Ten Thousand a-Year Volume I Part 12

_Saffron Hill, 15th July 18--._

"P. S.--Messrs. Q. G. and S. regret to hear that any unpleasantness has arisen (Gammon could hardly write for laughing) between Mr.

t.i.tmouse and his friend Mr. Hicklebagle, who, they a.s.sure him, manifested a very warm interest in behalf of Mr. T., and conducted himself with the greatest propriety on the occasion of his calling upon Messrs. Q. G. and S. They happened at that moment to be engaged in matters of the highest importance; which will, they trust, explain any appearance of abruptness they might have exhibited towards that gentleman. Perhaps Mr. t.i.tmouse will be so obliging as to intimate as much to Mr. Hickerbag."

There was an obvious reason for this polite allusion to Huckaback.

Gammon thought it very possible that that gentleman might be in Mr.

t.i.tmouse's confidence, and exercise a powerful influence over him hereafter; and that influence Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap might find it well worth their while to secure beforehand.

The moment that t.i.tmouse, with breathless haste, had read over this mollifying doc.u.ment, which being directed to his lodgings correctly, he obtained as soon as he had got home, after quitting Mr. Tag-rag, about ten o'clock, he hastened to his friend Huckaback. That gentleman (who seemed now virtually recognized by Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap as t.i.tmouse's confidant) shook his head ominously, exclaiming--"Blarny, blarny!" and a bitter sneer settled on his disagreeable features, till he had read down to the postscript; the perusal of which effected a sudden change in his feelings. He declared, with a great oath, that Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap were "perfect gentlemen," and would "do the right thing after all--t.i.tmouse might depend upon it;" an a.s.surance which greatly cheered t.i.tmouse, to whose keen discernment it never once occurred to refer Huckaback's altered tone to the right cause, viz. the lubricating quality of the postscript; and since t.i.tmouse did not allude to it, no more did Mr. Huckaback, although his own double misnomer stuck not a little in his throat. So effectual, indeed, had been that most skilful postscript upon the party at whom it had been aimed, that he exerted himself unceasingly to revive t.i.tmouse's confidence in Messrs.

Quirk, Gammon, and Snap; and so far succeeded, that t.i.tmouse returned to his lodgings at a late hour, a somewhat happier, if not a _wiser_ man than he had left them. By the time, however, that he had got into bed, having once more spelled over the note in question, he felt as despondent as ever, and thought that Huckaback had not known what he had been talking about. He also adverted to an _apparently_ careless allusion by Huckaback to the injuries which had been inflicted upon him by t.i.tmouse on the Wednesday night: and which, by the way, Huckaback determined it should be no fault of his if t.i.tmouse easily forgot! He hardly knew why--but he disliked this particularly.--Whom had he, however, in the world, but Huckaback? In company with him alone, t.i.tmouse felt that his pent-up feelings could discharge themselves.

Huckaback had certainly a wonderful knack of keeping up t.i.tmouse's spirits, whatever cause he fancied he might really have for depression.

In short, he longed for the Sunday morning, ushering in a day of rest and sympathy. t.i.tmouse would indeed then have to look back upon an agitating and miserable week, what with the dismal upsetting of his hopes in the manner I have described, and the tyrannical treatment which he had experienced at Tag-rag and Co.'s. His tormentor there, however, began at length, in some degree, to relax his _active_ exertions against t.i.tmouse, simply because of the exertion requisite for keeping them up.

He attributed the pallid cheek and depressed manner of t.i.tmouse entirely to the discipline which had been inflicted upon him at the shop; and was gratified at perceiving that all his other young men seemed, especially in his presence, to have imbibed his hatred of t.i.tmouse. What produced in Tag-rag this hatred of t.i.tmouse? Simply what had taken place on the Monday. Mr. Tag-rag's dignity and power had been doggedly set at nought by one of his shopmen, who had since refused to make the least submission, or offer any kind of apology. Such conduct struck at the root of subordination in his great establishment. Again, there is perhaps nothing in the world so calculated to enrage a petty and vulgar mind to the highest pitch of malignity, as the cool persevering defiance of an inferior, whom it strives to _despise_, while it is only _hating_, feeling at the same time such to be the case. Tag-rag now and then, when he looked towards t.i.tmouse, as he stood behind the counter, felt as though he could have killed the little ape. t.i.tmouse attempted once or twice, during the week, to obtain a situation elsewhere, but in vain.

