CHAPTER XXX

Esther’s Narrative

Richard had been gone away some time when a visitor came to pass a

few days with us. It was an elderly lady. It was Mrs. Woodcourt, who,

having come from Wales to stay with Mrs. Bayham Badger and having

written to my guardian, “by her son Allan’s desire,” to report that

she had heard from him and that he was well “and sent his kind

remembrances to all of us,” had been invited by my guardian to make a

visit to Bleak House. She stayed with us nearly three weeks. She took

very kindly to me and was extremely confidential, so much so that

sometimes she almost made me uncomfortable. I had no right, I knew

very well, to be uncomfortable because she confided in me, and I felt

it was unreasonable; still, with all I could do, I could not quite

help it.

She was such a sharp little lady and used to sit with her hands

folded in each other looking so very watchful while she talked to me

that perhaps I found that rather irksome. Or perhaps it was her being

so upright and trim, though I don’t think it was that, because I

thought that quaintly pleasant. Nor can it have been the general

expression of her face, which was very sparkling and pretty for an

old lady. I don’t know what it was. Or at least if I do now, I

thought I did not then. Or at least—but it don’t matter.

Of a night when I was going upstairs to bed, she would invite me

into her room, where she sat before the fire in a great chair;

and, dear me, she would tell me about Morgan ap-Kerrig until I

was quite low-spirited! Sometimes she recited a few verses from

Crumlinwallinwer and the Mewlinnwillinwodd (if those are the right

names, which I dare say they are not), and would become quite fiery

with the sentiments they expressed. Though I never knew what they

were (being in Welsh), further than that they were highly eulogistic

of the lineage of Morgan ap-Kerrig.

“So, Miss Summerson,” she would say to me with stately triumph,

“this, you see, is the fortune inherited by my son. Wherever my son

goes, he can claim kindred with Ap-Kerrig. He may not have money, but

he always has what is much better—family, my dear.”

I had my doubts of their caring so very much for Morgan ap-Kerrig in

India and China, but of course I never expressed them. I used to say

it was a great thing to be so highly connected.

“It IS, my dear, a great thing,” Mrs. Woodcourt would reply. “It has

its disadvantages; my son’s choice of a wife, for instance, is

limited by it, but the matrimonial choice of the royal family is

limited in much the same manner.”

Then she would pat me on the arm and smooth my dress, as much as to

assure me that she had a good opinion of me, the distance between us

notwithstanding.

“Poor Mr. Woodcourt, my dear,” she would say, and always with some

emotion, for with her lofty pedigree she had a very affectionate

heart, “was descended from a great Highland family, the MacCoorts of

MacCoort. He served his king and country as an officer in the Royal

Highlanders, and he died on the field. My son is one of the last

representatives of two old families. With the blessing of heaven he

will set them up again and unite them with another old family.”

It was in vain for me to try to change the subject, as I used to try,

only for the sake of novelty or perhaps because—but I need not be so

particular. Mrs. Woodcourt never would let me change it.

“My dear,” she said one night, “you have so much sense and you look

at the world in a quiet manner so superior to your time of life that

it is a comfort to me to talk to you about these family matters of

mine. You don’t know much of my son, my dear; but you know enough of

him, I dare say, to recollect him?”

“Yes, ma’am. I recollect him.”

“Yes, my dear. Now, my dear, I think you are a judge of character,

and I should like to have your opinion of him.”

“Oh, Mrs. Woodcourt,” said I, “that is so difficult!”

“Why is it so difficult, my dear?” she returned. “I don’t see it

myself.”

“To give an opinion—”

“On so slight an acquaintance, my dear. THAT’S true.”

I didn’t mean that, because Mr. Woodcourt had been at our house a

good deal altogether and had become quite intimate with my guardian.

I said so, and added that he seemed to be very clever in his

profession—we thought—and that his kindness and gentleness to Miss

Flite were above all praise.

