Doctor Marigold

Published：2026-07-29 21:22:04 Source: best family board games for 9 year olds Author: Market Playsets

Transcribed from the 1894 Chapman and dinosaur toys for 6 year oldsHall “Christmas Stories”edition by David Price, email [email protected]

DOCTOR MARIGOLD

I am a Cheap Jack, and my own father’s name was Willum Marigold. It was in his lifetime supposed by some that his name was William, butmy own father always consistently said, No, it was Willum.  Onwhich point I content myself with looking at the argument this way:If a man is not allowed to know his own name in a free country, howmuch is he allowed to know in a land of slavery?  As to lookingat the argument through the medium of the Register, Willum Marigoldcome into the world before Registers come up much,—and went outof it too.  They wouldn’t have been greatly in his line neither,if they had chanced to come up before him.

I was born on the Queen’s highway, but it was the King’sat that time.  A doctor was fetched to my own mother by my ownfather, when it took place on a common; and in consequence of his beinga very kind gentleman, and accepting no fee but a tea-tray, I was namedDoctor, out of gratitude and compliment to him.  There you haveme.  Doctor Marigold.

I am at present a middle-aged man of a broadish build, in cords,leggings, and a sleeved waistcoat the strings of which is always gonebehind.  Repair them how you will, they go like fiddle-strings. You have been to the theatre, and you have seen one of the wiolin-playersscrew up his wiolin, after listening to it as if it had been whisperingthe secret to him that it feared it was out of order, and then you haveheard it snap.  That’s as exactly similar to my waistcoatas a waistcoat and a wiolin can be like one another.

I am partial to a white hat, and I like a shawl round my neck woreloose and easy.  Sitting down is my favourite posture.  IfI have a taste in point of personal jewelry, it is mother-of-pearl buttons. There you have me again, as large as life.

The doctor having accepted a tea-tray, you’ll guess that myfather was a Cheap Jack before me.  You are right.  He was. It was a pretty tray.  It represented a large lady going alonga serpentining up-hill gravel-walk, to attend a little church. Two swans had likewise come astray with the same intentions.  WhenI call her a large lady, I don’t mean in point of breadth, forthere she fell below my views, but she more than made it up in heighth;her heighth and slimness was—in short THE heighth of both.

I often saw that tray, after I was the innocently smiling cause (ormore likely screeching one) of the doctor’s standing it up ona table against the wall in his consulting-room.  Whenever my ownfather and mother were in that part of the country, I used to put myhead (I have heard my own mother say it was flaxen curls at that time,though you wouldn’t know an old hearth-broom from it now tillyou come to the handle, and found it wasn’t me) in at the doctor’sdoor, and the doctor was always glad to see me, and said, “Aha,my brother practitioner!  Come in, little M.D.  How are yourinclinations as to sixpence?”

You can’t go on for ever, you’ll find, nor yet couldmy father nor yet my mother.  If you don’t go off as a wholewhen you are about due, you’re liable to go off in part, and twoto one your head’s the part.  Gradually my father went offhis, and my mother went off hers.  It was in a harmless way, butit put out the family where I boarded them.  The old couple, thoughretired, got to be wholly and solely devoted to the Cheap Jack business,and were always selling the family off.  Whenever the cloth waslaid for dinner, my father began rattling the plates and dishes, aswe do in our line when we put up crockery for a bid, only he had lostthe trick of it, and mostly let ’em drop and broke ’em. As the old lady had been used to sit in the cart, and hand the articlesout one by one to the old gentleman on the footboard to sell, just inthe same way she handed him every item of the family’s property,and they disposed of it in their own imaginations from morning to night. At last the old gentleman, lying bedridden in the same room with theold lady, cries out in the old patter, fluent, after having been silentfor two days and nights: “Now here, my jolly companions everyone,—which the Nightingale club in a village was held, At thesign of the Cabbage and Shears, Where the singers no doubt would havegreatly excelled, But for want of taste, voices and ears,—now,here, my jolly companions, every one, is a working model of a used-upold Cheap Jack, without a tooth in his head, and with a pain in everybone: so like life that it would be just as good if it wasn’tbetter, just as bad if it wasn’t worse, and just as new if itwasn’t worn out.  Bid for the working model of the old CheapJack, who has drunk more gunpowder-tea with the ladies in his time thanwould blow the lid off a washerwoman’s copper, and carry it asmany thousands of miles higher than the moon as naught nix naught, dividedby the national debt, carry nothing to the poor-rates, three under,and two over.  Now, my hearts of oak and men of straw, what doyou say for the lot?  Two shillings, a shilling, tenpence, eightpence,sixpence, fourpence.  Twopence?  Who said twopence? The gentleman in the scarecrow’s hat?  I am ashamed of thegentleman in the scarecrow’s hat.  I really am ashamed ofhim for his want of public spirit.  Now I’ll tell you whatI’ll do with you.  Come!  I’ll throw you in aworking model of a old woman that was married to the old Cheap Jackso long ago that upon my word and honour it took place in Noah’sArk, before the Unicorn could get in to forbid the banns by blowinga tune upon his horn.  There now!  Come!  What do yousay for both?  I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you. I don’t bear you malice for being so backward.  Here! If you make me a bid that’ll only reflect a little credit on yourtown, I’ll throw you in a warming-pan for nothing, and lend youa toasting-fork for life.  Now come; what do you say after thatsplendid offer?  Say two pound, say thirty shillings, say a pound,say ten shillings, say five, say two and six.  You don’tsay even two and six?  You say two and three?  No.  Youshan’t have the lot for two and three.  I’d soonergive it to you, if you was good-looking enough.  Here!  Missis! Chuck the old man and woman into the cart, put the horse to, and drive’em away and bury ’em!”  Such were the last wordsof Willum Marigold, my own father, and they were carried out, by himand by his wife, my own mother, on one and the same day, as I oughtto know, having followed as mourner.

My father had been a lovely one in his time at the Cheap Jack work,as his dying observations went to prove.  But I top him. I don’t say it because it’s myself, but because it has beenuniversally acknowledged by all that has had the means of comparison. I have worked at it.  I have measured myself against other publicspeakers,—Members of Parliament, Platforms, Pulpits, Counsel learnedin the law,—and where I have found ’em good, I have tooka bit of imagination from ’em, and where I have found ’embad, I have let ’em alone.  Now I’ll tell you what. I mean to go down into my grave declaring that of all the callings illused in Great Britain, the Cheap Jack calling is the worst used. Why ain’t we a profession?  Why ain’t we endowed withprivileges?  Why are we forced to take out a hawker’s license,when no such thing is expected of the political hawkers?  Where’sthe difference betwixt us?  Except that we are Cheap Jacks andthey are Dear Jacks, Idon’t see any difference but what’sin our favour.

