‘You kill your Crickets, eh?’ said John.
‘Scrunch ’em, sir,’ returned the other, setting his heel heavily on the floor. ‘You’ll say you’ll come? It’s as much your interest as mine, you know, that the women should persuade each other that they’re quiet and contented, and couldn’t be better off. I know their way. Whatever one woman says, another woman is determined to clinch, always. There’s that spirit of emulation among ’em, sir, that if your wife says to my wife, “I’m the happiest woman in the world, and mine’s the best husband in the world, and I dote on him,” my wife will say the same to yours, or more, and half believe it.’
‘Do you mean to say she don’t, then?’ asked the Carrier.
‘Don’t!’ cried Tackleton, with a short, sharp laugh. ‘Don’t what?’
The Carrier had some faint idea of adding, ‘dote upon you.’ But, happening to meet the half-closed eye, as it twinkled upon him over the turned-up collar of the cape, which was within an ace of poking it out, he felt it such an unlikely part and parcel of anything to be doted on, that he substituted, ‘that she don’t believe it?’
‘Ah you dog! You’re joking,’ said Tackleton.
But the Carrier, though slow to understand the full drift of his meaning, eyed him in such a serious manner, that he was obliged to be a little more explanatory.
‘I have the humour,’ said Tackleton: holding up the fingers of his left hand, and tapping the forefinger, to imply ‘there I am, Tackleton to wit:’ ‘I have the humour, sir, to marry a young wife, and a pretty wife:’ here he rapped his little finger, to express the Bride; not sparingly, but sharply; with a sense of power. ‘I’m able to gratify that humour and I do. It’s my whim. But—now look there!’
He pointed to where Dot was sitting, thoughtfully, before the fire; leaning her dimpled chin upon her hand, and watching the bright blaze. The Carrier looked at her, and then at him, and then at her, and then at him again.
‘She honours and obeys, no doubt, you know,’ said Tackleton; ‘and that, as I am not a man of sentiment, is quite enough for me. But do you think there’s anything more in it?’
‘I think,’ observed the Carrier, ‘that I should chuck any man out of window, who said there wasn’t.’
‘Exactly so,’ returned the other with an unusual alacrity of assent. ‘To be sure! Doubtless you would. Of course. I’m certain of it. Good night. Pleasant dreams!’
The Carrier was puzzled, and made uncomfortable and uncertain, in spite of himself. He couldn’t help showing it, in his manner.
‘Good night, my dear friend!’ said Tackleton, compassionately. ‘I’m off. We’re exactly alike, in reality, I see. You won’t give us tomorrow evening? Well! Next day you go out visiting, I know. I’ll meet you there, and bring my wife that is to be. It’ll do her good. You’re agreeable? Thank’ee. What’s that!’
It was a loud cry from the Carrier’s wife: a loud, sharp, sudden cry, that made the room ring, like a glass vessel. She had risen from her seat, and stood like one transfixed by terror and surprise. The Stranger had advanced towards the fire to warm himself, and stood within a short stride of her chair. But quite still.
‘Dot!’ cried the Carrier. ‘Mary! Darling! What’s the matter?’
They were all about her in a moment. Caleb, who had been dozing on the cake-box, in the first imperfect recovery of his suspended presence of mind, seized Miss Slowboy by the hair of her head, but immediately apologised.
‘Mary!’ exclaimed the Carrier, supporting her in his arms. ‘Are you ill! What is it? Tell me, dear!’
She only answered by beating her hands together, and falling into a wild fit of laughter. Then, sinking from his grasp upon the ground, she covered her face with her apron, and wept bitterly. And then she laughed again, and then she cried again, and then she said how cold it was, and suffered him to lead her to the fire, where she sat down as before. The old man standing, as before, quite still.
‘I’m better, John,’ she said. ‘I’m quite well now—I—’
‘John!’ But John was on the other side of her. Why turn her face towards the strange old gentleman, as if addressing him! Was her brain wandering?
‘Only a fancy, John dear—a kind of shock—a something coming suddenly before my eyes—I don’t know what it was. It’s quite gone, quite gone.’
‘I’m glad it’s gone,’ muttered Tackleton, turning the expressive eye all round the room. ‘I wonder where it’s gone, and what it was. Humph! Caleb, come here! Who’s that with the grey hair?’
‘I don’t know, sir,’ returned Caleb in a whisper. ‘Never see him before, in all my life. A beautiful figure for a nutcracker; quite a new model. With a screw-jaw opening down into his waistcoat, he’d be lovely.’
‘Not ugly enough,’ said Tackleton.
‘Or for a firebox, either,’ observed Caleb, in deep contemplation, ‘what a model! Unscrew his head to put the matches in; turn him heels up’ards for the light; and what a firebox for a gentleman’s mantel-shelf, just as he stands!’
‘Not half ugly enough,’ said Tackleton. ‘Nothing in him at all! Come! Bring that box! All right now, I hope?’
‘Oh quite gone! Quite gone!!’ said the little woman, waving him hurriedly away. ‘Good night!’
‘Good night,’ said Tackleton. ‘Good night, John Peerybingle! Take care how you carry that box, Caleb. Let it fall, and I’ll murder you! Dark as pitch, and weather worse than ever, eh? Good night!’
So, with another sharp look round the room, he went out at the door; followed by Caleb with the wedding-cake on his head.
The Carrier had been so much astounded by his little wife, and so busily engaged in soothing and tending her, that he had scarcely been conscious of the Stranger’s presence, until now, when he again stood there, their only guest.
‘He don’t belong to them, you see,’ said John. ‘I must give him a hint to go.’
‘I beg your pardon, friend,’ said the old gentleman, advancing to him; ‘the more so, as I fear your wife has not been well; but the Attendant whom my infirmity,’ he touched his ears and shook his head, ‘renders almost indispensable, not having arrived, I fear there must be some mistake. The bad night which made the shelter of your comfortable cart (may I never have a worse!) so acceptable, is still as bad as ever. Would you, in your kindness, suffer me to rent a bed here?’
‘Yes, yes,’ cried Dot. ‘Yes! Certainly!’
‘Oh!’ said the Carrier, surprised by the rapidity of this consent.
‘Well! I don’t object; but, still I’m not quite sure that—’
‘Hush!’ she interrupted. ‘Dear John!’
‘Why, he’s stone deaf,’ urged John.
‘I know he is, but—Yes, sir, certainly. Yes! certainly! I’ll make him up a bed, directly, John.’
As she hurried off to do it, the flutter of her spirits, and the agitation of her manner, were so strange that the Carrier stood looking after her, quite confounded.
‘Did its mothers make it up a Beds then!’ cried Miss Slowboy to the Baby; ‘and did its hair grow brown and curly, when its caps was lifted off, and frighten it, a precious Pets, a-sitting by the fires!’
With that unaccountable attraction of the mind to trifles, which is often incidental to a state of doubt and confusion, the Carrier as he walked slowly to and fro, found himself mentally repeating