasure, and engaged in filling up the glass bottles of sweets for the shop window, the peace was very soon made, and they remained to help her in her congenial occupation, while Dick upstairs was fretting over that most fruitful source of worry — -ways and means.

When Dick came in to dinner next day, he found a letter begun in large print, and Letty's fingers very inky. She was, as Aunt Maria had said, very back- ward, and this was the first letter she had ever at- tempted.

" dear tip cat," it ran, " sibel and me is not com- ing," and there a large blot seemed to have dis- couraged the attempt.

" I told him, you know," Letty said, " that we'd come and see him very often, for he gave us each a

TIP TON FARM. 127

little yellow duck, and they're too small to leave their mother, so I thought I ought to write and tell him we couldn't ever come again unless you or Mr. Tysoe could take us, and we should like the ducks called Punch and Judy, and we don't want them to go into the water till we come. Oh, Dick, I wish I could write. Ellen and Grace could write, with nice little curly tails to their g's, and dots to their i's."

" I wish you could, Letty. I'll teach you of an even- ing," said the poor young fellow, with another sharp sting of remorse for all his short-comings ; " and, if you like, I'll write to Tip Cat for you when I come home this evening."

But there was no need to write, for that afternoon, when Letty and Sybil were out with Mr. Tysoe in the cart, they met Tip Cat, so they were able to explain the difficulties.

" Dick says we ain't to come by ourselves, and Mrs. Tysoe can't walk so far because she's got corns, and they're dreadful painful. Dick says he don't mind bringing us sometimes on Sunday afternoon, though he can't think why we want to come, though we told him about the ducks, and he says he's quite sure you'd rather we kept away. Would you, really, Tip Cat ? "

128 TIP CAT.

" He needn't trouble himself to come on Sunday afternoons," was the gruff answer, " or any other afternoon for the matter of that ; and if he'll take the trouble to ask any one about here, they'll tell him I'm not in the habit of asking people who I'd rather kept away."

" But we can't come if he doesn't," said Sybil.

"Yes you can, if you want to. The corporal comes into town every day to fetch my paper about two, and I'll tell him to call in and see if you want an escort, and we'll see you safe home when you've had enough of it."

So the very next day, when Dick was coming out after dinner, taking the short cut through the shop as he was rather late, there he found Corporal Ridge standing very stiff and upright, with his heels to- gether, and he gave a military salute and told Dick that the captain had sent him for the young ladies.

But Dick received no more invitations to Tipton Farm, and saw nothing of Tip Cat, though the chil- dren often went there twice or three times a week. Now and then when they were late home, for, as the evenings grew longer, Dick sometimes reached home before them, he would walk out on the road to Tip- ton Grange to meet them, and then he would catch

TIPTON FARM. 129

a glimpse of the tall figure of the old man walking between the little girls with his head bent down, listening to their chatter as they held his hands, or clung to his arm or his shabby velveteen coat but, when Dick came in sight, and it was wonderful how far away Letty and Sybil could see him, Tip Cat would say good-by, and, turn back, while Kaiser would follow the children till they were safe with Dick, as if he felt his responsibility was not over till they were in Dick's hands, and then would go bounding off after his master.

" Tip Cat likes us both very much," Sybil would say ; " but he likes Letty the best, because she is like some one he knew ever so long ago, whose name was Letty too. But the corporal likes me the best, so that makes us equal."

130 TIP CAT.

, CHAPTER XII.

WAYS AND MEANS.

WITH what different eyes people look at things at different times ! — or do the things themselves change and alter and take other shapes and lines ? Three months before, Dick had looked round the little sitting-room at Mr., Tysoe's with disgust and discontent, as being insufferably small, and mean, and vulgar, and he had pitied the little girls, infi- nitely more than they needed his pity, for being reduced to this as their home ; and he had only re- conciled himself to it with the idea that it was only for a time, and that, by and by, when he saw where he was, he would find other quarters more suited to their position.

But now, as he looked round the room one Satur- day night in June, ft looked to him quite pretty and home-like and pleasant. It was a very hot night and the window was wide open, and a great, white

WA YS AND MEANS. 131

moon was looking calmly down on Slowmill, where perfect quiet reigned in the streets, and where, one by one, the lights were being extinguished in the bed- room windows, for it was nearly twelve o'clock.

There was not a breath of air stirring to move the window curtains or make Dick's candle flicker. Letty and Sybil had been in bed for hours, and he had been into their room and seen them asleep, with Letty's arm stretched across Sybil in a protecting fashion. He had heard the Tysoes go up to bed — Mrs. Tysoe very heavy-footed, with a grunt on each step, and Joe brisk and active even after a long and hot day's work.

Dick had been sitting for a long time with his elbows on the table and his hands supporting his head, and with a paper spread on the table in front of him, before he raised his head and took a survey of the room round him, partly in candle-light, partly in moonlight. There was hardly any alteration in the room ; it was just the same as it was three months ago, when it had so disgusted him, except that perhaps it was a little less stiff and more untidy ; a great straggling bunch of honeysuckle in a large jar had usurped the place of the wax water-lily in the window. Letty's hat lay on one of the chairs, and

132 TIP CAT.

a row of paper dolls adorned the sofa, and two long, lustrous peacock's feathers were stuck in the frame of the looking-glass and drooped gracefully acror the little mirror. Otherwise it was just the same^ and the portrait of Mrs. Tysoe ogled him with the very wooden grin which had made him so angry at first, that he had stuck a patch of sticking-plaster over those senseless eyes, to prevent them following him about, but to-night she seemed friendly and sym- pathetic as he looked up at her.

