The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch | Page 9

she asked, looking down in solemn perplexity at this
queer boy.
"Oh, he's the driver is Jim, and he got inside, you know, and I've driven
nearly all the way up by myself; haven't I, Jim?"
"Come inside, sir," said the matron hurriedly, "and don't stand talking
to vulgar cabmen and calling them by their Christian names. Your
name is Charles Newcome, I suppose? Come this way."
Charlie followed her in, his enthusiasm rather damped at this
somewhat frigid greeting, and sorry in his heart he had not been
allowed an opportunity of bidding farewell to his friend the driver.
And now I could hear the little fellow's heart begin to beat quicker as
he found himself at length for the first time in his life inside a public
school. The rows of caps in the corridors, the distant hum of voices
through half-opened doors, the occasional shout from the playground,
and the fleeting vision of a master in cap and gown, all had for him the
deepest and most mysterious interest. As he sat waiting in the matron's
room while that worthy lady went to superintend the bringing in of his
luggage, his mind became full of wonderings and misgivings. I who lay
so near the seat of his emotions could tell what was going on in his
breast. He wondered if the pair of socks lying on the table with a hole
in each heel, which appeared to be waiting their turn for mending,
belonged to the son of the old lady he had met in the train. He
wondered if the footsteps in the passage belonged to the head master,
and whether that awful being was being fetched to punish him for his
crime of driving the cab. He wondered who the boy was who put his
head in at the door and drew it back again. With what reverential eyes
he followed that hero's retreating form, and how he hung on his
whistling.

When would he, he wondered, be sufficiently hardy to whistle within
those awful walls? Then he wondered if he was the only new boy, and if
so, whether every one would stare at him and laugh at his new coat. He
wished he'd got his old one on, then he wouldn't have felt so brand-new.
And then--and then...
But here, tired-out with his long journey and the excitement of the day,
a drowsy fit came over him, and without another thought he dropped
off to sleep, where he sat. In this attitude the housekeeper found him
when she returned.
She could not help feeling rather more than a common interest in this
curly-haired, tired-out little fellow, as he sat there in his new clothes,
huddled up, with his little hat slipping from his head, and his hand
clasping his precious six-bladed knife. Accustomed as she was to boys
and their rude ways, this matron had a good deal of softness left in her
heart, and I dare say she thought as she watched Charlie that
afternoon that if she had ever had a son of her own she would have
liked a boy something like the little fellow before her. She went softly
up to him, took his hat from its perilous situation, and, lifting him in
her strong arms so gently as not to wake him, laid him on her own sofa,
and left him there to enjoy his well-merited sleep, while she busied
herself about making tea.
It was at this moment that a calamity befell me, which, in my
inexperience of the ways and natures of watches, I imagined to be
nothing short of fatal. The excitement through which I had passed, and
the rough-and-ready usage to which I had been subjected during the
day, seemed all of a sudden to overpower me. In some unaccountable
way I found my hands caught together in a manner I had never known
them to be before; no effort of mine could disengage them, and the
exertion thus required, added to the fatigues of the day, produced a sort
of paralysis of my whole system without quite losing consciousness. I
could feel my circulation become slower and finally stop; my nerves
and energies became suspended, and my hands grew numb and
powerless. Even my heart ceased to beat, and the little cry of alarm
which I gave just before my powers left me failed to bring me any help.

I was ill, very ill indeed; to me it seemed as if my last moment had
come, and I could not bear the thought of thus early being taken from
my young master, whom already I had learned to love as my best,
though my roughest friend.
How long I lay thus, speechless and helpless, I cannot say. Once I was
just conscious of a slight