For look here!  Say it’s election time.  I am onthe footboard of my cart in the market-place, on a Saturday night. I put up a general miscellaneous lot.  I say: “Now here,my free and independent woters, I’m a going to give you such achance as you never had in all your born days, nor yet the days preceding. Now I’ll show you what I am a going to do with you.  Here’sa pair of razors that’ll shave you closer than the Board of Guardians;here’s a flat-iron worth its weight in gold; here’s a frying-panartificially flavoured with essence of beefsteaks to that degree thatyou’ve only got for the rest of your lives to fry bread and drippingin it and there you are replete with animal food; here’s a genuinechronometer watch in such a solid silver case that you may knock atthe door with it when you come home late from a social meeting, androuse your wife and family, and save up your knocker for the postman;and here’s half-a-dozen dinner plates that you may play the cymbalswith to charm baby when it’s fractious.  Stop!  I’llthrow in another article, and I’ll give you that, and it’sa rolling-pin; and if the baby can only get it well into its mouth whenits teeth is coming and rub the gums once with it, they’ll comethrough double, in a fit of laughter equal to being tickled.  Stopagain!  I’ll throw you in another article, because I don’tlike the looks of you, for you haven’t the appearance of buyersunless I lose by you, and because I’d rather lose than not takemoney to-night, and that’s a looking-glass in which you may seehow ugly you look when you don’t bid.  What do you say now? Come!  Do you say a pound?  Not you, for you haven’tgot it.  Do you say ten shillings?  Not you, for you owe moreto the tallyman.  Well then, I’ll tell you what I’lldo with you.  I’ll heap ’em all on the footboard ofthe cart,—there they are! razors, flat watch, dinner plates, rolling-pin,and away for four shillings, and I’ll give you sixpence for yourtrouble!”  This is me, the Cheap Jack.  But on the Mondaymorning, in the same market-place, comes the Dear Jack on the hustings—hiscart—and, what does hesay?  “Now my free andindependent woters, I am a going to give you such a chance” (hebegins just like me) “as you never had in all your born days,and that’s the chance of sending Myself to Parliament.  NowI’ll tell you what I am a going to do for you.  Here’sthe interests of this magnificent town promoted above all the rest ofthe civilised and uncivilised earth.  Here’s your railwayscarried, and your neighbours’ railways jockeyed.  Here’sall your sons in the Post-office.  Here’s Britannia smilingon you.  Here’s the eyes of Europe on you.  Here’suniwersal prosperity for you, repletion of animal food, golden cornfields,gladsome homesteads, and rounds of applause from your own hearts, allin one lot, and that’s myself.  Will you take me as I stand? You won’t?  Well, then, I’ll tell you what I’lldo with you.  Come now!  I’ll throw you in anythingyou ask for.  There!  Church-rates, abolition of more malttax, no malt tax, universal education to the highest mark, or uniwersalignorance to the lowest, total abolition of flogging in the army ora dozen for every private once a month all round, Wrongs of Men or Rightsof Women—only say which it shall be, take ’em or leave ’em,and I’m of your opinion altogether, and the lot’s your ownon your own terms.  There!  You won’t take it yet! Well, then, I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you.  Come! You aresuch free and independent woters, and I am so proud ofyou,—you aresuch a noble and enlightened constituency,and I amso ambitious of the honour and dignity of being yourmember, which is by far the highest level to which the wings of thehuman mind can soar,—that I’ll tell you what I’lldo with you.  I’ll throw you in all the public-houses inyour magnificent town for nothing.  Will that content you? It won’t?  You won’t take the lot yet?  Well,then, before I put the horse in and drive away, and make the offer tothe next most magnificent town that can be discovered, I’ll tellyou what I’ll do.  Take the lot, and I’ll drop twothousand pound in the streets of your magnificent town for them to pickup that can.  Not enough?  Now look here.  This is thevery furthest that I’m a going to.  I’ll make it twothousand five hundred.  And still you won’t?  Here,missis!  Put the horse—no, stop half a moment, I shouldn’tlike to turn my back upon you neither for a trifle, I’ll makeit two thousand seven hundred and fifty pound.  There!  Takethe lot on your own terms, and I’ll count out two thousand sevenhundred and fifty pound on the footboard of the cart, to be droppedin the streets of your magnificent town for them to pick up that can. What do you say?  Come now!  You won’t do better, andyou may do worse.  You take it?  Hooray!  Sold again,and got the seat!”

These Dear Jacks soap the people shameful, but we Cheap Jacks don’t. We tell ’em the truth about themselves to their faces, and scornto court ’em.  As to wenturesomeness in the way of puffingup the lots, the Dear Jacks beat us hollow.  It is considered inthe Cheap Jack calling, that better patter can be made out of a gunthan any article we put up from the cart, except a pair of spectacles. I often hold forth about a gun for a quarter of an hour, and feel asif I need never leave off.  But when I tell ’em what thegun can do, and what the gun has brought down, I never go half so faras the Dear Jacks do when they make speeches in praise of theirguns—their great guns that set ’em on to do it.  Besides,I’m in business for myself: I ain’t sent down into the market-placeto order, as they are.  Besides, again, my guns don’t knowwhat I say in their laudation, and their guns do, and the whole concernof ’em have reason to be sick and ashamed all round.  Theseare some of my arguments for declaring that the Cheap Jack calling istreated ill in Great Britain, and for turning warm when I think of theother Jacks in question setting themselves up to pretend to look downupon it.

I courted my wife from the footboard of the cart.  I did indeed. She was a Suffolk young woman, and it was in Ipswich market-place rightopposite the corn-chandler’s shop.  I had noticed her upat a window last Saturday that was, appreciating highly.  I hadtook to her, and I had said to myself, “If not already disposedof, I’ll have that lot.”  Next Saturday that come,I pitched the cart on the same pitch, and I was in very high featherindeed, keeping ’em laughing the whole of the time, and gettingoff the goods briskly.  At last I took out of my waistcoat-pocketa small lot wrapped in soft paper, and I put it this way (looking upat the window where she was).  “Now here, my blooming Englishmaidens, is an article, the last article of the present evening’ssale, which I offer to only you, the lovely Suffolk Dumplings bilingover with beauty, and I won’t take a bid of a thousand poundsfor from any man alive.  Now what is it?  Why, I’lltell you what it is.  It’s made of fine gold, and it’snot broke, though there’s a hole in the middle of it, and it’sstronger than any fetter that ever was forged, though it’s smallerthan any finger in my set of ten.  Why ten?  Because, whenmy parents made over my property to me, I tell you true, there was twelvesheets, twelve towels, twelve table-cloths, twelve knives, twelve forks,twelve tablespoons, and twelve teaspoons, but my set of fingers wastwo short of a dozen, and could never since be matched.  Now whatelse is it?  Come, I’ll tell you.  It’s a hoopof solid gold, wrapped in a silver curl-paper, that I myself took offthe shining locks of the ever beautiful old lady in Threadneedle Street,London city; I wouldn’t tell you so if I hadn’t the paperto show, or you mightn’t believe it even of me.  Now whatelse is it?  It’s a man-trap and a handcuff, the parish stocksand a leg-lock, all in gold and all in one.  Now what else is it? It’s a wedding-ring.  Now I’ll tell you what I’ma going to do with it.  I’m not a going to offer this lotfor money; but I mean to give it to the next of you beauties that laughs,and I’ll pay her a visit to-morrow morning at exactly half afternine o’clock as the chimes go, and I’ll take her out fora walk to put up the banns.”  She laughed, and got the ringhanded up to her.  When I called in the morning, she says, “Odear!  It’s never you, and you never mean it?” “It’s ever me,” says I, “and I am ever yours,and I ever mean it.”  So we got married, after being putup three times—which, by the bye, is quite in the Cheap Jack wayagain, and shows once more how the Cheap Jack customs pervade society.

