Bleak House

On the day when matters were concluded between Richard and Mr. Badger, we were all under engagement to dine at Mr. Badger's house. We were to be 'merely a family party,' Mrs. Badger's note said; and we found no lady there but Mrs. Badger herself. She was surrounded in the drawing-room by various objects, indicative of her painting a little, playing the piano a little, playing the guitar a little, playing the harp a little, singing a little, working a little, reading a little, writing poetry a little, and botanising a little. She was a lady of about fifty, I should think, youthfully dressed, and of a very fine complexion. If I add, to the little list of her accomplishments, that she rouged a little, I do not mean that there was any harm in it.

Mr. Bayham Badger himself was a pink, fresh-faced, crisp-looking gentleman, with a weak voice, white teeth, light hair, and surprised eyes: some years younger, I should say, than Mrs. Bayham Badger. He admired her exceedingly, but principally, and to begin with, on the curious ground (as it seemed to us) of her having had three husbands. We had barely taken our seats, when he said to Mr. Jarndyce quite triumphantly,

'You would hardly suppose that I am Mrs. Bayham Badger's third!'

'Indeed?' said Mr. Jarndyce.

'Her third!' said Mr. Badger. 'Mrs. Bayham Badger has not the appearance, Miss Summerson, of a lady who has had two former husbands?'

I said 'Not at all!'

'And most remarkable men!' said Mr. Badger, in a tone of confidence. 'Captain Swosser of the Royal Navy, who was Mrs. Badger's first husband, was a very distinguished officer indeed. The name of Professor Dingo, my immediate predecessor, is one of European reputation.'

Mrs. Badger overheard him, and smiled.

'Yes, my dear!' Mr. Badger replied to the smile, 'I was observing to Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson, that you had had two former husbands – both very distinguished men. And they found it, as people generally do, difficult to believe.'

'I was barely twenty,' said Mrs. Badger, 'when I married Captain Swosser of the Royal Navy. I was in the Mediterranean with him; I am quite a sailor. On the twelfth anniversary of my wedding-day, I became the wife of Professor Dingo.'

('Of European reputation,' added Mr. Badger in an undertone.)

'And when Mr. Badger and myself were married,' pursued Mrs. Badger, 'we were married on the same day of the year. I had become attached to the day.'

'So that Mrs. Badger has been married to three husbands – two of them highly distinguished men,' said Mr. Badger, summing up the facts; 'and, each time, upon the twenty-first of March at Eleven in the forenoon!'

We all expressed our admiration.

'But for Mr. Badger's modesty,' said Mr. Jarndyce, 'I would take leave to correct him, and say three distinguished men.'

'Thank you, Mr. Jarndyce! What I always tell him!' observed Mrs. Badger.

'And, my dear,' said Mr. Badger, 'what do I always tell you? That without any affectation of disparaging such professional distinction as I may have attained (which our friend Mr. Carstone will have many opportunities of estimating), I am not so weak – no, really,' said Mr. Badger to us generally, 'so unreasonable – as to put my reputation on the same footing with such first-rate men as Captain Swosser and Professor Dingo. Perhaps you may be interested, Mr. Jarndyce,' continued Mr. Bayham Badger, leading the way into the next drawing-room, 'in this portrait of Captain Swosser. It was taken on his return home from the African Station, where he had suffered from the fever of the country. Mrs. Badger considers it too yellow. But it's a very fine head. A very fine head!'

We all echoed 'A very fine head!'

'I feel when I look at it,' said Mr. Badger, ' "that's a man I should like to have seen!" It strikingly bespeaks the firstclass man that Captain Swosser pre-eminently was. On the other side, Professor Dingo. I knew him well – attended him in his last illness – a speaking likeness! Over the piano, Mrs. Bayham Badger when Mrs. Swosser. Over the sofa, Mrs. Bayham Badger when Mrs. Dingo. Of Mrs. Bayham Badger in esse, I possess the original, and have no copy.'

Dinner was now announced, and we went down-stairs. It was a very genteel entertainment, very handsomely served. But the Captain and the Professor still ran in Mr. Badger's head, and, as Ada and I had the honour of being under his particular care, we had the full benefit of them.

'Water, Miss Summerson? Allow me! Not in that tumbler, pray. Bring me the Professor's goblet, James!'

Ada very much admired some artificial flowers, under a glass.

'Astonishing how they keep!' said Mr. Badger. 'They were presented to Mrs. Bayham Badger when she was in the Mediterranean.'