“You do him justice!” said Mrs. Woodcourt, pressing my hand. “You

define him exactly. Allan is a dear fellow, and in his profession

faultless. I say it, though I am his mother. Still, I must confess he

is not without faults, love.”

“None of us are,” said I.

“Ah! But his really are faults that he might correct, and ought to

correct,” returned the sharp old lady, sharply shaking her head. “I

am so much attached to you that I may confide in you, my dear, as a

third party wholly disinterested, that he is fickleness itself.”

I said I should have thought it hardly possible that he could have

been otherwise than constant to his profession and zealous in the

pursuit of it, judging from the reputation he had earned.

“You are right again, my dear,” the old lady retorted, “but I don’t

refer to his profession, look you.”

“Oh!” said I.

“No,” said she. “I refer, my dear, to his social conduct. He is

always paying trivial attentions to young ladies, and always has

been, ever since he was eighteen. Now, my dear, he has never really

cared for any one of them and has never meant in doing this to do any

harm or to express anything but politeness and good nature. Still,

it’s not right, you know; is it?”

“No,” said I, as she seemed to wait for me.

“And it might lead to mistaken notions, you see, my dear.”

I supposed it might.

“Therefore, I have told him many times that he really should be more

careful, both in justice to himself and in justice to others. And he

has always said, ‘Mother, I will be; but you know me better than

anybody else does, and you know I mean no harm—in short, mean

nothing.’ All of which is very true, my dear, but is no

justification. However, as he is now gone so far away and for an

indefinite time, and as he will have good opportunities and

introductions, we may consider this past and gone. And you, my dear,”

said the old lady, who was now all nods and smiles, “regarding your

dear self, my love?”

“Me, Mrs. Woodcourt?”

“Not to be always selfish, talking of my son, who has gone to seek

his fortune and to find a wife—when do you mean to seek YOUR fortune

and to find a husband, Miss Summerson? Hey, look you! Now you blush!”

I don’t think I did blush—at all events, it was not important if I

did—and I said my present fortune perfectly contented me and I had

no wish to change it.

“Shall I tell you what I always think of you and the fortune yet to

come for you, my love?” said Mrs. Woodcourt.

“If you believe you are a good prophet,” said I.

“Why, then, it is that you will marry some one very rich and very

worthy, much older—five and twenty years, perhaps—than yourself.

And you will be an excellent wife, and much beloved, and very happy.”

“That is a good fortune,” said I. “But why is it to be mine?”

“My dear,” she returned, “there’s suitability in it—you are so busy,

and so neat, and so peculiarly situated altogether that there’s

suitability in it, and it will come to pass. And nobody, my love,

will congratulate you more sincerely on such a marriage than I

shall.”

It was curious that this should make me uncomfortable, but I think it

did. I know it did. It made me for some part of that night

uncomfortable. I was so ashamed of my folly that I did not like to

confess it even to Ada, and that made me more uncomfortable still. I

would have given anything not to have been so much in the bright old

lady’s confidence if I could have possibly declined it. It gave me

the most inconsistent opinions of her. At one time I thought she was

a story-teller, and at another time that she was the pink of truth.

Now I suspected that she was very cunning, next moment I believed her

honest Welsh heart to be perfectly innocent and simple. And after

all, what did it matter to me, and why did it matter to me? Why could

not I, going up to bed with my basket of keys, stop to sit down by

her fire and accommodate myself for a little while to her, at least

as well as to anybody else, and not trouble myself about the harmless

things she said to me? Impelled towards her, as I certainly was, for

I was very anxious that she should like me and was very glad indeed

that she did, why should I harp afterwards, with actual distress and

pain, on every word she said and weigh it over and over again in

twenty scales? Why was it so worrying to me to have her in our house,

and confidential to me every night, when I yet felt that it was

better and safer somehow that she should be there than anywhere else?

These were perplexities and contradictions that I could not account

for. At least, if I could—but I shall come to all that by and by,

and it is mere idleness to go on about it now.