She wasn’t a bad wife, but she had a temper.  If she couldhave parted with that one article at a sacrifice, I wouldn’t haveswopped her away in exchange for any other woman in England.  Notthat I ever did swop her away, for we lived together till she died,and that was thirteen year.  Now, my lords and ladies and gentlefolksall, I’ll let you into a secret, though you won’t believeit.  Thirteen year of temper in a Palace would try the worst ofyou, but thirteen year of temper in a Cart would try the best of you. You are kept so very close to it in a cart, you see.  There’sthousands of couples among you getting on like sweet ile upon a whetstonein houses five and six pairs of stairs high, that would go to the DivorceCourt in a cart.  Whether the jolting makes it worse, I don’tundertake to decide; but in a cart it does come home to you, and stickto you.  Wiolence in a cart is sowiolent, and aggrawationin a cart is soaggrawating.

We might have had such a pleasant life!  A roomy cart, withthe large goods hung outside, and the bed slung underneath it when onthe road, an iron pot and a kettle, a fireplace for the cold weather,a chimney for the smoke, a hanging-shelf and a cupboard, a dog and ahorse.  What more do you want?  You draw off upon a bit ofturf in a green lane or by the roadside, you hobble your old horse andturn him grazing, you light your fire upon the ashes of the last visitors,you cook your stew, and you wouldn’t call the Emperor of Franceyour father.  But have a temper in the cart, flinging languageand the hardest goods in stock at you, and where are you then? Put a name to your feelings.

My dog knew as well when she was on the turn as I did.  Beforeshe broke out, he would give a howl, and bolt.  How he knew it,was a mystery to me; but the sure and certain knowledge of it wouldwake him up out of his soundest sleep, and he would give a howl, andbolt.  At such times I wished I was him.

The worst of it was, we had a daughter born to us, and I love childrenwith all my heart.  When she was in her furies she beat the child. This got to be so shocking, as the child got to be four or five yearold, that I have many a time gone on with my whip over my shoulder,at the old horse’s head, sobbing and crying worse than ever littleSophy did.  For how could I prevent it?  Such a thing is notto be tried with such a temper—in a cart—without comingto a fight.  It’s in the natural size and formation of acart to bring it to a fight.  And then the poor child got worseterrified than before, as well as worse hurt generally, and her mothermade complaints to the next people we lighted on, and the word wentround, “Here’s a wretch of a Cheap Jack been a beating hiswife.”

Little Sophy was such a brave child!  She grew to be quite devotedto her poor father, though he could do so little to help her. She had a wonderful quantity of shining dark hair, all curling naturalabout her.  It is quite astonishing to me now, that I didn’tgo tearing mad when I used to see her run from her mother before thecart, and her mother catch her by this hair, and pull her down by it,and beat her.

Such a brave child I said she was!  Ah! with reason.

“Don’t you mind next time, father dear,” she wouldwhisper to me, with her little face still flushed, and her bright eyesstill wet; “if I don’t cry out, you may know I am not muchhurt.  And even if I do cry out, it will only be to get motherto let go and leave off.”  What I have seen the little spiritbear—for me—without crying out!

Yet in other respects her mother took great care of her.  Herclothes were always clean and neat, and her mother was never tired ofworking at ’em.  Such is the inconsistency in things. Our being down in the marsh country in unhealthy weather, I considerthe cause of Sophy’s taking bad low fever; but however she tookit, once she got it she turned away from her mother for evermore, andnothing would persuade her to be touched by her mother’s hand. She would shiver and say, “No, no, no,” when it was offeredat, and would hide her face on my shoulder, and hold me tighter roundthe neck.

The Cheap Jack business had been worse than ever I had known it,what with one thing and what with another (and not least with railroads,which will cut it all to pieces, I expect, at last), and I was run dryof money.  For which reason, one night at that period of littleSophy’s being so bad, either we must have come to a dead-lockfor victuals and drink, or I must have pitched the cart as I did.

I couldn’t get the dear child to lie down or leave go of me,and indeed I hadn’t the heart to try, so I stepped out on thefootboard with her holding round my neck.  They all set up a laughwhen they see us, and one chuckle-headed Joskin (that I hated for it)made the bidding, “Tuppence for her!”

“Now, you country boobies,” says I, feeling as if myheart was a heavy weight at the end of a broken sashline, “I giveyou notice that I am a going to charm the money out of your pockets,and to give you so much more than your money’s worth that you’llonly persuade yourselves to draw your Saturday night’s wages everagain arterwards by the hopes of meeting me to lay ’em out with,which you never will, and why not?  Because I’ve made myfortunes by selling my goods on a large scale for seventy-five per cent.less than I give for ’em, and I am consequently to be elevatedto the House of Peers next week, by the title of the Duke of Cheap andMarkis Jackaloorul.  Now let’s know what you want to-night,and you shall have it.  But first of all, shall I tell you whyI have got this little girl round my neck?  You don’t wantto know?  Then you shall.  She belongs to the Fairies. She’s a fortune-teller.  She can tell me all about you ina whisper, and can put me up to whether you’re going to buy alot or leave it.  Now do you want a saw?  No, she says youdon’t, because you’re too clumsy to use one.  Elsehere’s a saw which would be a lifelong blessing to a handy man,at four shillings, at three and six, at three, at two and six, at two,at eighteen-pence.  But none of you shall have it at any price,on account of your well-known awkwardness, which would make it manslaughter. The same objection applies to this set of three planes which I won’tlet you have neither, so don’t bid for ’em.  Now Iam a going to ask her what you do want.”  (Then I whispered,“Your head burns so, that I am afraid it hurts you bad, my pet,”and she answered, without opening her heavy eyes, “Just a little,father.”)  “O!  This little fortune-teller saysit’s a memorandum-book you want.  Then why didn’t youmention it?  Here it is.  Look at it.  Two hundred superfinehot-pressed wire-wove pages—if you don’t believe me, count’em—ready ruled for your expenses, an everlastingly pointedpencil to put ’em down with, a double-bladed penknife to scratch’em out with, a book of printed tables to calculate your incomewith, and a camp-stool to sit down upon while you give your mind toit!  Stop!  And an umbrella to keep the moon off when yougive your mind to it on a pitch-dark night.  Now I won’task you how much for the lot, but how little?  How little are youthinking of?  Don’t be ashamed to mention it, because myfortune-teller knows already.”  (Then making believe to whisper,I kissed her,—and she kissed me.)  “Why, she says youare thinking of as little as three and threepence!  I couldn’thave believed it, even of you, unless she told me.  Three and threepence! And a set of printed tables in the lot that’ll calculate yourincome up to forty thousand a year!  With an income of forty thousanda year, you grudge three and sixpence.  Well then, I’ll tellyou my opinion.  I so despise the threepence, that I’d soonertake three shillings.  There.  For three shillings, threeshillings, three shillings!  Gone.  Hand ’em over tothe lucky man.”

