Master Humphrey's Clock - Charles Dickens (online e reader .TXT) 📗

jams and sweet cakes, which heralded some uncommon occasion. Miss Benton (my housekeeper bears that name) was in a state of great expectation, too, frequently going to the front door and looking anxiously down the lane, and more than once observing to the servant-girl that she expected company, and hoped no accident had happened to delay them.

A modest ring at the bell at length allayed her fears, and Miss Benton, hurrying into her own room and shutting herself up, in order that she might preserve that appearance of being taken by surprise which is so essential to the polite reception of visitors, awaited their coming with a smiling countenance.

‘Good ev’nin’, mum,’ said the older Mr. Weller, looking in at the door after a prefatory tap. ‘I’m afeerd we’ve come in rayther arter the time, mum, but the young colt being full o’ wice, has been’ a boltin’ and shyin’ and gettin’ his leg over the traces to sich a extent that if he an’t wery soon broke in, he’ll wex me into a broken heart, and then he’ll never be brought out no more except to learn his letters from the writin’ on his grandfather’s tombstone.’

With these pathetic words, which were addressed to something outside the door about two feet six from the ground, Mr. Weller introduced a very small boy firmly set upon a couple of very sturdy legs, who looked as if nothing could ever knock him down. Besides having a very round face strongly resembling Mr. Weller’s, and a stout little body of exactly his build, this young gentleman, standing with his little legs very wide apart, as if the top-boots were familiar to them, actually winked upon the housekeeper with his infant eye, in imitation of his grandfather.

‘There’s a naughty boy, mum,’ said Mr. Weller, bursting with delight, ‘there’s a immoral Tony. Wos there ever a little chap o’ four year and eight months old as vinked his eye at a strange lady afore?’

As little affected by this observation as by the former appeal to his feelings, Master Weller elevated in the air a small model of a coach whip which he carried in his hand, and addressing the housekeeper with a shrill ‘ya - hip!’ inquired if she was ‘going down the road;’ at which happy adaptation of a lesson he had been taught from infancy, Mr. Weller could restrain his feelings no longer, but gave him twopence on the spot.

‘It’s in wain to deny it, mum,’ said Mr. Weller, ‘this here is a boy arter his grandfather’s own heart, and beats out all the boys as ever wos or will be. Though at the same time, mum,’ added Mr. Weller, trying to look gravely down upon his favourite, ‘it was wery wrong on him to want to - over all the posts as we come along, and wery cruel on him to force poor grandfather to lift him cross-legged over every vun of ‘em. He wouldn’t pass vun single blessed post, mum, and at the top o’ the lane there’s seven-and-forty on ‘em all in a row, and wery close together.’

Here Mr. Weller, whose feelings were in a perpetual conflict between pride in his grandson’s achievements and a sense of his own responsibility, and the importance of impressing him with moral truths, burst into a fit of laughter, and suddenly checking himself, remarked in a severe tone that little boys as made their grandfathers put ‘em over posts never went to heaven at any price.

By this time the housekeeper had made tea, and little Tony, placed on a chair beside her, with his eyes nearly on a level with the top of the table, was provided with various delicacies which yielded him extreme contentment. The housekeeper (who seemed rather afraid of the child, notwithstanding her caresses) then patted him on the head, and declared that he was the finest boy she had ever seen.

‘Wy, mum,’ said Mr. Weller, ‘I don’t think you’ll see a many sich, and that’s the truth. But if my son Samivel vould give me my vay, mum, and only dis-pense vith his - MIGHT I wenter to say the vurd?’

‘What word, Mr. Weller?’ said the housekeeper, blushing slightly.

‘Petticuts, mum,’ returned that gentleman, laying his hand upon the garments of his grandson. ‘If my son Samivel, mum, vould only dis-pense vith these here, you’d see such a alteration in his appearance, as the imagination can’t depicter.’

‘But what would you have the child wear instead, Mr. Weller?’ said the housekeeper.

‘I’ve offered my son Samivel, mum, agen and agen,’ returned the old gentleman, ‘to purwide him at my own cost vith a suit o’ clothes as ‘ud be the makin’ on him, and form his mind in infancy for those pursuits as I hope the family o’ the Vellers vill alvays dewote themselves to. Tony, my boy, tell the lady wot them clothes are, as grandfather says, father ought to let you vear.’

‘A little white hat and a little sprig weskut and little knee cords and little top-boots and a little green coat with little bright buttons and a little welwet collar,’ replied Tony, with great readiness and no stops.

‘That’s the cos-toom, mum,’ said Mr. Weller, looking proudly at the housekeeper. ‘Once make sich a model on him as that, and you’d say he WOS an angel!’

Perhaps the housekeeper thought that in such a guise young Tony would look more like the angel at Islington than anything else of that name, or perhaps she was disconcerted to find her previously-conceived ideas disturbed, as angels are not commonly represented in top-boots and sprig waistcoats. She coughed doubtfully, but said nothing.

‘How many brothers and sisters have you, my dear?’ she asked, after a short silence.

‘One brother and no sister at all,’ replied Tony. ‘Sam his name is, and so’s my father’s. Do you know my father?’

‘O yes, I know him,’ said the housekeeper, graciously.

‘Is my father fond of you?’ pursued Tony.