So when Mrs. Woodcourt went away, I was sorry to lose her but was

relieved too. And then Caddy Jellyby came down, and Caddy brought

such a packet of domestic news that it gave us abundant occupation.

First Caddy declared (and would at first declare nothing else) that I

was the best adviser that ever was known. This, my pet said, was no

news at all; and this, I said, of course, was nonsense. Then Caddy

told us that she was going to be married in a month and that if Ada

and I would be her bridesmaids, she was the happiest girl in the

world. To be sure, this was news indeed; and I thought we never

should have done talking about it, we had so much to say to Caddy,

and Caddy had so much to say to us.

It seemed that Caddy’s unfortunate papa had got over his

bankruptcy—“gone through the Gazette,” was the expression Caddy

used, as if it were a tunnel—with the general clemency and

commiseration of his creditors, and had got rid of his affairs in

some blessed manner without succeeding in understanding them, and had

given up everything he possessed (which was not worth much, I should

think, to judge from the state of the furniture), and had satisfied

every one concerned that he could do no more, poor man. So, he had

been honourably dismissed to “the office” to begin the world again.

What he did at the office, I never knew; Caddy said he was a

“custom-house and general agent,” and the only thing I ever

understood about that business was that when he wanted money more

than usual he went to the docks to look for it, and hardly ever found

it.

As soon as her papa had tranquillized his mind by becoming this shorn

lamb, and they had removed to a furnished lodging in Hatton Garden

(where I found the children, when I afterwards went there, cutting

the horse hair out of the seats of the chairs and choking themselves

with it), Caddy had brought about a meeting between him and old Mr.

Turveydrop; and poor Mr. Jellyby, being very humble and meek, had

deferred to Mr. Turveydrop’s deportment so submissively that they had

become excellent friends. By degrees, old Mr. Turveydrop, thus

familiarized with the idea of his son’s marriage, had worked up his

parental feelings to the height of contemplating that event as being

near at hand and had given his gracious consent to the young couple

commencing housekeeping at the academy in Newman Street when they

would.

“And your papa, Caddy. What did he say?”

“Oh! Poor Pa,” said Caddy, “only cried and said he hoped we might get

on better than he and Ma had got on. He didn’t say so before Prince,

he only said so to me. And he said, ‘My poor girl, you have not been

very well taught how to make a home for your husband, but unless you

mean with all your heart to strive to do it, you had better murder

him than marry him—if you really love him.’”

“And how did you reassure him, Caddy?”

“Why, it was very distressing, you know, to see poor Pa so low and

hear him say such terrible things, and I couldn’t help crying myself.

But I told him that I DID mean it with all my heart and that I hoped

our house would be a place for him to come and find some comfort in

of an evening and that I hoped and thought I could be a better

daughter to him there than at home. Then I mentioned Peepy’s coming

to stay with me, and then Pa began to cry again and said the children

were Indians.”

“Indians, Caddy?”

“Yes,” said Caddy, “wild Indians. And Pa said”—here she began to

sob, poor girl, not at all like the happiest girl in the world—“that

he was sensible the best thing that could happen to them was their

being all tomahawked together.”

Ada suggested that it was comfortable to know that Mr. Jellyby did

not mean these destructive sentiments.

“No, of course I know Pa wouldn’t like his family to be weltering in

their blood,” said Caddy, “but he means that they are very

unfortunate in being Ma’s children and that he is very unfortunate in

being Ma’s husband; and I am sure that’s true, though it seems

unnatural to say so.”

I asked Caddy if Mrs. Jellyby knew that her wedding-day was fixed.

“Oh! You know what Ma is, Esther,” she returned. “It’s impossible to

say whether she knows it or not. She has been told it often enough;

and when she IS told it, she only gives me a placid look, as if I was

I don’t know what—a steeple in the distance,” said Caddy with a

sudden idea; “and then she shakes her head and says ‘Oh, Caddy,

Caddy, what a tease you are!’ and goes on with the Borrioboola

letters.”

