Volume Two—Chapter Four.
Jared’s Home.
“Well, Mr Ruggles, and how is little Pine?” said Mrs Jared, entering the room in Duplex Street, where industrious Tim was busily at work.
“Don’t know what to say, ma’am,” said Tim; “but somehow I fancy she’s better since I changed her oil. This one seems to agree with her different to what the last one did. Oils varies a deal.”
“No doubt,” said Mrs Jared, smiling; “but I should have more faith in keeping her well wrapped up and out of the night air.”
“I do keep her out of it, ma’am,” said Tim, talking away, but busy still over his work. “I take all the care I can of her; but what we want is warm weather to bring her round. Summer weather’s what we want; and there’s such a very little of it yet. It’s like everything else in London, ma’am—terribly adulterated. The oil’s adulterated, the milk’s adulterated, bread’s adulterated; everything is, ma’am, more or less, that we poor people buy; and I know we pay ten per cent, more for our things, ma’am, than the rich do; while, because things ain’t bad enough for us, we get our fresh air stale and fouled with blacks. As for our summer, what we get of it, that’s all adulterated with cold biting easterly winds. Summers seem to me, ma’am, to get shorter every year; but, for all that, I shall be glad when the summer does come.” And then, to give emphasis to his remarks, Tim brought his iron down thump upon the floor where he was seated.
Then there was a busy pause, during which time Jared was inspecting the lungs of a concertina, and, by means of his glue-pot, affixing soft patches of leather inside where failing spots were visible, Mrs Jared dividing her time between helping Patty over some garment and nursing the youngest Pellet, who sat watching Janet, staying with them for the evening.
“Strange thing this—terribly strange thing this about our poor-box, isn’t it?” said Jared. “Seems that there’s no mistake about it; but that it has been robbed again and again. Mrs Ruggles told you, I suppose?”
“Yes, sir, yes,” said Tim; “quite startled me, it did. But there! Lord bless you, sir, there’s people in this great London of ours would rob themselves, let alone other people, or church, or poor-boxes.”
“Ah!” said Jared, “it is startling. Mr Timson’s been talking to me about it. Sovereign of the vicar’s one time, half-a-crown another, crown-piece another. No doubt about it, for it seems Mr Gray’s been trying experiments.”
“Experiments!” said Mrs Jared.
“Yes; setting traps to find out the offender.”
“But, surely, it must be a mistake,” said Patty. “No one would be so wicked as to rob a church.”
“Well, I don’t know, my dear; money’s money,” said Jared; “and your Uncle Richard says it’s everything. There are plenty of people who value money more than religion.”
Jared was silent for business reasons now, since he was holding a piece of leather in his mouth, his hands being occupied by the concertina-bellows and glue-brush.
“You’re about right, sir,” put in Tim, who was busy over a shrinking operation upon one of Jared’s waistcoats, a proceeding which left room for the elision of the worn parts, so that it might fit a small person. “No idea, I s’pose, of who it could be, sir?”
“Not the slightest,” replied Jared, after placing his piece of leather in situ, and then preparing, with his scissors, a scrap for another part. “Glad if I had, for the rascal deserves to be punished. A man who would rob the poor, would rob—would—would do anything. Stir the fire under the glue-pot, Patty, my dear. Puts one in mind of a camp-kettle, don’t it?” he said, as the young girl stirred the glowing coals, and made the flame dance about the little vessel, hung from a hook in the chimney.
The little iron kettle began to sing, and Tim raised his eyes above his spectacles to peer round the room before taking a fresh hold of the garment upon which he was employed.
“Ah!” said Jared, after an interval of silence, “it’s a strange thing about that money. Poor Mr Gray’s in a sad way about it. He named it to me—says it’s so grievous, and that he thinks more of the crime than of the value of the money twenty times over.”