Читать книгу Hard Cash - Charles Reade Reade - Страница 22

“For two physicians, like a pair of oars,

Conduck him faster to the Styjjin shores.” *

* Garth.

Julia looked him in the face, and coldly ignored this perversion of Mrs. Maxley's meaning; and Mrs. Dodd returned pertinaciously to the previous topic. “Mr. Alfred Hardie interests me; he was good to Edward. I am curious to know why you call him a puppy?”

“Only because he is one, ma'am. And that is no reason at all with 'the Six.' He is a juveneel pidant and a puppy, and contradicts ivery new truth, bekase it isn't in Aristotle and th' Eton Grammar; and he's such a chatterbox, ye can't get in a word idgeways; and he and his sister—that's my virgin martyr—are a farce. He keeps sneerin' at her relijjin, and that puts her in such a rage, she threatens 't' intercede for him at the throne.”

“Jargon,” sighed Mrs. Dodd, and just shrugged her lovely shoulders. “We breathe it—we float in an atmosphere of it. My love?” And she floated out of the room, and Julia floated after.

Sampson sat meditating on the gullibility of man in matters medical. This favourite speculation detained him late, and almost his first word on entering the drawing-room was, “Good night, little girl.”

Julia coloured at this broad hint, drew herself up, and lighted a bedcandle. She went to Mrs. Dodd, kissed her, and whispered in her ear, “I hate him!” and, as she retired, her whole elegant person launched ladylike defiance; under which brave exterior no little uneasiness was hidden. “Oh, what will become of me!” thought she, “if he has gone and told him about Henley?”

“Let's see the prescriptions, ma'am,” said Dr. Sampson.

Delighted at this concession, Mrs. Dodd took them out of her desk and spread them earnestly. He ran his eye over them, and pointed out that the mucous-membrane man and the nerve man had prescribed the same medicine, on irreconcilable grounds; and a medicine, moreover, whose effect on the nerves was nil, and on the mucous membrane was not to soothe it, but plough it and harrow it; “and did not that open her eyes?” He then reminded her that all these doctors in consultation would have contrived to agree. “But you,” said he, “have baffled the collusive hoax by which Dox arrived at a sham uniformity—honest uniformity can never exist till scientific principles obtain. Listme! To begin, is the pashint in love?”

The doctor put this query in just the same tone in which they inquire “Any expectoration?” But Mrs. Dodd, in reply, was less dry and business-like. She started and looked aghast. This possibility had once, for a moment, occurred to her, but only to be rejected, the evidence being all against it.

“In love?” said she. “That child, and I not know it!”

He said he had never supposed that. “But I thought I'd just ask ye; for she has no bodily ailment, and the passions are all counterfeit diseases; they are connected, like all diseases, with cerebral instability, have their hearts and chills like all diseases, and their paroxysms and remissions like all diseases. Nlistme! You have detected the signs of a slight cerebral instability; I have ascertained th' absence of all physical cause: then why make this healthy pashint's buddy a test-tube for poisons? Sovereign drugs (I deal with no other, I leave the nullities to the noodles) are either counterpoisons or poisons, and here there is nothing to counterpoison at prisent. So I'm for caushin, and working on the safe side th' hidge, till we are less in the dark. Mind ye, young women at her age are kittle cattle; they have gusts o' this, and gusts o' that, th' unreasonable imps. D'ye see these two pieces pasteboard? They are tickets for a ball,

In Barkton town-hall.”

“Yes, of course I see them,” said Mrs. Dodd dolefully.

“Well, I prescribe 'em. And when they have been taken,

And the pashint well shaken,

perhaps we shall see whether we are on the right system: and if so, we'll dose her with youthful society in a more irrashinal form; conversaziones, cookeyshines, et citera. And if we find ourselves on the wrong tack why then we'll hark back.

Stick blindly to 'a course,' the Dockers cry.

But it does me harm: Then 'twill do good by-and-bye. Where lairned ye that, Echoes of Echoes, say! The killer ploughs 'a course,' the healer 'feels his way.'”