He could expect no character from Tag-rag; and when the 10th of August should have arrived, what was to become of him? These were the kind of thoughts often pa.s.sing through his mind during the Sunday, which he and Huckaback spent together in unceasing conversation on the one absorbing event of the last week. t.i.tmouse, poor little puppy, had dressed himself with just as much care as usual; but as he was giving the finishing touches at his toilet, pumping up grievous sighs every half minute, the sum of his reflections might be stated in the miserable significance of a quaint saying of Poor Richard's--"How hard is it to make an empty sack stand upright!"

Although the sun shone as vividly and beautifully as on the preceding Sunday, to t.i.tmouse's saddened eye there seemed a sort of gloom everywhere. Up and down the Park he and Huckaback walked, towards the close of the afternoon; but t.i.tmouse had not so elastic a strut as before. He felt empty and sinking. Everybody seemed to know what a sad pretender he was: and the friends quitted the magic circle much earlier than had been usual with t.i.tmouse. What with the fatigue of a long day's saunter, the vexation of having had but a hasty, inferior, and unrefreshing meal, which did not deserve the name of dinner, and their unpleasant thoughts, both seemed depressed as they walked along the streets. At length they arrived at the open doors of a gloomy-looking building, into which two or three sad and prim-looking people were entering. After walking a few paces past the door--"Do you know, Huck,"

said t.i.tmouse, stopping, "I've often thought that--that--there's something in _Religion_."

"To be sure there is, for those that like it--who doubts it? It's all very well in its place, no doubt," replied Huckaback, with much surprise, which increased, as he felt himself being slowly swayed round towards the building in question. "But what of that?"

"Oh, nothing; but--hem! hem!" replied t.i.tmouse, sinking his voice to a whisper--"a touch of--religion--eh?--would not be so much amiss, just now! I feel--uncommon inclined that way, somehow, 'pon my soul!"

"Religion's all very well, t.i.tty, dear!--for them that has much to be thankful for; but devil take me! what have either you or me to be"----

"But, Huck--how do you know but we might _get_ something to be thankful for, by praying?--I've often heard of great things in that line--but--_do_ come in with me, Huck!"

Huckaback stood for a moment irresolute, twirling about his cane, and looking rather distastefully towards the dingy building. "It won't answer," said he, faintly. t.i.tmouse drew him nearer; but he suddenly started back.--"No! oh, 'tis only a meeting-house, t.i.t! Curse Dissenters, how I hate 'em! Isn't your precious governor one in that line? Give _me_ a regular-like, respectable church, with a proper steeple, and parson, and prayers, and an organ, and all that!"

t.i.tmouse secretly acknowledged the force of these observations; and the intelligent and piously disposed couple, with perhaps a just, but certainly a somewhat sudden regard for orthodoxy, were not long before they had found their way into a church where evening service was being performed. They ascended the gallery stair; and seeing no reason to be ashamed of being at church, down they both went, with loud clattering steps and a bold air, into the very central seat (which happened to be vacant) in the front of the gallery. t.i.tmouse paid a most exemplary attention to what was going on, kneeling, sitting, and standing with exact propriety, in the proper places; joining audibly in the responses, and keeping his eyes pretty steadily on the prayer-book, which he found lying there. He even rebuked Huckaback for whispering (during one of the most solemn parts of the service) that "there was an uncommon pretty gal in the next pew!"--He thought that the clergyman was a remarkable fine preacher, and said some things that he _must_ have meant for him, t.i.tmouse, in particular!

"Curse me, Hucky!" said he, heatedly, as soon as they had quitted the church, and were fairly in the street--"Curse me if--if--ever I felt so comfortable-like in my mind before, as I do now--see if I don't go again next Sunday!"