He invited Mr. Jarndyce to take a glass of claret.

'Not that claret!' he said. 'Excuse me! This is an occasion, and on an occasion I produce some very special claret I happen to have. (James, Captain Swosser's wine!) Mr. Jarndyce, this is a wine that was imported by the Captain, we will not say how many years ago. You will find it very curious. My dear, I shall be happy to take some of this wine with you. (Captain Swosser's claret to your mistress, James!) My love, your health!'

After dinner, when we ladies retired, we took Mrs. Badger's first and second husband with us. Mrs. Badger gave us, in the drawing-room, a Biographical sketch of the life and services of Captain Swosser before his marriage, and a more minute account of him dating from the time when he fell in love with her, at a ball on board the Crippler, given to the officers of that ship when she lay in Plymouth Harbour.

'The dear old Crippler!' said Mrs. Badger, shaking her head. 'She was a noble vessel. Trim, ship-shape, all a taunto, as Captain Swosser used to say. You must excuse me if I occasionally introduce a nautical expression; I was quite a sailor once. Captain Swosser loved that craft for my sake. When she was no longer in commission, he frequently said that if he were rich enough to buy her old hulk, he would have an inscription let into the timbers of the quarter-deck where we stood as partners in the dance, to mark the spot where he fell – raked fore and aft (Captain Swosser used to say) by the fire from my tops. It was his naval way of mentioning my eyes.'

Mrs. Badger shook her head, sighed, and looked in the glass.

'It was a great change from Captain Swosser to Professor Dingo,' she resumed, with a plaintive smile. 'I felt it a good deal at first. Such an entire revolution in my mode of life! But custom, combined with science – particularly science– inured me to it. Being the Professor's sole companion in his botanical excursions, I almost forgot that I had ever been afloat, and became quite learned. It is singular that the Professor was the Antipodes of Captain Swosser, and that Mr. Badger is not in the least like either!'

We then passed into a narrative of the deaths of Captain Swosser and Professor Dingo, both of whom seem to have had very bad complaints. In the course of it, Mrs. Badger signified to us that she had never madly loved but once; and that the object of that wild affection, never to be recalled in its fresh enthusiasm, was Captain Swosser. The Professor was yet dying by inches in the most dismal manner, and Mrs. Badger was giving us imitations of his way of saying, with great difficulty, 'Where is Laura? Let Laura give me my toast and water!' when the entrance of the gentlemen consigned him to the tomb.

Now, I observed that evening, as I had observed for some days past, that Ada and Richard were more than ever attached to each other's society; which was but natural, seeing that they were going to be separated so soon. I was therefore not very much surprised, when we got home, and Ada and I retired up-stairs, to find Ada more silent than usual; though I was not quite prepared for her coming into my arms, and beginning to speak to me, with her face hidden.

'My darling Esther!' murmured Ada. 'I have a great secret to tell you!'

A mighty secret, my pretty one, no doubt!

'What is it, Ada?'

'O Esther, you would never guess!'

'Shall I try to guess?' said I.

'O no! Don't! Pray don't!' cried Ada, very much startled by the idea of my doing so.

'Now, I wonder who it can be about?' said I, pretending to consider.

'It's about,' said Ada, in a whisper. 'It's about – my cousin Richard!'

'Well, my own!' said I, kissing her bright hair, which was all I could see. 'And what about him?'

'O Esther, you would never guess!'

It was so pretty to have her clinging to me in that way, hiding her face; and to know that she was not crying in sorrow, but in a little glow of joy, and pride, and hope; that I would not help her just yet.

'He says – I know it's very foolish, we are both so young– but he says,' with a burst of tears, 'that he loves me dearly, Esther.'

'Does he indeed?' said I. 'I never heard of such a thing! Why, my pet of pets, I could have told you that weeks and weeks ago!'

To see Ada lift up her flushed face in joyful surprise, and hold me round the neck, and laugh, and cry, and blush, and laugh, was so pleasant!

'Why, my darling!' said I, 'what a goose you must take me for! Your cousin Richard has been loving you as plainly as he could, for I don't know how long!'

'And yet you never said a word about it!' cried Ada, kissing me.

'No, my love,' said I. 'I waited to be told.'

'But now I have told you, you don't think it wrong of me; do you?' returned Ada. She might have coaxed me to say No, if I had been the hardest-hearted Duenna in the world. Not being that yet, I said No, very freely.

'And now,' said I, 'I know the worst of it.'

'O, that's not quite the worst of it, Esther dear!' cried Ada, holding me tighter, and laying down her face again upon my breast.

