A Little World Part 20

D. Wragg did not approve of waste, so taking the half-dead bird to one corner, he opened the cage, wherein, fixed and glaring with its yellow eye, sat a kestrel, which sluggishly dropped from its perch, and, with a good deal of unnecessary beating of its pointed wings, seized the hapless chirrupper in one quartette of yellow claws, returned to its seat, and then and there proceeded to strip the sparrow, sending a cloud of light downy feathers into the cage of its neighbour, a staring barn-owl, which had opened its eyes for a few minutes, but only to blink a while before subsiding into what appeared to be a ball of feathers. A pair of bullfinches were then roused, by a finger drawn rapidly across the cage bars--the effect being decidedly startling, while the next object upon which the dealer's eye fell was a disreputable-looking, ragged-coated, grey parrot, busily engaged in picking off its feathers, as if, out of spite for its imprisonment, it wished to render itself as unsightly and unsaleable as possible.

"You're a beauty, you are!" growled D. Wragg, poking at it viciously with the perch; but, nothing daunted, the bird seized the end of the a.s.sailing weapon with its strong hooked beak, and held on fiercely, screaming a loud defiance the while.

With a dexterous jerk, the stick was withdrawn--a strategical movement evidently taken by the bird as a token of defeat; for it stood upon one leg, derisively danced its head up and down, and then loudly cried out--"Quack--quack--quack!" an accomplishment learned of a couple of London-white Aylesbury ducks, located in a small green dog-kennel, whose door was formed of an old half-worn fire-guard.

Apparently satisfied, D. Wragg withdrew to a corner which he specially affected, and turned his back to door and window while he drew forth his dirty pocket-book and carefully examined the two crisp bank-notes, replaced them, and b.u.t.toned them up in his breastpocket, as he muttered, softly--

"More yet, my lad, more yet! I shouldn't be a bit surprised if you turned out a mint to some on us afore we've done with you. And why not?" he muttered again, as he glanced uneasily over his shoulder.

"What's the good o' money to such as him. If he likes to come on the chance of seeing her here, 'taint my doing, is it? I wish she was here always, I do."

D. Wragg frowned as he proceeded to refresh himself with another pipe, and a renewed spelling over of his paper. Then he c.o.c.ked his head on one side, magpie fashion, and listened, for a light step was heard, and the closing of a door, and the next minute, without waiting for her friend to descend, Patty was up-stairs, where Janet was watching her goldfish.

The latter turned as soon as she saw Patty, and seeming to read trouble in her face, she wound her arm round the little waist and drew her close.

"I came down to the shop," said Janet; "but you were writing something for him, so I took advantage of it and came back. But don't do it, Patty; I don't like you to go in there."

Patty did not answer, but stood looking, dreamy and thoughtful.

"Are you keeping something from me?" said Janet, pettishly.

"No--no--no," said Patty, starting, and smiling once more; "I was only dull without you. Now, let's talk. Some one came this morning--two some ones--they were there when you saw me writing--they spoke to me, and--and--and--"

Patty's face reddened, and then grew worn and troubled as she spoke.

"I did not like it," she continued; "and--and--there! what stuff I am talking! We shall have no French to-day. Let's go down, and when Monsieur comes in, get him to paint a partridge's beak and legs, and I'll help you to do it. There! pray, come down."

Janet had her arm still round Patty's waist, and for a few moments she stood gazing up at her in a strange thoughtful way. She did not speak, though; but keeping close to her visitor, walked with her to the door, muttering softly, "Patty has secrets--Patty has secrets; and I guess what it means."

Hand-in-hand they began to descend the stairs, but only for Patty to turn back and lead the deformed girl into the room.

"What is it? what ails you?" said Janet, gazing wonderingly at her.

"Are you ill? Do you feel faint?"

"No--no; it is nothing; I--I thought--I thought I had seen one of them before."

"One of them!"

"Yes, one of the customers; but it was nothing--nothing," she said, sadly; "I must have dreamed it. Janet, do you believe in fancying things?"

"Fancying things! What are you talking about?"

"In feeling that things are to take place--in being as if something whispered to you that there was to be trouble by and by, and misery, and heartaches--that the hawk was coming to seize a miserable little weak pigeon, and tear, and tear it till its poor heart was bleeding."

"No; stuff!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Janet.

"I feel so," said Patty, slowly, "and sometimes I believe it. O Janet!

if one could be rich and nice, and live where people would not be ashamed to see you, and--Ah! I'd give anything--anything to be rich and a lady. But there," she cried, impetuously, "do come down."

"Riddles--talking in riddles; like people speak in their sleep," said Janet, as she wreathed her long arm round Patty. "Perhaps you ought not to come and see me here, for it is horrible; but I am used to it, and I could not live without you now. They don't like you to come?"

"No," said Patty; "but they think it would be unkind for me to stay away. They like you, and my father is fond of Monsieur Canau, and loves the musical evenings. You ought to come and live near us."