“And about your wardrobe, Caddy?” said I. For she was under no

restraint with us.

“Well, my dear Esther,” she returned, drying her eyes, “I must do the

best I can and trust to my dear Prince never to have an unkind

remembrance of my coming so shabbily to him. If the question

concerned an outfit for Borrioboola, Ma would know all about it and

would be quite excited. Being what it is, she neither knows nor

cares.”

Caddy was not at all deficient in natural affection for her mother,

but mentioned this with tears as an undeniable fact, which I am

afraid it was. We were sorry for the poor dear girl and found so much

to admire in the good disposition which had survived under such

discouragement that we both at once (I mean Ada and I) proposed a

little scheme that made her perfectly joyful. This was her staying

with us for three weeks, my staying with her for one, and our all

three contriving and cutting out, and repairing, and sewing, and

saving, and doing the very best we could think of to make the most of

her stock. My guardian being as pleased with the idea as Caddy was,

we took her home next day to arrange the matter and brought her out

again in triumph with her boxes and all the purchases that could be

squeezed out of a ten-pound note, which Mr. Jellyby had found in the

docks I suppose, but which he at all events gave her. What my

guardian would not have given her if we had encouraged him, it would

be difficult to say, but we thought it right to compound for no more

than her wedding-dress and bonnet. He agreed to this compromise, and

if Caddy had ever been happy in her life, she was happy when we sat

down to work.

She was clumsy enough with her needle, poor girl, and pricked her

fingers as much as she had been used to ink them. She could not help

reddening a little now and then, partly with the smart and partly

with vexation at being able to do no better, but she soon got over

that and began to improve rapidly. So day after day she, and my

darling, and my little maid Charley, and a milliner out of the town,

and I, sat hard at work, as pleasantly as possible.

Over and above this, Caddy was very anxious “to learn housekeeping,”

as she said. Now, mercy upon us! The idea of her learning

housekeeping of a person of my vast experience was such a joke that I

laughed, and coloured up, and fell into a comical confusion when she

proposed it. However, I said, “Caddy, I am sure you are very welcome

to learn anything that you can learn of ME, my dear,” and I showed

her all my books and methods and all my fidgety ways. You would have

supposed that I was showing her some wonderful inventions, by her

study of them; and if you had seen her, whenever I jingled my

housekeeping keys, get up and attend me, certainly you might have

thought that there never was a greater imposter than I with a blinder

follower than Caddy Jellyby.

So what with working and housekeeping, and lessons to Charley, and

backgammon in the evening with my guardian, and duets with Ada, the

three weeks slipped fast away. Then I went home with Caddy to see

what could be done there, and Ada and Charley remained behind to take

care of my guardian.

When I say I went home with Caddy, I mean to the furnished lodging in

Hatton Garden. We went to Newman Street two or three times, where

preparations were in progress too—a good many, I observed, for

enhancing the comforts of old Mr. Turveydrop, and a few for putting

the newly married couple away cheaply at the top of the house—but

our great point was to make the furnished lodging decent for the

wedding-breakfast and to imbue Mrs. Jellyby beforehand with some

faint sense of the occasion.

The latter was the more difficult thing of the two because Mrs.

Jellyby and an unwholesome boy occupied the front sitting-room (the

back one was a mere closet), and it was littered down with

waste-paper and Borrioboolan documents, as an untidy stable might be

littered with straw. Mrs. Jellyby sat there all day drinking strong

coffee, dictating, and holding Borrioboolan interviews by

appointment. The unwholesome boy, who seemed to me to be going into a

decline, took his meals out of the house. When Mr. Jellyby came home,

he usually groaned and went down into the kitchen. There he got

something to eat if the servant would give him anything, and then,

feeling that he was in the way, went out and walked about Hatton

Garden in the wet. The poor children scrambled up and tumbled down

the house as they had always been accustomed to do.

