Dickory Dock | Page 4

infant? I must know at once, madam, what you intend to do? Miss Jenkins, over the way, has offered me her front parlour with the bedroom behind, and her terms are lower than yours. You have but to say the word, ma'am, and my bed will be well aired, and the room at Miss Jenkins's all comfortable for me to-night. I don't want you to turn that infant away, oh dear me! no, but I must decide my own plans; stay in the house with a baby, and have my sleep broken, I will not!'
The speaker was Mr Martin. He had come into Mrs Franklin's little back parlour and expressed his mind very freely. The poor woman was standing up and regarding her best lodger with a puzzled and almost despairing air. She did not know that Flossy had crept into the room and was hiding herself behind her chair, and that Flossy's little face had grown even more white and despairing than her own.
'Give me until to-night, sir,' she said. 'Mrs Potts has also been in and complaining about the poor child. She's an orphan child, and my husband's niece, but we are in no way bound to support her. I would not treat her badly, sir, but there are limits; and, of course, as you say, your night's sleep must not be broken. Rather than that should happen, Mr Martin, I would send the child to the workhouse, for, of course, she has no legal claim on us. If you will be so kind, sir, as to give me until to-morrow morning, I will then let you know what I have decided to do with the baby, and I faithfully promise that you are not to be disturbed to-night, sir.'
'That is all right,' said Mr Martin, with a mollified air. 'Of course it is not to be expected that an old bachelor such as I am should be worried by an infant's screams. The screams of a baby have to me an appalling sound. Do what you think well with the child, ma'am, and let me know in the morning; only I may as well state that I think the workhouse an extreme measure.'
Then Mr Martin left the house. Mrs Franklin followed him out of the room, and Flossy crept slowly back to the nursery.
Mrs Franklin did not notice her little daughter, and Flossy did not venture to address her mother. She came into the room where Peter and Snip-snap were doing their utmost for the baby. Peter had her in his arms, and was walking up and down with her, and Snip-snap was bounding after a ball and tossing it into the air for her benefit.
'She's to go, Peter,' said Flossy. 'I guessed it--I guessed it quite well last night. She's to go away to the workhouse--that's what mother said; I heard her telling Mr Martin so.'
'She's not!' said Peter. He turned very pale, and, still holding the child in his arms, sat down on the nearest chair.
It is to be doubted whether this poor neglected baby had ever been christened. The children had given her a name of their own; they had called her Dickory Dock. The reason they had given her this distinctive title was because the first amusement which had brought a smile to her little face had been the old play of Dickory Dock and the mouse that ran up the clock.
'She said it,' repeated Flossy, coming up close to her brother, and fixing her anxious eyes on the baby. 'She said that our Dickory was to go to the workhouse.'
'Well then, she shan't!' said Peter. 'I know nothing about workhouses, but I expect they are very nasty places, and Dickory shan't go there!'
Then he sat silent, his arm round the little child, who looked up at him and then back at Flossy, and then smiled in that wonderfully pathetic way she had.
'Look here, Flossy,' said Peter, 'if you are quite certain sure that mother said the workhouse, that she didn't say nothing about Dickory Dock being put to sleep in another room, or maybe down in the kitchen--if you are quite positive about the workhouse, Flossy, why, I know what I'll do.'
'She did say the workhouse,' answered Flossy; 'I heard her with my own ears, and Mr Martin said it was a stream measure. I don't know what he meant by that, but I do know that mother said the workhouse, and that she has got till to-morrow morning to take baby away.'
'No, she hasn't,' said Peter; 'we'll take her away first, you and me, Flossy--you and me and Snip-snap--we'll take our little baby away, and we'll hide her. Dickory shall never go to no workhouse!'
Here Dickory looked up again at Peter, who looked down at her and kissed her, and two