"In fashionable Clerkenwell, eh?" said Janet, laughing. "No; he will not leave here--we are used to it, and we are poor, Patty," she added, with a sigh.

"Lean on me," said Patty, lightly; "and don't let's be miserable;" and they now began to descend the stairs; but only to be met by D. Wragg stumping and jerking up to meet them.

As the dealer came up, he gazed earnestly for a moment at Patty, and there was a hesitating air about him; but he seemed to chase it away, as, with an effort, he exclaimed--

"Here don't you make no--Here, Miss Pellet, my dear, you're wanted."

"Wanted!" said Patty, instinctively shrinking back, while Janet's dark fierce eyes gazed from one to the other.

"Yes; wanted--in the shop," said D. Wragg. "You don't mind coming, do you? Don't stop her, Janet; it may mean money, you know."

"But who--who wants me?" faltered Patty, one of whose hands tightly pressed the long restraining bony fingers of Janet--"who wants me?"

"It's one o' them swells as come about the dorg!"

Volume 1, Chapter XXVIII.

THE ALARM QUELLED.

By nine o'clock in the morning of the day succeeding that of his dinner-party at Norwood, Mr Richard Pellet, eager and anxious, was in Borton Street. He would have been there hours before, but Mrs Richard Pellet had been suffering from over-excitement, which was her way of describing a sharp fit of indigestion, brought on by over-indulgence in the good things of the table. So Mrs Richard Pellet had been faint and hysterical, and violently sick and prostrated. She had consumed nearly a half-bottle of the best Cognac; the servants had been, like their master, up nearly all night; and the consequence was, that about five o'clock, Mr Richard Pellet had lain down for an hour, which in spite of his anxiety extended itself to three. He awoke under the impression that he had been asleep five minutes, when he smoothed himself, hurried to the train, took a cab, and arrived at Borton Street two hours later than he had intended.

If he could have made sure that, now she was gone, he would see no more of Ellen Herrisey, he would have ceased from troubling himself in the matter; but, as he would have expressed himself, in his position the dread of any exposure was not to be borne.

It would never have done for his name--the name of Mr Richard Pellet-- known everywhere in the city; down, too, in so many lists amongst the great philanthropists of the day, to be brought forward in such a connection, and then to be dragged through the mud and laughed at by those who had grudged his rise. Why! his name was held in honour by all the great religious societies, whose secretaries invariably sent him reports of their proceedings, and they did no more for what Richard called the "n.o.bs." So by nine the next morning he was at Borton Street, hot, angry, undecided, and uncomfortable.

No doubt, he told himself, by putting the police upon her track, he would be able to find her; but such a proceeding would involve confidences, and partake to some extent of the nature of an exposure, which he could not afford. No, it must be done quietly; so, with the intention of having it done quietly, he gave a sneaky, diffident, hang-dog rap at the door, as he glanced up and down the street to see if he was observed--such a knock as might be given by a gipsy-looking woman, with her wean slung at her back, and a bundle of clothes-pegs for sale in her hand.

But Richard Pellet's humble no-notice-attracting knock had as little effect inside the house as in the street at large, and, in spite of the giver's fidgety manner and uneasy glances up and down, no one answered the summons.

There was no help for it; so the early caller gave another rap at the door--a single rap; for, from the effects of an ordinary double knock, he saw in imagination a score of heads at the open doors and windows of the densely-populated street, gazing at and looking down upon him as the doctor and ordainer of strait-waistcoats for the woman said to be insane, and kept so closely for years past in a room at Number 804.

Quite five minutes now elapsed without his venturing to knock again, while he pretended to be absorbed in the contents of the newspaper he held in his hand. But at last his position grew painful, for a small boy bearing a big child came and sat himself upon the step, and looked at him; then two more children came and cricked their necks as they gazed up in his face, and a woman across the way also lent her attention.

Richard Pellet was turning all over into a state of the most profuse perspiration, and had his hand once more raised to the knocker, when he heard a door open, apparently beneath his feet, and he started as a shrill voice from the area shouted, "What is it?"

The important city man's perspiration from being cold now grew to be hot; but he felt that it was no time for being indignant, as he looked down from his height, moral and literal, upon a little old-faced wrinkle-browed girl-of-all-work, almost a child, who was rubbing her cheek with a match-box.

"Missus ain't down yet," she replied, in answer to Richard's interrogations.

"I'll come in then and wait," said the city man, peering down through the railings; but the girl shook her head.

"She said I wasn't to let no one in. There's so many tramps and beggars about."

"There!" exclaimed Richard, impatiently, as he threw down a card. "Take that up to her, and I'll wait here; or, no--give me that card back," he said, for the thought struck him that it was impossible to say where that card might go.

The girl tried to throw the card back, and succeeded in projecting it, twice over, a couple of feet, to come fluttering down again, when she caught it, and stood shaving and sc.r.a.ping the dirt off her cheek with its edge, evidently finding it more grateful than the sandpaper of the match-box.