‘I hope so,’ rejoined the smiling housekeeper.

Tony considered a moment, and then said, ‘Is my grandfather fond of you?’

This would seem a very easy question to answer, but instead of replying to it, the housekeeper smiled in great confusion, and said that really children did ask such extraordinary questions that it was the most difficult thing in the world to talk to them. Mr. Weller took upon himself to reply that he was very fond of the lady; but the housekeeper entreating that he would not put such things into the child’s head, Mr. Weller shook his own while she looked another way, and seemed to be troubled with a misgiving that captivation was in progress. It was, perhaps, on this account that he changed the subject precipitately.

‘It’s wery wrong in little boys to make game o’ their grandfathers, an’t it, mum?’ said Mr. Weller, shaking his head waggishly, until Tony looked at him, when he counterfeited the deepest dejection and sorrow.

‘O, very sad!’ assented the housekeeper. ‘But I hope no little boys do that?’

‘There is vun young Turk, mum,’ said Mr. Weller, ‘as havin’ seen his grandfather a little overcome vith drink on the occasion of a friend’s birthday, goes a reelin’ and staggerin’ about the house, and makin’ believe that he’s the old gen’lm’n.’

‘O, quite shocking!’ cried the housekeeper,

‘Yes, mum,’ said Mr. Weller; ‘and previously to so doin’, this here young traitor that I’m a speakin’ of, pinches his little nose to make it red, and then he gives a hiccup and says, “I’m all right,” he says; “give us another song!” Ha, ha! “Give us another song,” he says. Ha, ha, ha!’

In his excessive delight, Mr. Weller was quite unmindful of his moral responsibility, until little Tony kicked up his legs, and laughing immoderately, cried, ‘That was me, that was;’ whereupon the grandfather, by a great effort, became extremely solemn.

‘No, Tony, not you,’ said Mr. Weller. ‘I hope it warn’t you, Tony. It must ha’ been that ‘ere naughty little chap as comes sometimes out o’ the empty watch-box round the corner, - that same little chap as wos found standing on the table afore the looking-glass, pretending to shave himself vith a oyster-knife.’

‘He didn’t hurt himself, I hope?’ observed the housekeeper.

‘Not he, mum,’ said Mr. Weller proudly; ‘bless your heart, you might trust that ‘ere boy vith a steam-engine a’most, he’s such a knowin’ young’ - but suddenly recollecting himself and observing that Tony perfectly understood and appreciated the compliment, the old gentleman groaned and observed that ‘it wos all wery shockin’ - wery.’

‘O, he’s a bad ‘un,’ said Mr. Weller, ‘is that ‘ere watch-box boy, makin’ such a noise and litter in the back yard, he does, waterin’ wooden horses and feedin’ of ‘em vith grass, and perpetivally spillin’ his little brother out of a veelbarrow and frightenin’ his mother out of her vits, at the wery moment wen she’s expectin’ to increase his stock of happiness vith another play-feller, - O, he’s a bad one! He’s even gone so far as to put on a pair of paper spectacles as he got his father to make for him, and walk up and down the garden vith his hands behind him in imitation of Mr. Pickwick, - but Tony don’t do sich things, O no!’

‘O no!’ echoed Tony.

‘He knows better, he does,’ said Mr. Weller. ‘He knows that if he wos to come sich games as these nobody wouldn’t love him, and that his grandfather in partickler couldn’t abear the sight on him; for vich reasons Tony’s always good.’

‘Always good,’ echoed Tony; and his grandfather immediately took him on his knee and kissed him, at the same time, with many nods and winks, slyly pointing at the child’s head with his thumb, in order that the housekeeper, otherwise deceived by the admirable manner in which he (Mr. Weller) had sustained his character, might not suppose that any other young gentleman was referred to, and might clearly understand that the boy of the watch-box was but an imaginary creation, and a fetch of Tony himself, invented for his improvement and reformation.

Not confining himself to a mere verbal description of his grandson’s abilities, Mr. Weller, when tea was finished, invited him by various gifts of pence and halfpence to smoke imaginary pipes, drink visionary beer from real pots, imitate his grandfather without reserve, and in particular to go through the drunken scene, which threw the old gentleman into ecstasies and filled the housekeeper with wonder. Nor was Mr. Weller’s pride satisfied with even this display, for when he took his leave he carried the child, like some rare and astonishing curiosity, first to the barber’s house and afterwards to the tobacconist’s, at each of which places he repeated his performances with the utmost effect to applauding and delighted audiences. It was half-past nine o’clock when Mr. Weller was last seen carrying him home upon his shoulder, and it has been whispered abroad that at that time the infant Tony was rather intoxicated.

 

I was musing the other evening upon the characters and incidents with which I had been so long engaged; wondering how I could ever have looked forward with pleasure to the completion of my tale, and reproaching myself for having done so, as if it were a kind of cruelty to those companions of my solitude whom I had now dismissed, and could never again recall; when my clock struck ten. Punctual to the hour, my friends appeared.

On our last night of meeting, we had finished the story which the reader has just concluded. Our conversation took the same current as the meditations which the entrance of my friends had interrupted, and The Old Curiosity Shop was the staple of our discourse.

I may confide to the reader now, that in connection with this little history I had something upon my