Round the Block Part 13

The inventor did not know one word of French beyond the colloquial phrases with which everybody is familiar; but he would ask his daughter to read the crisp and tinkling tongue to him for hours at a time. He would hammer softly and file gently as she read, so that he might not lose a word of it. He would hear no news but that which she translated from the triweekly French paper published in the city. With correct and careful tuition at Miss Pillbody's, these constant exercises at home, ambition, and an excellent memory for languages, Pet was soon able not only to satisfy her teacher, but to make herself understood, in a small way, by a real French woman, Mdlle. d.u.c.h.ette, the forewoman of a candy store on the nearest business avenue.

Pet followed every lesson on the piano at Miss Pillbody's by three hours of daily practice at home. Marcus had hired for her a small piano, warranted to be just the thing for beginners. In other words, the keys and pedals were nearly worn out, and could not be much further damaged by unpractised hands and feet. This instrument was squeezed in between the bureau and the washstand, filling up the last spare place in the crowded little room. Pet wanted to have it set up in the next apartment, and practise there in the cold, alone; but neither her father nor Marcus would listen to that proposition for a moment.

Mr. Minford's nerves were extremely sensitive to sound. They vibrated to it, like Aeolian harp in the wind. He placed pianos, cats, fish peddlers, and hand organs on precisely the same footing, as nuisances.

Nothing but the ruling desire to make a lady of his child, could have steeled him to the endurance, hour after hour, of her monotonous "One--two--three--four," and the discordant banging which accompanied those plaintive utterances.

The permanent discords with which the piano was afflicted, or the striking of a false note, would sometimes set his teeth on edge; but he would only hold his jaws tightly together, beat time with his head, and smile a hypocritical approval. Sometimes he would torture himself playfully, and make Pet laugh, by running a musical opposition with his three-cornered file--a small but effective instrument.

Marcus Wilkeson was equally tolerant of Pet's practice, and there was little false pretence in the patience with which he listened. Happily, he was not all alive to sounds. Screeches and harmonies were pretty much the same to him. Since he was a boy, he had been trying (privately) to sing, or whistle, "Auld Lang Syne," and had not yet mastered the first bar of it. He watched Pet's little fingers moving up and down the piano with mechanical repet.i.tion, and was truly interested in the sight--for two reasons: first, the motion was graceful; and second, she was acquiring an accomplishment which he held in the highest esteem, because Nature had put it entirely beyond his reach.

Sometimes, but not often, Bog was a listener at these rudimental concerts. Since Marcus had come to the relief of the family, Bog felt that his mission was ended. He knew that it was a piece of pure hypocrisy to call once or twice a week to see if he could be of any service, when he was aware that Mr. Minford had hired a woman, who lived on the floor below, to do all their household work, marketing, cooking, and general errands. He knew that Pet, on these occasions, asked him to go for a spool of thread, or a paper of needles, or a package of candy, merely to gratify him with the idea that he was making himself useful.

When he came into the room tidily dressed, and highly polished as to his boots, he blushed even redder than he used to. It was not the acquisition of a little money by Mr. Minford that had exalted his daughter in the-eyes of Bog, but the French and the music. These two accomplishments seemed to lift her into an upper air of delicacy and refinement, for which Bog felt that his miserable education and clumsy manners quite unfitted him. After Bog had performed some little invented errand for her, she would reward him with a short exercise, and Bog would sit, with open mouth and crossed legs, staring at Pet's face and hands alternately, and beating time with his large red hands on his knees.

Bog knew the negro songs of the period, and admired them. He would have liked to hear Pet play them, but feared she would think his musical taste very bad if he asked her to. Her "exercises," as she called them, he considered something perfectly wonderful, and belonging to a cla.s.s of scientific music which a poor fellow like him could not be expected to enjoy. But, like many an older and more worldly-wise person, he pretended to be thrown into raptures by it, and, at every pause in the playing, would say, "Beautiful! a'n't it?" "That's prime!" or "Splendid!" or "The best I ever heerd." Sometimes, at his earnest entreaty, Pet would read a page of French to him; and he would listen with awe and reverence, as to a beautiful sibyl prophesying in an unknown tongue.