As there had been no bid at all, everybody looked about and grinnedat everybody, while I touched little Sophy’s face and asked herif she felt faint, or giddy.  “Not very, father.  Itwill soon be over.”  Then turning from the pretty patienteyes, which were opened now, and seeing nothing but grins across mylighted grease-pot, I went on again in my Cheap Jack style.  “Where’sthe butcher?”  (My sorrowful eye had just caught sight ofa fat young butcher on the outside of the crowd.)  “She saysthe good luck is the butcher’s.  Where is he?” Everybody handed on the blushing butcher to the front, and there wasa roar, and the butcher felt himself obliged to put his hand in hispocket, and take the lot.  The party so picked out, in general,does feel obliged to take the lot—good four times out of six. Then we had another lot, the counterpart of that one, and sold it sixpencecheaper, which is always wery much enjoyed.  Then we had the spectacles. It ain’t a special profitable lot, but I put ’em on, andI see what the Chancellor of the Exchequer is going to take off thetaxes, and I see what the sweetheart of the young woman in the shawlis doing at home, and I see what the Bishops has got for dinner, anda deal more that seldom fails to fetch ’em ’up in theirspirits; and the better their spirits, the better their bids. Then we had the ladies’ lot—the teapot, tea-caddy, glasssugar-basin, half-a-dozen spoons, and caudle-cup—and all the timeI was making similar excuses to give a look or two and say a word ortwo to my poor child.  It was while the second ladies’ lotwas holding ’em enchained that I felt her lift herself a littleon my shoulder, to look across the dark street.  “What troublesyou, darling?”  “Nothing troubles me, father. I am not at all troubled.  But don’t I see a pretty churchyardover there?”  “Yes, my dear.”  “Kissme twice, dear father, and lay me down to rest upon that churchyardgrass so soft and green.”  I staggered back into the cartwith her head dropped on my shoulder, and I says to her mother, “Quick. Shut the door!  Don’t let those laughing people see!” “What’s the matter?” she cries.  “O woman,woman,” I tells her, “you’ll never catch my littleSophy by her hair again, for she has flown away from you!”

Maybe those were harder words than I meant ’em; but from thattime forth my wife took to brooding, and would sit in the cart or walkbeside it, hours at a stretch, with her arms crossed, and her eyes lookingon the ground.  When her furies took her (which was rather seldomerthan before) they took her in a new way, and she banged herself aboutto that extent that I was forced to hold her.  She got none thebetter for a little drink now and then, and through some years I usedto wonder, as I plodded along at the old horse’s head, whetherthere was many carts upon the road that held so much dreariness as mine,for all my being looked up to as the King of the Cheap Jacks. So sad our lives went on till one summer evening, when, as we were cominginto Exeter, out of the farther West of England, we saw a woman beatinga child in a cruel manner, who screamed, “Don’t beat me! O mother, mother, mother!”  Then my wife stopped her ears,and ran away like a wild thing, and next day she was found in the river.

Me and my dog were all the company left in the cart now; and thedog learned to give a short bark when they wouldn’t bid, and togive another and a nod of his head when I asked him, “Who saidhalf a crown?  Are you the gentleman, sir, that offered half acrown?”  He attained to an immense height of popularity,and I shall always believe taught himself entirely out of his own headto growl at any person in the crowd that bid as low as sixpence. But he got to be well on in years, and one night when I was conwulsingYork with the spectacles, he took a conwulsion on his own account uponthe very footboard by me, and it finished him.

Being naturally of a tender turn, I had dreadful lonely feelingson me arter this.  I conquered ’em at selling times, havinga reputation to keep (not to mention keeping myself), but they got medown in private, and rolled upon me.  That’s often the waywith us public characters.  See us on the footboard, and you’dgive pretty well anything you possess to be us.  See us off thefootboard, and you’d add a trifle to be off your bargain. It was under those circumstances that I come acquainted with a giant. I might have been too high to fall into conversation with him, had itnot been for my lonely feelings.  For the general rule is, goinground the country, to draw the line at dressing up.  When a mancan’t trust his getting a living to his undisguised abilities,you consider him below your sort.  And this giant when on viewfigured as a Roman.

He was a languid young man, which I attribute to the distance betwixthis extremities.  He had a little head and less in it, he had weakeyes and weak knees, and altogether you couldn’t look at him withoutfeeling that there was greatly too much of him both for his joints andhis mind.  But he was an amiable though timid young man (his motherlet him out, and spent the money), and we come acquainted when he waswalking to ease the horse betwixt two fairs.  He was called Rinaldodi Velasco, his name being Pickleson.

This giant, otherwise Pickleson, mentioned to me under the seal ofconfidence that, beyond his being a burden to himself, his life wasmade a burden to him by the cruelty of his master towards a step-daughterwho was deaf and dumb.  Her mother was dead, and she had no livingsoul to take her part, and was used most hard.  She travelled withhis master’s caravan only because there was nowhere to leave her,and this giant, otherwise Pickleson, did go so far as to believe thathis master often tried to lose her.  He was such a very languidyoung man, that I don’t know how long it didn’t take himto get this story out, but it passed through his defective circulationto his top extremity in course of time.

When I heard this account from the giant, otherwise Pickleson, andlikewise that the poor girl had beautiful long dark hair, and was oftenpulled down by it and beaten, I couldn’t see the giant throughwhat stood in my eyes.  Having wiped ’em, I give him sixpence(for he was kept as short as he was long), and he laid it out in twothree-penn’orths of gin-and-water, which so brisked him up, thathe sang the Favourite Comic of Shivery Shakey, ain’t it cold?—apopular effect which his master had tried every other means to get outof him as a Roman wholly in vain.