I need hardly say that the paper over which Dick sat so long that night was the weekly bill, and when I add that the first item was, " Balance from last account," it will explain the desperate look in poor Dick's eyes as he looked up at the cold, composed moon riding in the clear, indigo darkness above. That little reserve fund of Dick's had been exhausted some weeks ago, and since then he had been obliged to pay Mrs. Tysoe only so much on account, and ask her to carry forward the balance to next week's bill. It was only a little, to be sure, and Mrs. Tysoe was quite willing to do so, and even proposed to leave the whole amount to another time ; but each week the balance grew a little more, and this present week one or two little extra expenses for boot-mending and

WAYS AND MEANS. 133

such like necessary outlay had raised the sum so alarmingly, that Dick felt that the matter must be looked in the face and grappled with boldly.

There was no escaping the truth, that they could not afford to live in their present style, and that al- ready the serpent debt was beginning to wind its coils round him. They must leave Mrs. Tysoe's, that was very plain, and try and find humbler lodgings ; but it was the little girls who would suffer most from this, for they would lose Mrs. Tysoe's kindly care, and have to shift and manage for themselves.

Had he any right to sacrifice his little sisters in this way ? he asked himself. What was his duty to them ? His whole soul had risen in revolt at the idea of the rough school to which Aunt Maria had proposed to send them, but, after all, would not that have been better than what he could provide for them ? He had a right to his own pride, and to suffer for it if needs must ; but had he a right to pride for them, and let them suffer for it ? Was it not his duty to write to Uncle Tom and confess that he was not man enough to keep his little sisters, and that, after all, he must accept his charity for them ? Oh ! what a fool he had been not to do it at first when he could have made better terms for

134 TIP CAT.

them, and been at hand to watch over them, instead of coming as a suppliant to beg and entreat for the very thing he had flung back indignantly in their faces not four months ago. And what would his life at Slowmill be worth without them, when they were handed over to Aunt Maria's cold charity, and he was alone, with no little figures waiting at the corner of the street when office hours were over, no arms to cling round his neck, and coax and pet him when he was tired and dull, no tappings at his bedroom door in the morning, and entrance of little half-clad creatures wanting help in the matter of a button or a tape when Mrs. Tysoe was busy ? He must not think of that, but only of them, what would be best and happiest. For that matter they could not be better and happier than they are now. He went in to have another look, and held the candle shaded with his hand, lest the light should wake them. They had never looked so well. Letty's cheeks had a sweet rose flush on them, and Sybil's young arms tossed above her head were round and dimpled. Happy too ! They were as happy as the day was long ; he had not seen a tear except on that one oc- casion, when they had left Mrs. Tysoe in the lurch, and gone off alone to Tip Cat's.

WA YS AND MEANS. 135

If there had only been the slightest prospect of im- provment in his income he would have tried to struggle on for the present, but he was painfully conscious that Mr. Lupton regarded him with great dissatisfaction, and, not knowing the cause, he set it down to his own stupidity and shortcomings ; and Mr. Burgess had a grumbling tone about everything which poor Dick thought was only called forth by himself, and felt that, far from there being any probability of a rise in his salary, he might at any time lose his situation altogether.

Once he thought he would write to Mr. Murchison, and once he even thought of poor old Jenkins and his offered loan, and then, with a desperate effort, he seized a pen and began " Dear Uncle Tom."

But just then the candle flickered in its socket and went out, and the soft-toned bell from the church struck two, echoing through the quiet town, bathed in silver moonlight ; and Dick, with a strange feeling, as if the bell had sounded a reprieve, threw down the pen and closed the window and went off to bed in the dark.

I have heard of people who have found direct help and guidance in great perplexity by opening the Bible at haphazard and reading the text they open

136 TIP CAT.

at ; and to some the help comes through the words of a passing stranger or the thoughtless chatter of a baby ; and there is a poem describing how a child singing as it went along the street unconsciously af- fected the lives and actions of those who heard it. So it was that some words of Sybil's threw a light on Dick's uncertainty.

It was next morning when he was tying her neck- tie to go to church that she said, " How nice it would be if we could live in a cottage Quite out in the country all the summer, Dick ! "

Why not ? There was all the summer before them, and if they could find a clean cottage among the fields the children would be able to live out of doors in fine weather. He had only thought, in leaving Mrs. Tysoe's of taking smaller, cheaper lodg- ings in the town, and these would certainly be stuffy and cramped, but a country cottage was different ; and Dick turned the subject over and over in his mind, and in the afternoon set off with the little girls to a cottage about a mile from Slowmill which they had passed once or twice in their walks, and which occurred to his mind as a likely place.

You had to cross a meadow to get to it, and there was a good bit of garden round it, and a rough piece

WAYS AND MEANS. 137

of covert behind which would make a capital play- ground for the children.

