A Little World Part 19

"'Pon my soul, this grows highly amusing," said Lionel, laughing. "Why, Harry, I'm right; we must have come to court. May I ask if the young lady of the house will again be visible, so as to go through the same performance?"

Harry looked annoyed, and D. Wragg gave Lionel a sharp, searching sidelong glance, which the other missed.

"Let's settle the business at once, gents," said D. Wragg. "Let me see, sir," he continued, jerking himself round the counter. "I'll trouble you for two fivers."

"But where's the dog?" said Lionel.

"Don't you make no mistake, sir. You hand over the money, and you shall have him in five minutes."

Lionel hesitated for a moment, and then drew a couple of crisp notes from his pocket-book, and handed them to the dealer.

"I suppose you will give me a receipt?" said Lionel.

"Never put pen to paper in my life, gents, and never means to," was the reply. "It's been the ruin of thousands. But you shall have a receipt for buying a dog, if you like. Here," he said, stumping to the inner door, and speaking to somebody within; "you won't mind coming to write out a receipt for ten pound for me, will you? If you won't, I must call Janet down. That's right, my dear; come and do it while I go and see if that there party's brought the dorg."

To Harry Clayton's great annoyance, Patty came slowly and timidly from the inner room, her face flushed and her eyes wandering from one to the other.

She quickly took pen and paper from a drawer and began to write, while D. Wragg jerked himself out of the door.

"Why, Harry," said Lionel, staring hard at the fair little writer the while, "depend upon it that old chap has cut with the money, and we shall never see him again. But never mind; he has left us a jolly little hostage, and we can take her instead."

Harry Clayton bit his lips, for his fingers itched to seize Lionel by the collar, and shake him till he could not speak; but he felt that he could do nothing now but suffer for his want of frankness, as he saw the pretty little head bent down over the paper.

"What a charming handwriting!" continued Lionel, in the bantering tones, for he had seen Harry's annoyance. "What well-shaped letters! By the way, my dear, what boarding-school were you at?"

Patty's crimson face was raised to his for an instant, but her eye fell beneath his bold stare, and she went on writing with trembling hand.

"I shall place that receipt amongst my treasures," said Lionel, "and--"

"Have the goodness to recollect where you are," said Harry, angrily.

"Your banter is out of place and offensive."

Lionel stared, laughed, and elevated his eyebrows, as, without bestowing upon him another glance, Patty took the slip of paper she had written, and handed it to Harry, meeting his eyes for the moment fully as she said in a low voice, "Thank you!" and then she pa.s.sed out of the shop.

Volume 1, Chapter XXVI.

GOOD ADVICE.

"Your receipt, Lionel," said Harry, quietly, as he pa.s.sed the paper to his companion.

"Thanks! yes. A saucy little prude! she knows how to play her cards.

We've got the receipt, and he's got the ten pounds; but I don't mean to go without value for my cash, if I take one of those scrub-tailed old c.o.c.katoos, and--Ah! what, Luffy, old boy--what, Luffy! Down there, down there, good dog! What! you know your old master, then? There! down, down!"

"There, gents, that's about it, aint it," said D. Wragg, stumping in after the dog, and stooping to unfasten the collar round his neck, as the delighted animal bounded upon its master, licking his hand, pawing him, and displaying his unbounded canine pleasure at the meeting, to the great endangering of D. Wragg's stock-in-trade.

"And now, is there anything more as I can do for you, eh?" said D.

Wragg, rubbing his hands, and jigging about as if freshly wound up. "A few rats for the dorg? A couple o' score sparrers for a shot? Send 'em anywheres! Don't you make no mistake. You won't get better supplied in the place. Not to-day, gents? Well, another time perhaps."

"Yes; I'll give you another look in," said Lionel, gazing hard the while at Harry.

"Werry good, sir! werry good!" said D. Wragg, rubbing his hands and jerking himself as if another set of springs had just been brought into use. "I hope as you will. Gents often do come to me again when they've been once. Let me give you another card. Here, Janet, bring me another card for the gents. Oh! she aint there. Would you mind giving me a card off the chimally-piece, my dear, for these gents?"

Lionel, who had reached the door, returned; and Patty, now quite composed, brought out a card, and avoiding the young man's outstretched hand, she pa.s.sed it to D. Wragg.

"Give it to the gentlemen, my dear; don't be ashamed. There's nothing to mind. Don't you make no mistake, gents; she's young and a bit shy."

Patty did not look up as the card was taken from her hand; and though Harry tried hard to meet her eyes once more, so as to ask forgiveness for the slight he had offered to her, she turned back into the room, and the young men pa.s.sed out of the shop.

"That's a good dorg, gents, a good dorg!" whispered D. Wragg, from behind his hand, as he followed them to the door. "You'd better keep a sharp eye on him. I've got my bit of commission out of this job; but honour bright, gents. As gents, I don't want to see you here again arter the bull-tarrier--not just yet, you know--not just yet. Good-day, gents. Don't you make no mistake; you know, about me. Good-day!"

"Bye-bye! old chap," said Lionel, lightly, as they strolled on. "Wish we'd bought a chain and collar, Harry; I shouldn't like to lose old Luff again, in this abominable maze. Let's go back!"