His master’s name was Mim, a wery hoarse man, and I knew himto speak to.  I went to that Fair as a mere civilian, leaving thecart outside the town, and I looked about the back of the Vans whilethe performing was going on, and at last, sitting dozing against a muddycart-wheel, I come upon the poor girl who was deaf and dumb.  Atthe first look I might almost have judged that she had escaped fromthe Wild Beast Show; but at the second I thought better of her, andthought that if she was more cared for and more kindly used she wouldbe like my child.  She was just the same age that my own daughterwould have been, if her pretty head had not fell down upon my shoulderthat unfortunate night.

To cut it short, I spoke confidential to Mim while he was beatingthe gong outside betwixt two lots of Pickleson’s publics, andI put it to him, “She lies heavy on your own hands; what’llyou take for her?”  Mim was a most ferocious swearer. Suppressing that part of his reply which was much the longest part,his reply was, “A pair of braces.”  “Now I’lltell you,” says I, “what I’m a going to do with you. I’m a going to fetch you half-a-dozen pair of the primest bracesin the cart, and then to take her away with me.”  Says Mim(again ferocious), “I’ll believe it when I’ve gotthe goods, and no sooner.”  I made all the haste I could,lest he should think twice of it, and the bargain was completed, whichPickleson he was thereby so relieved in his mind that he come out athis little back door, longways like a serpent, and give us Shivery Shakeyin a whisper among the wheels at parting.

It was happy days for both of us when Sophy and me began to travelin the cart.  I at once give her the name of Sophy, to put herever towards me in the attitude of my own daughter.  We soon madeout to begin to understand one another, through the goodness of theHeavens, when she knowed that I meant true and kind by her.  Ina very little time she was wonderful fond of me.  You have no ideawhat it is to have anybody wonderful fond of you, unless you have beengot down and rolled upon by the lonely feelings that I have mentionedas having once got the better of me.

You’d have laughed—or the rewerse—it’s accordingto your disposition—if you could have seen me trying to teachSophy.  At first I was helped—you’d never guess bywhat—milestones.  I got some large alphabets in a box, allthe letters separate on bits of bone, and saying we was going to WINDSOR,I give her those letters in that order, and then at every milestoneI showed her those same letters in that same order again, and pointedtowards the abode of royalty.  Another time I give her CART, andthen chalked the same upon the cart.  Another time I give her DOCTORMARIGOLD, and hung a corresponding inscription outside my waistcoat. People that met us might stare a bit and laugh, but what did Icare, if she caught the idea?  She caught it after long patienceand trouble, and then we did begin to get on swimmingly, I believe you! At first she was a little given to consider me the cart, and the cartthe abode of royalty, but that soon wore off.

We had our signs, too, and they was hundreds in number.  Sometimesshe would sit looking at me and considering hard how to communicatewith me about something fresh,—how to ask me what she wanted explained,—andthen she was (or I thought she was; what does it signify?) so like mychild with those years added to her, that I half-believed it was herself,trying to tell me where she had been to up in the skies, and what shehad seen since that unhappy night when she flied away.  She hada pretty face, and now that there was no one to drag at her bright darkhair, and it was all in order, there was a something touching in herlooks that made the cart most peaceful and most quiet, though not atall melancholy.  [N.B.  In the Cheap Jack patter, we generallysound it lemonjolly, and it gets a laugh.]

The way she learnt to understand any look of mine was truly surprising. When I sold of a night, she would sit in the cart unseen by them outside,and would give a eager look into my eyes when I looked in, and wouldhand me straight the precise article or articles I wanted.  Andthen she would clap her hands, and laugh for joy.  And as for me,seeing her so bright, and remembering what she was when I first lightedon her, starved and beaten and ragged, leaning asleep against the muddycart-wheel, it give me such heart that I gained a greater heighth ofreputation than ever, and I put Pickleson down (by the name of Mim’sTravelling Giant otherwise Pickleson) for a fypunnote in my will.

This happiness went on in the cart till she was sixteen year old. By which time I began to feel not satisfied that I had done my wholeduty by her, and to consider that she ought to have better teachingthan I could give her.  It drew a many tears on both sides whenI commenced explaining my views to her; but what’s right is right,and you can’t neither by tears nor laughter do away with its character.

So I took her hand in mine, and I went with her one day to the Deafand Dumb Establishment in London, and when the gentleman come to speakto us, I says to him: “Now I’ll tell you what I’lldo with you, sir.  I am nothing but a Cheap Jack, but of late yearsI have laid by for a rainy day notwithstanding.  This is my onlydaughter (adopted), and you can’t produce a deafer nor a dumber. Teach her the most that can be taught her in the shortest separationthat can be named,—state the figure for it,—and I am gameto put the money down.  I won’t bate you a single farthing,sir, but I’ll put down the money here and now, and I’llthankfully throw you in a pound to take it.  There!” The gentleman smiled, and then, “Well, well,” says he, “Imust first know what she has learned already.  How do you communicatewith her?”  Then I showed him, and she wrote in printed writingmany names of things and so forth; and we held some sprightly conversation,Sophy and me, about a little story in a book which the gentleman showedher, and which she was able to read.  “This is most extraordinary,”says the gentleman; “is it possible that you have been her onlyteacher?”  “I have been her only teacher, sir,”I says, “besides herself.”  “Then,” saysthe gentleman, and more acceptable words was never spoke to me, “you’rea clever fellow, and a good fellow.”  This he makes knownto Sophy, who kisses his hands, claps her own, and laughs and criesupon it.

We saw the gentleman four times in all, and when he took down myname and asked how in the world it ever chanced to be Doctor, it comeout that he was own nephew by the sister’s side, if you’llbelieve me, to the very Doctor that I was called after.  This madeour footing still easier, and he says to me:

“Now, Marigold, tell me what more do you want your adopteddaughter to know?”

“I want her, sir, to be cut off from the world as little ascan be, considering her deprivations, and therefore to be able to readwhatever is wrote with perfect ease and pleasure.”

“My good fellow,” urges the gentleman, opening his eyeswide, “why Ican’t do that myself!”

I took his joke, and gave him a laugh (knowing by experience howflat you fall without it), and I mended my words accordingly.

“What do you mean to do with her afterwards?” asks thegentleman, with a sort of a doubtful eye.  “To take her aboutthe country?”

“In the cart, sir, but only in the cart.  She will livea private life, you understand, in the cart.  I should never thinkof bringing her infirmities before the public.  I wouldn’tmake a show of her for any money.”

The gentleman nodded, and seemed to approve.

“Well,” says he, “can you part with her for twoyears?”

“To do her that good,—yes, sir.”

“There’s another question,” says the gentleman,looking towards her,—“can she part with you for two years?”

I don’t know that it was a harder matter of itself (for theother was hard enough to me), but it was harder to get over.  However,she was pacified to it at last, and the separation betwixt us was settled. How it cut up both of us when it took place, and when I left her atthe door in the dark of an evening, I don’t tell.  But Iknow this; remembering that night, I shall never pass that same establishmentwithout a heartache and a swelling in the throat; and I couldn’tput you up the best of lots in sight of it with my usual spirit,—no,not even the gun, nor the pair of spectacles,—for five hundredpound reward from the Secretary of State for the Home Department, andthrow in the honour of putting my legs under his mahogany arterwards.