'No?' said I. 'Not even that?'

'No, not even that!' said Ada, shaking her head.

'Why, you never mean to say—!' I was beginning in joke.

But Ada, looking up, and smiling through her tears, cried, 'Yes, I do! You know, you know I do!' and then sobbed out, 'With all my heart I do! With all my whole heart, Esther!'

I told her, laughing, why I had known that, too, just as well as I had known the other! And we sat before the fire, and I had all the talking to myself for a little while (though there was not much of it); and Ada was soon quiet and happy.

'Do you think my cousin John knows, dear Dame Durden?' she asked.

'Unless my cousin John is blind, my pet,' said I, 'I should think my cousin John knows pretty well as much as we know,'

'We want to speak to him before Richard goes,' said Ada, timidly, 'and we wanted you to advise us, and to tell him so. Perhaps you wouldn't mind Richard's coming in, Dame Durden?'

'O! Richard is outside, is he, my dear?' said I.

'I am not quite certain,' returned Ada, with a bashful simplicity that would have won my heart, if she had not won it long before; 'but I think he's waiting at the door.'

There he was, of course. They brought a chair on either side of me, and put me between them, and really seemed to have fallen in love with me, instead of one another; they were so confiding, and so trustful, and so fond of me. They went on in their own wild way for a little while—I never stopped them; I enjoyed it too much myself – and then we gradually fell to considering how young they were, and how there must be a lapse of several years before this early love could come to anything, and how it could come to happiness only if it were real and lasting, and inspired them with a steady resolution to do their duty to each other, with constancy, fortitude, and perseverance: each always for the other's sake. Well! Richard said that he would work his fingers to the bone for Ada, and Ada said that she would work her fingers to the bone for Richard, and they called me all sorts of endearing and sensible names, and we sat there, advising and talking, half the night. Finally, before we parted, I gave them my promise to speak to their cousin John to-morrow.

So, when to-morrow came, I went to my Guardian after breakfast, in the room that was our town-substitute for the Growlery, and told him that I had it in trust to tell him something.

'Well, little woman,' said he, shutting up his book, 'if you have accepted the trust, there can be no harm in it.'

'I hope not, Guardian,' said I. 'I can guarantee that there is no secrecy in it. For it only happened yesterday.'

'Aye? And what is it, Esther?'

'Guardian,' said I, 'you remember the happy night when first we came down to Bleak House? When Ada was singing in the dark room?'

I wished to call to his remembrance the look he had given me then. Unless I am much mistaken, I saw that I did so.

'Because,' said I, with a little hesitation.

'Yes, my dear!' said he. 'Don't hurry.'

'Because,' said I, 'Ada and Richard have fallen in love. And have told each other so.'

'Already!' cried my Guardian, quite astonished.

'Yes!' said I, 'and to tell you the truth, Guardian, I rather expected it.'

'The deuce you did!' said he.

He sat considering for a minute or two; with his smile, at once so handsome and so kind, upon his changing face; and then requested me to let them know that he wished to see them. When they came, he encircled Ada with one arm, in his fatherly way, and addressed himself to Richard with a cheerful gravity.

'Rick,' said Mr. Jarndyce, 'I am glad to have won your confidence. I hope to preserve it. When I contemplated these relations between us four which have so brightened my life, and so invested it with new interests and pleasures, I certainly did contemplate, afar off, the possibility of you and your pretty cousin here (don't be shy, Ada, don't be shy, my dear!) being in a mind to go through life together. I saw, and do see, many reasons to make it desirable. But that was afar off, Rick, afar off!'

'We look afar off, sir,' returned Richard.

'Well!' said Mr. Jarndyce. 'That's rational. Now, hear me, my dears! I might tell you that you don't know your own minds yet; that a thousand things may happen to divert you from one another; that it is well this chain of flowers you have taken up is very easily broken, or it might become a chain of lead. But I will not do that. Such wisdom will come soon enough, I dare say, if it is to come at all. I will assume that, a few years hence, you will be in your hearts to one another, what you are to-day. All I say before speaking to you according to that assumption is, if you do change – if you do come to find that you are more commonplace cousins to each other as man and woman, than you were as boy and girl (your manhood will excuse me, Rick!) – don't be ashamed still to confide in me, for there will be nothing monstrous or uncommon in it. I am only your friend and distant kinsman. I have no power over you whatever. But I wish and hope to retain your confidence, if I do nothing to forfeit it.'