"Lord, t.i.t, you don't _really_ mean--eh?--it's deuced dull work!"

"Hang me if I don't, though! and if anything should come of it--if I _do_ but get the estate--(I wonder, now, where _Mr. Gammon_ goes to church. I should like to know!--I'd go there regularly)--But if I _do_ get the thing--you see if I don't"----

"Ah, I don't know; it's not much use praying for money, t.i.t; I've tried it myself, once or twice, but it didn't answer!"

"I'll take my oath you was staring at the gals all the while, Hucky!"

"Ah, t.i.tty!" exclaimed Huckaback, and winked his eye, and put the tip of his forefinger to the tip of his nose, and laughed.

t.i.tmouse continued in what he doubtless imagined to be a devout frame of mind, for several minutes after quitting the church. But close by the aforesaid church, the devil had a thriving little establishment, in the shape of a cigar-shop; in which a showily-dressed young Jewess sat behind the counter, right underneath a glaring gas-light--with a narrow stripe of greasy black velvet across her forehead, and long ringlets resting on her shoulders--bandying slang with two or three other such creatures as t.i.tmouse and Huckaback. Our friends entered and purchased a cigar a-piece, which they lit on the spot; and after each of them had exchanged an impudent wink with the Jewess, out they went, puffing away--all the remains of their piety! When they had come to the end of their cigars they parted, each speeding homeward. t.i.tmouse, on reaching his lodgings, sank into profound depression. He felt an awful conviction that his visit to the cigar-shop had entirely spoiled the effect of his previous attendance at the church; and that, if so disposed, (and it served him right,) he might now sit and whistle for his ten thousand a-year. Thoughts such as these drove him nearly distracted. If, indeed, he had foreseen having to go through such another week as the one just over, I think it not impossible that before the arrival of the ensuing Sunday, he might have afforded a little employment to that ancient and gloomy functionary, a coroner, and his jury. At that time, however, inquests of this sort were matter-of-fact and melancholy affairs enough; which I doubt not would have been rather a _dissuasive_ from suicide, in the estimation of one who might be supposed ambitious of the _eclat_ of a modern inquest; where, indeed, such strange antics are played by certain new performers as would suffice to revive the corpse, (if it were a corpse that had ever had a spark of sense or spirit in it,) and make it kick the coroner out of the room.[8] But to one of so high an ambition as t.i.ttlebat t.i.tmouse, how delightful would it not have been, to antic.i.p.ate becoming (what had been quite impracticable during life) the object of public attention after his death--by means of a flaming dissertation by the coroner on his own zeal and spirit--the nature and extent of his rights, powers, and duties;--when high doctors are brow-beaten, the laws set at defiance, and public decency plucked by the beard, and the torn and bleeding hearts of surviving relatives still further agonized by an exposure, all quivering under the recent stroke, to the gaping vulgar! Indeed, I sometimes think that the object of certain coroners, now-a-days, is twofold; first, public--to disgust people with suicide, by showing what horrid proceedings will take place over their carca.s.ses; and secondly, private--to get the means of studying anatomy by _post mortems_, which the said coroner never could procure in his own practice; which enables us to account for some things one has lately seen, viz. that if a man come to his death by means of a wagon crushing his legs, the coroner inst.i.tutes an exact examination of the structure of the _lungs_ and _heart_. I take it to be getting now into a rule--the propriety whereof, some people think, cannot be doubted--namely, that bodies ought now to be opened only to prove that they ought not to have been opened; an inquest must be held, in order to demonstrate that it need not have been held, except that certain fees thereby find their way into the pocket of the aforesaid coroner, which would otherwise not have done so. In short, such a coroner as I have in my eye may be compared to a great ape squatting on a corpse, furiously chattering and spitting at all around it; and I am glad that it hath at last had wit enough first to _shut the door_ before proceeding to its horrid tricks.