Letty and Sybil knew all about the people who lived there, for they had been there several times with Mr. Tysoe ; but they did not understand Dick's sudden interest in old Ricketts, who worked at the flour mill close to Mr. Burgess's, and in his rheumatic, old wife, for Dick would not tell them his intentions, in case they should come to nothing, and he should be obliged to send the children back to London and Aunt Maria.

The old man was standing leaning over the gate into the road, smoking his pipe as they came up, and he was quite willing to enter into conversation. " It's a quiet place, sure enough, and there ain't many folk pass along in the day ; but me and my missis is quiet folk, so it suits well enough, and we've a lived here these thirty years, so we're about used to it. It's a good, big cottage — most too big for me and my missis now the young uns is all away ; and times we've talked of moving, but the rent ain't more nor a smaller one 'ud be, and we've a nice bit of garden, so we wouldn't better ourselves. Lodgers ? Well, we've took mowers nows and thens, but they're mostly a rough lot, and the missis don't like their

138 TIP CAT.

noise and drinking ways — as is a good-living woman though I says it."

The children had wandered off picking honey- suckle in the hedges, so Dick accepted the old man's invitation to come in and see the missis. It was the plainest, little cottage kitchen, where the old woman sat in the chimney corner, poking bits of stick into the fire with her rheumatic hands, to try and rouse a blaze under the big black kettle to make it boil for tea. There was a dresser with a poor array of plates and cups, and a patchwork curtain across the mantle- piece, on which were ranged dim photographs on glass and funeral cards in cheap frames. You might see the same in dozens of cottages, but Dick noticed that it possessed a virtue not always to be found, and that was cleanliness. The old man opened a door at the side and showed him with pride a little best parlor, with a round table in the middle, with six straight-backed wooden chairs standing round it, and a dusky little looking-glass over the chimney-piece.

It was not very spacious, to be sure, but Dick was not disposed to be critical, if he could only avoid having to write to Uncle Tom, and send the little girls away from him. But when he opened the sub- ject with old Ricketts and his wife, he met with a de-

WAYS AND MEANS. 139

cided refusal, when at last they understood what he meant, for they could not imagine that a gentleman like Dick could possibly want to come and live in a cottage like that.

" It's no place for gentlefolks," they kept saying^ " and the missis is that rheumatic as she couldn't wait on you as you'll be used to."

But Dick persisted, in spite of their shaking heads and discouraging answers, and made it all appear so easy'and comfortable that, after a time, the old couple agreed to think it over and not decide in a hurry.

The bedrooms up stairs had uneven floors and sloping ceilings, and did not boast much, furniture, but they had the all-redeeming quality of cleanliness ; and Mrs. Ricketts, opening an old worm-eaten chest, showed a store of linen, sweet with lavender, of which the mistress of many a better house might have been proud ; and though there were no curtains to the beds, nor carpets on the floors, Dick thought the bed- rooms might compare favorably with Mrs. Tysoe's which were apt to get stuffy and oppressive.

He was so very anxious to think it suitable, that he made the very best of everything, and when the old man rather doubtfully suggested two shillings and

140 TIP CAT.

sixpence a week as a rent that might, perhaps, be thought too exorbitant, Dick could have declared the cottage the most elegant and luxurious accommodation to be imagined ; and the little girls, coming in just then with their hands full of honeysuckle and wild roses, were quite surprised at Dick's restored cheer- fulness, and at the friendly way in which he parted from the old couple, who, on their part, looked dazed and confused, and a little bit resentful, as if they were being bustled along faster than they liked or were accustomed to in the quiet jog-trot pace of their everyday life.

VISIT TO BRISTOL. 141

CHAPTER XIII.

A VISIT TO BRISTOL.

" WOULD it be convenient, sir, to spare me for a few hours this afternoon ? "

" Eh ? what, what ? " Mr. Burgess looked sharply up at the young man. He happened to use the very same words that Fred Burgess always employed to signify to his uncle that he should not come back to the office after lunch, and this form of words had grown so familiar to the old man by constant repeti- tion, that it quite startled him to hear them in the mouth of his new clerk, who had worked on steadily now for four months without a request for even half an hour's holiday. But now it was beginning, the old man told himself, the broom was losing its new- ness, and there would soon be an end to punctuality and attention to business. He had been too good- natured in allowing it with Fred, and see what it had

142 TIP. CAT.

led to ! So he would not let this youngster off so easily.

" Would it be convenient, sir, to spare me for a few hours this afternoon ? "

" What for ? important business, eh ? "

Dick flushed up to the roots of his hair.

" I want to go to Bristol, sir."

" Oh indeed ! that was what my delightful nephew always used to say, but he generally added on impor- tant business, which I usually ascertained, if I cared to inquire, was to have his hair cut. Do you want your hair cut ? "

" No, sir. If it is not convenient, I can go another day."

Mr. Burgess felt a little bit ashamed of his bully- ing manner, as Dick quietly took up his pen again and prepared to resume his writing, and, being kind- hearted he would have been sorry if he could have seen how heart-sick the young fellow was, and how this trifling opposition seemed to fret him beyond endurance.

