Tales and Novels Volume II Part 20

"La! you don't know what money is," said Mrs. Dolly. "Why haven't you five thousand pounds, man? You don't know what can be done with five thousand pounds, cousin Maurice."

"No, nor you neither, cousin Dolly; or you'd never talk of setting up your coach."

"Why not, pray? I know what a coach costs as well as another. I know we can have a second-hand coach, and we need not tell n.o.body that it's second-hand, for about a hundred pounds. And what's a hundred pounds out of five thousand?"

"But if we've a coach, we must have horses, must not we?" said Ellen, "and they'll cost a hundred more."

"Oh, we can have job horses, that will cost us little or nothing," said Mrs. Dolly.

"Say 150. a-year," replied Maurice; "for I heard my master's coachman telling that the livery-keeper in London declared as how he made nothing by letting him have job horses for 150. a-year."

"We are to have our own coach," said Dolly, "and that will be cheaper, you know."

"But the coach won't last for ever," said Ellen; "it must be mended, and that will cost something."

"It is time enough to think of that when the coach wants mending," said Mrs. Dolly; who, without giving herself the trouble of calculating, seemed to be convinced that every thing might be done for five thousand pounds. "I must let you know a little secret," continued she. "I have written, that is, got a friend to write, to have the house at Paddington taken for a year; for I know it's quite the thing for us, and we are only to give fifty pounds a-year for it: and you know that one thousand pounds would pay that rent for twenty years to come."

"But then," said Ellen, "you will want to do a great many other things with that thousand pounds. There's the coach you mentioned; and you said we must keep a footboy, and must see a deal of company, and must not grudge to buy clothes, and that we could not follow any trade, nor have a farm, nor do any thing to make money; so we must live on upon what we have. Now let us count, and see how we shall do it. You know, Maurice, that William Deane inquired about what we could get for our five thousand pounds, if we put it out to interest?"

"Ay; two hundred a-year, he said."

"Well, we pay fifty pounds a-year for the rent of the house, and a hundred a-year we three and the boy must have to live upon, and there is but fifty pounds a-year left."

Mrs. Dolly, with some reluctance, gave up the notion of the coach; and Ellen proposed that five hundred pounds should be laid out in furnis.h.i.+ng a haberdasher's shop, and that the rest of their money should be put out to interest, till it was wanted. "Maurice and I can take care of the shop very well; and we can live well enough upon what we make by it,"

said Ellen.

Mrs. Dolly opposed the idea of keeping a shop; and observed that they should not, in that case, be gentlefolks. Besides, she said, she was sure the people of the house she had taken would never let it be turned into a shop.

What Mrs. Dolly had said was indeed true. When they got to Paddington, they found that the house was by no means fit for a shop; and as the bargain was made for a year, and they could not get it off their hands without considerable loss, Ellen was forced to put off her prudent scheme. In the mean time she determined to learn how to keep accounts properly.

There was a small garden belonging to the house, in which George set to work; and though he could do little more than pull up the weeds, yet this kept him out of mischief and idleness; and she sent him to a day-school, where he would learn to read, write, and cast accounts. When he came home in the evenings, he used to show her his copy-book, and read his lesson, and say his spelling to her, while she was at work. His master said it was a pleasure to teach him, he was so eager to learn; and Ellen was glad that she had money enough to pay for having her boy well taught. Mrs. Dolly, all this time, was sitting and gossiping amongst her acquaintance in Paddington. These acquaintance were people whom she had seen when they visited the housekeeper in the great family where she was laundry-maid; and she was very proud to show them that she was now a finer person than even the housekeeper, who was formerly the object of her envy. She had tea-drinking parties, and sometimes dinner parties, two or three in a week; and hired a footboy, and laughed at Ellen for her low notions, and dissuaded Maurice from all industrious schemes; still saying to him, "Oh, you'll have time enough to think of going to work when you have spent all your money."

Maurice, who had been accustomed to be at work for several hours in the day, at first thought it would be a fine thing to walk about, as Mrs.

Dolly said, like a gentleman, without having any thing to do; but when he came to try it, he found himself more tired by this way of life than he had ever felt himself in the cotton-mills at Derby. He gaped and gaped, and lounged about every morning, and looked a hundred times at his new watch, and put it to his ear to listen whether it was going, the time seemed to him to pa.s.s so slowly. Sometimes he sauntered through the town, came back again, and stood at his own door looking at dogs fighting for a bone; at others, he went into the kitchen, to learn what there was to be for dinner, and to watch the maid cooking, or the boy cleaning knives. It was a great relief for him to go into the room where his wife was at work: but he never would have been able to get through a year in this way without the a.s.sistance of a pretty little black horse, for which he paid thirty guineas. During a month he was very happy in riding backwards and forwards on the Edgeware-road: but presently the horse fell lame; it was discovered that he was spavined and broken-winded; and the jockey from whom Maurice bought him was no where to be found. Maurice sold the horse for five guineas, and bought a fine bay for forty, which he was certain would turn out well, seeing he paid such a good price for him; but the bay scarcely proved better than the black. How he managed it we do not know, but it seems he was not so skilful in horses as in cotton-weaving; for at the end of the year he had no horse, and had lost fifty guineas by his bargains.