Bog always paid these visits in the afternoon. Marcus Wilkeson always called in the evening. The two had met in the house rarely since New Year's. When they accidentally met on the sidewalk, within a square or two of the house, as they sometimes did, Bog colored up as if he were guilty of something. Once Marcus Wilkeson saw Bog at a distance, turning suddenly down a side street, as if to avoid him; and Marcus wondered what could be the matter with the boy. By industry and tact, Bog made money in his new partners.h.i.+p, and had already laid up a snug sum in the savings bank.

Between Pet and her teacher a feeling of sisterly affection had sprung up. Miss Pillbody turned with a feeling of relief from her dull elderly pupils, stiff in manners, and firmly set in their habits, to this fresh, impressible young creature. What she did conscientiously to the others for pay, she would have done to Pet for love, had not her bills been settled in advance. Whenever Miss Pillbody had a spare hour or two, afforded by the indisposition of one of her older scholars (from excessive fatigue occasioned by a dinner party or other laborious hospitality the night before), she would send the red-headed servant to Mr. Minford's, and notify Pet, who was only too happy to go to her beloved teacher, and take an extra lesson.

Mrs. Crull could not be called a promising pupil. Her intentions were excellent. Her patience and her good nature were unbounded. She was always punctual at her lessons. Neither cold nor storm could keep her away. While she was in the schoolroom, she would resolutely deny herself the pleasure of indulging in more than a dozen episodes on the fas.h.i.+ons and bits of scandal which she picked up in her cruise through society.

With the exception of these little wanderings, she would go through her recitations with as much correctness and docility as a sharp-witted child of twelve years. She felt a childlike pride in gaining the approval of her teacher. When she was under Miss Pillbody's instructions, and knew that every mistake would be courteously but firmly corrected on the spot (the teacher's invariable custom), she kept such a guard upon her tongue that she sometimes read or conversed in long sentences without making a single error. But when she was out of Miss Pillbody's sight, there were certain blunders which she fell into as surely as she opened her mouth.

Sometimes Mrs. Crull and Pet would meet on the doorsteps of Miss Pillbody's house--the one going in and the other coming out--or on the sidewalk in the neighborhood. Mrs. Crull would catch the child by both hands, smack her heartily on the cheek (no matter how public the kiss), and then a conversation something like this would follow:

"How bright and pretty you look this mornin', my darlin!" (Mrs. Crull could not remember to pick up the "g's," except under Miss Pillbody's eye, and then not always.)

"Thank you, Mrs. Crull; I am quite well. How are you, marm?"

"Oh! smart as a trap. Haven't known not a sick day these ten years."

(Mrs. Crull was weak on the double negatives.)

"How do you get along?" From motives of delicacy, Pet never added, "in your studies."

"Well, I don't mind tellin' you, as you are my confidential little friend." Here Mrs. Crull would look around cautiously, to be sure no one was listening. "The other studies isn't so hard, but grammar knocks me."

(Mrs. Crull's nominatives and verbs were irreconcilable.)

Then Pet would say, telling an innocent fib:

"I don't observe anything very wrong, Mrs. Crull."

"Ha! ha! there you are flattering me, you little chick. I know, or think, I have improved a good deal with our dear Miss Pillbody; but a smart little scholar like you must see lots of mistakes in me."

At this point, Pet would blush, and murmur, "No--no!"

"Humbug!" Mrs. Crull would say. "I know my incurable faults, and I know that you know 'em. But Lor' bless you, child! there is plenty of ladies in good s'ciety" (Mrs. C. always slurred on the first syllable of that word) "who talk as bad as me. Their husbands, just like mine, got rich suddenly, you see. I tell you, I was 'stonished to find how many of 'em there was. They are thicker'n blackberries. I found out something else, too." Here Mrs. Crull would shake her head knowingly, like one who had discovered a great truth.

Pet would know what was coming, but would ask: "Pray, what is it, Mrs.

Crull?"

"Why, I found out that, if you give good dinners and big parties, and keep a carriage, and have a conservatory, and rent a pew up near the altar, your little shortcomin's in grammar isn't no objection to you.

'Money makes the mare go.' However, eddication, as Miss Pillbody says, is a good thing of itself, and I shall keep on tryin' to get it."

