Cripplegate

“ Here I found a number of poor creatures, all in circumstances like myself, expecting the arrival of Mr Cripse, presenting a true epitome of English impatience. Each untractable soul at variance with fortune, wreaked her injuries on their own hearts: but Mr Cripse at last came down, and all our murmurs were hushed. He deigned to regard me with an air of peculiar approbation, and indeed he was the first man who for a month past talked to me with smiles. After a few questions, he found I was fit for every thing in the world. ”

“ But He do give very hard measure some time to them as have never desarved it. Now, there be your poor Miss Grace, for instance. As nice a young lady as ever lived; the purtiest ever come out of a bed; that humble, too, and gracious always, that 'Cripps,' she would say—nay 'Master Cripps'—she always give me my proper title, even on a dirty linen day—'Master Cripps,' her always said, 'let me mark it off, in your hat, for you'—no matter whether it was my best hat, or the one with the grease come through—'Master Cripps,' she always say, 'let me mark it out for you.'"
"Very well, Cripps. ”

“ A dreamy sense, coming of weakness and the desire to sleep, crept over me. The scampering rats no longer set my brain burning. I was content to rest and wait for death. And in this new mood of my exhaustion I heard the trap above me open of a sudden, and the pit was lighted with a very blaze of light. I looked up and saw the cripple poised there upon his crutches, a flaming torch in his hand. For a minute he stood like some human vulture; his eyes outstanding, his face still bloody. Then he closed the trap with a snap, and I was alone with the darkness. ”

“ We’re going to visit the establishment of Crippe, Marine Store dealer. Who Crippe may be we don’t know. Perhaps he’s Krevin—your Uncle Joseph. If he is, Ben, I don’t think we shall find him. If he isn’t, and there’s a Crippe who really is Crippe, then we want to know why Krevin carried Crippe’s cards in his pocket? Perhaps Crippe will tell us; perhaps he won’t. This business, Ben, consists largely of the question-and-answer system. Plenty of questions!—but getting satisfactory answers is the difficulty, and sometimes the very devil! ”

“ Miss Grace is coming, bless her heart! And she'll give it to me, if she finds any dirt."
"But, sir, if you please, Master Cripps now just is beginning of his pint of ale. And he never hurrieth over that——"
"Well, we don't want Cripps. We only want the bag. Jem will bring it into the brewery, if you want to sit with Cripps. Cripps is tired, I dare say. These young men's legs are not fit for much. Stop—call old Thomas; he's the best, after all. If I want a thing done, I come back to the old folk, after all." ”

“ But that—as Cripps would plainly put it—is neither here nor there just now; and it is ever so much better to let a man make his own excuses, which he can generally do pretty well.
"Cripps, well met!" cried Russel Overshute, seizing him by the apron, as Zacchary stood at the corner of Ship Street, to shake his head after his brother, who had made off down the Corn Market; "you are the very man I want to see!"
"Lor' a mercy now, be I, your Worship? Well, there are not many gentlemen as it does me more good to look at." ”

“ In the end, however, this feeling (like most of those which are adverse to our wishes) was prevailed upon to subside, and Esther, although of the least revolutionary and longest-established stock in England—that of the genuine Crippses, whose name, originally no doubt "Chrysippus," indicates the possession of a golden horse—Etty Cripps, finding that the heart of her adored one had, in Splinters' opinion, a perilous fissure, requiring change of climate, consented at last (having no house of her own) to come down from the tilt, and go to Africa. ”

“ The bridle of the tongue falleth into the teeth, when the lash is laid on us."
"Your metaphors are quite classical. However, I respect you greatly, Cripps, for your straightforward conduct. I am not a weak man, any more than you are; although you seem to think me one. I like and admire your sister Esther, for courage combined with gentleness. I always liked her, when she was a child; and I understood her nature. But as to her—liking me more than she ought; Cripps, you are imaginative." ”