This visit to Bristol and its object was utterly re- pugnant to him, and he had nerved himself up to it only by the constant remembrance of the debt he owed the Tysoes and the absolute necessity of get-

A VISIT TO BRISTOL. 143

ting free of it, cost what it might, and of starting clear in the future.

The night before he had turned out his little store of valuables and had selected any that he thought had any market value. A ring or two, some shirt-studs and a scarf-pin that had belonged to his father. There was a miniature of his fair, young mother, wonderfully like Letty, who seemed to be looking up at brother Dick from the circle of pearls with which the portrait was surrounded, just as she looked up at him morning and night when he took her face be- tween his hands to kiss it. The pearls and gold mounting must be worth something, but it went to Dick's heart to rob the portrait of its fair setting, and it seemed almost like sacrilege, as if he were de- spoiling the dead. Poor, sweet, young mother that he had hardly known ! His eyes were dim as he pressed the miniature softly against his cheek and whispered, " It is for your little girls, mother, your little Letty and Sybil."

Then there was his watch which his grandfather had given him the last year he was at school. What a beauty it was ! He had hardly even yet entirely got over the pride of bringing it out before strangers. He had never seen one he liked half as well. He

144 TIP CAT.

remembered the extreme delight it gave him when he first went back to school with it, and how con- stantly it was necessary to refer to it, and how the first class boys came, for a joke, one after another to ask him what time it was, much to his satisfaction, till that great duffer Mabson burst out laughing, and he saw it was all done for a lark, and how he was ready to fight any one who cast a doubt on its perfect veracity, and stoutly maintained that the church clock must be slow because the time did not agree with his.

He found himself smiling over these recollections of his schoolboy days, which seemed now such ages ago ; but the smile only made the pain deeper when he thought of parting with his watch.

And then the notion of going to a pawnbroker's ! He had often passed the door of such a place and seen poor, drunken, desperate creatures pass in, with a furtive, shame-faced look round, to pledge their children's clothes for more gin, and had imagined the greasy counter and the frowsy, close smell and the dirty Jewish face, whose sharp eyes know in a second the value of the article offered, and whose heart must be long dead to all pity and respect for human nature.

There was no pawnbroker's that he knew of in

A VISIT TO BRISTOL. 145

Slowmill, and, if there had been, he knew well enough how many curious eyes would have watched him in, and how many trumpet-tongues would have pro- claimed his business on the housetops, but in Bristol he would be lost in the crowd, and could do what he pleased without any one being the wiser.

The opposition from Mr. Burgess was an unex- pected difficulty, and, as he wrote from the old man's dictation, he was trying to decide whether he would go in spite of it, and risk the chance of losing his situation, or if he would go by the late train and get back to Slowmill as best he could.

But when one o'clock came and Mr. Burgess rose to go to his lunch, he said, " You had better tell Mr. Lupton that you are not coming back to-day, and I hope business will not often call you away on Mon- day afternoons just when we are so busy."

" Thank you, sir ; indeed it shall not occur again."

" Till next time," said the old man to himself, as he closed the door and went away to his solitary luncheon, while Dick had to endure a volley of grumbling from old Lupton, from whose irritation it would seem as if this particular Monday were the busiest day of all the year at Burgess's office.

146 TIPCAT.

But Dick cut it as short as he could with civility, and ran off, for there was not a moment to lose if he meant to catch the train, for the omnibus was far too expensive a luxury to be thought of, and he would have to walk three miles to the station. So he only ran in and told the little girls that he should not be home till quite late, and they were to have tea, and go to bed without him, and he took a bit of bread in his pocket to eat on the way, and the little packet of valuables he had looked out the evening before, and went off, the children calling after him to bring them back some chocolates.

" You know," Sybil explained to Mrs. Tysoe, " he always used to bring us back chocolates when he went anywhere ; really nice, don't you know, not like what you have in the shop, but a different sort of taste, not so much like soot. I'll give you one when he comes back, and I'm -sure you'll like it."

Dick was just in time for the train, and reached Bristol without any adventure except that, at one station, a face well known to him at Oxford passed the carriage, with all the old fuss and circumstance that used to attend Dick himself in his prosperous days when he travelled. The obsequious porters carrying portmanteau, hat-box, coat, and umbrella,

A VISIT TO BRISTOL. 147

the scent of a good cigar, the couple of dogs whose comfort seemed of more importance than that of all the rest of the passengers put together ; it had all been second nature to Dick in old days, and he drew back now in the corner of the carriage in deadly fear of being recognized, as if it were likely that young Prosperous should be travelling third class or look for friends in that quarter.

When he reached Bristol it was not difficult to find what he was seeking for ; the three dingy, smoke- grimed golden balls soon caught his eye, but he did not go into the first pawnbroker's that offered, but went straying on, passing one because it looked too smart, and another because it looked too low, and aimlessly looking into many of the shop windows, hardly noticing what his eyes were resting on, so full was he of the painful memories that the sight of El- liott of Balliol had called up in him.

So he stood for full ten minutes before a toyshop, with vacant eyes fixed on waxen-faced beauties and elaborate toys, and for all he knew it might just as well have been the little undertaker's at Slowmill, of which Letty and Sybil had grown so tired while they were waiting for Mrs. Tysoe.