So mysterious are the operations of the human mind, that, when we have exploded in verse tuneful as the above, we lapse into triumph instead of penitence. Not that doggrel meets with reverence here below—the statues to it are few, and not in marble, but in the material itself—But then an Impromptu! A moment ago our Posy was not: and now is; with the speed, if not the brilliancy, of lightning, we have added a handful to the intellectual dust-heap of an oppressed nation. From this bad eminence Sampson then looked down complacently, and saw Mrs. Dodd's face as long as his arm. She was one that held current opinions; and the world does not believe Poetry can sing the Practical. Verse and useful knowledge pass for incompatibles; and, though Doggrel is not Poetry, yet it has a lumbering proclivity that way, and so forfeits the confidence of grave sensible people. This versification, and this impalpable and unprecedented prescription she had waited for so long, seemed all of a piece to poor mamma: wild, unpractical, and—“oh, horror! horror!”—eccentric.

Sampson read her sorrowful face after his fashion. “Oh, I see, ma'am,” cried he. “Cure is not welcome unless it comes in the form consecrated by cinturies of slaughter. Well, then, give me a sheet.” He took the paper and rent it asunder, and wrote this on the larger fragment:

Rx Die Mercur. circa x. hor: vespert:

eat in musca ad Aulam oppid:

Saltet cum xiii canicul:

praesertim meo. Dom: reddita,

6 hora matutin: dormiat at prand:

Repetat stultit: pro re nata.

He handed this with a sort of spiteful twinkle to Mrs. Dodd, and her countenance lightened again. Her sex will generally compound with whoever can give as well as take. Now she had extracted a real, grave prescription, she acquiesced in the ball, though not a county one; “to satisfy your whim, my good, kind friend, to whom I owe so much.”

Sampson called on his way back to town, and, in course of conversation, praised nature for her beautiful instincts, one of which, he said, had inspired Miss Julee, at a credulous age, not to swallow “the didly drastics of the tinkering dox.”

Mrs. Dodd smiled, and requested permission to contradict him; her daughter had taken the several prescriptions.

Sampson inquired brusquely if she took him for a fool.

She replied calmly: “No; for a very clever, but rather opinionated personage.

“Opinionated? So is ivery man who has grounnds for his opinin. D'ye think, because Dockers Short, an' Bist, an' Kinyon, an' Cuckoo, an' Jackdaw, an' Starling, an' Co., don't know the dire effecks of calomel an' drastics on the buddy, I don't know't? Her eye, her tongue, her skin, her voice, her elastic walk, all tell me she has not been robbed of her vital resources. 'Why, if she had taken that genteel old thief Short's rimidies alone, the girl's gums would be sore,

And herself at Dith's door.”

Mrs. Dodd was amused. “Julia, this is so like the gentlemen; they are in love with argumeunt. They go on till they reason themselves out of their reason. Why beat about the bush; when there she sits?”

“What, go t' a wumman for the truth, when I can go t' infallible Inference?”

“You may always go to my David's daughter for the truth,” said Mrs. Dodd, with dignity. She then looked the inquiry; and Julia replied to her look as follows: first, she coloured very high; then, she hid her face in both her hands; then rose, and turning her neck swiftly, darted a glance of fiery indignation and bitter reproach on Dr. Meddlesome, and left the apartment mighty stag-like.

“Maircy on us!” cried Sampson. “Did ye see that, ma'am? Yon's just a bonny basilisk. Another such thunderbolt as she dispinsed, and ye'll be ringing for your maid to sweep up the good physician's ashes.”

Julia did not return till the good physician was gone back to London. Then she came in with a rush, and, demonstrative toad, embraced Mrs. Dodd's knees, and owned she had cultivated her geraniums with all those medicines, liquid and solid; and only one geranium had died.

There is a fascinating age, when an intelligent girl is said to fluctuate between childhood and womanhood. Let me add that these seeming fluctuations depend much on the company she is in: the budding virgin is princess of chameleons; and, to confine ourselves to her two most piquant contrasts, by her mother's side she is always more or less childlike; but, let a nice young fellow engage her apart, and, hey presto! she shall be every inch a woman: perhaps at no period of her life are the purely mental characteristics of her sex so supreme in her; thus her type, the rosebud, excels in essence of rosehood the rose itself.

My reader has seen Julia Dodd play both parts; but it is her child's face she has now been turning for several pages; so it may be prudent to remind him she has shone on Alfred Hardie in but one light; a young but Juno-like woman. Had she shown “my puppy” her childish qualities, he would have despised her—he had left that department himself so recently. But Nature guarded the budding fair from such a disaster.