These conversations always ended by an invitation to Pet to visit Mrs.

Crull. "I'll have our carriage call for you," she would say, "at your father's house. We have no children, you know, and the old man would be very good to you; though, of course, it wouldn't do to hint about the school. But I can trust my little friend for that. Come, now, won't you?"

But Pet always modestly declined these kind invitations. She knew her father's pride, and his aversion to the patronage of rich people.

CHAPTER II.

THE FALLING BOARD.

One afternoon, Pet had been taking an extra lesson from Miss Pillbody, and had started homeward with a light heart, humming to herself a musical exercise which she had practised for the first time that day. A few doors from Miss Pillbody's, some workmen were repairing a wooden awning. The framework was covered with loose boards, which the carpenters were about to nail down. A feminine dread of danger would have induced Pet to make a wide detour of this awning; but her mind was so fully occupied by the musical exercise, that she walked, unheeding, right under it.

"Look out! look out!" shrieked a chorus of voices overhead, accompanied by a rattle of falling boards. Pet sprang forward just in time to escape one of them, and to catch another on her shoulder. It touched her gently, not even abrading her skin, for its fall had been stopped midway by a young man.

"Stupid!" "Silly creature!" "The girl's a blockhead!" "Where's her eyes, I wonder?" shouted the carpenters, after the manner of carmen and stage drivers, when you narrowly escape being run over by _their_ carelessness, at the crossings.

"Shut up!" said the young man, savagely. "Why the d---l don't you keep your boards where they belong, instead of tumbling them down on people's heads?--I hope you are not hurt, miss?" (in a gentle voice).

"Oh, no; not at all. I am sure I thank you, sir, very much." Pet blushed, and hurried away.

The young man and the carpenters then exchanged the customary abusive epithets with each other, which might have resulted in something more serious (though such verbal encounters rarely do), but for the desire of the young man to overtake the young girl whom he had saved from a bruised shoulder, or a worse accident. Shaking his fist at the four jeering carpenters, and muttering a farewell execration between his teeth, he rapidly followed Pet, and soon came up with her.

"You are sure you are not hurt?" said he. "Those scoundrelly workmen!

I'll thrash one of them yet."

Pet was confused by the second appearance of the young man at her side, though she knew that he would follow her; even her brief experience having taught her that it is not in the nature of man to do a kindness to a woman, without exacting a full acknowledgment for it.

"No, sir; I am not hurt the least bit," she replied, looking in his face no more than grat.i.tude and civility required. Here she would have stopped, but she feared (charming simplicity of girlhood) that the young man would, some future day, get into trouble with the four carpenters. So she added, timidly: "As for the workmen, sir, they were not to blame. It was all my fault, running into the danger. I--I beg, sir, that you won't say another word to them."

This was a long speech for timid Pet to make to a stranger, and she blushed fearfully at the end of it, and wished that the young man would go away.

"They deserve a thras.h.i.+ng, every one of them," said he; "but, for your sake, I let them go." The young man spoke in a sweet voice, and his manner was respectful. Pet had observed, in several hasty side glances, that he was nicely dressed, and not ill-featured, in all except the eyes. But had his eyes been large and handsome, instead of small and forbidding, she would have desired his absence all the same.

"You say you are not hurt," he continued; "but you may be, without knowing it. I have heard of people receiving serious injuries, and never finding them out till they got home. Have you far to go, miss?"

"Only two blocks farther," said Pet, turning the corner.

"The very route I was going," observed the young man.

Although Pet felt that the young man's company was unnecessary and disagreeable, she did not like to tell him so. She kept silence until she reached her home, when she said, "I stop here, sir." She would have added, "Good-by, sir," or "Thank you, sir," or something equivalent, but instinct checked the expression, and she darted into the entry (the door being accidentally ajar), and shut the door after her, before the young man could say a word. Although the door was shut, he raised his hat respectfully as one often does on Broadway _after_ he has pa.s.sed a female acquaintance upon whom he suddenly comes--the salute being received and acknowledged with a stare by the next lady, or ladies, following after. The young man then noted the number of the house, nodded satisfactorily to himself, and strolled very leisurely along the street, as if neither business nor pleasure had urgent demands upon him.

CHAPTER III.