The Cricket on the Hearth | Page 9

little man. 'He mightn't like it perhaps.
There's a small order just come in, for barking dogs; and I should wish
to go as close to Natur' as I could, for sixpence. That's all. Never mind,
Mum.'
It happened opportunely, that Boxer, without receiving the proposed
stimulus, began to bark with great zeal. But, as this implied the
approach of some new visitor, Caleb, postponing his study from the life
to a more convenient season, shouldered the round box, and took a
hurried leave. He might have spared himself the trouble, for he met the
visitor upon the threshold.
'Oh! You are here, are you? Wait a bit. I'll take you home. John
Peerybingle, my service to you. More of my service to your pretty wife.
Handsomer every day! Better too, if possible! And younger,' mused the
speaker, in a low voice; 'that's the Devil of it!'
'I should be astonished at your paying compliments, Mr. Tackleton,'
said Dot, not with the best grace in the world; 'but for your condition.'
'You know all about it then?'
'I have got myself to believe it, somehow,' said Dot.
'After a hard struggle, I suppose?'
'Very.'
Tackleton the Toy-merchant, pretty generally known as Gruff and
Tackleton--for that was the firm, though Gruff had been bought out
long ago; only leaving his name, and as some said his nature, according
to its Dictionary meaning, in the business--Tackleton the Toy-merchant,
was a man whose vocation had been quite misunderstood by his
Parents and Guardians. If they had made him a Money Lender, or a

sharp Attorney, or a Sheriff's Officer, or a Broker, he might have sown
his discontented oats in his youth, and, after having had the full run of
himself in ill-natured transactions, might have turned out amiable, at
last, for the sake of a little freshness and novelty. But, cramped and
chafing in the peaceable pursuit of toy- making, he was a domestic
Ogre, who had been living on children all his life, and was their
implacable enemy. He despised all toys; wouldn't have bought one for
the world; delighted, in his malice, to insinuate grim expressions into
the faces of brown-paper farmers who drove pigs to market, bellmen
who advertised lost lawyers' consciences, movable old ladies who
darned stockings or carved pies; and other like samples of his stock in
trade. In appalling masks; hideous, hairy, red-eyed Jacks in Boxes;
Vampire Kites; demoniacal Tumblers who wouldn't lie down, and were
perpetually flying forward, to stare infants out of countenance; his soul
perfectly revelled. They were his only relief, and safety-valve. He was
great in such inventions. Anything suggestive of a Pony- nightmare
was delicious to him. He had even lost money (and he took to that toy
very kindly) by getting up Goblin slides for magic-lanterns, whereon
the Powers of Darkness were depicted as a sort of supernatural
shell-fish, with human faces. In intensifying the portraiture of Giants,
he had sunk quite a little capital; and, though no painter himself, he
could indicate, for the instruction of his artists, with a piece of chalk, a
certain furtive leer for the countenances of those monsters, which was
safe to destroy the peace of mind of any young gentleman between the
ages of six and eleven, for the whole Christmas or Midsummer
Vacation.
What he was in toys, he was (as most men are) in other things. You
may easily suppose, therefore, that within the great green cape, which
reached down to the calves of his legs, there was buttoned up to the
chin an uncommonly pleasant fellow; and that he was about as choice a
spirit, and as agreeable a companion, as ever stood in a pair of
bull-headed-looking boots with mahogany-coloured tops.
Still, Tackleton, the toy-merchant, was going to be married. In spite of
all this, he was going to be married. And to a young wife too, a
beautiful young wife.
He didn't look much like a bridegroom, as he stood in the Carrier's
kitchen, with a twist in his dry face, and a screw in his body, and his

hat jerked over the bridge of his nose, and his hands tucked down into
the bottoms of his pockets, and his whole sarcastic ill- conditioned self
peering out of one little corner of one little eye, like the concentrated
essence of any number of ravens. But, a Bridegroom he designed to be.
'In three days' time. Next Thursday. The last day of the first month in
the year. That's my wedding-day,' said Tackleton.
Did I mention that he had always one eye wide open, and one eye
nearly shut; and that the one eye nearly shut, was always the expressive
eye? I don't think I did.
'That's my wedding-day!' said Tackleton, rattling his money.
'Why, it's our wedding-day too,' exclaimed the