We left Alfred Hardie standing in the moonlight gazing at her lodging. This was sudden; but, let slow coaches deny it as loudly as they like, fast coaches exist; and Love is a Passion, which, like Hate, Envy, Avarice, &c., has risen to a great height in a single day. Not that Alfred's was “Love at first sight;” for he had seen her beauty in the full blaze of day with no deeper feeling than admiration; but in the moonlight he came under more sovereign spells than a fair face: her virtues and her voice. The narrative of their meeting has indicated the first, and as to the latter, Julia was not one of those whose beauty goes out with the candle; her voice was that rich, mellow, moving organ, which belongs to no rank nor station; is born, not made; and, flow it from the lips of dairymaid or countess, touches every heart, gentle or simple, that is truly male. And this divine contralto, full, yet penetrating, Dame Nature had inspired her to lower when she was moved or excited, instead of raising it; and then she was enchanting. All unconsciously she cast this crowning spell on Alfred, and he adored her. In a word, he caught a child-woman away from its mother; his fluttering captive turned, put on composure, and bewitched him.

She left him, and the moonlight night seemed to blacken. But within his young breast all was light, new light. He leaned opposite her window in an Elysian reverie, and let the hours go by. He seemed to have vegetated till then, and lo! true life had dawned. He thought he should love to die for her; and, when he was calmer, he felt he was to live for her, and welcomed his destiny with rapture. He passed the rest of the Oxford term in a soft ecstasy; called often on Edward, and took a sudden and prodigious interest in him; and counted the days glide by and the happy time draw near, when he should be four months in the same town with his enchantress. This one did not trouble the doctors; he glowed with a steady fire; no heats and chills, and sad misgivings; for one thing, he was not a woman, a being tied to that stake, Suspense, and compelled to wait and wait for others' actions. To him, life's path seemed paved with roses, and himself to march in eternal sunshine, buoyed by perfumed wings.

He came to Barkington to try for the lovely prize. Then first he had to come down from love's sky, and realise how hard it is here below to court a young lady—who is guarded by a mother—without an introduction in the usual form. The obvious course was to call on Edward. Having parted from him so lately, he forced himself to wait a few days, and then set out for Albion Villa.

As he went along, he arranged the coming dialogue for all the parties. Edward was to introduce him; Mrs. Dodd to recognise his friendship for her son; he was to say he was the gainer by it; Julia, silent at first, was to hazard a timid observation, and he to answer gracefully, and draw her out and find how he stood in her opinion. The sprightly affair should end by his inviting Edward to dinner. That should lead to their inviting him in turn, and then he should have a word with Julia, and find out what houses she visited, and get introduced to their proprietors. Arrived at this point, his mind went over hedge and ditch faster than my poor pen can follow; as the crow flies, so flew he, and had reached the church-porch under a rain of nosegays with Julia—in imagination—by then he arrived at Albion Villa in the body. Yet he knocked timidly; his heart beat almost as hard as his hand.

Sarah, the black-eyed housemaid, “answered the door.”

“Mr. Edward Dodd?”

“Not at home, sir. Left last week.”

“For long?”

“I don't rightly know, sir. But he won't be back this week, I don't think.”

“Perhaps,” stammered Alfred, “the ladies—Mrs. Dodd—might be able to tell me.”

“Oh yes, sir. But my mistress, she's in London just now.”

Alfred's eyes flashed. “Could I learn from Miss Dodd?”

“La, sir, she is in London along with her ma; why, 'tis for her they are gone; to insult the great doctors.”

He started. “She is not ill? Nothing serious?”

“Well, sir, we do hope not. She is pinning a bit, as young ladies will.”

Alfred was anything but consoled by this off-hand account; he became alarmed, and looked wretched. Seeming him so perturbed, Sarah, who was blunt but good-natured, added, “But cook she says hard work would cure our Miss of all she ails. But who shall I say was asking? For my work is a bit behind-hand.”

Alfred took the hint reluctantly, and drew out his card-case, saying, “For Mr. Edward Dodd.” She gave her clean but wettish hand a hasty wipe with her apron, and took the card. He retired; she stood on the step and watched him out of sight, said “Oho!” and took his card to the kitchen for preliminary inspection and discussion.

