However, to come back to my gooseberry pudding and my weaning. Well, thanks to that dear good mother of mine, I got the weaning all over so nicely the reader can’t tell, though, I’m sorry to say that, thanks to that beauty of a Betsy of mine, the gooseberry pudding with the wood in it, that I had set my heart upon having so, wasn’t fit to have been set before a pig, let alone a respectable married female like myself—Augh! I declare I’ve got the taste of it in my mouth to this very day.
Well, as I was saying, I went by myself round to dear, dear mother’s, (who, whatever her faults may be, still I must say has always been a good mother to me,) and after we had had a nice long cry together, and both of us agreed that it was all owing to Mr. Sk—n—st—n’s continually trying, all he could, to set me against my own dear parents, as he was, we kissed each other and made friends again; for, as my darling mother very truly said, I had always been her own dear, good girl, and, she would add, whatever might come of it, (though, far be it from her to make words between man and wife,) that I was a great deal too good for that sour, good-for-nothing husband of mine, who, she couldn’t help saying, was no gentleman. Then the dear, foolish old soul would make me step into the beautiful little back parlour and take a mouthful of luncheon. And then, I declare, she must go having up, expressly for me, the beautiful cold, baked rice-pudding that she’d had for dinner only the day before, and which, if it is well browned, and has got plenty of custard, and a stick or two of cinnamon in it, is to my mind as nice a thing as one can put one’s lips to. Nor, was this all. Really she seemed as if she couldn’t make enough of me, for, do what I would, I could not prevent the affectionate silly from opening a fresh bottle of her lovely, best green-ginger wine on the joyful occasion, for the more I told her that I dare not touch a drop of it for the life of me, the more determined she seemed to be to open it.
Oh! upon my word, I don’t think I ever passed such a pleasant afternoon as that was. I declare, as I sat there, looking out of that lovely little window, and seeing that superb Regent’s Canal winding along like a live eel, with father’s majestic barge dancing on its surface, and his gallant heaver fast asleep in the stern, while here and there a child of charity might be seen fishing on the banks, it seemed to me as if, with a slight stretch of the imagination, you might have fancied yourself to have been far away in beautiful Venice, and the swarthy bargeman the sun-burnt gondolier of that romantic clime, while with a little extra play of fancy one might easily have twisted the charity boys seeking the finny tribe into the yellow-legged kingfishers, which I have heard papa’s old friend, Mr. Glasscock, (who keeps a large Italian warehouse in the neighbourhood, and consequently ought to know something about the country,) over and over again say, delight to haunt the Venetian shores.
Oh! it was so beautiful to sit there, eating that heavenly cold baked rice-pudding till I was afraid I should make myself ill, and hearing dear mother call me everything that was good, and Mr. Sk—n—st—n everything that was bad. “Ah! my dear sweet Caroline,” she said, with much feeling and great truth, “how you can ever have brought yourself to put up with the brutal treatment of that disgraceful tyrant of a husband of yours,—of whose conduct I must beg of you, my darling, not to ask me to express any opinion,—is more than I should like to take upon myself to state. All I can say is, my love, that if you had not been a perfect angel, you would have packed up your things, and left the ungrateful monster long ago. But I can see what he is after, my dear; he wont rest easy until he has fidgetted you into an early grave; for I see as plainly as plainly can be, that you are fast giving way under it, and that your appetite is not half as good as it used to be, and that unless you take as much strengthening food as you possibly can, the wretch will break your heart chip by chip before he has done with you. However, it is no business of mine, and Heaven forbid that I should say a word about it! Only I wish to goodness gracious, with all my heart and soul, that it had pleased Providence to have allowed your father to have blessed you with a big brother, and then Mr. Sk—n—st—n would never have dared to have treated you in the way he does. But, as I said before, it is a subject which it pains me much to touch upon, so I shall let it drop, merely observing, that if your respected father had the spirit of a tadpole in him, he could never sit quietly smoking his pipe of an evening down at that filthy wharf as he does, while he knows, as well as I do, that a big-whiskered fellow is puzzling his wits to find out the quickest way of driving his own innocent, gentle little lamb of a Caroline into a premature coffin. But I have done with the painful theme, my pet; so let me give you a little more ginger, and we will change the conversation to a more lively theme, if you please. By-the-bye, will you, on your return home, remember to mention to that disgraceful husband of yours, that your dear father is now selling the very best screened Wall’s-end coals as low as twenty-one shillings a ton.”