"No, no; there is no need!" exclaimed Harry, hastily. And then flushing slightly at the eagerness he had displayed, he continued firmly--"If you'll take my advice, Lionel, you will go there no more."

"Perhaps not, Reverend Harry Clayton,--perhaps not," laughed the young man, eyeing his companion sideways. "But don't you make no mistake," he continued, mimicking the voice and action of the man they had just left; "I may want a toy tarrier for a present, or a few rats, or a score or two of sparrers, or--eh, Harry?--to see the lady go through the dove performance. Don't you make no mistake, friend Harry, for it's quite within the range of probability that I may go there often."

"Perhaps once too often!" exclaimed Harry, impetuously, for he could not control the pa.s.sion within him. As Lionel spoke, each word seemed to be freighted with bitterness, armed with a sting and a sense of misery such as he had never before felt, and which seemed to crush down his spirit.

Visions of Patty smiling welcome upon Lionel floated before him, filling him with a new feeling of rage; and it was all he could do to hide it from his companion, who began to whistle, and then said lightly--

"Perhaps so--perhaps so! As you say, I may go there once too often; but that's my business, Master Harry, and nothing to do with reading cla.s.sics. What a cad!" he exclaimed, as he returned the fierce look bestowed upon him by a heavy-browed young fellow in a sleeved waistcoat; nodded familiarly to the policeman; and then, making a point of coolly and insolently returning every loiterer's stare, he pa.s.sed on out of the region of the Decadian, thinking all the same, though, of Patty.

Volume 1, Chapter XXVII.

AN ALARM.

Mrs Winks was bound under contract to spend the next day at Duplex Street; but she made known just now her presence in the Dials, being busy enough in the lower regions of D. Wragg's; for the smoke and steam of her copper altar, erected to the G.o.ddess of cleanliness, rose through the house, to be condensed in a dewy clamminess upon handrail and paint.

It was the incense that rose thickly to the nostrils when she stuck in a wooden probe to fish up boiling garments for purification's sake.

The inhabitants of D. Wragg's dwelling took but little notice of Mrs Winks' washing-days, inasmuch as they were inured to them by their frequency. D. Wragg, though, must be excepted; for when some bird would sneeze and evince a dislike to the odorous moist vapour, he called to mind the deaths of three valuable cochins by croup--a catarrh-like distemper which, with or without truth, he laid to the charge of Mrs Winks' washing.

So that good lady busied herself over what she called her own and Monsieur Canau's "toots,"--meaning thereby divers calico undergarments-- till her playbill curl-papers grew soft in the steam. Mrs Winks was interrupted but once, when, aroused by the plunging in of the copper-stick and an extra cloud from the sacrifice, D. Wragg stamped with his heavy boot upon the shop-floor, and shouted an inquiry as to how long Mrs Winks would be before she was done, and whether she knew that there was company in the house?

To this query the stout lady returned the very vague response of "Hours!"

For D. Wragg was now shop-minding, and, as he called it, busy--that is to say, he was going over his stock, stirring up sluggish birds with a loose perch, administering pills composed of rue and b.u.t.ter to sickly bantams, which sat in a heap with feathers erect, and refusing to be smoothed down.

Here and there he would pin a newspaper before the cage of a newly-captured finch, fighting hard to escape by breaking its prison bars, beating its soft round bosom bare of feathers against the cruel wires, but with a fair prospect before it of finding relief for its restless spirit, if not for its body, and flight--where?

Then there were the "tarriers" to look after, some of which justified their name by not finding customers.

Here D. Wragg seemed quite at home, looking, as he stooped and tightened a chain or shortened a string, much like one of the breed Darwinised, and in a state of transition.

D. Wragg's ministrations were needed, for since the shop had been left by Janet to his care, there had been sundry vicious commotions amongst the dogs. One slight skirmish had ended in a spaniel having an ear made more fringe-like in character. Then the restless little animals had executed a _gavotte_ upon their hind-legs, maybe a waltz, ending in a general tangle, and an Old Bailey performance, caused by the twisting together of string and chain into a Gordian knot, which puzzled D. Wragg into using a knife for sword in its solution--the dogs the while lying panting, with protruding eyes, and a general aspect of being at the last gasp.

At last, though, the canine fancy were reduced to order, so far as was possible; for chained-up dogs are always moved by a restless spirit to reach something a few inches beyond their nose--canine examples, indeed, of human discontent; and if small and restless of breed, hang themselves upon an average about twelve times _per diem_--possibly without suicidal intent, though, from their miserable state, one cannot avoid suspicion.

D. Wragg had growled almost as much as his dogs in reducing them to order; but he turned at last to go over other portions of his stock, pinching protruded rats' tails to make them lively; thrusting a hand down the stocking nailed over the hole in the top of the sparrow-cage, and taking out one panting black-cravatted c.o.c.k-bird from amongst his scores of fellows, to find it naked of breast, with its heavy eyes half-closed, dying fast, and so escaping the sportive shot of the skilled marksman in some sweepstake--"so many birds each, shot from the trap."