Touching, by the way, the _moral_ of suicide, it is a way which some have of _cutting_ the Gordian knot of the difficulties of life; which having been done, possibly the very first thing made manifest to the spirit, after taking its mad leap into the dark may be--how very easily the said knot might have been UNTIED; nay, that it was _on the very point_ of being untied, if the impatient spirit had stayed only a moment longer!

I said it was not _impossible_ that Mr. t.i.tmouse might, under the circ.u.mstances alluded to, have done the deed which has called forth the above natural and profound reflections; but, upon the whole, it is hardly _probable_; for he knew that by doing so he would (first) irreparably injure society, by depriving it of an enlightened and invaluable member; (secondly,) inflict great indignity on his precious body, of which, during life, he had always taken the most affectionate care, by consigning it to burial in a cross-road, at night-time, with a stake run through it,[9] and moreover peril the little soul that had just leaped out of it, by not having any burial-service said over his aforesaid remains; and (lastly) lose all chance of enjoying Ten Thousand a-Year--at least upon the earth. I own I was a little startled (as I dare say was the pensive reader) at a pa.s.sage of mournful significance in Mr. t.i.tmouse's last letter to Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap, viz.--"How full of trouble I am, _often thinking of death_, which is the end of everything;" but on carefully considering the context, I am disposed to think that the whole was only an astute device of t.i.tmouse's, either to rouse the fears, or stimulate the feelings, or excite the hopes of the three arbiters of his destiny to whom it was addressed. Mr. Gammon, he thought, might be thereby moved to pity; while Mr. Quirk would probably be operated upon by fears, lest the sad contingency pointed at might deprive the house of one who would richly repay their exertions; and by hopes of indefinite advantage, if they could by any means prevent its happening. That these gentlemen really _did_ keenly scrutinize, and carefully weigh every expression in that letter, ridiculous as it was, and contemptible as, I fear, it showed its writer to be, is certain; but it did not occur to them to compare with it the spirit, at least, and intention of their own answer to it. Did the latter doc.u.ment contain less cunning and insincerity, because it was couched in somewhat superior phraseology? They could conceal their selfish and over-reaching designs, while poor t.i.tmouse exposed all his little mean-mindedness and hypocrisy, simply because he had not learned how to conceal it effectually. 'Twas indeed a battle for the very same object, but between unequal combatants. Each was trying to _take in_ the other. If Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap despised and loathed the man to whom they exhibited such anxious courtesy, t.i.tmouse hated and feared those whom his interests compelled him for a while to conciliate. Was there, in fact, a pin to choose between them--except perhaps that t.i.tmouse was, in a manner, excused by his necessities? But, in the mean while--to proceed--his circ.u.mstances were becoming utterly desperate. He continued to endure great suffering at Mr. Tag-rag's during the day--the constant b.u.t.t of the ridicule and insult of his amiable companions, and the victim of his employer's vile and vulgar spirit of hatred and oppression. His spirit, (such as it was,) in short, was very nearly broken. Though he seized every opportunity that offered, to inquire for another situation, he was unsuccessful; for all whom he applied to, spoke of the _strict character_ they should require, "before taking a new hand into their establishment." His occupation at nights, after quitting the shop, was twofold only--either to call upon Huckaback, (whose sympathy, however, he was exhausting rapidly,) or solace his feelings by walking down to Saffron Hill, and lingering about the closed office of Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap--there was a kind of gratification even in that! He once or twice felt fl.u.s.tered even on catching a glimpse of the old housekeeper returning home with a pint of porter in her hand. How he would have rejoiced to get into her good graces, and accompany her into even the kitchen--when he would be on the premises, at least, and conversing with one of the establishment, of those who he believed could, with a stroke of their pens, turn this wilderness of a world into a paradise for him! But he dared not make any overtures in that quarter, for fear of their getting to the notice of the dreaded Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap.

At length, no more than three or four shillings stood between him and utter dest.i.tution; and the only person in the world to whom he could apply for even the most trivial a.s.sistance, was Huckaback--whom, however, he knew to be really little better off than himself; and whom, moreover, he felt to be treating him more and more coldly, as the week wore on, without his hearing of any the least tidings from Saffron Hill.

