A Little World

Mr Stiff winked to himself as he obeyed, and rattled out of the room with quite a load of cages, but only to return at the end of five minutes.

“Well,” said Lionel, inquiringly, “what now?”

“About them there ferrets, sir?” said Mr Stiff.

“Oh! take them away by all means,” said Lionel, impatiently.

“Yes, sir, in course; but what shall I do with them?”

“Wring their necks – sell them – send them down the drains after the rats,” exclaimed Lionel; and the wire-fronted box, containing the furry, snakey animals, was carried down; but only for Mr Stiff to return at the end of ten minutes, hot, henpecked, and nervous, to encounter Lionel’s savage glances.

“Well, what next?” cried the young man to the troubled ambassador, who, open to receiving both fires, had now come charged with a message which he hardly dared to deliver, for, after the sweep made of birds and cages, he felt that it was rather dangerous to ask for fresh concessions, and therefore he remained silent until Lionel fiercely repeated his question.

“Please, sir, there’s them tortushes,” said Stiff, at last.

“Con-found the tortoises!” cried Lionel; “give them to some of the street boys.” And, moving to the window, he hailed a doctor’s boy passing with his medicine-basket. “Catch, my lad,” he shouted; and he threw him down – one after the other – three of the sluggish little reptiles, with heads and legs drawn within their shells so as to be out of danger. “Now, I hope you are satisfied,” he said to his landlord; who, after a good hunt had continued to discover in out-of-the-way corners the other three offenders.

Mr Stiff’s only response was a shake of the head – a motion kept up until he reached the lower regions, whence he returned, more hot and flustered than ever, to be greeted with a storm of abuse from his angry young tenant.

No, he would not give up the dogs, that he wouldn’t, and Mr Stiff might go and tell his wife so. He had already thrown away above thirty pounds’ worth of things to satisfy them. He gave twelve pounds for that parrot, he said, and now they wanted him to part with his dogs. Why! he had only got back the bull-terrier after paying ten pounds one day, and five the next, through losing it in Decadia, let alone the heavy sums he had paid for the others. Part with his dogs! No, that he wouldn’t, so there was an end of it; and if Mr Stiff came bothering him again, hang him if he wouldn’t serve him as he had served the tortoises.

There might have been an end of it, so far as Mr Stiff was concerned; but when he returned to the kitchen, he was soon sent back to the drawing-room, with fresh diplomatic charges, which he delivered in spite of the window-throwing threat; but, still failing to make satisfactory arrangements, he was accompanied in a further visit to the first-floor by the irate landlady herself – hot, out of breath, and voluminous in her discourse.

And now the wordy warfare recommenced, charge after charge being made by Mrs Stiff, to the discomfiture of Lionel Redgrave, till a truce had been agreed upon: the young tenant was to retain his chambers on condition that he brought no more “wild beasts” or birds – so Mrs Stiff put it – and did not, as, one by one, the four dogs he was allowed to keep were lost, either try to recover them, or supply their places with fresh favourites.

“Confound the pair!” cried Lionel, as they left the room; and, according to custom, proceeded to solace himself with a cigar.

“I don’t care,” exclaimed Mrs Stiff, as she reached her best kitchen, and sat down panting; “we ought to have persevered, and then we should have had the house clear of his rubbish. How do we know how long the silly young noodle – all money and no brains – will be before he loses even one of his dogs?”

“Don’t you fret about that,” laughed her husband; “that won’t be long first. Why, he never hardly goes out now without some ill-looking vagabond dodging him; and there’s one in particular follows him home as regular as clockwork. Do you think he’s always slinking about for nothing? Not he. You wait a bit, and you’ll see.”

Volume Two – Chapter Ten.

Mutterings

D. Wragg was out on business, down by the docks. He had left home directly after breakfast, telling his lodger, the little Frenchman, that he was “good to buy five hundred of zebras, or a hundred of grays, or a miskellaneous assortment of anything fresh brought over;” and he tapped his breast-pocket as he spoke, winking and jerking himself up and down.

“Dessay I could find a customer for a monkey, if I brought one home.”

A sharp glance was directed at Patty by Janet, as the dealer spoke; for Wragg’s absence being likely to last the whole day, while Canau’s engagements would occupy him for a considerable portion of it, Mrs Pellet had been persuaded to let Patty come and bear her friend company during the time when she would otherwise have been left alone in charge of D. Wragg’s stock-in-trade.

“Coming back,” said D. Wragg, “I shall see about the four-wheeler, so as we can go down comfortable. What time shall we start?”

He looked at Janet as he spoke, but she was thoughtful and silent; coming back though into the present, upon being again addressed.