'I am very sure, sir,' returned Richard, 'that I speak for Ada, too, when I say that you have the strongest power over us both – rooted in respect, gratitude, and affection – strengthening every day.'

'Dear cousin John,' said Ada, on his shoulder, 'my father's place can never be empty again. All the love and duty I could ever have rendered to him, is transferred to you.'

'Come!' said Mr. Jarndyce. 'Now for our assumption. Now we lift our eyes up, and look hopefully at the distance! Rick, the world is before you; and it is most probable that as you enter it, so it will receive you. Trust in nothing but in Providence and your own efforts. Never separate the two, like the heathen waggoner. Constancy in love is a good thing; but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every kind of effort. If you had the abilities of all the great men, past and present, you could do nothing well, without sincerely meaning it, and setting about it. If you entertain the supposition that any real success, in great things or in small, ever was or could be, ever will or can be, wrested from Fortune by fits and starts, leave that wrong idea here, or leave your cousin Ada here.'

'I will leave it here, sir,' replied Richard, smiling, 'if I brought it here just now (but I hope I did not), and will work my way on to my cousin Ada in the hopeful distance.'

'Right!' said Mr. Jarndyce. 'If you are not to make her happy, why should you pursue her?'

'I wouldn't make her unhappy – no, not even for her love,' retorted Richard, proudly.

'Well said!' cried Mr. Jarndyce; 'that's well said! She remains here, in her home with me. Love her, Rick, in your active life, no less than in her home when you revisit it, and all will go well. Otherwise, all will go ill. That's the end of my preaching. I think you and Ada had better take a walk.'

Ada tenderly embraced him, and Richard heartily shook hands with him, and then the cousins went out of the room – looking back again directly, though, to say that they would wait for me.

The door stood open, and we both followed them with our eyes, as they passed down the adjoining room on which the sun was shining, and out at its farther end. Richard with his head bent, and her hand drawn through his arm, was talking to her very earnestly; and she looked up in his face, listening, and seemed to see nothing else. So young, so beautiful, so full of hope and promise, they went on lightly through the sunlight, as their own happy thoughts might then be traversing the years to come, and making them all years of brightness. So they passed away into the shadow, and were gone. It was only a burst of light that had been so radiant. The room darkened as they went out, and the sun was clouded over.

'Am I right, Esther?' said my Guardian, when they were gone.

He who was so good and wise, to ask me whether he was right!

'Rick may gain, out of this, the quality he wants. Wants, at the core of so much that is good!' said Mr. Jarndyce, shaking his head. 'I have said nothing to Ada, Esther. She has her friend and counsellor always near.' And he laid his hand lovingly upon my head.

I could not help showing that I was a little moved, though I did all I could to conceal it.

'Tut, tut!' said he. 'But we must take care, too, that our little woman's life is not all consumed in care for others.'

'Care? My dear Guardian, I believe I am the happiest creature in the world!'

'I believe so, too,' said he. 'But some one may find out, what Esther never will, – that the little woman is to be held in remembrance above all other people!'

I have omitted to mention in its place, that there was some one else at the family dinner party. It was not a lady. It was a gentleman. It was a gentleman of a dark complexion – a young surgeon. He was rather reserved, but I thought him very sensible and agreeable. At least, Ada asked me if I did not, and I said yes.

Chapter XIV
Deportment

Richard left us on the very next evening, to begin his new career, and committed Ada to my charge with great love for her, and great trust in me. It touched me then to reflect, and it touches me now, more nearly, to remember (having what I have to tell) how they both thought of me, even at that engrossing time. I was a part of all their plans, for the present and the future. I was to write to Richard once a week, making my faithful report of Ada, who was to write to him every alternate day. I was to be informed, under his own hand, of all his labours and successes; I was to observe how resolute and persevering he would be; I was to be Ada's bridesmaid when they were married; I was to live with them afterwards; I was to keep all the keys of their house; I was to be made happy for ever and a day.

'And if the suit should make us rich, Esther – which it may, you know!' said Richard, to crown all.

A shade crossed Ada's face.

'My dearest Ada,' asked Richard, 'why not?'

'It had better declare us poor at once,' said Ada.

'O! I don't know about that,' returned Richard; 'but, at all events, it won't declare anything at once. It hasn't declared anything in Heaven knows how many years.'

'Too true,' said Ada.

'Yes, but,' urged Richard, answering what her look suggested rather than her words, 'the longer it goes on, dear cousin, the nearer it must be to a settlement one way or other. Now, is not that reasonable?'