Huckaback evidently felt now scarcely any interest or pleasure in the visits of his melancholy friend, and was plainly disinclined to talk about his affairs. At length he quite turned up his nose with disgust, whenever t.i.tmouse took out the well-worn note of Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap, (which was almost dropping in pieces with being constantly carried about in his pocket, taken in and out, and folded and unfolded,) for the purpose of conning over its contents, as if there might yet linger in it some hitherto undiscovered source of consolation. Poor t.i.tmouse, therefore, looked at it on every such occasion with as eager and vivid an interest as ever; but it was glanced at by Huckaback with a half-averted eye, and a cold drawling, yawning "Ya--a--as--I see--I--dare--say!" While his impressions of t.i.tmouse's bright prospects were thus being rapidly effaced, his smarting recollections of the drubbing he had received became more distinct and frequent, his feelings of resentment more lively, nor the less so, because the expression of them had been stifled, (while he had considered the star of t.i.tmouse to be in the ascendant,) till the time for setting them into motion and action, had gone by. In fact, the presence of t.i.tmouse, suggesting such thoughts and recollections, became intolerable to Huckaback; and t.i.tmouse's perceptions (dull as they naturally were, but a little quickened by recent suffering) gave him more and more distinct notice of this circ.u.mstance, at the precise time when he meditated applying for the loan of a few shillings. These feelings made him as humble towards Huckaback, and as tolerant of his increasing rudeness and ill-humor, as he felt abject towards Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap; for, unless he could succeed in wringing some trifling loan from Huckaback, (if he really had it in his power to advance him _anything_,) t.i.tmouse really could not conjecture what was to become of him. Various faint but unadroit hints and feelers of his had been thrown away upon Huckaback, who did not, or would not, comprehend them. At length, however, a sudden and fearful pressure compelled poor t.i.tmouse to speak out. Gripe, the collector, called one morning for the poor's rates due from Mrs.

Squallop, and drained her of almost every penny of ready money which she had by her. This threw the good woman upon her resources to replenish her empty pocket--and down she came upon t.i.tmouse--or rather, up she went to him; for his heart sank within him, one night on his return from the shop, having only just taken off his hat and lit his candle, as he heard the fat old termagant's well-known heavy step ascending the stairs, and approaching nearer and nearer to his door. Her loud imperative single knock vibrated through his very heart.

"Oh, Mrs. Squallop! How d'ye do, Mrs. Squallop?" commenced t.i.tmouse, faintly, when he had opened the door; "Won't you take a chair?" with trepidation offering to the panting dame almost the only chair he had.

"No--I a'n't come to stay, Mr. t.i.tmouse, because, d'ye see, in coorse you've got a pound, _at least_, ready for me, as you promised long ago--and never more welcome; there's old Gripe been here to-day, and had his hodious rates--(drat the poor, say I! them as can't work should starve!--rates is a robbery!)--but howsomdever he's cleaned _me_ out to-day; so, in coorse, I come up to _you_. Got it, Mr. t.i.tmouse?"

"I--I--I--'pon my life, Mrs. Squallop, I'm uncommon sorry"----

"Oh, bother your sorrow, Mr. t.i.tmouse!--out with the needful, for I can't stop palavering here."

"I--I can't, so help me----!" gasped t.i.tmouse, with the calmness of desperation.

"You can't! And marry, sir, why not, may I make bold to ask?" inquired Mrs. Squallop, after a moment's pause, striving to choke down her rage.

"P'r'aps you can get blood out of a stone, Mrs. Squallop; it's what _I_ can't," replied t.i.tmouse, striving to screw his courage up to the sticking place, to encounter one who was plainly bent upon mischief.

"I've got two shillings--there they are," throwing them on the table; "and cuss me if I've another rap in the world; there, ma'am! take 'em, do; and drive me desperate!"