Alfred Hardie was resolute, but sensitive. He had come on the wings of Love and Hope; he went away heavily; a housemaid's tongue had shod his elastic feet with lead in a moment; of all misfortunes, sickness was what he had not anticipated, for she looked immortal. Perhaps it was that fair and treacherous disease, consumption. Well, if it was, he would love her all the more, would wed her as soon as he was of age, and carry her to some soft Southern clime, and keep each noxious air at bay, and prolong her life, perhaps save it.

And now he began to chafe at the social cobwebs that kept him from her. But, just as his impatience was about to launch him into imprudence, he was saved by a genuine descendant of Adam. James Maxley kept Mr. Hardie's little pleasaunce trim as trim could be, by yearly contract. This entailed short but frequent visits; and Alfred often talked with him; for the man was really a bit of a character; had a shrewd rustic wit, and a ready tongue, was rather too fond of law, and much too fond of money; but scrupulously honest: head as long as Cudworth's, but broader; and could not read a line. One day he told Alfred that he must knock off now, and take a look in at Albion Villee. The captain was due: and on no account would he, Maxley, allow that there ragged box round the captains quarter-deck: “That is how he do name their little mossel of a lawn: and there he walks for a wager, athirt and across, across and athirt, five steps and then about; and I'd a'most bet ye a halfpenny he thinks hisself on the salt sea ocean, bless his silly old heart.”

All this time Alfred, after the first start of joyful surprise, was secretly thanking his stars for sending him an instrument. To learn whether she had returned, he asked Maxley whether the ladies had sent for him. “Not they,” said Maxley, rather contemptuously; “what do women-folk care about a border, without 'tis a lace one to their nightcaps, for none but the father of all vanity to see. Not as I have ought to say again the pair; they keep their turf tidyish—and pay ready money—and a few flowers in their pots; but the rest may shift for itself. Ye see, Master Alfred,” explained Maxley, wagging his head wisely, “nobody's pride can be everywhere. Now theirs is in-a-doors; their with-drawing-room it's like the Queen's palace, my missus tells me; she is wrapped up in 'em, ye know. But the captain for my money.”

The sage shouldered his tools and departed. But he left a good hint behind him. Alfred hovered about the back-door the next day till he caught Mrs. Maxley; she supplied the house with eggs and vegetables. “Could she tell him whether his friend Edward Dodd was likely to come home soon?” She thought not; he was gone away to study. “He haven't much head-piece, you know, not like what Miss Julia have. Mrs. and Miss are to be home to-day; they wrote to cook this morning. I shall be there to-morrow, sartain, and I'll ask in the kitchen when Master Edward is a-coming back.” She prattled on. The ladies of Albion Villa were good kind ladies; the very maid-servants loved them; Miss was more for religion than her mother, and went to St. Anne's Church Thursday evenings, and Sundays morning and evening; and visited some poor women in the parish with food and clothes; Mrs. Dodd could not sleep a wink when the wind blew hard at night; but never complained, only came down pale to breakfast. Miss Julia's ailment was nothing to speak of, but they were in care along of being so wrapped up in her, and no wonder, for if ever there was a duck——!

Acting on this intelligence, Alfred went early the next Sunday to St. Anne's Church, and sat down in the side gallery at its east end. While the congregation flowed quietly in, the organist played the Agnus Dei of Mozart. Those pious tender tones stole over his hot young heart, and whispered, “Peace, be still!” He sighed wearily, and it passed through his mind that it might have been better for him, and especially for his studies, if he had never seen her. Suddenly the aisle seemed to lighten up; she was gliding along it, beautiful as May, and modesty itself in dress and carriage. She went into a pew and kneeled a minute, then seated herself and looked out the lessons for the day. Alfred gazed at her face: devoured it. But her eyes never roved. She seemed to have put off feminine curiosity, and the world, at the church door. Indeed he wished she was not quite so heavenly discreet; her lashes were delicious, but he longed to see her eyes once more; to catch a glance from them, and, by it, decipher his fate.

But no; she was there to worship, and did not discern her earthly lover, whose longing looks were glued to her, and his body rose and sank with the true worshippers, but with no more spirituality than a piston or a Jack-in-the-box.

In the last hymn before the sermon, a well-meaning worshipper in the gallery delivered a leading note, a high one, with great zeal, but small precision, being about a semitone flat; at this outrage on her too-sensitive ear, Julia Dodd turned her head swiftly to discover the offender, and failed; but her two sapphire eyes met Alfred's point-blank.