It was a great pity that he was not more conscious

148 TIP CAT.

of the things before him, for Letty and Sybil, who had not had the chance of a good look into a toy- shop or a bazaar since they left London, would much have enjoyed a detailed account of all the toys in the window, and on another occasion Dick would have remembered this, and laid up a store of interest- ing information to carry to his little sisters.

More than one of the passers-by looked curiously at the young man, standing apparently lost in serious contemplation of those simpering dolls in the window, and his face seemed quite to disturb a customer within the shop, who after peering at him inquisitive- ly between the Noah's Arks and doll's houses which filled the back of the window, opened the door and took a closer survey of him, unnoticed by Dick.

This customer was quite as remarkable as he seemed to find Dick, indeed, there seemed something more curious in a great, gaunt, old man with grey moustaches and deep lines of thought and care about his face, spending nearly an hour in minute inspec- tion of wax dolls in a shop, than in a young man standing a few minutes outside the window.

This customer had declined to have anything to do with the smiling young women behind the counter, who generally found themselves very acceptable,

A VISIT TO BRISTOL. 149

especially to gentlemen customers ; and he had demanded the presence of the master of the shop, who was not nearly so used to attending to purchasers, and had frequently to appeal as to prices and varieties to the giggling young shop-women, who were much amused at the business-like and minute review and comparison of nearly every doll in the shop which this strange old man went through before he selected two dolls which satisfied his requirements.

He then proceeded to give orders for the dressing of these two dolls, still giving his instructions to the master of the shop, who, being young and unmarried, was much confused at the scarcely repressed laughter of the two girls, who were entirely ignored by the old man, and who listened with intense amusement to the blundering and unscientific* language in which these two ignorant men-folk discussed the clothing of the dolls.

The arrangements were nearly concluded when Dick's face appeared at the window, and when Tip Cat, for he it was, came out into the street, the young man was just turning listlessly away. The two men met face to face, but Dick's thoughts were too far away just then from Slowmill to recognise any one from there, even indeed, if he would have known

15° TIP CAT.

Tip Cat again, having only seen him once, and that four months ago.

Those strange light eyes of Tip Cat were very observant and the dull, dejected look in Dick's face struck him at a glance, and without any intention of spying on him, or interfering with him in any way, he turned when he had gone a few steps and followed him, keeping him in sight through several streets, along which he noticed that Dick went in an object- less way, stopping now and then at a shop window, and then wandering on again. Was he ill ? Had he been drinking ? But just as this doubt entered his head, Tip Cat saw Dick quicken his step and rouse up and pull himself together, and give a look up at the smoky sky overhead, and the next minute he had turned into a shop at the corner of the street.

What shop was it ? Tip Cat wondered, but as he came nearer recognised it by the three golden balls over the door. " What does this mean ? " said the old man to himself, as he turned away. " Nothing good ! Poor little Letty ! "

NOTICE TO LEAVE. 151

CHAPTER XIV.

NOTICE TO LEAVE.

WHEN Dick got back to Slowmill late that night, he found Mrs. Tysoe sitting up for him with her nightcap on, and rather a martyr-like aspect, and she looked very narrowly at Dick as he came in, having a general idea that coming in after twelve was usually accompanied by unsteady gait and indistinct utter- ance, and a tendency to set the house on fire, and it was on this ground that she had declined Joe's offer to sit up and let her go to bed, as she could not have slept a wink with the fear of being burnt alive in her bed.

But Dick only looked very tired and worn out, and he was so penitent for having kept her up, that her resolution to speak a few motherly words to the young man on the error of his ways was quite for-

152 TIP CAT.

gotten, and she was only anxious to get him a little supper, as he was obliged to confess, on being ques- tioned, that he had had nothing to eat since that bit of bread he had taken from the dinner-table in the middle of the day.

To save trouble she spread the supper in the back parlour, and Dick, when he came down to it, brought down the bill and the little pile of money to pay it.

" Bless my heart ! you needn't have troubled," Mrs. Tysoe said, " at this time of night too. I thought you'd alet it bide till next week, so when you didn't settle it Saturday night, I thought 'twould just be" carried forward to next account."

" It won't do for me to get into debt, Mrs. Tysoe ; it's as much as I can do to pay a week's bill, so I'm sure I couldn't a fortnight's."

Mrs. Tysoe laughed ; she always laughed at any reference to Dick's great poverty, as if it were an amusing fiction he liked to keep up, in which it was necessary to humor him. But she did not laugh at Dick's next remark, but sat in stony silence, only the quivering of the frills of her nightcap revealing the agitation of her feelings.

" I want to thank you," Dick said, " for all your kindness to me and the little girls, and to tell you

NOTICE TO LEAVE. 153

that, much to my regret, I must give you notice to leave at the end of the week. Saturday is the right day for giving notice, I know, so we shall not leave till Saturday, week ; but I thought I had better tell you as soon as my plans were settled."