Still, the loneliness that followed in the cart was not the old loneliness,because there was a term put to it, however long to look forward to;and because I could think, when I was anyways down, that she belongedto me and I belonged to her.  Always planning for her coming back,I bought in a few months’ time another cart, and what do you thinkI planned to do with it?  I’ll tell you.  I plannedto fit it up with shelves and books for her reading, and to have a seatin it where I could sit and see her read, and think that I had beenher first teacher.  Not hurrying over the job, I had the fittingsknocked together in contriving ways under my own inspection, and herewas her bed in a berth with curtains, and there was her reading-table,and here was her writing-desk, and elsewhere was her books in rows uponrows, picters and no picters, bindings and no bindings, gilt-edged andplain, just as I could pick ’em up for her in lots up and downthe country, North and South and West and East, Winds liked best andwinds liked least, Here and there and gone astray, Over the hills andfar away.  And when I had got together pretty well as many booksas the cart would neatly hold, a new scheme come into my head, which,as it turned out, kept my time and attention a good deal employed, andhelped me over the two years’ stile.

Without being of an awaricious temper, I like to be the owner ofthings.  I shouldn’t wish, for instance, to go partners withyourself in the Cheap Jack cart.  It’s not that I mistrustyou, but that I’d rather know it was mine.  Similarly, verylikely you’d rather know it was yours.  Well!  A kindof a jealousy began to creep into my mind when I reflected that allthose books would have been read by other people long before they wasread by her.  It seemed to take away from her being the owner of’em like.  In this way, the question got into my head: Couldn’tI have a book new-made express for her, which she should be the firstto read?

It pleased me, that thought did; and as I never was a man to leta thought sleep (you must wake up all the whole family of thoughts you’vegot and burn their nightcaps, or you won’t do in the Cheap Jackline), I set to work at it.  Considering that I was in the habitof changing so much about the country, and that I should have to findout a literary character here to make a deal with, and another literarycharacter there to make a deal with, as opportunities presented, I hiton the plan that this same book should be a general miscellaneous lot,—likethe razors, flat-iron, chronometer watch, dinner plates, rolling-pin,and looking-glass,—and shouldn’t be offered as a singleindiwidual article, like the spectacles or the gun.  When I hadcome to that conclusion, I come to another, which shall likewise beyours.

Often had I regretted that she never had heard me on the footboard,and that she never could hear me.  It ain’t that Iam vain, but that youdon’t like to put your own lightunder a bushel.  What’s the worth of your reputation, ifyou can’t convey the reason for it to the person you most wishto value it?  Now I’ll put it to you.  Is it worth sixpence,fippence, fourpence, threepence, twopence, a penny, a halfpenny, a farthing? No, it ain’t.  Not worth a farthing.  Very well, then. My conclusion was that I would begin her book with some account of myself. So that, through reading a specimen or two of me on the footboard, shemight form an idea of my merits there.  I was aware that I couldn’tdo myself justice.  A man can’t write his eye (at least Idon’t know how to), nor yet can a man write his voice, nor therate of his talk, nor the quickness of his action, nor his general spicyway.  But he can write his turns of speech, when he is a publicspeaker,—and indeed I have heard that he very often does, beforehe speaks ’em.

Well!  Having formed that resolution, then come the questionof a name.  How did I hammer that hot iron into shape?  Thisway.  The most difficult explanation I had ever had with her was,how I come to be called Doctor, and yet was no Doctor.  After all,I felt that I had failed of getting it correctly into her mind, withmy utmost pains.  But trusting to her improvement in the two years,I thought that I might trust to her understanding it when she shouldcome to read it as put down by my own hand.  Then I thought I wouldtry a joke with her and watch how it took, by which of itself I mightfully judge of her understanding it.  We had first discovered themistake we had dropped into, through her having asked me to prescribefor her when she had supposed me to be a Doctor in a medical point ofview; so thinks I, “Now, if I give this book the name of my Prescriptions,and if she catches the idea that my only Prescriptions are for her amusementand interest,—to make her laugh in a pleasant way, or to makeher cry in a pleasant way,—it will be a delightful proof to bothof us that we have got over our difficulty.”  It fell outto absolute perfection.  For when she saw the book, as I had itgot up,—the printed and pressed book,—lying on her deskin her cart, and saw the title, DOCTOR MARIGOLD’S PRESCRIPTIONS,she looked at me for a moment with astonishment, then fluttered theleaves, then broke out a laughing in the charmingest way, then felther pulse and shook her head, then turned the pages pretending to readthem most attentive, then kissed the book to me, and put it to her bosomwith both her hands.  I never was better pleased in all my life!

But let me not anticipate.  (I take that expression out of alot of romances I bought for her.  I never opened a single oneof ’em—and I have opened many—but I found the romancersaying “let me not anticipate.”  Which being so, Iwonder why he did anticipate, or who asked him to it.)  Let menot, I say, anticipate.  This same book took up all my spare time. It was no play to get the other articles together in the general miscellaneouslot, but when it come to my own article!  There!  I couldn’thave believed the blotting, nor yet the buckling to at it, nor the patienceover it.  Which again is like the footboard.  The public haveno idea.

At last it was done, and the two years’ time was gone afterall the other time before it, and where it’s all gone to, whoknows?  The new cart was finished,—yellow outside, relievedwith wermilion and brass fittings,—the old horse was put in it,a new ’un and a boy being laid on for the Cheap Jack cart,—andI cleaned myself up to go and fetch her.  Bright cold weather itwas, cart-chimneys smoking, carts pitched private on a piece of wasteground over at Wandsworth, where you may see ’em from the Sou’westernRailway when not upon the road.  (Look out of the right-hand windowgoing down.)

“Marigold,” says the gentleman, giving his hand hearty,“I am very glad to see you.”

“Yet I have my doubts, sir,” says I, “if you canbe half as glad to see me as I am to see you.”

“The time has appeared so long,—has it, Marigold?”

“I won’t say that, sir, considering its real length;but—”

“What a start, my good fellow!”

Ah!  I should think it was!  Grown such a woman, so pretty,so intelligent, so expressive!  I knew then that she must be reallylike my child, or I could never have known her, standing quiet by thedoor.

“You are affected,” says the gentleman in a kindly manner.

“I feel, sir,” says I, “that I am but a rough chapin a sleeved waistcoat.”

“I feel,” says the gentleman, “that it was youwho raised her from misery and degradation, and brought her into communicationwith her kind.  But why do we converse alone together, when wecan converse so well with her?  Address her in your own way.”

“I am such a rough chap in a sleeved waistcoat, sir,”says I, “and she is such a graceful woman, and she stands so quietat the door!”

