The Three Clerks Part 44

Linda and Katie had been so hurried off, that they had only been just able to shake hands with Harry and Charley. There is, however, an old proverb, that though one man may lead a horse to water, a thousand cannot make him drink. It was easy to send Katie to bed, but very difficult to prevent her talking when she was there.

'Oh, Linda,' she said, 'what can I do for him?'

'Do for him?' said Linda; 'I don't know that you can do anything for him. I don't suppose he wants you to do anything.' Linda still looked on her sister as a child; but Katie was beginning to put away childish things.

'Couldn't I make something for him, Linda--something for him to keep as a present, you know? I would work so hard to get it done.'

'Work a pair of slippers, as Crinoline did,' said Linda.

Katie was brushing her hair at the moment, and then she sat still with the brush in her hand, thinking. 'No,' said she, after a while, 'not a pair of slippers--I shouldn't like a pair of slippers.'

'Why not?' said Linda.

'Oh--I don't know--but I shouldn't.' Katie had said that Crinoline was working slippers for Maca.s.sar because she was in love with him; and having said so, she could not now work slippers for Charley. Poor Katie! she was no longer a child when she thought thus.

'Then make him a purse,' said Linda.

'A purse is such a little thing.'

'Then work him the cover for a sofa, like what mamma and I are doing for Gertrude.'

'But he hasn't got a house,' said Katie.

'He'll have a house by the time you've done the sofa, and a wife to sit on it too.'

'Oh, Linda, you are so ill-natured.'

'Why, child, what do you want me to say? If you were to give him one of those grand long tobacco pipes they have in the shop windows, that's what he'd like the best; or something of that sort. I don't think he cares much for girls' presents, such as purses and slippers.'

'Doesn't he?' said Katie, mournfully.

'No; not a bit. You know he's such a rake.'

'Oh! Linda; I don't think he's so very bad, indeed I don't; and mamma doesn't think so; and you know Harry said on Easter Sunday that he was much better than he used to be.'

'I know Harry is very good-natured to him.'

'And isn't Charley just as good-natured to Harry? I am quite sure he is. Harry has only to ask the least thing, and Charley always does it. Do you remember how Charley went up to town for him the Sunday before last?'

'And so he ought,' said Linda. 'He ought to do whatever Harry tells him.'

'Well, Linda, I don't know why he ought,' said Katie. 'They are not brothers, you know, nor yet even cousins.'

'But Harry is very--so very--so very superior, you know,' said Linda.

'I don't know any such thing,' said Katie.

'Oh! Katie, don't you know that Charley is such a rake?'

'But rakes are just the people who don't do whatever they are told; so that's no reason. And I am quite sure that Charley is much the cleverer.'

'And I am quite sure he is not--nor half so clever; nor nearly so well educated. Why, don't you know the navvies are the most ignorant young men in London? Charley says so himself.'

'That's his fun,' said Katie: 'besides, he always makes little of himself. I am quite sure Harry could never have made all that about Maca.s.sar and Crinoline out of his own head.'

'No! because he doesn't think of such nonsensical things. I declare, Miss Katie, I think you are in love with Master Charley.'

Katie, who was still sitting at the dressing-table, blushed up to her forehead; and at the same time her eyes were suffused with tears. But there was no one to see either of those tell-tale symptoms, for Linda was in bed.

'I know he saved my life,' said Katie, as soon as she could trust herself to speak without betraying her emotion--'I know he jumped into the river after me, and very, very nearly drowned himself; and I don't think any other man in the world would have done so much for me besides him.'

'Oh, Katie! Harry would in a moment.'

'Not for me; perhaps he might for you--though I'm not quite sure that he would.' It was thus that Katie took her revenge on her sister.

'I'm quite sure he would for anybody, even for Sally.' Sally was an a.s.sistant in the back kitchen. 'But I don't mean to say, Katie, that you shouldn't feel grateful to Charley; of course you should.'

'And so I do,' said Katie, now bursting out into tears, overdone by her emotion and fatigue; 'and so I do--and I do love him, and will love him, if he's ever so much a rake! But you know, Linda, that is very different from being in love; and it was very ill-natured of you to say so, very.'

Linda was out of bed in a trice, and sitting with her arm round her sister's neck.

'Why, you darling little foolish child, you! I was only quizzing,' said she. 'Don't you know that I love Charley too?'

'But you shouldn't quiz about such a thing as that. If you'd fallen into the river, and Harry had pulled you out, then you'd know what I mean; but I'm not at all sure that he could have done it.'

Katie's perverse wickedness on this point was very nearly giving rise to another contest between the sisters. Linda's common sense, however, prevailed, and giving up the point of Harry's prowess, she succeeded at last in getting Katie into bed. 'You know mamma will be so angry if she hears us,' said Linda, 'and I am sure you will be ill to-morrow.'

'I don't care a bit about being ill to-tomorrow; and yet I do too,' she added, after a pause, 'for it's Sunday. It would be so stupid not to be able to go out to-morrow.'

'Well, then, try to go to sleep at once'--and Linda carefully tucked the clothes around her sister.

'I think it shall be a purse,' said Katie.

'A purse will certainly be the best; that is, if you don't like the slippers,' and Linda rolled herself up comfortably in the bed.

'No--I don't like the slippers at all. It shall be a purse. I can do that the quickest, you know. It's so stupid to give a thing when everything about it is forgotten, isn't it?'

'Very stupid,' said Linda, nearly asleep.

'And when it's worn out I can make another, can't I?'

'H'm'm'm,' said Linda, quite asleep.

And then Katie went asleep also, in her sister's arms.

Early in the morning--that is to say, not very early, perhaps between seven and eight--Mrs. Woodward came into their room, and having inspected her charges, desired that Katie should not get up for morning church, but lie in bed till the middle of the day.

'Oh, mamma, it will be so stupid not going to church after tumbling into the river; people will say that all my clothes are wet.'