She was crimson in a moment, and lowered them on her book again, as if to look that way was to sin. It was but a flash: but sometimes a flash fires a mine.

The lovely blush deepened and spread before it melted away, and Alfred's late cooling heart warmed itself at that sweet glowing cheek. She never looked his way again, not once: which was a sad disappointment; but she blushed again and again before the service ended, only not so deeply. Now there was nothing in the sermon to make her blush: I might add, there was nothing to redden her cheek with religious excitement. There was a little candid sourness—oil and vinegar—against sects and Low Churchmen; but thin generality predominated. Total: “Acetate of morphia,” for dry souls to sip.

So Alfred took all the credit of causing those sweet irrelevant blushes; and gloated: the young wretch could not help glorying in his power to tint that fair statue of devotion with earthly thoughts.

But stay! that dear blush, was it pleasure or pain? What if the sight of him was intolerable?

He would know how he stood with her, and on the spot. He was one of the first to leave the church; he made for the churchyard gate, and walked slowly backwards and forwards by it, with throbbing heart till she came out.

She was prepared for him now, and bowed slightly to him with the most perfect composure, and no legible sentiment, except a certain marked politeness many of our young ladies think wasted upon young gentlemen; and are mistaken.

Alfred took off his hat in a tremor, and his eyes implored and inquired, but met with no further response; and she walked swiftly home, though without apparent effort. He looked longingly after her; but discretion forbade.

He now crawled by Albion Villa twice every day, wet or dry, and had the good fortune to see her twice at the drawing-room window. He was constant at St. Anne's Church, and one Thursday crept into the aisle to be nearer to her, and he saw her steal one swift look at the gallery, and look grave; but soon she detected him, and though she looked no more towards him, she seemed demurely complacent. Alfred had learned to note these subtleties now, for Love is a microscope. What he did not know was, that his timid ardour was pursuing a masterly course; that to find herself furtively followed everywhere, and hovered about for a look, is apt to soothe womanly pride and stir womanly pity, and to keep the female heart in a flutter of curiosity and emotions, two porters that open the heart's great gate to love.

Now the evening before his visit to the Dodds, Dr. Sampson dined with the Hardies, and happened to mention the “Dodds” among his old patients: “The Dodds of' Albion Villa?” inquired Miss Hardie, to her brother's no little surprise. “Albyn fiddlestick!” said the polished doctor. “No! they live by the water-side; used to; but now they have left the town, I hear. He is a sea-captain and a fine lad, and Mrs. Dodd is just the best-bred woman I ever prescribed for, except Mrs. Sampson.”

“It is the Dodds of Albion Villa,” said Miss Hardie. “They have two children: a son; his name is Edward; and a daughter, Julia; she is rather good-looking; a Gentleman's Beauty.”

Alfred stared at his sister. Was she blind? with her “rather good-looking.”

Sampson was quite pleased at the information. “N' listen me! I saved that girl's life when she was a year old.”

“Then she is ill now, doctor,” said Alfred hastily. “Do go and see her! Hum! The fact is, her brother is a great favourite of mine.” He then told him how to find Albion Villa. “Jenny, dear,” said he, when Sampson was gone, “you never told me you knew her.”

“Knew who, dear?”

“Whom? Why Dodd's sister.”

“Oh, she is a new acquaintance, and not one to interest you. We only meet in the Lord; I do not visit Albion Villa; her mother is an amiable worldling.”

“Unpardonable combination!” said Alfred with a slight sneer. “So you and Miss Dodd meet only at church!”

“At church? Hardly. She goes to St. Anne's: sits under a preacher who starves his flock with moral discourses, and holds out the sacraments of the Church as the means of grace.”

Alfred shook his head good-humouredly. “Now, Jenny, that is a challenge; and you know we both got into a fury the last time we were betrayed into that miserable waste of time and temper, Theological discussion. No, no:—

Let sects delight to bark and bite

For 'tis their nature to;

Let gown and surplice growl and fight,

For Satan makes them so.

But let you and I cut High Church and Low Church, and be brother and sister. Do tell me in English where you meet Julia Dodd; that's a dear; for young ladies 'meeting in the Lord' conveys no positive idea to my mind.”

Jane Hardie sighed at this confession. “We meet in the cottages of the poor and the sick, whom He loved and pitied when on earth; and we, His unworthy servants, try to soothe their distress, and lead them to Him who can heal the soul as well as the body, and wipe away all the tears of all His people.”