“Tryif she moves at the old sign,” says the gentleman.

They had got it up together o’ purpose to please me! For when I give her the old sign, she rushed to my feet, and droppedupon her knees, holding up her hands to me with pouring tears of loveand joy; and when I took her hands and lifted her, she clasped me roundthe neck, and lay there; and I don’t know what a fool I didn’tmake of myself, until we all three settled down into talking withoutsound, as if there was a something soft and pleasant spread over thewhole world for us.

* * * *

[A portion is here omitted from the text, having reference to thesketches contributed by other writers; but the reader will be pleasedto have what follows retained in a note:

“Now I’ll tell you what I am a-going to do with you. I am a-going to offer you the general miscellaneous lot, her own book,never read by anybody else but me, added to and completed by me afterher first reading of it, eight-and-forty printed pages, six-and-ninetycolumns, Whiting’s own work, Beaufort House to wit, thrown offby the steam-ingine, best of paper, beautiful green wrapper, foldedlike clean linen come home from the clear-starcher’s, and so exquisitelystitched that, regarded as a piece of needlework alone, it’s betterthan the sampler of a seamstress undergoing a Competitive examinationfor Starvation before the Civil Service Commissioners—and I offerthe lot for what?  For eight pound?  Not so much.  Forsix pound?  Less.  For four pound.  Why, I hardly expectyou to believe me, but that’s the sum.  Four pound! The stitching alone cost half as much again.  Here’s forty-eightoriginal pages, ninety-six original columns, for four pound.  Youwant more for the money?  Take it.  Three whole pages of advertisementsof thrilling interest thrown in for nothing.  Read ’em andbelieve ’em.  More?  My best of wishes for your merryChristmases and your happy New Years, your long lives and your trueprosperities.  Worth twenty pound good if they are delivered asI send them.  Remember!  Here’s a final prescriptionadded, “To be taken for life,” which will tell you how thecart broke down, and where the journey ended.  You think Four Poundtoo much?  And still you think so?  Come!  I’lltell you what then.  Say Four Pence, and keep the secret.”]

* * * *

So every item of my plan was crowned with success.  Our reunitedlife was more than all that we had looked forward to.  Contentand joy went with us as the wheels of the two carts went round, andthe same stopped with us when the two carts stopped.  I was aspleased and as proud as a Pug-Dog with his muzzle black-leaded for aevening party, and his tail extra curled by machinery.

But I had left something out of my calculations.  Now, whathad I left out?  To help you to guess I’ll say, a figure. Come.  Make a guess and guess right.  Nought?  No. Nine?  No.  Eight?  No.  Seven?  No. Six?  No.  Five?  No.  Four?  No.  Three? No.  Two?  No.  One?  No.  Now I’ll tellyou what I’ll do with you.  I’ll say it’s anothersort of figure altogether.  There.  Why then, says you, it’sa mortal figure.  No, nor yet a mortal figure.  By such meansyou got yourself penned into a corner, and you can’t help guessinga immortal figure.  That’s about it.  Why didn’tyou say so sooner?

Yes.  It was a immortal figure that I had altogether left outof my Calculations.  Neither man’s, nor woman’s, buta child’s.  Girl’s or boy’s?  Boy’s. “I, says the sparrow with my bow and arrow.”  Now youhave got it.

We were down at Lancaster, and I had done two nights more than fairaverage business (though I cannot in honour recommend them as a quickaudience) in the open square there, near the end of the street whereMr. Sly’s King’s Arms and Royal Hotel stands.  Mim’stravelling giant, otherwise Pickleson, happened at the self-same timeto be trying it on in the town.  The genteel lay was adopted withhim.  No hint of a van.  Green baize alcove leading up toPickleson in a Auction Room.  Printed poster, “Free listsuspended, with the exception of that proud boast of an enlightenedcountry, a free press.  Schools admitted by private arrangement. Nothing to raise a blush in the cheek of youth or shock the most fastidious.” Mim swearing most horrible and terrific, in a pink calico pay-place,at the slackness of the public.  Serious handbill in the shops,importing that it was all but impossible to come to a right understandingof the history of David without seeing Pickleson.

I went to the Auction Room in question, and I found it entirely emptyof everything but echoes and mouldiness, with the single exception ofPickleson on a piece of red drugget.  This suited my purpose, asI wanted a private and confidential word with him, which was: “Pickleson. Owing much happiness to you, I put you in my will for a fypunnote; but,to save trouble, here’s fourpunten down, which may equally suityour views, and let us so conclude the transaction.”  Pickleson,who up to that remark had had the dejected appearance of a long Romanrushlight that couldn’t anyhow get lighted, brightened up at histop extremity, and made his acknowledgments in a way which (for him)was parliamentary eloquence.  He likewise did add, that, havingceased to draw as a Roman, Mim had made proposals for his going in asa conwerted Indian Giant worked upon by The Dairyman’s Daughter. This, Pickleson, having no acquaintance with the tract named after thatyoung woman, and not being willing to couple gag with his serious views,had declined to do, thereby leading to words and the total stoppageof the unfortunate young man’s beer.  All of which, duringthe whole of the interview, was confirmed by the ferocious growlingof Mim down below in the pay-place, which shook the giant like a leaf.

But what was to the present point in the remarks of the travellinggiant, otherwise Pickleson, was this: “Doctor Marigold,”—Igive his words without a hope of conweying their feebleness,—“whois the strange young man that hangs about your carts?”—“Thestrange young man?”  I gives him back, thinking thathe meant her, and his languid circulation had dropped a syllable. “Doctor,” he returns, with a pathos calculated to draw atear from even a manly eye, “I am weak, but not so weak yet asthat I don’t know my words.  I repeat them, Doctor. The strange young man.”  It then appeared that Pickleson,being forced to stretch his legs (not that they wanted it) only at timeswhen he couldn’t be seen for nothing, to wit in the dead of thenight and towards daybreak, had twice seen hanging about my carts, inthat same town of Lancaster where I had been only two nights, this sameunknown young man.

It put me rather out of sorts.  What it meant as to particularsI no more foreboded then than you forebode now, but it put me ratherout of sorts.  Howsoever, I made light of it to Pickleson, andI took leave of Pickleson, advising him to spend his legacy in gettingup his stamina, and to continue to stand by his religion.  Towardsmorning I kept a look out for the strange young man, and—whatwas more—I saw the strange young man.  He was well dressedand well looking.  He loitered very nigh my carts, watching themlike as if he was taking care of them, and soon after daybreak turnedand went away.  I sent a hail after him, but he never started orlooked round, or took the smallest notice.

We left Lancaster within an hour or two, on our way towards Carlisle. Next morning, at daybreak, I looked out again for the strange youngman.  I did not see him.  But next morning I looked out again,and there he was once more.  I sent another hail after him, butas before he gave not the slightest sign of being anyways disturbed. This put a thought into my head.  Acting on it I watched him indifferent manners and at different times not necessary to enter into,till I found that this strange young man was deaf and dumb.

