The Adventures of Harry Revel | Page 8

echoed at length, in a wondering way, under his breath.
"I have used my best endeavours. Yes, though I say it to his face, you will really--if careful to appeal to his better instincts--find him one of Nature's gentlemen."
Mr. Trapp broke into a grin of relief; almost you could say that he heaved a sigh.
"Oh, that's all?" said he. "Why, Lord love ye, ma'am, I've been called that myself before now!"
So to Mr. Trapp I was bound, early next week, before the magistrates sitting in petty sessional division, to serve him and to receive from him proper sustenance and clothing until the age of twenty-one. And I (as nearly as could be guessed, for I had no birthday) had barely turned ten. Mr. Scougall arrived in time to pilot me through these formalities and hand me over to Mr. Trapp: but at a parting interview, throughout which we both wept copiously, Miss Plinlimmon gave me for souvenir a small Testament with this inscription on the fly-leaf:
H. REVEL, from his affectionate friend, A. Plinlimmon.
O happy, happy days, when childhood's cares Were soon forgotten! But now, when dear ones all around are still the same, Where shall we be in ten years' time?
"They were my own composition," she explained. Mr. George bade me a gloomier farewell. "You might come to some good," he said contemplatively; "and then again you mightn't. I ain't what they call a pessimist, but I thinks poorly of most things. It's safer."
Mr. Trapp was exceedingly jocose as he conveyed me home to his house beside the Barbican, Plymouth; stopping on the way before every building of exceptional height and asking me quizzically how I would propose to set about climbing it. At the time, in the soreness of my heart, I resented this heavy pleasantry, and to be sure, after the tenth repetition or so, the diversity of the buildings to which he applied it but poorly concealed its sameness. But, in fact, he was doing his best to be kind, and succeeded in a sort; for it roused a childish scorn in me and so fetched back my heart, which at starting had been somewhere in my boots.
I took it for granted that a sweep must inhabit a dingy hovel, and certainly the crowded filth of the Barbican promised nothing better as we threaded our way among fishermen, fish-jowters, blowzy women, and children playing hop-scotch with the heads of decaying fish. At the seaward end of it, and close beside the bow-fronted Custom House, we turned aside into an alley which led uphill between high blank walls to the base of the Citadel: and here, stuck as if it were a marten's nest under the shadow of the ramparts, a freshly whitewashed cottage overhung the slope, with a sweep's brush dangling over its doorway and the sign "S. Trapp, Chimney Sweep in Season."
While I wondered what might be the season for chimney-sweeps, a small bead-eyed woman emerged from the doorway and shook a duster vigorously: in the which act catching sight of us, she paused.
"I've a-got en, my dear," said Mr. Trapp much as a man might announce the capture of a fish: and though he did not actually lift me for inspection his hand seemed to waver over my collar.
But it was Mrs. Trapp, who, after a fleeting glance at me, caught her husband by the collar.
"And you actilly went in that state, you nasty keerless hulks! O, you heart-breaker!"
Mr. Trapp in custody managed to send me a sidelong, humorous grin.
"My dear, I thought 'twould be a surprise for you--business taking me that way, and the magistrates being used to worse."
"You heart-breaker!" repeated Mrs. Trapp. "And me slaving morn and night to catch up with your messy ways! What did I tell you the first time you came back from the Hospital looking like a malkin, and with a clean shift of clothes laid out for you and the water on the boil, that I couldn't have taken more trouble, no, not for a funeral? Didn't I tell you 'twas positively lowering?"
"I ha'n't a doubt you did, my dear."
"That's what you are. You're a lowering man. And there by your own account you met a lady, with your neck streaked like a ham-rasher, and me not by--thank goodness!--to see what her feelings were; and now 'tis magistrates. But nothing warns you. I suppose you thought that as 'twas only fondlings without any father or mother it didn't matter how you dressed!"
Mrs. Trapp, though she might seem to talk at random, had a wifely knack of dropping a shaft home. Her husband protested.
"Come, come, Maria--you know I'm not that sort of man!"
"How do I know what sort of man you are, under all that dirt? For my part, if I'd been a magistrate, you shouldn't have walked off