“Then it does you infinite credit, Jane,” said Alfred, warmly. “Now, that is the voice of true religion; and not the whine of this sect, nor the snarl of that. And so she joins you in this good work? I am not surprised.”

“We meet in it now and then, dear; but she can hardly be said to have joined me: I have a district, you know; but poor Mrs. Dodd will not allow Julia to enlist in the service. She visits independently, and by fits and starts; and I am afraid she thinks more of comforting their perishable bodies than of feeding their souls. It was but the other day she confessed to me her backwardness to speak in the way of instruction to women as old as her mother. She finds it so much easier to let them run on about their earthly troubles: and of course it is much easier. Ah! the world holds her still in some of its subtle meshes.”

The speaker uttered this sadly; but presently, brightening up, said, with considerable bonhomie, and almost a sprightly air: “But she is a dear girl, and the Lord will yet light her candle.”

Alfred pulled a face as of one that drinketh verjuice unawares; but let it pass: hypercriticism was not his cue just then. “Well, Jenny,” said he, “I have a favour to ask you. Introduce me to your friend, Miss Dodd. Will you?”

Miss Hardie coloured faintly. “I would rather not, dear Alfred: the introduction could not be for her eternal good. Julia's soul is in a very ticklish state; she wavers as yet between this world and the other world; and it won't do; it won't do; there is no middle path. You would very likely turn the scale, and then I should have fought against her everlasting welfare—my friend's.”

“What, am I an infidel?” inquired Alfred angrily. Jane looked distressed. “Oh no, Alfred; but you are a worldling.”

Alfred, smothering a strong sense of irritation, besought her to hear reason; these big words were out of place here. “It is Dodd's sister; and he will introduce me at a word, worldling as I am.”

“Then why urge me to do it, against my conscience?” asked the young lady, as sharply as if she had been a woman of the world. “You cannot be in love with her, as you do not know her.”

Alfred did not reply to this unlucky thrust, but made a last effort to soften her. “Can you call yourself my sister, and refuse me this trifling service, which her brother, who loves her and esteems her ten times more sincerely than you do, would not think of refusing me if he was at home?”

“Why should he? He is in the flesh himself; let the carnal introduce one another. I really must decline; but I am very, very sorry that you feel hurt about it.”

“And I am very sorry I have not an amiable worldling for my sister, instead of an unamiable and devilish conceited Christian.” And with these bitter words, Alfred snatched a candle and bounced to bed in a fury. So apt is one passion to rouse up others.

Jane Hardie let fall a gentle tear: but consoled herself with the conviction that she had done her duty, and that Alfred's anger was quite unreasonable, and so he would see as soon as he should cool.

The next day the lover, smarting under this check, and spurred to fresh efforts, invaded Sampson. That worthy was just going to dine at Albion Villa, so Alfred postponed pumping him till next day. Well, he called at the inn next day, and if the doctor was not just gone back to London!

Alfred wandered disconsolate homewards.

In the middle of Buchanan Street, an agitated treble called after him, “Mr. Halfred! hoh, Mr. Halfred!” He looked back and saw Dick Absalom, a promising young cricketer, brandishing a document and imploring aid. “Oh, Master Halfred, dooce please come here. I durstn't leave the shop.”

There is a tie between cricketers far too strong for social distinctions to divide, and, though Alfred muttered peevishly, “Whose cat is dead now?” he obeyed the strange summons.

The distress was a singular one. Master Absalom, I must premise, was the youngest of two lads in the employ of Mr. Jenner, a benevolent old chemist, a disciple of Malthus. Jenner taught the virtues of drugs and minerals to tender youths, at the expense of the public. Scarcely ten minutes had elapsed since a pretty servant girl came into the shop, and laid a paper on the counter, saying, “Please to make that up, young man.” Now at fifteen we are gratified by inaccuracies of this kind from ripe female lips: so Master Absalom took the prescription with a complacent grin; his eye glanced over it; it fell to shaking in his hand, chill dismay penetrated his heart; and, to speak with oriental strictness, his liver turned instantly to water. However, he made a feeble clutch at Mercantile Mendacity, and stammered out, “Here's a many ingredients, and the governor's out walking, and he's been and locked the drawer where we keeps our haulhoppy. You couldn't come again in half an hour, Miss, could ye?” She acquiesced readily, for she was not habitually called Miss, and she had a follower, a languid one, living hard by, and belonged to a class which thinks it consistent to come after its followers.