The discovery turned me over, because I knew that a part of thatestablishment where she had been was allotted to young men (some ofthem well off), and I thought to myself, “If she favours him,where am I? and where is all that I have worked and planned for?” Hoping—I must confess to the selfishness—that she mightnotfavour him, I set myself to find out.  At last I wasby accident present at a meeting between them in the open air, lookingon leaning behind a fir-tree without their knowing of it.  It wasa moving meeting for all the three parties concerned.  I knew everysyllable that passed between them as well as they did.  I listenedwith my eyes, which had come to be as quick and true with deaf and dumbconversation as my ears with the talk of people that can speak. He was a-going out to China as clerk in a merchant’s house, whichhis father had been before him.  He was in circumstances to keepa wife, and he wanted her to marry him and go along with him. She persisted, no.  He asked if she didn’t love him. Yes, she loved him dearly, dearly; but she could never disappoint herbeloved, good, noble, generous, and I-don’t-know-what-all father(meaning me, the Cheap Jack in the sleeved waistcoat) and she wouldstay with him, Heaven bless him! though it was to break her heart. Then she cried most bitterly, and that made up my mind.

While my mind had been in an unsettled state about her favouringthis young man, I had felt that unreasonable towards Pickleson, thatit was well for him he had got his legacy down.  For I often thought,“If it hadn’t been for this same weak-minded giant, I mightnever have come to trouble my head and wex my soul about the young man.” But, once that I knew she loved him,—once that I had seen herweep for him,—it was a different thing.  I made it rightin my mind with Pickleson on the spot, and I shook myself together todo what was right by all.

She had left the young man by that time (for it took a few minutesto get me thoroughly well shook together), and the young man was leaningagainst another of the fir-trees,—of which there was a cluster,—withhis face upon his arm.  I touched him on the back.  Lookingup and seeing me, he says, in our deaf-and-dumb talk, “Do notbe angry.”

“I am not angry, good boy.  I am your friend.  Comewith me.”

I left him at the foot of the steps of the Library Cart, and I wentup alone.  She was drying her eyes.

“You have been crying, my dear.”

“Yes, father.”

“Why?”

“A headache.”

“Not a heartache?”

“I said a headache, father.”

“Doctor Marigold must prescribe for that headache.”

She took up the book of my Prescriptions, and held it up with a forcedsmile; but seeing me keep still and look earnest, she softly laid itdown again, and her eyes were very attentive.

“The Prescription is not there, Sophy.”

“Where is it?”

“Here, my dear.”

I brought her young husband in, and I put her hand in his, and myonly farther words to both of them were these: “Doctor Marigold’slast Prescription.  To be taken for life.”  After whichI bolted.

When the wedding come off, I mounted a coat (blue, and bright buttons),for the first and last time in all my days, and I give Sophy away withmy own hand.  There were only us three and the gentleman who hadhad charge of her for those two years.  I give the wedding dinnerof four in the Library Cart.  Pigeon-pie, a leg of pickled pork,a pair of fowls, and suitable garden stuff.  The best of drinks. I give them a speech, and the gentleman give us a speech, and all ourjokes told, and the whole went off like a sky-rocket.  In the courseof the entertainment I explained to Sophy that I should keep the LibraryCart as my living-cart when not upon the road, and that I should keepall her books for her just as they stood, till she come back to claimthem.  So she went to China with her young husband, and it wasa parting sorrowful and heavy, and I got the boy I had another service;and so as of old, when my child and wife were gone, I went ploddingalong alone, with my whip over my shoulder, at the old horse’shead.

Sophy wrote me many letters, and I wrote her many letters. About the end of the first year she sent me one in an unsteady hand:“Dearest father, not a week ago I had a darling little daughter,but I am so well that they let me write these words to you.  Dearestand best father, I hope my child may not be deaf and dumb, but I donot yet know.”  When I wrote back, I hinted the question;but as Sophy never answered that question, I felt it to be a sad one,and I never repeated it.  For a long time our letters were regular,but then they got irregular, through Sophy’s husband being movedto another station, and through my being always on the move.  Butwe were in one another’s thoughts, I was equally sure, lettersor no letters.

Five years, odd months, had gone since Sophy went away.  I wasstill the King of the Cheap Jacks, and at a greater height of popularitythan ever.  I had had a first-rate autumn of it, and on the twenty-thirdof December, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four, I found myselfat Uxbridge, Middlesex, clean sold out.  So I jogged up to Londonwith the old horse, light and easy, to have my Christmas-eve and Christmas-dayalone by the fire in the Library Cart, and then to buy a regular newstock of goods all round, to sell ’em again and get the money.

I am a neat hand at cookery, and I’ll tell you what I knockedup for my Christmas-eve dinner in the Library Cart.  I knockedup a beefsteak-pudding for one, with two kidneys, a dozen oysters, anda couple of mushrooms thrown in.  It’s a pudding to put aman in good humour with everything, except the two bottom buttons ofhis waistcoat.  Having relished that pudding and cleared away,I turned the lamp low, and sat down by the light of the fire, watchingit as it shone upon the backs of Sophy’s books.

Sophy’s books so brought Sophy’s self, that I saw hertouching face quite plainly, before I dropped off dozing by the fire. This may be a reason why Sophy, with her deaf-and-dumb child in herarms, seemed to stand silent by me all through my nap.  I was onthe road, off the road, in all sorts of places, North and South andWest and East, Winds liked best and winds liked least, Here and thereand gone astray, Over the hills and far away, and still she stood silentby me, with her silent child in her arms.  Even when I woke witha start, she seemed to vanish, as if she had stood by me in that veryplace only a single instant before.

I had started at a real sound, and the sound was on the steps ofthe cart.  It was the light hurried tread of a child, coming clamberingup.  That tread of a child had once been so familiar to me, thatfor half a moment I believed I was a-going to see a little ghost.

But the touch of a real child was laid upon the outer handle of thedoor, and the handle turned, and the door opened a little way, and areal child peeped in.  A bright little comely girl with large darkeyes.

Looking full at me, the tiny creature took off her mite of a strawhat, and a quantity of dark curls fell about her face.  Then sheopened her lips, and said in a pretty voice,

“Grandfather!”

“Ah, my God!” I cries out.  “She can speak!”

“Yes, dear grandfather.  And I am to ask you whether therewas ever any one that I remind you of?”

In a moment Sophy was round my neck, as well as the child, and herhusband was a-wringing my hand with his face hid, and we all had toshake ourselves together before we could get over it.  And whenwe did begin to get over it, and I saw the pretty child a-talking, pleasedand quick and eager and busy, to her mother, in the signs that I hadfirst taught her mother, the happy and yet pitying tears fell rollingdown my face.

Related articles