" Then you're going back to London, and have come back into all your property ? There ! if I didn't always say you would. It was only this very blessed day as I was saying to Mrs. Jones as no one couldn't look at you and think as you'd be long at Burgess's, as 'twere for all the world like putting a silk patch on a cotton gown. Dear ! dear ! dear ! and all you've asaid about being so poor, when I warrant you knowed all along how it would all come right. And those pretty little dears, so contented and happy, and as pleased to ride with Joe in his cart as if he'd been a coach and six ! "

Mrs. Tysoe was getting quite tearful and hysterical, and her words came so rapidly that Dick could not edge in a word for some minutes to enlighten her as to the very different cause of their leaving.

" But I'm not going back to London, Mrs. Tysoe, and I never shall come into any property ; and I think Mr. Lupton would tell you I'm a very poor patch indeed at Mr. Burgess's, and I may think my-

154 TIP CAT.

self lucky if I don't get the sack. No ; the truth of it is, we can't afford to stop here, and I must try and find cheaper rooms. — No, you must not offer to lower the rent, for you do not ask a penny too much ; only you must find lodgers better off than we are and who won't give you so much trouble."

There was a strange convulsion of feeling to be read in Mrs. Tysoe's face just then, if Dick had not been too weary and down-hearted to read it. One moment she was inclined to bridle up and take of- fence, and talk of not giving satisfaction ; the next to dissolve into tears and beg them to stop at any terms, as she was " as fond of them two children as her own flesh and blood." One moment the darkest suspicions of Dick crossed her mind, and the next the most pitiful, motherly feeling for him and the little girls. Now she thought only of the dulness she should feel without Letty and Sybil, and now, of the brother of the dissenting minister, who wanted apart- ments, and who was a quiet Christian man and a traveller for the wholesale oil and colourman with whom Joe dealt, so that he was likely to be a very advantageous lodger.

" And may I ask," she said, at last, stiffly, " where you'll find cheaper rooms, where you'll get as well

NOTICE TO LEAVE. 155

done by as you've done here ? though I say it as shouldn't."

" Nowhere, and I don't expect it. You've spoilt us, Mrs. Tysoe, and I don't know how Letty and Sybil will get on without you."

His voice was a little husky as he spoke, and Mrs. Tysoe's heart softened at the sound.

" Poor little dears ! " she went on, " they're not of the sort to rough it. Miss Letty ain't strong, the leastest thing upsets her, and Miss Sybil have a nasty wheezing at her chest if she ketches a bit of a cold, as wants seeing to keerful if you wants to rear her. You say as your ma did'nt die in consumption, but you marks my words as some of your folks did some time or other, and it's sure and certain to come out in them little sisters of yours if they're not well looked to."

Poor Dick did not find these gloomy forebodings very reassuring, but he tried to take a cheerful view of the matter. " At any rate they are both very well now."

Mrs. Tysoe shook her head ominously, and sighed. " There's nowhere in Slowmill as I can think of as is' fit for you. There's Mrs. Jolly's, but she's a deal too fond of a glass, and them's not the sort to have

156 TIP CAT.

the care of children ; and Mrs. Laws is that dirty, as I couldn't eat a mossel in her house were it ever so. But there ! perhaps you've found what you want, and don't need any advice from me."

" Indeed I do, Mrs. Tysoe. If you don't stand our friend, I don't know who will." And then Dick unfolded his plan of the Ricketts's cottage.

Mrs. Tysoe was, as I have said, no great walker, so, though she had lived all her life in Slowmill, and that life had extended to sixty-five years, she knew very little of the neighborhood, and Dick was rather relieved to find that she did not quite know which was the Ricketts's cottage, and that his description, quite unintentionally, conveyed to her mind an idea very superior to the humble reality.

She had seen old Ricketts ; he had dealt with them for years, which was greatly in his favor, and she had heard tell that his Missus was a decent, clean sort of a body.

" But she ain't never been used to gentlefolks' ways ; and who's to look after the children's hair, I'd like to know, and brush it and do it out as have took me sometimes half an hour between the two ? "

Dick shook his head wearily. He knew better

NOTICE TO LEAVE. 157

even than Mrs. Tysoe did, of how little hairdressing or anything else, Mrs. Rickett's rheumatic hands were capable.

" We must make the best of it," he said, " and I must do lady's-maid now and then. We can but try it for a week or two, and see how we get on. But I must not keep you up any longer, or you will be only too glad to get rid of us."

" Well, it must be getting late," said Mrs. Tysoe : " but Joe he've taken the clock up to his room, as his watch have stopped, so I don't rightly know the time."

Dick's hand went involuntarily to his waistcoat pocket.

" Bless and save us ! Where's your watch ? " asked Mrs. Tysoe, as his hand fell and his face changed color.

" I left it in Bristol," stammered Dick, " to — to — be mended." Poor Dick, it was the first time he had missed the watch, and with that first impulse of a wounded creature to hide its hurt, he had told a falsehood about it — and such a poor little pitiful un- truth that deceived no one, for Mrs. Tysoe stood looking at him with consternation and horror.