The production of these devoted little sacrifices in any presentable

condition being quite out of the question at a week’s notice, I

proposed to Caddy that we should make them as happy as we could on

her marriage morning in the attic where they all slept, and should

confine our greatest efforts to her mama and her mama’s room, and a

clean breakfast. In truth Mrs. Jellyby required a good deal of

attention, the lattice-work up her back having widened considerably

since I first knew her and her hair looking like the mane of a

dustman’s horse.

Thinking that the display of Caddy’s wardrobe would be the best means

of approaching the subject, I invited Mrs. Jellyby to come and look

at it spread out on Caddy’s bed in the evening after the unwholesome

boy was gone.

“My dear Miss Summerson,” said she, rising from her desk with her

usual sweetness of temper, “these are really ridiculous preparations,

though your assisting them is a proof of your kindness. There is

something so inexpressibly absurd to me in the idea of Caddy being

married! Oh, Caddy, you silly, silly, silly puss!”

She came upstairs with us notwithstanding and looked at the clothes

in her customary far-off manner. They suggested one distinct idea to

her, for she said with her placid smile, and shaking her head, “My

good Miss Summerson, at half the cost, this weak child might have

been equipped for Africa!”

On our going downstairs again, Mrs. Jellyby asked me whether this

troublesome business was really to take place next Wednesday. And on

my replying yes, she said, “Will my room be required, my dear Miss

Summerson? For it’s quite impossible that I can put my papers away.”

I took the liberty of saying that the room would certainly be wanted

and that I thought we must put the papers away somewhere. “Well, my

dear Miss Summerson,” said Mrs. Jellyby, “you know best, I dare say.

But by obliging me to employ a boy, Caddy has embarrassed me to that

extent, overwhelmed as I am with public business, that I don’t know

which way to turn. We have a Ramification meeting, too, on Wednesday

afternoon, and the inconvenience is very serious.”

“It is not likely to occur again,” said I, smiling. “Caddy will be

married but once, probably.”

“That’s true,” Mrs. Jellyby replied; “that’s true, my dear. I suppose

we must make the best of it!”

The next question was how Mrs. Jellyby should be dressed on the

occasion. I thought it very curious to see her looking on serenely

from her writing-table while Caddy and I discussed it, occasionally

shaking her head at us with a half-reproachful smile like a superior

spirit who could just bear with our trifling.

The state in which her dresses were, and the extraordinary confusion

in which she kept them, added not a little to our difficulty; but at

length we devised something not very unlike what a common-place

mother might wear on such an occasion. The abstracted manner in which

Mrs. Jellyby would deliver herself up to having this attire tried on

by the dressmaker, and the sweetness with which she would then

observe to me how sorry she was that I had not turned my thoughts to

Africa, were consistent with the rest of her behaviour.

The lodging was rather confined as to space, but I fancied that if

Mrs. Jellyby’s household had been the only lodgers in Saint Paul’s or

Saint Peter’s, the sole advantage they would have found in the size

of the building would have been its affording a great deal of room to

be dirty in. I believe that nothing belonging to the family which it

had been possible to break was unbroken at the time of those

preparations for Caddy’s marriage, that nothing which it had been

possible to spoil in any way was unspoilt, and that no domestic

object which was capable of collecting dirt, from a dear child’s knee

to the door-plate, was without as much dirt as could well accumulate

upon it.

Poor Mr. Jellyby, who very seldom spoke and almost always sat when he

was at home with his head against the wall, became interested when he

saw that Caddy and I were attempting to establish some order among

all this waste and ruin and took off his coat to help. But such

wonderful things came tumbling out of the closets when they were

opened—bits of mouldy pie, sour bottles, Mrs. Jellyby’s caps,

letters, tea, forks, odd boots and shoes of children, firewood,

wafers, saucepan-lids, damp sugar in odds and ends of paper bags,

footstools, blacklead brushes, bread, Mrs. Jellyby’s bonnets, books

with butter sticking to the binding, guttered candle ends put out

by being turned upside down in broken candlesticks, nutshells,

heads and tails of shrimps, dinner-mats, gloves, coffee-grounds,

umbrellas—that he looked frightened, and left off again. But he came

regularly every evening and sat without his coat, with his head

against the wall, as though he would have helped us if he had known

how.