'You know best, Richard. But I am afraid if we trust to it, it will make us unhappy.'

'But, my Ada, we are not going to trust to it!' cried Richard. 'We know it better than to trust to it. We only say that if it should make us rich, we have no constitutional objection to being rich. The Court is, by solemn settlement of law, our grim old guardian, and we are to suppose that what it gives us (when it gives us anything) is our right. It is not necessary to quarrel with our right.'

'No,' said Ada, 'but it may be better to forget all about it.'

'Well, well!' cried Richard, 'then we will forget all about it! We consign the whole thing to oblivion. Dame Durden puts on her approving face, and it's done!'

'Dame Durden's approving face,' said I, looking out of the box in which I was packing his books, 'was not very visible when you called it by that name; but it does approve, and she thinks you can't do better.'

So Richard said there was an end of it, – and immediately began, on no other foundation, to build as many castles in the air as would man the great wall of China. He went away in high spirits. Ada and I, prepared to miss him very much, commenced our quieter career.

On our arrival in London, we had called with Mr. Jarndyce at Mrs. Jellyby's, but had not been so fortunate as to find her at home. It appeared that she had gone somewhere, to a tea-drinking, and had taken Miss Jellyby with her. Besides the tea-drinking, there was to be some considerable speech-making and letter-writing on the general merits of the cultivation of coffee, conjointly with natives, at the Settlement of Borrioboola-Gha. All this involved, no doubt, sufficient active exercise of pen and ink, to make her daughter's part in the proceedings anything but a holiday.

It being, now, beyond the time appointed for Mrs. Jellyby's return, we called again. She was in town, but not at home, having gone to Mile End, directly after breakfast, on some Borrioboolan business, arising out of a Society called the East London Branch Aid Ramification. As I had not seen Peepy on the occasion of our last call (when he was not to be found anywhere, and when the cook rather thought he must have strolled away with the dustman's cart), I now inquired for him again. The oyster-shells he had been building a house with, were still in the passage, but he was nowhere discoverable, and the cook supposed that he had 'gone after the sheep.' When we repeated, with some surprise, 'The sheep?' she said, O yes, on market days he sometimes followed them quite out of town, and came back in such a state as never was!

I was sitting at the window with my guardian, on the following morning, and Ada was busy writing – of course to Richard – when Miss Jellyby was announced, and entered, leading the identical Peepy, whom she had made some endeavours to render presentable, by wiping the dirt into corners of his face and hands, and making his hair very wet and then violently frizzling it with her fingers. Everything the dear child wore, was either too large for him or too small. Among his other contradictory decorations he had the hat of a Bishop, and the little gloves of a baby. His boots were, on a small scale, the boots of a ploughman: while his legs, so crossed and recrossed with scratches that they looked like maps, were bare, below a very short pair of plaid drawers finished off with two frills of perfectly different patterns. The deficient buttons on his plaid frock had evidently been supplied from one of Mr. Jellyby's coats, they were so extremely brazen and so much too large. Most extraordinary specimens of needlework appeared on several parts of his dress, where it had been hastily mended; and I recognised the same hand on Miss Jellyby's. She was, however, unaccountably improved in her appearance, and looked very pretty. She was conscious of poor little Peepy being but a failure after all her trouble, and she showed it as she came in, by the way in which she glanced, first at him and then at us.

'O dear me!' said my guardian. 'Due East!'

Ada and I gave her a cordial welcome, and presented her to Mr. Jarndyce; to whom she said, as she sat down:

'Ma's compliments, and she hopes you'll excuse her because she's correcting proofs of the plan. She's going to put out five thousand new circulars, and she knows you'll be interested to hear that. I have brought one of them with me. Ma's compliments.' With which she presented it sulkily enough.

'Thank you,' said my guardian. 'I am much obliged to Mrs. Jellyby. O dear me! This is a very trying wind!'

We were busy with Peepy; taking off his clerical hat; asking him if he remembered us; and so on. Peepy retired behind his elbow at first, but relented at the sight of spongecake, and allowed me to take him on my lap, where he sat munching quietly. Mr. Jarndyce then withdrawing into the temporary Growlery, Miss Jellyby opened a conversation with her usual abruptness.

'We are going on just as bad as ever in Thavies Inn,' said she. 'I have no peace of my life. Talk of Africa! I couldn't be worse off if I was a what 's-his-name – man and a brother!'

I tried to say something soothing.