" Why, you've never been and — "

158 TIPCAT.

" Good-night," he said, irritably. " I'm tired to death, and so I expect are you ; " and he left her, looking after him and murmuring, " He's been and — Who'd 'a'thought ? Poor lad ! poor lad ! He might a'told me first, and I'll warrant as he didn't get half as he ought for it ! And 'twere such a beauty ! And 'twould, a'been nice for Joe. Dear ! dear ! 'tis a terrible pity ! "

Neither Mrs. Tysoe nor Dick slept much that night, and Dick looked so dilapidated when he turned up at the office that Mr. Burgess was corn- firmed in his opinion, that the day before had been the first step in a course of dissipation ; and, as he passed through the outer office, Mr. Macintosh pre- tended to take a long draught from a roll of paper on his desk, and then pointed over his shoulder to Dick's retiring figure, and winked at the office boy, who went into an irrepressible burst of merriment at this refined and elegant joke.

The morning's work had never seemed so long and tiresome to Dick before, or Mr. Burgess so fidg- ety and exacting ; and when he came home to din- ner, he found Letty and Sybil sitting up with very serious faces and red eyes, and following him about with anxious, deprecating little looks that in his pres-

NOTICE TO LEAVE. 159

ent nervous, irritable condition, made him, for the first time in his life, almost cross to them.

But the culminating point was reached, when both the children refused to take a second helping, and he caught Letty making signs to Sybil not to take a second piece of bread and giving her part of hers instead.

This was more than he could bear, and getting up suddenly, leaving his dinner unfinished, he went out, telling them to go on without him, as he wanted to walk before he went back to the office.

He could not be angry with the little girls, but he could not endure it. It was plain that Mrs. Tysoe had been talking to them. What talkers women are ! What an idiot he had been not to tell her to hold her tongue ! The only comfort he had had was that the children were happy and light-hearted, and well. He had meant to make the new move appear a pleas- ant change to them, like going out of town in the summer, and to treat it all like a picnic and a piece of fun.

He had taken the way towards Tipton Grange, and as he passed the stile leading to the farm, he did not, notice that Tip Cat was standing near it, who, however, saw the young man pass and came to

160 TIP CAT.

much the same conclusion as Mr. Burgess and his clerks had done, from the look of his white, troubled face and heavy, anxious eyes.

He also saw a little figure that was timidly follow- ing Dick at a distance, making a run now and then to keep him in sight, and giving such a piteous, little out-of-breath sob as she passed the stile, that Tip Cat made a stride forward, as if he would have caught the little thing up or punished that brute of a brother who went walking on, leaving the little, white-faced, delicate sister to hurry after him in all the heat and dust of that Midsummer day.

Kaiser, too, was indignant at the sight, and instead of restraining himself, as his master had done after the first impulsive stride, he leapt the stile and reached Letty almost at one bound, whining and licking her tearful little face, and circling round her and, taking a corner of her pinafore in his white teeth, pulled it gently as if to remind her that the right way to Tipton Farm was over the stile.

But Letty was not to be diverted from her pursuit of Dick and she tried to push Kaiser away, but Kaiser had not been a sheep-dog for nothing, and he thought he knew his duty too well to let this little stray lamb wander any further out of the way and

NOTICE TO LEAVE. 161

he kept firm hold of her pinafore till Dick had disap- peared round the corner of the road, and was quite ouc of sight.

And then Letty broke down altogether, and burst into such a torrent of sobs, that Kaiser, utterly be- wildered, let go of her, and turned up his head and howled out of very sympathy. It was the very best thing he could have done to make up for the mistake he had made, for the sound reached Dick's ears, and the next moment he re-appeared at the turn of the road, and to his great surprise saw Letty, whom he imagined at home with Sybil, apparently struggling with a big, savage-looking dog.

It did not take half a minute for Dick to reach the scene of action and snatch Letty up in his arms and give Kaiser a most undeserved whack with his stick, which that animal might have been inclined to resent, if an imperative whistle from the other side of the hedge had not called him off at that very minute.

But Dick and Letty sat on the green bank by the roadside under the elm trees and comforted one another, for Dick wanted comfort every bit as much at his Jittle, sobbing, trembling sister, and nothing seemed to soothe him so much as her arms clinging

1 62 TIP CAT.

round his neck and her damp cheek pressed to his.

They neither of them noticed the Grange carriage and its sleek, grey horses passing by, nor Mrs. Viv-

*

ian's curious scrutiny through her gold eye-glasses. . " Who are they, Kathie, ? " she said to the girl at her side. "I don't seem to know their faces. What a pretty child ? "

"I didn't see them, Auntie, but I daresay they belong to one of the cottages in the lane."

Dick was late at the office that afternoon, he had no watch to tell him the time now, and besides it took some time to quiet Letty's convulsive sobs, and soothe her troubled little heart into composure and take her back to Mrs. Tysoe's ; and Mr. Lupton gave a little sneer about punctuality when he came in, and Mr. Burgess was snappish, and out of temper but Dick did not feel nearly as bad as he had done in the morning, or as if he would like to knock his head against the dingy office wall and have done with it all.

" And, Sybil, " Letty said, between the turns of the coffee-grinder, that afternoon, " I've promised Dick ever so faithful that we'll always eat as much as we possibly can, and take two helpings at dinner, for he bcvys if we don't it will just break his heart."