“Poor Pa!” said Caddy to me on the night before the great day, when

we really had got things a little to rights. “It seems unkind to

leave him, Esther. But what could I do if I stayed! Since I first

knew you, I have tidied and tidied over and over again, but it’s

useless. Ma and Africa, together, upset the whole house directly. We

never have a servant who don’t drink. Ma’s ruinous to everything.”

Mr. Jellyby could not hear what she said, but he seemed very low

indeed and shed tears, I thought.

“My heart aches for him; that it does!” sobbed Caddy. “I can’t help

thinking to-night, Esther, how dearly I hope to be happy with Prince,

and how dearly Pa hoped, I dare say, to be happy with Ma. What a

disappointed life!”

“My dear Caddy!” said Mr. Jellyby, looking slowly round from the

wail. It was the first time, I think, I ever heard him say three

words together.

“Yes, Pa!” cried Caddy, going to him and embracing him

affectionately.

“My dear Caddy,” said Mr. Jellyby. “Never have—”

“Not Prince, Pa?” faltered Caddy. “Not have Prince?”

“Yes, my dear,” said Mr. Jellyby. “Have him, certainly. But, never

have—”

I mentioned in my account of our first visit in Thavies Inn that

Richard described Mr. Jellyby as frequently opening his mouth after

dinner without saying anything. It was a habit of his. He opened his

mouth now a great many times and shook his head in a melancholy

manner.

“What do you wish me not to have? Don’t have what, dear Pa?” asked

Caddy, coaxing him, with her arms round his neck.

“Never have a mission, my dear child.”

Mr. Jellyby groaned and laid his head against the wall again, and

this was the only time I ever heard him make any approach to

expressing his sentiments on the Borrioboolan question. I suppose he

had been more talkative and lively once, but he seemed to have been

completely exhausted long before I knew him.

I thought Mrs. Jellyby never would have left off serenely looking

over her papers and drinking coffee that night. It was twelve o’clock

before we could obtain possession of the room, and the clearance it

required then was so discouraging that Caddy, who was almost tired

out, sat down in the middle of the dust and cried. But she soon

cheered up, and we did wonders with it before we went to bed.

In the morning it looked, by the aid of a few flowers and a quantity

of soap and water and a little arrangement, quite gay. The plain

breakfast made a cheerful show, and Caddy was perfectly charming. But

when my darling came, I thought—and I think now—that I never had

seen such a dear face as my beautiful pet’s.

We made a little feast for the children upstairs, and we put Peepy at

the head of the table, and we showed them Caddy in her bridal dress,

and they clapped their hands and hurrahed, and Caddy cried to think

that she was going away from them and hugged them over and over again

until we brought Prince up to fetch her away—when, I am sorry to

say, Peepy bit him. Then there was old Mr. Turveydrop downstairs, in

a state of deportment not to be expressed, benignly blessing Caddy

and giving my guardian to understand that his son’s happiness was his

own parental work and that he sacrificed personal considerations to

ensure it. “My dear sir,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “these young people

will live with me; my house is large enough for their accommodation,

and they shall not want the shelter of my roof. I could have

wished—you will understand the allusion, Mr. Jarndyce, for you

remember my illustrious patron the Prince Regent—I could have

wished that my son had married into a family where there was more

deportment, but the will of heaven be done!”

Mr. and Mrs. Pardiggle were of the party—Mr. Pardiggle, an

obstinate-looking man with a large waistcoat and stubbly hair, who

was always talking in a loud bass voice about his mite, or Mrs.