Dicky saw her safe off, and groaned at his ease. Here was a prescription full of new chemicals, sovereign, no doubt, i.e., deadly when applied Jennerically; and the very directions for use were in Latin words he had encountered in no prescription before. A year ago Dicky would have counted the prescribed ingredients on his fingers, and then taken down an equal number of little articles, solid or liquid, mixed them, delivered them, and so to cricket, serene; but now, his mind, to apply the universal cant, was “in a transition state.” A year's practice had chilled the youthful valour which used to scatter Epsom salts or oxalic acid, magnesia or corrosive sublimate. An experiment or two by himself and his compeers, with comments by the coroner, had enlightened him as to the final result on the human body of potent chemicals fearlessly administered, leaving him dark as to their distinctive qualities applied remedially. What should he do? Run with the prescription to old Taylor in the next street, a chemist of forty years? Alas! at his tender age he had not omitted to chaff that reverend rival persistently and publicly. Humble his establishment before the King Street one? Sooner perish drugs, and come eternal cricket! And after all, why not? Drummer-boys, and powder-monkeys, and other imps of his age that dealt destruction, did not depopulate gratis; Mankind acknowledged their services in cash: but old Jenner, taught by Philosophy through its organ the newspapers that “knowledge is riches,” was above diluting with a few shillings a week the wealth a boy acquired behind his counter; so his apprentices got no salary. Then why not shut up the old rogue's shutters, and excite a little sympathy for him, to be followed by a powerful reaction on his return from walking; and go and offer his own services on the cricket-ground to field for the gentlemen by the hour, or bowl at a shilling on their balls?

“Bowling is the lay for me,” said he; “you get money for that, and you only bruise the gents a bit and break their thumbs: you can't put their vital sparks out as you can at this work.”

By a striking coincidence the most influential member of the cricket club passed while Dick was in this quandary.

“Oh, Mr. Halfred, you was always very good to me on the ground—you couldn't have me hired by the club, could ye? For I am sick of this trade; I wants to bowl.”

“You little duffer!” said Alfred, “cricket is a recreation, not a business. Besides, it only lasts five months. Unless you adjourn to the anitipodes. Stick to the shop like a man, and make your fortune.”

“Oh, Mr. Halfred,” said Dick sorrowfully, “how can I find fortune here? Jenner don't pay. And the crowner declares he will not have it; and the Barton Chronicle says us young gents ought all to be given a holiday to go and see one of us hanged by lot. But this is what have broke this camel's back at last; here's a dalled thing to come smiling and smirking in with, and put it across a counter in a poor boy's hand. Oh! oh! oh!”

“Dick,” said Alfred, “if you blubber, I'll give you a hiding. You have stumbled on a passage you can't construe. Well, who has not? But we don't shed the briny about it. Here, let me have a go at it.”

“Ah! I've heard you are a scholard,” said Dick, “but you won't make out this; there's some new preparation of mercury, and there's musk, and there's horehound, and there's a neutral salt: and dal his old head that wrote it!”

“Hold your jaw, and listen, while I construe it to you. 'Die Mercurii, on Wednesday—decima hora vespertina, at ten o'clock at night—eat in Musca:'' what does that mean? 'Eat in Musca?'' I see! this is modern Latin with a vengeance. 'Let him go in a fly to the Towns-hall. Saltet, let him jump—cum tredecim caniculis, with thirteen little dogs—praesertim meo, especially with my little dog.' Dicky, this prescription emanates from Bedlam direct. 'Domum reddita''—hallo! it is a woman, then. 'Let her go in a fly to the—Town-hall, eh?' 'Let her jump, no, dance, with thirteen whelps, especially mine.' Ha! ha! ha! And who is the woman that is to do all this I wonder?”

“Woman, indeed!” said a treble at the door! “no more than I am; it's for a young lady. O jiminy!”

This polite ejaculation was drawn out by the speaker's sudden recognition of Alfred, who had raised his head at her remonstrance, and now started in his turn; for it was the black-eyed servant of Albion Villa. They looked at one another in expressive silence.

“Yes, sir, it is for my young lady. Is it ready, young man?”

