Charles Hooton

“ The door was pushed violently open, and the village constable, an assistant, and Mr. Longstaff, the steward,—in a state of considerable mental elevation, arising from the combination of punch and revenge,—stood in the middle of the room.
“Now, missis!” bawled the steward, advancing, and clenching his fist before his own face, while he stared at her through a pair of leaden eyes, with much of the expression of an owl in the sun; “You see me, don't you? You see me, I say? Mark that. Did you expect me, I say, missis? No, no, I think not. You thought you were safe enough, but I've got you! ”

“ Old George, who had been a distant and silent spectator of the scene, stood at the door as he entered.
“Ay, poor boy!” said he, pityingly, as the child passed by him, “they'd more need to nurse him by the fireside than half drown him this way. It's sad wages—sad wages, indeed, for a nest-babe like him! But they don't heed what I say. I'm an old man, and have no right to speak.”
Miss Sowersoft seized the earliest opportunity she could to place Colin's letter upon the fire, which she did with a spoonful of salt upon it, in order that its flames should be of the same colour as its contents. ”

“ In this varied storehouse, with poor pale little Fanny for his nurse, until he grew too big for her any longer to carry him, did our hero Colin live and thrive. After he had found his own legs, his nurse became his companion; and many a time, as he grew older,—pitying her hungry looks, and solemn-looking eyes,—has he stolen out with half his own meals in his pinafore, on purpose to give them unseen to her who, he thought, wanted them more than he. But in time the little shop was to be minded, and Fanny had grown up enough to attend to it. ”

“ While Colin, with tears in his eyes, promised implicit compliance with all that had been requested of him, he yet, with the candour and warm-hearted generosity peculiar to his character, declared that Fanny ought to despise him if ever he trusted to the labour of her hands for a single meal, No: he would save all his yearly wages, and bring them home for her and his mother; and in time he should be able to maintain them both by his own labour, without their having any need to struggle for themselves. ”

“ The candle being extinguished, Colin could see nothing save a small square of dim light where the window was. Below stairs he could hear the muttering of voices, as Miss Sower-soft still endeavoured to restore the beauty of Mr. Palethorpe's countenance; and in the false floor over his head the sound of rats, who were at work in the roof, making noise sufficient over their labours to keep awake, during the whole night, any person less accustomed to that kind of nocturnal entertainment than the inhabitants of country-houses usually are. ”

“ Palethorpe was much excited of course,—for he is very passionate indeed when he is once got up,—and he took him in his rage and dipped him in the horse-trough. Not that I justify his passion, or say that I admire his revenge,—nothing of the sort: but I must say, that if there is one thing more mean and contemptible than another, or that deserves to be more severely punished in children, it is that of listening behind hedges and doors, to know the very thing that people wish to keep particularly secret. ”

“ Clink had taken little Colin out of his cradle, and wrapped him warmly round with all the clothes it contained. She then led Fanny into the inner room, which was occupied as a bed-chamber.
“Come, Fanny,” said she; “if there be still less charity under a bare sky than under this stripped roof, we cannot do much worse. Put on all the clothes you have, child, for perhaps we may want them before morning.” ”

“ To go in there, and see that wench a mother before she is a wife,—her character gone for ever,—ruined,—lost!—why, I say, sink me to perdition this instant! if I don't redden his own hearthstone with his own blood, though I wait for it to the last day of my life. As sure as he sees the day, I'll make his children fatherless—I'll have my knife in him!”
“Stop! stop! Mr. Clink!” cried Mrs. Mallory, laying her hand upon his shoulder, “do cool yourself, and do not threaten so terribly.” ”

“ Longstaff, the steward, had been fast asleep in bed, dreaming of felled timbers and unpaid arrears, and utterly regardless of Colin's existence, instead of preparing, as he was—untimely and heartlessly—to disturb that baby slumber, and to harass with additional pains and fears the bosom of one who had already found too abundantly that folly and vice mete out their own punishment. ”

“ Fresh air, fields, rivers, clouds, and sunshine, redeem half the miseries of want, and make a happy joyful being of him who, in any other sense, cannot call one single atom of the world his own.
Colin Clink was a native of the village of Bramleigh, about twenty miles west of that city of law and divinity, of sermons and proctors' parchment, the silent city of York. ”

“ A loud thump on the table, accompanied with corresponding emphasis of speech, made the word child sound a great deal bigger than either man or woman. The squire then went on,—“Look at the effect of it, Longstaff. Any man,—I myself,—you,—any of us, or all of us,—are liable at any time to have fathered upon us a thing, a brat,—any tinkers whelp that ever was bred, very likely in Cumberland or Cornwall, or a thousand miles off,—though, in point of fact, you or I had no more acquaintance with that child's mother—no, no more than we had with Donna Maria! Now mark, Longstaff. ”

“ Colin himself, like most other boys, true to the earliest propensity of our nature, preferred a life passed in fields and woods, amongst horses, dogs, and cattle, to that of a dull shop behind a counter; or of any tedious and sickly mechanical trade. So far that was good. What he himself approved, he was most likely to succeed in; and with success in field-craft, he might eventually become a considerable farmer, or raise himself, like Mr. Longstaff, to the stewardship of some large estate. Visions, never to be realised, now rose in vivid distinctness before the mental eye of Mistress Clink. ”

