The Garret and the Garden | Page 4

vain efforts of man to cope with smoke; where wild beasts--in the form
of cats--hold their nightly revels, imitating the yells of agonised infants,
filling the dreams of sleepers with ideas of internal thunder or
combustion, and driving the sleepless mad!
Susy--our Susy--is the cause of this miracle of beauty in the midst of
misery; this glowing gem in a setting of ugliness. It is her modest little
head that has bent over the boxes of earth, which constitute her landed
property; her pretty little fingers which have trained the stems and
watered the roots and cherished the flowers until the barren house-top
has been made to blossom like the rose. And love, as usual, has done it
all--love to that very ugly old woman, chimney-pot Liz, who sits on the
rustic chair in the midst of the garden enjoying it all.
For Liz has been a mother to that motherless bairn from her earliest
years. She has guarded, fed, and clothed her from infancy; taught her
from God's Book the old, old story of redeeming love, and led her to
the feet of Jesus. It would be strange indeed if Susy did not love the
ugly old woman, until at last she came to regard the wrinkles as
veritable lines of beauty; the nut-cracker nose and chin as emblems of
persistent goodness; the solitary wobbling tooth as a sign of
unconquerable courage; and the dark eyes--well, it required no effort of
imagination to change the character of the old woman's eyes, for they
had always been good, kindly, expressive eyes, and were at that date as
bright and lively as when she was sweet sixteen.
But chimney-pot Liz was poor--desperately poor, else she had not been
there, for if heaven was around and within her, assuredly something
very like pandemonium was underneath her, and it not unfrequently
appeared as if the evil spirits below were surging to and fro in a fierce
endeavour to burst up the whole place, and hurl the old woman with her
garden into the river.
Evil spirits indeed formed the dread foundation of the old woman's
abode; for, although her own court was to some extent free from the
curse, this particular pile of building, of which the garden formed the
apex, had a grog-shop, opening on another court, for its

foundation-stone. From that sink of iniquity, literal and unmitigated--
though not unadulterated--spirits of evil rose like horrid fumes from the
pit, and maddened the human spirits overhead. These, descending to
the foundation-den, soaked themselves in the material spirit and carried
it up, until the whole tenement seemed to reek and reel under its malign
influence.
But, strange to say, the riot did not rise as high as the garden on the
roof--only the echoes reached that little paradise.
Now it is a curious almost unaccountable fact, which no one would
ever guess, that a teapot was the cause of this--at least a secondary
cause-- for a teapot was the chief instrument in checking, if not turning,
the tide of evil. Yes, chimney-pot Liz held her castle in the very midst
of the enemy, almost single-handed, with no visible weapon of offence
or defence but a teapot! We say visible, because Liz did indeed possess
other and very powerful weapons which were not quite so
obvious--such as, the Word of God in her memory, the love of God in
her heart, and the Spirit of God in her soul.
To the outside world, however, the teapot was her weapon and shield.
We have read of such a weapon before, somewhere in the glorious
annals of city missions, but just now we are concerned only with the
teapot of our own Liz of chimney-pot notoriety.
Seated, as we have said, in a rustic chair, gazing through the foliage at
the busy Thames, and plying her knitting needles briskly, while the sun
seemed to lick up and clear away the fogs and smoke of the great city,
chimney-pot Liz enjoyed her thoughts until a loud clatter announced
that Susy had knocked over the watering-pot.
"Oh! granny" (thus she styled her), "I'm so sorry! So stupid of me!
Luckily there's no water in it."
"Never mind, dear," said the old woman in a soft voice, and with a
smile which for a moment exposed the waste of gums in which the
solitary fang stood, "I've got no nerves--never had any, and hope I

never may have. By the way, that reminds me--Is the tea done, Susy?"
"Yes, not a particle left," replied the girl, rising from her floral labours
and thereby showing that her graceful figure matched well with her
pretty young face. It was a fair face, with golden hair divided in the
middle and laid smooth over her white brow, not sticking confusedly
out from it like