Another hundred guineas were gone, n.o.body in the family but himself knew how: but he resolved to waste no more money and began the new year well, by opening a haberdasher's shop in Paddington. The fitting up this shop cost them five hundred pounds; it was tolerably stocked, and Ellen was so active, and so attentive to all customers, that she brought numbers to Maurice Robinson's new shop. They made full twelve per cent, upon all they sold; and, in six months, had turned three hundred pounds twice, and had gained the profit of seventy-two pounds. Maurice, however, had got such a habit of lounging, during his year of idleness, that he could not relish steady attendance in the shop: he was often out, frequently came home late at night, and Ellen observed that he sometimes looked extremely melancholy; but when she asked him whether he was ill, or what ailed him, he always turned away, answering, "Nothing--nothing ails me.

Why do ye fancy any thing ails me?"

Alas! it was no fancy. Ellen saw too plainly, that something was going wrong: but as her husband persisted in silence, she could not tell how to a.s.sist or comfort him.

Mrs. Dolly in the mean time was going on spending her money in junketing. She was, besides, no longer satisfied with taking her spoonful of brandy in every dish of tea; she found herself uncomfortable, she said, unless she took every morning fasting a full gla.s.s of the good cordial recommended to her by her friend, Mrs. Joddrell, the apothecary's wife. Now this good cordial, in plain English, was a strong dram. Ellen, in the gentlest manner she could, represented to Mrs. Dolly that she was hurting her health, and was exposing herself, by this increasing habit of drinking; but she replied with anger, that what she _took_ was for the good of her health; that everybody knew best what agreed with them; that she should trust to her own feelings; and that n.o.body need talk, when all she took came out of the apothecary's shop, and was paid for honestly with her own money.

Besides what came out of the apothecary's shop, Mrs. Dolly found it agreed with her constantly to drink a pot of porter at dinner, and another at supper; and always when she had a cold, and she had often a cold, she drank large basins full of white wine whey, "to throw off her cold," as she said.

Then by degrees, she lost her appet.i.te, and found she could eat nothing, unless she had a gla.s.s of brandy at dinner. Small beer, she discovered, did not agree with her; so at luncheon time she always had a tumbler full of brandy and water. This she carefully mixed herself, and put less and less water in every day, because brandy, she was convinced, was more wholesome for some const.i.tutions than water; and brandy and peppermint, taken together, was an infallible remedy for all complaints, low spirits included.

CHAPTER II.

Mrs. Dolly never found herself comfortable, moreover, unless she dined abroad two or three days in the week, at a public-house, near Paddington, where she said she was more at home than she was any where else. There was a bowling-green at this public-house, and it was a place to which tea-drinking parties resorted. Now Mrs. Dolly often wanted to take little George out with her to these parties, and said, "It is a pity and shame to keep the poor thing always mewed up at home, without ever letting him have any pleasure! Would not you like to go with me, George dear, in the one-horse chaise? and would not you be glad to have cakes, and tea, and all the good things that are to be had?"

"I should like to go in the one-horse chaise, to be sure, and to have cakes and tea; but I should not like to go with you, because mother does not choose it," answered George, in his usual plain way of speaking.

Ellen, who had often seen Mrs. Dolly offer him wine and punch to drink, by way of a treat, was afraid he might gradually learn to love spirituous liquors; and that if he acquired a habit of drinking such when he was a boy, he would become a drunkard when he should grow to be a man. George was now almost nine years old; and he could understand the reason why his mother desired that he would not drink spirituous liquors. She once pointed out to him a drunken man, who was reeling along the street, and bawling ridiculous nonsense: he had quite lost his senses, and as he did not attend to the noise of a carriage coming fast behind him, he could not get out of the way time enough, and the coachman could not stop his horses; so the drunken man was thrown down, and the wheel of the carriage went over his leg, and broke it in a shocking manner. George saw him carried towards his home, writhing and groaning with pain.

"See what comes of drunkenness!" said Ellen.