"You're a liar, then, that's flat!" exclaimed Mrs. Squallop, slapping her hand upon the table, with a violence that made the candle quiver on it, and almost fall down. "_You_ have the _himperance_," said she, sticking her arms akimbo, and commencing the address she had been preparing in her own mind ever since Mr. Gripe had quitted her house, "to stand there and tell me you've got nothing in the world but them _two shillings_! Heugh! Out on you, you oudacious fellow!--you jack-a-dandy! _You_ tell me you haven't got more than them two shillings, and yet turns out every Sunday morning of your life like a lord, with your pins, and your rings, and your chains, and your fine coat, and your gloves, and your spurs, and your dandy cane--ough! you whipper-snapper! You're a cheat--you're a swindler, jack-a-dandy! You're the contempt of the whole court, you are--you jack-a-dandy! You've got all my rent on your back, and so you've had every Sunday for three months, you cheat!--you low fellow!--you ungrateful chap! You're a-robbing the widow and fatherless! Look at me, and my six fatherless children down there, you good-for-nothing, nasty, proud puppy!--eugh! it makes me sick to see you. _You_ dress yourself out like my lord mayor!

You've bought a gold chain with my rent, you rascally cheat! _You_ dress yourself out?--Ha, ha!--you're a nasty, mean-looking, humpty-dumpty, carroty-headed"----

"You'd better not say _that_ again, Mrs. Squallop," quoth t.i.tmouse, with a fierce glance.

"Not say it again!--ha, ha! Hoighty-toighty, carroty-haired jack-a-dandy!--Why, you hop-o-my-thumb! d'ye think I won't say whatever I choose, and in my own house, and to a man that can't pay his rent?

You're a t.i.tmouse by name and by nature; there a'n't a c.o.c.kroach crawling in our kitchen that a'n't more harmless than you!--You're a himperant cheat, and dandy, and knave, and a liar, and a red-haired rascal--and _that_ in your teeth! (snapping her fingers.) Ough! Your name stinks in the court. You're a-taking of everybody in as will trust you to a penny's amount. There's poor old c.o.x, the tailor, with a sick wife and children, whom you've cheated this many months, all of his not having sperrit to summons you! But _I'll_ set him upon you; you see if I don't--and I'll have my own, too, or I wouldn't give _that_ for the laws!" shouted Mrs. Squallop, again furiously snapping her fingers in his face; and then pausing for breath after her eloquent invective.

"Now, what _is_ the use," said t.i.tmouse, gently, being completely cowed--"now, what good _can_ it do to go on in this way, Mrs. Squallop?"

"Missus me no missus, Mr. t.i.tmouse, but pay me my rent, you jack-a-dandy! You've got my rent on your back, and on your little finger; and I'll have it off you before I've done with you, I warrant you. I'm your landlady, and I'll sell you up; I'll have old Thumbscrew here the first thing in the morning, and distrain everything, and you, too, you jackdaw, if any one would buy you, which they won't! I'll have my rent at last: I've been too easy with you, you ungrateful chap; for, mark, even Gripe this morning says, 'Haven't you a gentleman lodger up above? get him to pay you your own,' says he; and so I will. I'm sick of all this, and I'll have my rights! Here's my son, Jem, a far better-looking chap than you, though he _hasn't_ got hair like a sandy mop all under his chin, and he's obligated for to work from one week's end to another, in a paper cap and fustian jacket; and you--you painted jackanapes! But now I have got you, and I'll turn you inside out, though I know there's nothing in you! But I'll try to get at your fine coats, and spurs, and trousers, your chains and pins, and make something of them before I've done with you, you jack-a-dandy!"--and the virago shook her fist at him, looking as though she had not yet uttered even half that was in her heart towards him.

[Alas, alas, unhappy t.i.tmouse, much-enduring son of sorrow! I perceive that you now feel the sharpness of an angry female tongue; and indeed to me, not in the least approving of the many coa.r.s.e and heart-splitting expressions which she uses, it seems, nevertheless, that she hath not gone exceeding far off the mark in much that she hath said; for, in truth, in your conduct there is not a little that to me, piteously inclined towards you as I am, yet appeareth obnoxious to the edge of this woman's reproaches. But think not, O bewildered and not-with-sufficient-distinctness-discerning-the-nature-of-things t.i.tmouse! that she hath only a sharp and bitter tongue. In this woman behold a mother, and it may be that she will soften before you, who have plainly, as I hear, neither father nor mother. Oh me!]