“No, it ain't: and never will,” squealed Dick angrily “It's a vile 'oax; and you ought to be ashamed of yourself bringing it into a respectable shop.”

Alfred silenced him, and told Sarah he thought Miss Dodd ought to know the nature of this prescription before it went round the chemists.

He borrowed paper of Dick and wrote:

“Mr. Alfred Hardie presents his compliments to Miss Dodd, and begs leave to inform her that he has, by the merest accident, intercepted the enclosed prescription. As it seems rather a sorry jest, and tends to attract attention to Miss Dodd and her movements, he has ventured with some misgivings to send it back with a literal translation, on reading which it will be for Miss Dodd to decide whether it is to circulate.

“'On Wednesday, at ten P.M., let her go in a fly to the Town-hall, and dance with thirteen little {little dogs, puppies, whelps,} especially with mine: return home at six A.M. and sleep till dinner, and repeat the folly as occasion serves.'”

“Suppose I could get it into Miss's hands when she's alone?” whispered Sarah.

“You would earn my warmest gratitude.”

“'Warmest gratitude!' Is that a warm gownd, or a warm clock, I wonder?”

“It is both, when the man is a gentleman, and a pretty, dark-eyed girl pities him and stands his friend.”

Sarah smiled, and whispered, “Give it me; I'll do my best.”

Alfred enclosed the prescription and his note in one cover, handed them to her, and slipped a sovereign into her hand. He whispered, “Be prudent.”

“I'm dark, sir,” said she: and went off briskly homewards, and Alfred stood rapt in dreamy joy, and so self-elated that, had he been furnished like a peacock, he would have instantly become a “thing all eyes,” and choked up Jenner's shop, and swept his counter. He had made a step towards familiarity, had written her a letter; and then, if this prescription came, as he suspected, from Dr. Sampson, she would perhaps be at the ball. This opened a delightful vista. Meantime, Mrs. Dodd had communicated Sampson's opinion to Julia, adding that there was a prescription besides, gone to be made up. “However, he insists on your going to this ball.”

Julia begged hard to be excused: said she was in no humour for balls: and Mrs. Dodd objecting that the tickets had actually been purchased, she asked leave to send them to the Dartons. “They will be a treat to Rose and Alice; they seldom go out: mamma, I do so fear they are poorer than people think. May I?”

“It would be but kind,” said Mrs. Dodd. “Though really why my child should always be sacrificed to other people's children——”

“Oh, a mighty sacrifice!” said Julia. She sat down and enclosed the tickets to Rose Darton, with a little sugared note. Sarah, being out, Elizabeth took it. Sarah met her at the gate, but did not announce her return: she lurked in ambush till Julia happened to go to her own room, then followed her, and handed Alfred's missive, and watched her slily, and being herself expeditious as the wind in matters of the heart, took it for granted the enclosure was something very warm indeed; so she said with feigned simplicity, “I suppose it is all right now, miss?” and retreated swelling with a secret, and tormented her fellow-servants all day with innuendoes dark as Erebus.

Julia read the note again and again: her heart beat at those few ceremonious lines. “He does not like me to be talked of,” she said to herself. “How good he is! What trouble he takes about me! Ah! he will be there!”

She divined rightly; on Wednesday, at ten, Alfred Hardie was in the ball-room. It was a magnificent room, well lighted, and at present not half filled, though dancing had commenced. The figure Alfred sought was not there; and he wondered he had been so childish as to hope she would come to a city ball. He played the fine gentleman; would not dance. He got near the door with another Oxonian, and tried to avenge himself for her absence on the townspeople who were there by quizzing them.

But in the middle of this amiable occupation, and indeed in the middle of a sentence, he stopped short, and his heart throbbed, and he thrilled from head to foot; for two ladies glided in at the door, and passed up the room with the unpretending composure of well-bred people. They were equally remarkable; but Alfred saw only the radiant young creature in flowing muslin, with the narrowest sash in the room, and no ornament but a necklace of large pearls and her own vivid beauty. She had altered her mind about coming, with apologies for her vacillating disposition so penitent and disproportionate that her indulgent and unsuspecting mother was really quite amused. Alfred was not so happy as to know that she had changed her mind with his note. Perhaps even this knowledge could have added little to that exquisite moment, when, unhoped for, she passed close to him, and the fragrant air from her brushed his cheek, and seemed to whisper, “Follow me and be my slave.”