THE FLITTING. 163

CHAPTER XV.

THE FLITTING.

DICK was very glad when that last week at Mrs. Tysoe's was over. Mrs Tysoe was kindness itself, but kindness with tearful eyes and gloomy forebod- ings, and rather a resentful manner, as if Dick's poverty were somehow a personal affront to herself.

It was quite a relief to Dick when he heard that negotiations with the Christian commercial traveller were going on favorably, and that the Tysoes' lodg- ings would not be vacant for more than a couple of days after he left, but even this desirable arrange- ment could not be mentioned without a sigh, and nothing could induce Mrs. Tysoe to take a cheerful view of anything, though Dick and the little girls, after that first despondency, found a good deal that was pleasant in the prospect.

Dick had not only to endure a good deal from his old landlady but also from his new one, who was at

164 TIP CAT.

ways starting some fresh panic and insuperable difficulty, which required sometimes hours of the most vigorous and hopeful persuasion from Dick to counteract.

" She's a pore sperritted crittur." her husband would say, waylaying Dick as he came out of the office at dinner-time to convey some alarming piece of in- telligence. " She ain't slept a wink all night ; and she woke me at two, and she says, says she, ' There ain't a warming-pan in the place, and most like they're all a' used to it every night of their lives,' says she."

As this difficulty was suggested under a blazing sun, with every probability of sunstroke, and Ricketts constantly applying his red-cotton handkerchief to a very moist forehead, a warming-pan did not seem a very immediate necessity.

Another time it was a more important difficulty. The four- post bed allotted to Letty and Sybil had, for some reason best known to itself, sat down like a cat during the night, and the old woman was in despair at the idea of what might have been the result if the children had been in bed at the time. But Dick and Ricketts together restored the bed- stead to its original position and prevented any

THE FLITTING. 165

chance of its repeating its eccentric behavior, and when once Dick had taken to a hammer and nails, he developed quite a talent for carpentering, and put up a rail for the children's towels and some pegs for their frocks to hang on at an easier distance from the ground than those at Mrs. Tysoe's, and a shelf or two in a recess.

The only thing he found it necessary to supply was a bath for the children, as he unearthed a big, wooden tub from an outhouse that would do nicely for him. He undertook to fill the baths himself every even- ing, for there was no pump, but only an open well, out of which water was drawn in a bucket by means of a long pole, and Mrs. Ricketts looked rather aghast at these preparations for much washing, which her new lodgers seemed to consider quite as necessary a part of life as eating and sleeping.

Dick spent most of his evenings over at the cottage that week, and generally Letty and Sybil went with him, assisting, with much bustling, in the arrange- ments. At any rate they could not starve, as Dick provided that a plentiful supply of milk should be sent every morning from the nearest farm, and home-made bread and butter from the same source, and the rest of the food Dick could bring with him

1 66 TIP CAT.

every day from the town, or Mr. Tysoe would supply on his weekly call.

The thing that most preyed on Dick's mind was the children's toilets. He had gained a little ex- perience since they came to Slowmill, but he very much doubted his capability when there was no longer Mrs. Tysoe to appeal to in an emergency, and when one evening he made an experiment in doing Sybil's hair, such screams followed the first application of a comb to the bright curly tangle, that he gave it up in despair, and wondered if Mrs. Tysoe would let them come in two or three times a week to have their hair dressed by her, and try and make shift on the other days.

Letty thought it was very naughty of Sybil to scream and run away when Dick combed her hair, and offered her own head to be operated on, setting her lips with the determination of a martyr that no suffering should wring a sound from her, but Dick would not put her to the test, and~ he soon forgot all about it, and wondered why Letty sat with her arms folded on the table and her chin resting on them in deep thought, and still more when she drew a chair in front of the fireplace and mounted on it and took a long look at herself in the little mirror.

THE FLITTIA'G. 167

" What a vain little puss it is," he said, laughing, and thinking that sweet, little, wistful face was some- thing to be vain of.

But Letty flushed all over to her finger-tips at his words, and jumping down, ran and hid her hot ashamed little face on his shoulder.

" I was thinking," she said — " I was wondering, Dick, if you would love us quite as well — every bit — not a tiny bit less — if Sybil and me was ugly — quite ugly — like boys you know."

Dick laughed. " Are boys always so ugly, Letty ? "

"Don't laugh, Dick. I want you to say, really and truly, if we was ugly and horrid-looking little girls, would you love us ever so much as you do now ? "

She was so earnest and serious that Dick did not laugh again, but took the sweet little face between his hands and looked into the great clear eyes.

" You never could be ugly or horrid to me, Letty -, and I could not love you less if I tried."

This seemed to satisfy her, and she got down and ran away.

The next day, when Dick came out of the office, the little girls were not waiting for him at the corner, and he felt a little surprised, as he knew this was

1 68 TIP CAT.

not the day for Mrs. Tysoe's cart to go out, and the children had told him, \\ith some mystery at dinner, that they were not going to Tip Cat's, as they had something else to do.

Neither were they in the shop, nor looking out at the sitting-room window ; and though tea was ready when he got in, there was no sign of Letty and Sybil. He called them, but received no answer, and took up a paper to read till they