“ I hear a horse tearing through the wood! Oh, dear, clever Cripps, you will repent it for the rest of all your life. Even Dobbin is sharper than you are."
"You blessed old ass!" cried a stern young voice, as Kit Sharp (who had meant not to show) rushed forward, "there is no time for your heavy brain to work. You shall have the young lady, dead or alive! Pardon me, Grace—no help for it. Now, thick-headed bumpkin, put one arm round her, and off at full gallop with your old screw! If you give her up I will hang you by the neck to the tail of your broken rattletrap!" ”

“ At night, I will come down, and smoke a pipe, and finish my story with you, as soon as I am sure you have had your supper."
"Never you pay no heed at all," said Master Cripps, with solemnity, "to no thought of my zupper, sir. That be entire what you worships call a zecondary consideration. However, I will have un, if so be I can. And you mustn't goo for to think, sir, that goo I would now, if stay I could. I goes with that there story, the same as the jog of a cart to the trot of the nag. My wits kapes on agoin' up and down. But business is a piece of the body, sir. ”

“ You might think, if you was not told distinkly to the contrairy, that having no business to lift up her eyes, she never would do so according. But I do assure you, sir, when it cometh to such like manner of taking on, the last thing as ever gets called into the account is sensible reason. They feels this, and they feels that; and then they falls to a-dreaming; and the world goes into their tub, same as butter, and they scoops it out, and pats, and stamps it to their own size and liking, and then the whole melteth, and a sour fool is left."
"Master Cripps, what you say is wise ”

“ Cripps, with great presence of mind, made believe for a moment to surrender, till Mr. Sharp lowered his weapon, and came up to stop the cart, and to take out Grace. In a moment, the Carrier, with a wonderful stroke, learned from long whip-wielding, fetched down his new lash on the eyeball of the young and ticklish horse of the lawyer. Mad with pain and rage, the horse stood up as straight as a soldier drilling, and balanced on the turn to fall back, break his spine, and crush his rider. Luke Sharp in his peril slipped off, and the cart-wheel comfortably crunched over his left foot. ”

“ As evening steals along a hill-side where the sun has tyrannised, and spreads the withering and the wearying of the day with gentleness, and brings relief to rugged points, and breadth of calm to everything; so the Squire's fine old face relaxed in slumber's halo, and tranquil ease began to settle on each yielding lineament; when open flew the door of the room, and Mary, at the top of her voice, exclaimed—
"Plaize, sir, Maister Cripps be here." ”

“ That’s what you said three months ago,” replied Cripps.
“I won’t ask you again,” pleaded the boy; “just this time, Cripps.”
“Why, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, that you ought,” exclaimed the virtuous landlord of the Cockchafer, “a keeping a honest man out of his money!”
“Oh, but I’m certain to have it then—that is, next to certain.”
“Oh! then what you’re tilling me about this here Nightingale of yours is a lie, is it?” said the ’cute Mr. Cripps. “You ain’t got it at all, ain’t you?”
Loman could have bitten his tongue off for making such a blunder.
“A he? No ”

“ Cripps said I could pay in June, when I get my next pocket-money.”
“What on earth has he to do with when you get your pocket-money?” demanded Oliver. “Who is this young Cripps? He’s a cad, isn’t he?”
“He seemed a very nice man,” said Stephen.
“Well, look here! the less you have to do with men like him the better. What is the price of the bat?”
“I don’t know; it’s one Mr. Cripps had himself when he was a boy. He says it’s a beauty! I say, it looks as good as new, Oliver.” ”

“ Cripps's alarm astir again.
"You're throwing away your luck," he would say, perhaps, "seein' you know him so well by sight. If you're too well-off to bother about fifty pound, give some of us poor 'uns a run for it, an' put us on to him. I wish I'd been able to see him so clear." For in truth Grandfather Nat well knew that nobody had had so near a chance of seeing the murderer's face as himself; and that Mr. Cripps, at the top of the passage—perhaps even round the corner—had no chance at all. ”

“ Etty, my dear, no call for you to come down and catch chilblains."
"Zak, I am going to push behind. I am not big enough to do much good. But I would rather be alongside of you, through this here bend of the road, I would."
For now the dusk was gathering in, as they toiled up the lonesome and snowy road where it overhung the "Gipsy's Grave."
"This here bend be as good as any other," said Cripps, though himself afraid of it. "What ails you, girl? What hath ailed you, ever since out of Oxford town you come? Is it a jail thou be coming home to? Oxford turns the head of thee!" ”