Well, as I said before, I got the weaning over beautifully. Poor dear mother was delighted at having the job, though father—just like all the selfish men—was quite of a different way of thinking. Of course I kept away from the dear little pet for more than a whole week, though I’m sure I needn’t tell my fair readers that it was a hard, very hard struggle for me to do so, as I made certain that the darling was fretting its poor little life out for want of it. However, when I went to fetch the dear, mother told me that it had been as good as gold all the time, and had never cried once for it; for bless the little chick’s heart, it’s got its own mother’s sweet temper—so it has.
And upon my word, I had only just got my new nurse in, and my little toodle-loodle-lumpties (if I may be allowed so strong an expression) was only just beginning to take its food nicely, when, lo and behold, if that Easter Sunday didn’t pop round upon me! I never knew such a price as gooseberries were—three-and-sixpence for a little tiddy basketful, scarcely enough for one person; and Edward is such a pig at pastry, especially if it’s short crust; though I take good care always to make it flakey. However, it was a solemn feast; and if they had been twenty shillings a quart, I should have felt it my bounden duty to have given as much for them.
On the Saturday before Easter Sunday, I saw a little boy come to the door; and as Miss Betsy was up-stairs, busy with the beds, I went and opened it, when, bless us and save us, if it wasn’t a little dirty-faced monkey who had brought round her ladyship’s papers for the week from her twopenny-halfpenny newsvender. Oh, yes! there they were—“Penny Sunday Times,” as usual, with another horrible engraving; and the fifteenth part of “Emily Fitzormond, or the Deserted One;” together with the commencement of “Ela the Outcast, or the Gipsy Girl of Rosemary Dell;” with the first number of which Nos. 2, 3, and 4, were given gratis. Like a good-natured silly as I was, I went, letting her have the highly-exciting rubbish, instead of tearing it all up, as I ought to have done; and nicely I bit my fingers for my folly, for, just as I might have expected, there she was, all the next day, so interested with that stupid outcast of an Ela, that she couldn’t get my lamb down before the fire until it was so late, that when it came to table it was only just warmed through, and every one knows how nice underdone lamb is. However, said I to myself, thank goodness, there’s a good large pudding coming, or else I don’t know what I should do. But, Lord-a-mercy me! when that came up, I thought I should have died of disgust and vexation, for, drat the novel-reading blockhead, if she hadn’t been so taken up with the fate of that bothering fal-lal gipsy-girl of Rosemary Dell, indeed, that I declare, if she didn’t go beating up a nasty, filthy, bad French egg, in my beautiful expensive little green gooseberries, with the wood in them. As she had spoilt the lamb for me, of course I had made little or no dinner, and, let alone my being as hungry as a hunter, I was positively dying to taste my favourite pudding for the first time that year, so that it wasn’t until I had put a large dessert-spoonful into my mouth, that I found out what the minx had been doing. And then, Uch! oh la! of all the messes, I thought I should have fainted! Taken the roughness off, indeed—ay, that she had, with a vengeance. Upon my word I was so vexed, I could have set down and had a good cry, I could; but as it was, I merely said to the jade,—“I’ll make you pay soundly for this, you may depend upon it, Miss Betsy; for if I don’t have another gooseberry pudding out of your next quarter, my name isn’t what it is; and I can tell you this, my fine lady, that if you don’t mind your P’s and Q’s, you’ll find that those trumpery soul-thrilling novels of yours will bring you to a bad end some of these fine mornings, take my word for it.”