“All right, then!” said D. Wragg; “to-morrow morning, directly arter breakfast, say half arter eight, and that will be nine; and you and Mother Winks will be sure and get a basket all ready.”

D. Wragg took his departure, after an affectionate glance all round at the birds and the rest of his stock-in-trade, while the little Frenchman stood lighting his cigarette with the match handed him by Janet.

“You will stay with Janet?” he said to Patty, as he turned to go.

“Yes; she has promised,” said Janet, quickly; “but you will be back in an hour to paint the birds?”

“Good! yes, in one hour;” and raising his hat, he replaced it, old and pinched of brim, very much on one side, and sauntered out.

The two girls, left now alone, stood silently in the shop for a few minutes, and then entered the back-room, where, in a quiet, pre-occupied manner, Janet commenced arranging cardboard, gum, and various packets of feathers, upon the table; an operation interrupted almost directly by a loud tapping upon the shop-counter.

Patty turned to answer the summons for her friend, but, on reaching the glass-door, she started back, looking pale and anxious.

“Oh, pray go!” she whispered to Janet, whose dark eyes were fixed maliciously upon her.

“So it is the gay cavalier, is it?” laughed Janet, in a harsh angry fashion.

“No, no!” whispered Patty, “but that dreadful man. He follows me, and always comes to the shop when he thinks I am here.”

“I’ll answer him,” said Janet, fiercely; and then in a whisper, “should you have turned back if it had been some one else?”

Patty’s sole reply was a look of reproach, one, though, that spoke volumes, as the deformed girl left the room to encounter the heavy, surly-voiced young man, who, upon being sharply asked what he wanted —

“Didn’t quite know. Perhaps it were a bird, or it might be a ferret; but he wasn’t quite sure. How-so-be, she wasn’t the one as was in the shop the other day. Where was the other one? Oh! she was busy, was she? Then p’raps he’d call again;” after which the heavy gentleman loitered slowly out of the shop, to hang about the window, glancing in at the birds and chewing straws.

“He’s gone!” said Janet, returning to the room. “He’s a hideous wretch, ugly as I am. Such impudence! He did not want to buy anything. But what a little coward you are!”

“Yes,” sighed Patty, “I am – I know I am. Ah! Janet,” she continued, after a short pause, “I wish I were a lady!”

“For the sake of the gay cavalier, of course,” laughed Janet, sneeringly, and then she looked angrily across at her companion, who bent her head, whispering to herself —

“She won’t believe me – she won’t believe me.”

Janet’s long fingers now grew very busy over her work, as she nimbly arranged the wing, tail, back, and breast feathers of a partridge, with gum, upon a stiff piece of card, following, with an accuracy learned of the birds amongst which she had so long dwelt, the soft curves and graceful swellings of the natural form, making up pair after pair of ornaments, destined, after being finished off by Canau, and prettily mounted, to be disposed of by D. Wragg at a profitable rate.

Punctual to his time, the little Frenchman returned, and, quite at home, sauntered into the room.

“Good girls! good girls!” he said, lightly. “Now the colours and the brush. Did the Madame Vinks bring the music she said she would borrow from the chef d’orchestre? No? Ah! then, but I am disappoint, and must wait. Janet, that bird is too big – round – plump – too much like the Madame Vinks; but we will paint his beak and leg. He does look fit for the chef– the cook – and not for the ornament.”

Then taking up cakes, first of one colour and then of another, he moistened a camel’s hair pencil in the gum, and, with the skill of a finished artist, gave the finishing touches, beaks, eyes, legs, to the young girl’s work.

In the midst of the operation, though, there was again the sound of a step in the shop.

Patty rose and left the room, for Janet’s fingers were busy with the feathers, and she determined this time not to let cowardice prevent her from doing her friend the little service. The deformed girl’s manner, however, evinced but little gratitude for the act, for she sat with bent head, but flashing eyes and distended nostrils, eagerly listening to catch the slightest word.

And eager whispered words those seemed to her to be, but replied to only in monosyllables, and at last, when she raised her head and gazed through the open door, she winced as if she had been struck, on seeing a be-ringed hand stretched across the counter, and tightly holding one of Patty’s little white palms.

Janet did not heed that the young girl seemed to be vainly trying to release that hand, as she stood right back against the cages at the side of the shop.

It was a bright hot summer day, with window and door open, so as to catch every wandering breeze that might lose itself in the vast maze of bricks and mortar; and as Janet had that one glance in at the shop, the door of communication banged loudly, and her view was cut off.

For a moment the girl’s face was contracted by pain; then a fierce malicious look swept over it as she rose to re-open the door.