Pardiggle’s mite, or their five boys’ mites. Mr. Quale, with his hair

brushed back as usual and his knobs of temples shining very much, was

also there, not in the character of a disappointed lover, but as the

accepted of a young—at least, an unmarried—lady, a Miss Wisk, who

was also there. Miss Wisk’s mission, my guardian said, was to show

the world that woman’s mission was man’s mission and that the only

genuine mission of both man and woman was to be always moving

declaratory resolutions about things in general at public meetings.

The guests were few, but were, as one might expect at Mrs. Jellyby’s,

all devoted to public objects only. Besides those I have mentioned,

there was an extremely dirty lady with her bonnet all awry and the

ticketed price of her dress still sticking on it, whose neglected

home, Caddy told me, was like a filthy wilderness, but whose church

was like a fancy fair. A very contentious gentleman, who said it was

his mission to be everybody’s brother but who appeared to be on terms

of coolness with the whole of his large family, completed the party.

A party, having less in common with such an occasion, could hardly

have been got together by any ingenuity. Such a mean mission as the

domestic mission was the very last thing to be endured among them;

indeed, Miss Wisk informed us, with great indignation, before we sat

down to breakfast, that the idea of woman’s mission lying chiefly in

the narrow sphere of home was an outrageous slander on the part of

her tyrant, man. One other singularity was that nobody with a

mission—except Mr. Quale, whose mission, as I think I have formerly

said, was to be in ecstasies with everybody’s mission—cared at all

for anybody’s mission. Mrs. Pardiggle being as clear that the only

one infallible course was her course of pouncing upon the poor and

applying benevolence to them like a strait-waistcoat; as Miss Wisk

was that the only practical thing for the world was the emancipation

of woman from the thraldom of her tyrant, man. Mrs. Jellyby, all the

while, sat smiling at the limited vision that could see anything but

Borrioboola-Gha.

But I am anticipating now the purport of our conversation on the ride

home instead of first marrying Caddy. We all went to church, and Mr.

Jellyby gave her away. Of the air with which old Mr. Turveydrop, with

his hat under his left arm (the inside presented at the clergyman

like a cannon) and his eyes creasing themselves up into his wig,

stood stiff and high-shouldered behind us bridesmaids during the

ceremony, and afterwards saluted us, I could never say enough to do

it justice. Miss Wisk, whom I cannot report as prepossessing in

appearance, and whose manner was grim, listened to the proceedings,

as part of woman’s wrongs, with a disdainful face. Mrs. Jellyby, with

her calm smile and her bright eyes, looked the least concerned of all

the company.

We duly came back to breakfast, and Mrs. Jellyby sat at the head of

the table and Mr. Jellyby at the foot. Caddy had previously stolen

upstairs to hug the children again and tell them that her name was

Turveydrop. But this piece of information, instead of being an

agreeable surprise to Peepy, threw him on his back in such transports

of kicking grief that I could do nothing on being sent for but accede

to the proposal that he should be admitted to the breakfast table. So

he came down and sat in my lap; and Mrs. Jellyby, after saying, in

reference to the state of his pinafore, “Oh, you naughty Peepy, what

a shocking little pig you are!” was not at all discomposed. He was

very good except that he brought down Noah with him (out of an ark I

had given him before we went to church) and WOULD dip him head first

into the wine-glasses and then put him in his mouth.

My guardian, with his sweet temper and his quick perception and his

amiable face, made something agreeable even out of the ungenial

company. None of them seemed able to talk about anything but his, or

her, own one subject, and none of them seemed able to talk about even

that as part of a world in which there was anything else; but my

guardian turned it all to the merry encouragement of Caddy and the

honour of the occasion, and brought us through the breakfast nobly.

What we should have done without him, I am afraid to think, for all

the company despising the bride and bridegroom and old Mr.

Turveydrop—and old Mr. Thurveydrop, in virtue of his deportment,

considering himself vastly superior to all the company—it was a very

unpromising case.

At last the time came when poor Caddy was to go and when all her

property was packed on the hired coach and pair that was to take her

and her husband to Gravesend. It affected us to see Caddy clinging,

then, to her deplorable home and hanging on her mother’s neck with

the greatest tenderness.