She stopped the people, who were carrying the hurt man past her door, and had him brought in and laid upon a bed, whilst a surgeon was sent for. George stood beside the bed in silence; and the words "See what comes of drunkenness!" sounded in his ears.

Another time, his mother pointed out to him a man with terribly swollen legs, and a red face blotched all over, lifted out of a fine coach by two footmen in fine liveries. The man leaned upon a gold-headed cane, after he was lifted from his carriage, and tried with his other hand to take off his hat to a lady, who asked him how he did; but his hand shook so much that, when he had got his hat off, he could not put it rightly upon his head, and his footman put it on for him. The boys in the street laughed at him. "Poor man!" said Ellen; "that is Squire L----, who, as you heard the apothecary say, has drunk harder in his day than any man that ever he knew; and this is what he has brought himself to by drinking! All the physic in the apothecary's shop cannot make him well again! No; nor can his fine coach and fine footmen any more make him easy or happy, poor man!"

George exclaimed, "I wonder how people can be such fools as to be drunkards! I will never be a drunkard, mother; and now I know the reason why you desired me not to drink the wine, when Mrs. Dolly used to say to me, 'Down with it, George dear, it will do ye no harm.'"

These circ.u.mstances made such an impression upon George that there was no further occasion to watch him; he always pushed away the gla.s.s when Mrs. Dolly filled it for him.

One day his mother said to him, "Now I can trust you to take care of yourself, George, I shall not watch you. Mrs. Dolly is going to a bowling-green tea-party this evening, and has asked you to go with her; and I have told her you shall."

George accordingly went with Mrs. Dolly to the bowling-green. The company drank tea out of doors, in summer-houses. After tea, Mrs. Dolly bid George go and look at the bowling-green; and George was very well entertained with seeing the people playing at bowls; but when it grew late in the evening, and when the company began to go away, George looked about for Mrs. Dolly. She was not in the summer-house, where they had drunk tea, nor was she any where upon the terrace round the bowling-green; so he went to the public-house in search of her, and at last found her standing at the bar with the landlady. Her face was very red, and she had a large gla.s.s of brandy in her hand, into which the landlady was pouring some drops, which she said were excellent for the stomach.

Mrs. Dolly started so when she saw George, that she threw down half her gla.s.s of brandy. "Bless us, child! I thought you were safe at the bowling-green," said she.

"I saw every body going away," answered George; "so I thought it was time to look for you, and to go home."

"But before you go, my dear little gentleman," said the landlady, "you must eat one of these tarts, for my sake." As she spoke, she gave George a little tart: "and here," added she, "you must drink my health too in something good. Don't be afraid, love; it's nothing that will hurt you: it's very sweet and nice."

"It is wine, or spirits of some sort or other, I know by the smell,"

said George; "and I will not drink it, thank you, ma'am."

"The boy's a fool!" said Mrs. Dolly; "but it's his mother's fault. She won't let him taste any thing stronger than water. But now your mother's not by, you know," said Mrs. Dolly, winking at the landlady; "now your mother's not by--"

"Yes, and n.o.body will tell of you," added the landlady; "so do what you like: drink it down, love."

"No!" cried George, pus.h.i.+ng away the gla.s.s which Mrs. Dolly held to his lips. "No! no! no! I say. I will not do any thing now my mother's not by, that I would not do if she was here in this room."

"Well; hush, hush; and don't bawl so loud though," said Mrs. Dolly, who saw, what George did not see, a gentleman that was standing at the door of the parlour opposite to them, and who could hear every thing that was saying at the bar.

"I say," continued George, in a loud voice, "mother told me she could trust me to take care of myself; and so I will take care of myself; and I am not a fool, no more is mother, I know; for she told me the reasons why it is not good to drink spirituous--." Mrs. Dolly pushed him away, without giving him time to finish his sentence, bidding him go and see whether the gig was ready; for it was time to be going home.

As George was standing in the yard, looking at the mechanism of the one-horse chaise and observing how the horse was put to, somebody tapped him upon the shoulder, and looking up, he saw a gentleman with a very good-natured countenance, who smiled upon him, and asked him whether he was the little boy who had just been talking so loud in the bar?

"Yes, sir," says George. "You seem to be a good little boy," added he; "and I liked what I heard you say very much. So you will not do any thing when your mother is not by, that you would not do if she was here--was not that what you said?"

"Yes, sir; as well as I remember."

"And who is your mother?" continued the gentleman. "Where does she live?"

George told him his mother's name, and where she lived; and the gentleman said, "I will call at your mother's house as I go home, and tell her what I heard you say; and I will ask her to let you come to my house, where you will see a little boy of your own age, whom I should be very glad to have seen behave as well as you did just now."