A House to Let | Page 4

fancied something must have gone wrong in my life--something must

have been turned aside from its original intention I mean--or I should
have been the proud and happy mother of many children, and a fond
old grandmother this day. I have soon known better in the cheerfulness
and contentment that God has blessed me with and given me abundant
reason for; and yet I have had to dry my eyes even then, when I have
thought of my dear, brave, hopeful, handsome, bright-eyed Charley,
and the trust meant to cheer me with. Charley was my youngest brother,
and he went to India. He married there, and sent his gentle little wife
home to me to be confined, and she was to go back to him, and the
baby was to be left with me, and I was to bring it up. It never belonged
to this life. It took its silent place among the other incidents in my story
that might have been, but never were. I had hardly time to whisper to
her "Dead my own!" or she to answer, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust! O
lay it on my breast and comfort Charley!" when she had gone to seek
her baby at Our Saviour's feet. I went to Charley, and I told him there
was nothing left but me, poor me; and I lived with Charley, out there,
several years. He was a man of fifty, when he fell asleep in my arms.
His face had changed to be almost old and a little stern; but, it softened,
and softened when I laid it down that I might cry and pray beside it;
and, when I looked at it for the last time, it was my dear, untroubled,
handsome, youthful Charley of long ago.
--I was going on to tell that the loneliness of the House to Let brought
back all these recollections, and that they had quite pierced my heart
one evening, when Flobbins, opening the door, and looking very much
as if she wanted to laugh but thought better of it, said:
"Mr. Jabez Jarber, ma'am!"
Upon which Mr. Jarber ambled in, in his usual absurd way, saying:
"Sophonisba!"
Which I am obliged to confess is my name. A pretty one and proper
one enough when it was given to me: but, a good many years out of
date now, and always sounding particularly high-flown and comical
from his lips. So I said, sharply:
"Though it is Sophonisba, Jarber, you are not obliged to mention it, that
I see."
In reply to this observation, the ridiculous man put the tips of my five
right-hand fingers to his lips, and said again, with an aggravating
accent on the third syllable:

"Sophon_is_ba!"
I don't burn lamps, because I can't abide the smell of oil, and wax
candles belonged to my day. I hope the convenient situation of one of
my tall old candlesticks on the table at my elbow will be my excuse for
saying, that if he did that again, I would chop his toes with it. (I am
sorry to add that when I told him so, I knew his toes to be tender.) But,
really, at my time of life and at Jarber's, it is too much of a good thing.
There is an orchestra still standing in the open air at the Wells, before
which, in the presence of a throng of fine company, I have walked a
minuet with Jarber. But, there is a house still standing, in which I have
worn a pinafore, and had a tooth drawn by fastening a thread to the
tooth and the door-handle, and toddling away from the door. And how
should I look now, at my years, in a pinafore, or having a door for my
dentist?
Besides, Jarber always was more or less an absurd man. He was
sweetly dressed, and beautifully perfumed, and many girls of my day
would have given their ears for him; though I am bound to add that he
never cared a fig for them, or their advances either, and that he was
very constant to me. For, he not only proposed to me before my
love-happiness ended in sorrow, but afterwards too: not once, nor yet
twice: nor will we say how many times. However many they were, or
however few they were, the last time he paid me that compliment was
immediately after he had presented me with a digestive dinner-pill
stuck on the point of a pin. And I said on that occasion, laughing
heartily, "Now, Jarber, if you don't know that two people whose united
ages would make about a hundred and fifty, have got to be old, I do;
and I beg to swallow this nonsense in the form of this pill" (which I
took on