“I am very sorry I couldn’t go on writing from dictation, Ma,” sobbed

Caddy. “I hope you forgive me now.”

“Oh, Caddy, Caddy!” said Mrs. Jellyby. “I have told you over and over

again that I have engaged a boy, and there’s an end of it.”

“You are sure you are not the least angry with me, Ma? Say you are

sure before I go away, Ma?”

“You foolish Caddy,” returned Mrs. Jellyby, “do I look angry, or have

I inclination to be angry, or time to be angry? How CAN you?”

“Take a little care of Pa while I am gone, Mama!”

Mrs. Jellyby positively laughed at the fancy. “You romantic child,”

said she, lightly patting Caddy’s back. “Go along. I am excellent

friends with you. Now, good-bye, Caddy, and be very happy!”

Then Caddy hung upon her father and nursed his cheek against hers as

if he were some poor dull child in pain. All this took place in the

hall. Her father released her, took out his pocket handkerchief, and

sat down on the stairs with his head against the wall. I hope he

found some consolation in walls. I almost think he did.

And then Prince took her arm in his and turned with great emotion and

respect to his father, whose deportment at that moment was

overwhelming.

“Thank you over and over again, father!” said Prince, kissing his

hand. “I am very grateful for all your kindness and consideration

regarding our marriage, and so, I can assure you, is Caddy.”

“Very,” sobbed Caddy. “Ve-ry!”

“My dear son,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “and dear daughter, I have done

my duty. If the spirit of a sainted wooman hovers above us and looks

down on the occasion, that, and your constant affection, will be my

recompense. You will not fail in YOUR duty, my son and daughter, I

believe?”

“Dear father, never!” cried Prince.

“Never, never, dear Mr. Turveydrop!” said Caddy.

“This,” returned Mr. Turveydrop, “is as it should be. My children, my

home is yours, my heart is yours, my all is yours. I will never leave

you; nothing but death shall part us. My dear son, you contemplate an

absence of a week, I think?”

“A week, dear father. We shall return home this day week.”

“My dear child,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “let me, even under the present

exceptional circumstances, recommend strict punctuality. It is highly

important to keep the connexion together; and schools, if at all

neglected, are apt to take offence.”

“This day week, father, we shall be sure to be home to dinner.”

“Good!” said Mr. Turveydrop. “You will find fires, my dear Caroline,

in your own room, and dinner prepared in my apartment. Yes, yes,

Prince!” anticipating some self-denying objection on his son’s part

with a great air. “You and our Caroline will be strange in the upper

part of the premises and will, therefore, dine that day in my

apartment. Now, bless ye!”

They drove away, and whether I wondered most at Mrs. Jellyby or at

Mr. Turveydrop, I did not know. Ada and my guardian were in the same

condition when we came to talk it over. But before we drove away too,

I received a most unexpected and eloquent compliment from Mr.

Jellyby. He came up to me in the hall, took both my hands, pressed

them earnestly, and opened his mouth twice. I was so sure of his

meaning that I said, quite flurried, “You are very welcome, sir. Pray

don’t mention it!”

“I hope this marriage is for the best, guardian,” said I when we

three were on our road home.

“I hope it is, little woman. Patience. We shall see.”

“Is the wind in the east to-day?” I ventured to ask him.

He laughed heartily and answered, “No.”

“But it must have been this morning, I think,” said I.

He answered “No” again, and this time my dear girl confidently

answered “No” too and shook the lovely head which, with its blooming

flowers against the golden hair, was like the very spring. “Much YOU

know of east winds, my ugly darling,” said I, kissing her in my

admiration—I couldn’t help it.

Well! It was only their love for me, I know very well, and it is a

long time ago. I must write it even if I rub it out again, because it

gives me so much pleasure. They said there could be no east wind

where Somebody was; they said that wherever Dame Durden went, there

was sunshine and summer air.