Poor t.i.tmouse trembled violently; his lips quivered; and the long pent-up tears forced their way at length over his eyelids, and fell fast down his cheeks.

"Ah, you may well cry!--you may! But it's too late!--it's my turn to cry now! Don't you think that I feel for my own flesh and blood, which is my six children? And isn't what's mine theirs? And aren't you keeping the fatherless out of their own? It's too bad of you--it is! and you know it is," continued Mrs. Squallop, vehemently.

"_They've_ got a mother--a kind--good--mother--to take--care of them,"

sobbed t.i.tmouse; "but there's been no one in the--the--world that cares a straw for _me_--this twenty--years!" He fairly wept aloud.

"Well, then, more's the pity for _you_. If you had, they wouldn't have let you make such a puppy of yourself--and at your landlady's expense, too. You know you're a fool," said Mrs. Squallop, dropping her voice a little; for she was a MOTHER, after all, and she knew that what poor t.i.tmouse had just stated was quite true. She tried hard to feed the fire of her wrath, by forcing into her thoughts every aggravating topic against t.i.tmouse that she could think of; but it became every moment harder and harder to do so, for she was consciously softening rapidly towards the weeping and miserable little object, on whom she had been heaping such violent and bitter abuse. He was a great fool, to be sure--he was very fond of fine clothes--- he knew no better--he had, however, paid his rent well enough till lately--he was a very quiet, well-disposed lodger, for all _she_ had known--he had given her youngest, child a pear not long ago. Really, thought Mrs. Squallop, I may have gone a _leetle_ too far.

"Come--it a'n't no use crying in this way," she began in an altered tone. "It won't put money into your pocket, nor my rent into mine. You know you've wronged me, and I _must_ be paid," she added, but in a still lower tone. She tried to cough away a certain rising disagreeable sensation about her throat; for t.i.tmouse, having turned his back to hide the extent of his emotions, seemed half-choked with suppressed sobs.

"So you won't speak a word--not a word--to the woman you've injured so much?" inquired Mrs. Squallop, trying to a.s.sume a harsh tone; but her eyes were a little obstructed with tears.

"I--I--_can't_ speak," sobbed t.i.tmouse--"I--I feel ready to drop into a cold early grave!--everybody hates me"--here he paused; and for some moments neither of them spoke. "I've been kept on my legs the whole day about the town by Mr. Tag-rag, and had no dinner. I--I--wish I was _dead_! I do!--you may take all I have--here it is," continued t.i.tmouse, with his foot pushing towards Mrs. Squallop the old hair trunk that contained all his little finery. "I sha'n't want them much longer, for I'm turned out of my situation."

This was too much for Mrs. Squallop, and she was obliged to wipe her full eyes with the corner of her ap.r.o.n, without saying a word. Her heart smote her for the misery she had inflicted on one who seemed quite broken down. Pity suddenly flew, fluttering his wings--soft dove!--into her heart, and put to flight in an instant all her enraged feelings.

"Come, Mr. t.i.tmouse," said she, in quite an altered tone, "never mind _me_; I'm a plain-spoken woman enough, I dare say--and often say more than I mean--for I know I a'n't over particular when my blood's up--but--lord!--I--I wouldn't hurt a hair of your head, poor chap!--for all I've said--no, not for double the rent you owe me. Come! don't go on so, Mr. t.i.tmouse--what's the use?--it's all quite--over--I'm _so_ sorry--Lud! if I had _really_ thought"--she almost sobbed--"you'd been so--so--why, I'd have waited till to-morrow night before I'd said a word. But, Mr. t.i.tmouse, since you haven't had any dinner, won't you have a mouthful of something--a bit of bread and cheese I--I'll soon fetch you up a bit, and a drop of beer--we've just had it in for our suppers."