'O, it's of no use, Miss Summerson,' exclaimed Miss Jellyby, 'though I thank you for the kind intention all the same. I know how I am used, and I am not to be talked over. You wouldn't be talked over, if you were used so. Peepy, go and play at Wild Beasts under the piano!'

'I sha'n't!' said Peepy.

'Very well, you ungrateful, naughty, hard-hearted boy!' returned Miss Jellyby, with tears in her eyes. 'I'll never take pains to dress you any more.'

'Yes, I will go, Caddy!' cried Peepy, who was really a good child, and who was so moved by his sister's vexation that he went at once.

'It seems a little thing to cry about,' said poor Miss Jellyby, apologetically, 'but I am quite worn out. I was directing the new circulars till two this morning. I detest the whole thing so, that that alone makes my head ache till I can't see out of my eyes. And look at that poor unfortunate child! Was there ever such a fright as he is!'

Peepy, happily unconsious of the defects in his appearance, sat on the carpet behind one of the legs of the piano, looking calmly out of his den at us, while he ate his cake.

'I have sent him to the other end of the room,' observed Miss Jellyby, drawing her chair nearer ours, 'because I don't want him to hear the conversation. Those little things are so sharp! I was going to say, we really are going on worse than ever. Pa will be a bankrupt before long, and then I hope Ma will be satisfied. There'll be nobody but Ma to thank for it.'

We said we hoped Mr. Jellyby's affairs were not in so bad a state as that.

'It's of no use hoping, though it's very kind of you,' returned Miss Jellyby, shaking her head. 'Pa told me, only yesterday morning (and dreadfully unhappy he is), that he couldn't weather the storm. I should be surprised if he could. When all our tradesmen send into our house any stuff they like, and the servants do what they like with it, and I have no time to improve things if I knew how, and Ma don't care about anything, I should like to make out how Pa is to weather the storm. I declare if I was Pa, I'd run away.'

'My dear!' said I, smiling. 'Your papa, no doubt, considers his family.'

'O yes, his family is all very fine, Miss Summerson,' replied Miss Jellyby; 'but what comfort is his family to him? His family is nothing but bills, dirt, waste, noise, tumbles downstairs, confusion, and wretchedness. His scrambling home, from week's-end to week's-end, is like one great washing-day– only nothing's washed!'

Miss Jellyby tapped her foot upon the floor, and wiped her eyes.

'I am sure I pity Pa to that degree,' she said, 'and am so angry with Ma, that I can't find words to express myself! However, I am not going to bear it, I am determined. I won't be a slave all my life, and I won't submit to be proposed to by Mr. Quale. A pretty thing, indeed, to marry a Philanthropist. As if I hadn't had enough of that!' said poor Miss Jellyby.

I must confess that I could not help feeling rather angry with Mrs. Jellyby, myself; seeing and hearing this neglected girl, and knowing how much of bitterly satirical truth there was in what she said.

'If it wasn't that we had been intimate when you stopped at our house,' pursued Miss Jellyby, 'I should have been ashamed to come here to-day, for I know what a figure I must seem to you two. But, as it is, I made up my mind to call: especially as I am not likely to see you again, the next time you come to town.'

She said this with such great significance that Ada and I glanced at one another, foreseeing something more.

'No!' said Miss Jellyby, shaking her head. 'Not at all likely! I know I may trust you two. I am sure you won't betray me. I am engaged.'

'Without their knowledge at home?' said I.

'Why, good gracious me, Miss Summerson,' she returned, justifying herself in a fretful but not angry manner, 'how can it be otherwise? You know what Ma is – and I needn't make poor Pa more miserable by telling him.'

'But would it not be adding to his unhappiness, to marry without his knowledge or consent, my dear?' said I.

'No,' said Miss Jellyby, softening. 'I hope not. I should try to make him happy and comfortable when he came to see me; and Peepy and the others should take it in turns to come and stay with me; and they should have some care taken of them, then.'

There was a good deal of affection in poor Caddy. She softened more and more while saying this, and cried so much over the unwonted little home-picture she had raised in her mind, that Peepy, in his cave under the piano, was touched, and turned himself over on his back with loud lamentations. It was not until I had brought him to kiss his sister, and had restored him to his place on my lap, and had shown him that Caddy was laughing (she laughed expressly for the purpose), that we could recall his peace of mind; even then, it was for some time conditional on his taking us in turns by the chin, and smoothing our faces all over with his hand. At last, as his spirits were not equal to the piano, we put him on a chair to look out of window; and Miss Jellyby, holding him by one leg, resumed her confidence.