Charles Dickens by The Cricket on the Hearth Read Free Book Online Page B

not
endure to meet her face; but dropped his eyes, as if she could have
read in them his innocent deceit.
    'Then, tell me again about him, dear father,' said Bertha. 'Many
times again! His face is benevolent, kind, and tender. Honest and
true, I am sure it is. The manly heart that tries to cloak all
favours with a show of roughness and unwillingness, beats in its
every look and glance.'
    'And makes it noble!' added Caleb, in his quiet desperation.
    'And makes it noble!' cried the Blind Girl. 'He is older than May,
father.'
    'Ye-es,' said Caleb, reluctantly. 'He's a little older than May.
But that don't signify.'
    'Oh father, yes! To be his patient companion in infirmity and age;
to be his gentle nurse in sickness, and his constant friend in
suffering and sorrow; to know no weariness in working for his sake;
to watch him, tend him, sit beside his bed and talk to him awake,
and pray for him asleep; what privileges these would be! What
opportunities for proving all her truth and devotion to him! Would
she do all this, dear father?
    'No doubt of it,' said Caleb.
    'I love her, father; I can love her from my soul!' exclaimed the
Blind Girl. And saying so, she laid her poor blind face on Caleb's
shoulder, and so wept and wept, that he was almost sorry to have
brought that tearful happiness upon her.
    In the mean time, there had been a pretty sharp commotion at John
Peerybingle's, for little Mrs. Peerybingle naturally couldn't think
of going anywhere without the Baby; and to get the Baby under weigh
took time. Not that there was much of the Baby, speaking of it as
a thing of weight and measure, but there was a vast deal to do
about and about it, and it all had to be done by easy stages. For
instance, when the Baby was got, by hook and by crook, to a certain
point of dressing, and you might have rationally supposed that
another touch or two would finish him off, and turn him out a tip-
top Baby challenging the world, he was unexpectedly extinguished in
a flannel cap, and hustled off to bed; where he simmered (so to
speak) between two blankets for the best part of an hour. From
this state of inaction he was then recalled, shining very much and
roaring violently, to partake of—well? I would rather say, if
you'll permit me to speak generally—of a slight repast. After
which, he went to sleep again. Mrs. Peerybingle took advantage of
this interval, to make herself as smart in a small way as ever you
saw anybody in all your life; and, during the same short truce,
Miss Slowboy insinuated herself into a spencer of a fashion so
surprising and ingenious, that it had no connection with herself,
or anything else in the universe, but was a shrunken, dog's-eared,
independent fact, pursuing its lonely course without the least
regard to anybody. By this time, the Baby, being all alive again,
was invested, by the united efforts of Mrs. Peerybingle and Miss
Slowboy, with a cream-coloured mantle for its body, and a sort of
nankeen raised-pie for its head; and so in course of time they all
three got down to the door, where the old horse had already taken
more than the full value of his day's toll out of the Turnpike
Trust, by tearing up the road with his impatient autographs; and
whence Boxer might be dimly seen in the remote perspective,
standing looking back, and tempting him to come on without orders.
    As to a chair, or anything of that kind for helping Mrs.
Peerybingle into the cart, you know very little of John, if you
think THAT was necessary. Before you could have seen him lift her
from the ground, there she was in her place, fresh and rosy,
saying, 'John! How CAN you! Think of Tilly!'
    If I might be allowed to mention a young lady's legs, on any terms,
I would observe of Miss Slowboy's that there was a fatality about
them which rendered them singularly liable to be grazed; and that
she never effected the smallest ascent or descent, without
recording the circumstance upon them with a notch, as Robinson
Crusoe marked the days upon his wooden