The Garret and the Garden | Page 5

get it good, poor thing. No, I shouldn't like to go without my teapot, it would disappoint her, you know--though I've no doubt she would be glad to see me even empty-handed."
"I should just think she would!" said Susy with a laugh, as she stooped to arrange some of the fastenings of her garden, "I should just think she would. Indeed, I doubt if that dear old woman would be alive now but for you, granny."
The girl emphasised the "dear" laughingly, for Mrs Rampy was one of those middle-aged females of the destitute class whose hearts have been so steeled against their kind by suffering and drink as to render them callous to most influences. The proverbial "soft spot" in Mrs Rampy's heart was not reached until an assault had been made on it by chimney-pot Liz with her teapot. Even then it seemed as if the softness of the spot were only of the gutta-percha type.
"Perhaps not, perhaps not my dear," returned old Liz, with that pleased little smile with which she was wont to recognise a philanthropic success a smile which always had the effect of subduing the tooth, and rendering the plain face almost beautiful.
Although bordering on the lowest state of destitution--and that is a remarkably low state in London!--old Liz had an air of refinement about her tones, words, and manner which was very different from that of the poor people around her. This was not altogether, though partly, due to her Christianity. The fact is, the old woman had "seen better days." For fifty years she had been nurse in an amiable and wealthy family, the numerous children of which seemed to have been born to bloom for a few years in the rugged garden of this world, and then be transplanted to the better land. Only the youngest son survived. He entered the army and went to India--that deadly maelstrom which has swallowed up so much of British youth and blood and beauty! When the old couple became bankrupt and died, the old nurse found herself alone and almost destitute in the world.
It is not our purpose to detail here the sad steps by which she descended to the very bottom of the social ladder, taking along with her Susan, her adopted daughter and the child of a deceased fellow-servant. We merely tell thus much to account for her position and her partial refinement--both of which conditions she shared with Susan.
"Now then," said the latter, "I must go, granny. Stickle and Screw are not the men to overlook faults. If I'm a single minute late I shall have to pay for it."
"And quite right, Susy, quite right. Why should Stickle and Screw lose a minute of their people's work? Their people would be angry enough if they were to be paid a penny short of their wages! Besides, the firm employs over two hundred hands, and if every one of these was to be late a minute there would be two hundred minutes gone--nigh four hours, isn't it? You should be able to count that right off, Susy, havin' been so long at the Board-school."
"I don't dispute it, granny," said the girl with a light laugh, as she stood in front of a triangular bit of looking-glass tying on her poor but neatly made hat. "And I am usually three or four minutes before my time, but Stickle and Screw are hard on us in other ways, so different from Samson and Son, where Lily Hewat goes. Now, I'm off. I'll be sure to be back by half-past nine or soon after."
As the girl spoke, footsteps were heard ascending the creaky wooden stair. Another moment and Tommy Splint entering with a theatrical air, announced--
"A wisitor!"
He was closely followed by Sam Blake, who no sooner beheld Susy than he seemed to become paralysed, for he stood gazing at her as if in eager but helpless amazement.
Susy was a good deal surprised at this, but feeling that if she were to wait for the clearing up of the mystery she would infallibly be late in reaching the shop of the exacting Stickle and Screw, she swept lightly past the seaman with a short laugh, and ran down-stairs.
Without a word of explanation Sam sprang after her, but, although smart enough on the shrouds and ladders of shipboard, he failed to accommodate himself to the stairs of rookeries, and went down, as he afterwards expressed it, "by the run," coming to an anchor at the bottom in a sitting posture. Of course the lithe and active Susy escaped him, and also escaped being too late by only half a minute.
"Never mind, she'll be back again between nine and ten o'clock, unless they keep her late," said old Liz, after Sam had explained who he was, and found that