Oh! if I’d had my wits about me, and only been able to see my true interests, I should have had none of the stupid scruples of conscience that I had, and have got rid of the girl on the spot—only, thanks to Mr. Edward, he must have it that I was only happy when I was changing, when he knows that all I pray for is that I could get hold of some good, honest, hard-working maid, that would live and die in my service. As for Miss Betsy, she was quite a hopeless job. Upon my word she was so wrapt up in her works of fiction, that really she would believe any trumpery cock-and-a-bull story that was told her. There really was no trusting her out of my sight, and that’s the truth. Once I went out just to get a mouthful of fresh air in the Park, and on my return found that the hall had been stripped, and the gold watch of Edward’s poor dear first wife, which he had given me before we were married, had been carried off the mantelpiece by a fellow, whom she would have was the clergyman of the parish, and who, she said, requested to be allowed to write a letter to me about the Easter offering. If, too, by any accident I let the key of the area-gate out of my possession for more than a minute, she was certain to have down in the kitchen the first gipsy woman, with her trumpery box of sewing cottons to sell, that she could lay hold of, just to tell her rubbishing fortune, and who, after stuffing her head that she saw by the lines in her great ugly, coarse hand, that she was to marry a certain black-eyed young baker, and was to have her nine children and a shay-cart, and promising her, moreover, a large fortune into the bargain, would be certain to wind up by walking off with my silver spoons. The beauty of it was, too, that when I used to rate the romantic idiot soundly for her disgusting simplicity, telling her that she ought to be whipped at the cart’s tail for encouraging a pack of thieves in the way she did, upon my word if she wouldn’t, with all the coolness in the world, go off lamenting the degraded state of the robbers of the present day, saying that they were not half the fine set of people that they used to be in “the good old times and days of yore;” and then she’d actually have the impudence to look me in the face, and ask me if I knew anything about the great Jack Sheppard, declaring that he was the robber for her money, for he never shed blood but once; and whatever his faults might have been, the book that had been written upon him said very beautifully that he never told a lie.
This was the secret of it all. Of course, with the high-flown notions she had got of robbers, and brigands, and pirates, and a pack of other pickpockets, out of her weekly pennyworths of romantic rodomontades; and believing that the vagabonds possessed every virtue under the sun, with merely the slight drawback of occasionally wanting either your money or your life, she was a common victim to every villain that chose to impose upon her. I declare she got me into one scrape by her credulity that nearly proved the death of me, (though it wasn’t the one that I spoke of last month, and for which I sent her away.)
You see, summer was just coming on, and the fine weather had set in; so I went to work, looking up my light dresses; and it’s very lucky I did so, for there was scarcely any of them that were fit to put on. They were all as yellow as marigolds; so I packed them off to the wash, every one excepting a very nice clear muslin, which really was so slightly discoloured, that it seemed to me worse than a sin to go giving a matter of eightpence to have it washed, when with a nice dark shawl it would look nearly clean, and do very well for a walk round the park some fine day at the end of the week. When I saw my beautiful Swiss cambric again, with its sweet pretty little, bright-red flower upon it, and its rich skirt and four rows of deep flounces, I couldn’t for the life of me help saying to myself, “Oh, you are a perfect love, I declare! and when you’re nicely clear-starched you’ll look superb, with my pink drawn silk bonnet and green shot-silk scarf, next Sunday at church.” And the more I looked at it, the more it struck me that I might just as well coax my own dear Edward, the first evening he was in one of his merry humours, to consent to have a one-horse fly for half the day; and then after church we could go round and make a number of calls that I was positively dying to rub off, and afterwards take a drive round Hyde Park, and wind up with a promenade in Kensington Gardens. Nothing on earth would have given me greater pleasure than to have taken my darling good mother with me, as I knew it would do her so much good; but then she always will dress so funny, and I felt convinced that, as matters stood, it would not be safe to trust the dear old soul with Edward a whole afternoon in a shut-up fly, or they would be certain to get to high words again, and then I should never forgive myself.