“ Now, I did not mean that, Mary, as you might know. Inside the women, and outside the men—now, what is this paper for, my dear?"
"That there Cripps, sir, have a sent 'un in. He be gettin' so pertikular!"
"Quite right. Quite right. Business is business. No man can be too particular. Let him sit down and have a pint of ale. He wants me to sign this paper, does he? Very well; tell him to come next week. My fingers are cramped with the wind. Tell Cripps—now, don't you be in such a hurry, Mary; Cripps is not a marrying man." ”

“ My dear sir, in this age of advanced therapeutics—Oglander, you must know better than to listen to that low story!"
"Splinters, I know that foolish tales are told about almost everything. But being there myself, I thought there might be something in it."
"Nothing whatever! I never heard such nonsense! I was quite angry with Esther Cripps. What can chits of girls know? They must have their chatter."
"I suppose they must," said the Squire sadly, thinking of his own dear Grace; "still they may be right sometimes. At any rate, doctor, the fire-bell did as much good as your medicine did. ”

“ Cripps, however, as the head of the family, having seigneurial rights by birth—as well as, in his own opinion, force of superior intellect—saw, and at once discharged, his duty. No taint of poached rabbits must lie, for a moment, on the straightforward path of the Crippses. Zacchary, therefore, held up one hand, as a warning to Tickuss to say no more, until he could get at him—for just at this moment a dead lock arose, through a fight of four women about a rotten egg—but when that had lapsed into hysterics, the Carrier struggled to his brother's elbow. ”

“ In short, Cripps was a blackguard by practice, whatever he was by profession. He had, however, one redeeming virtue; he was very partial to young gentlemen, and would go a good bit out of his way to meet one. He always managed to know of something that young gentlemen had a fancy for. He could put them into the way of getting a thoroughbred bull-dog dirt-cheap; he could put them up to all the tips at billiards and “Nap,” and he could make up a book for them on the Derby or any other race, that was bound to win. ”

“ Good-bye for the present; good-bye, Master Cripps."
"There goes one of the finest fellows, of all the fine fellows yet ruined by rubbish!" With these words Russel Overshute ran to the window and looked out. A dozen or more of young men were waiting, the best undergraduates of the college, for Mr. Hardenow to lead them for fifteen miles, without a word.
"Well, every man to his liking," said Russel; "but that would be about the last of mine. Now, Cripps, most patient of carriers, are you ready for me to go on or not?"
"I hath a been thinking about my horse. ”

“ They puts it on 'em all alike wi'out trial of constitootion. Some goes better for it; but most volk worse."
"Well, you know best, Mr. Cripps, of course. Up and down the road as you be, every door give you a hinstance. His Worship is all for eddication; and no one need swaller it, unless they likes. But pretty well schooled as I have been, sir, I looks down on no one. And now, when master's sister made that sudden call upon me, I assure you, sir, and Master Cripps, and Miss Esther in the corner there, the very first thing as I longed for was more knowledge of the ways of the kingdom. ”

“ Mr Cripps senior and his son were specially interested in no one knew, for neither of them was blessed with any. However, it was one of old Mr Cripps’s heart-moving phrases, and no one was rude enough to ask questions.
Stephen did not, on the present occasion, feel moved to respond to the old man’s lament, and Cripps junior, with more adroitness than filial affection, hustled the old gentleman out of the door.
“Never mind him,” said he to Stephen. “He’s a silly old man, and always pretends he’s starvin’. If you believe me, he’s a thousand pounds stowed away somewheres. ”

“ Such things befall almost everybody exploring unknown places. You are pulling me! you are exceeding your duty! Is the bucolic mind so dense? Here I am at your mercy—just show yourselves. You may choke me if you like, but the result will be—oh!—that you will also be choked yourselves!"
"A rare fine-plucked one as ever I see," said rabbiting George to Leviticus Cripps, when Hardenow lay between them, senseless from the pressure upon his throat; "ease him off a bit, my lad, he never done no harm to me. They long-coated parsons is good old women, and he be cut up into a young gal now. ”