“ Now, keep awake, Mary, for sleep is of no use at all to me: and, besides that, she told me the baby was as like her master as snow to the clouds; so that what is to become of me I do not know.—I cannot tell, indeed!”
Here Mrs. Lupton wrung her hands, and wept bitterly.
Miss Shirley grew terrified at this incoherent discourse, and with an unconscious degree of earnestness begged her to go down stairs.
“Never heed,—never heed,” said she, turning towards the table, and apparently forgetting her grief: “there will come an end. Days do not last for ever, nor nights either.” ”

“ Colin's eyes as he lay were fixed, as it might have been the eyes of a picture, on the doctor's countenance.
“I don't know, I'm sure, sir,” replied Fanny: but after a few moments' hesitation, added, “I suppose it was because I had no friends.”
“No friends!” the doctor repeated,—“why, where's your father and mother?”
“I never knew them, sir.”
“Indeed! never knew them!”
“No, sir!” and Fanny sobbed at the very recollection of her childhood's helplessness.
“Humph!” ejaculated the doctor; “you scarcely seem to have been born for a servant. Where did Mrs. Clink find you?” ”

“ A strong reflection from this spot was thrown upon the door, by the aid of which he beheld through the grating that looked into the dark passage a white hand clutching the little bars, and higher up the dim shadow of a face, that looked like that of a spirit. Woodruff rose up, and sat upon the cold edge of his iron bedstead.
“James!” whispered a voice through the grating, which he instantly recognised as that of the doctor's wife, “are you awake?” ”

“ I am not able to do much, but I can earn my living; and, if I work like a slave, you shall never want a farthing as long as I have one left for myself in the world! I have nursed you, Colin, when I was almost as little as yourself ”

“ Everything was silent, save one or two of those quiet homely sounds, which fall on the ear with a sensation that appears to render even silence itself still more silent. The solitary ticking of an old caseless Dutch clock on the wall was interrupted only by the smothered rocking of the cradle, wherein lay the yet unconscious cause of all I have told, or may yet have to tell. ”

“ Thus:—Great states require great taxes to support them; great taxes produce political extravagance; political extravagance enforces domestic economy; and domestic economy in the lowest class, where misery would seem almost rudely to sever the most endearing ties, now-a-days, demands that every pair of hands, however small, shall labour for the milk that supports them; and every little heart, however light, shall be filled with the pale cares and yearning anxieties which naturally belong only to mature age.
Of such as these was Mistress Clink's diminutive housemaid, Fanny Woodruff. ”

“ When, some little time afterwards, Fanny went down stairs, and informed the mistress of the house of her resolution to stay and attend on Colin until he was better, that amiable creature replied, “I think you won't then. We have not any room to spare. As if I was going to keep beds at liberty, to accommodate any trunnion that may think fit to cram herself into my house! We've plenty of work on our hands without having to wait on other people's servants. What do you say, Palethorpe?” ”

“ Concluding from the direction in which the doctor had come that Colin was somewhere in the regions above, she flew rather than walked up stairs, without waiting for an invitation or a conductor, and soon threw her arms in an ecstasy of grief upon his neck.
“Oh, Colin! God has sent me on purpose to save you! Do be better, and you shall go home again very soon.” ”

“ Miss Sowersoft uttered this last sentence in such a peculiar tone of self-satisfied depreciation, as evidently proved that she considered herself a much more eligible subject, on account of that identical weakness which she had verbally condemned, than she would have been if wholly free from it.
“Well, meesis,” replied Mr. Palethorpe, with considerate deliberation, “I should have no objection to our union, if it so happened that we were not doing very well as we are at present; and, while we are making a little money to put by every week, I think it is as well just now to let good alone. ”

“ Was it not possible that the squire might be speaking in some way or other of her?
We are ever jealous of those who have done us wrong; and never more so, however little we may credit it, than when the sense of that wrong lies most keenly upon us. Colin was soundly asleep in her arms; she had nothing to fear. Leaving Fanny, therefore, under cover of a laurel-tree, she stepped lightly but rapidly up, and placed herself close by the window, about the same moment that, as previously described, Mr. Lupton had entered the room. ”

“ Between you and me, Miss Sowersoft,—though it does not do to show everybody what colour you wear towards them,—there is not a person in the world—and I ought not to say it of a woman, but so it is,—there is not a single individual living that I hate more than I do that woman. ”

“ Rowel to witness the agonies of the human countenance.
“Yes, sir,” added Fanny, “I am only a servant; but I am a woman, whether servant or mistress. I nursed this lad when I was but six years old myself, and have taken care of him ever since. She shall not drown him, though she thinks she will!”
“Me drown him!” exclaimed Miss Sowersoft in feigned amazement.
“Yes,” replied Fanny, “you drown him. If you had not half murdered him in that trough, he would never have been here now.”
“Do let us go down stairs, doctor,” observed Miss Sowersoft; “such rubbish as this is not worth hearing.” ”

“ I always liked to be my own mistress and my own master. Besides that, it does entail so much trouble on people in one way or another. Really, when I look on that great family of my brother Ted, I am fit to fancy it is pulling him down to the ground; and I positively believe it would, if he did not take advantage of his situation in trade, and rap and wring every farthing out of everybody in any way that he possibly can, without being at all particular;—though they are sweet children, they are! Ay, but something must be risked, and something must be sacrificed in this world. ”