“Li—ar,—return—ed—the—aughty—Hearl—of—H—e—i—Hi—d—e—l—del—b—e—r—g—berg—Heidelberg—in—a—tone—of—suppress—ed—hire—dare—you—her—p—a—r—par—her—par—a—her—par—a—m—o—u—r—mowr—her—par—a—mowr—speak—thus.”
Upon my word, too, that stupid Betsy filled the poor boy’s head, directly she heard he was a foundling, with such a lot of rubbish, about his being a “Mysterious Horphan,” and making him pull up his shirt-sleeves to see if he had any strawberry mark by which his parentage might be discovered, and be acknowledged as the rightful heir to his estates, that I could have given it her well, I could; for she had the impudence to tell the poor boy that noble blood flowed in his veins, and actually went to the length of asking me, whether I ever heerd tell of any peer of the realm whose family name might be Wittals?
But what disgusted me with the woman more than anything else, was, that she was so fond of the mischievous young imp, that in order to screen him she would stand for hours, and tell me tarrididdles as long as my arm, and which really used to make my blood all run cold to listen to. And even if I had seen the young monkey break one of my windows through his nasty cruel love of throwing stones at the poor sparrows, as he always was, she’d even then have the face to stand me out that she did it, though I always took good care to punish her well for it, by stopping it out of her wages—which, considering Wittals had none to stop it out of, I wasn’t at all sorry at being obliged by her obstinacy to do.
Owing to that monkey of a Wittals going making a pig of himself inside the sugar cask, my doctor never came round till near upon five o’clock to see my poor little patient angel of a Kitty, who was suffering so dreadfully with her nasty—nasty tiresome teeth; and the consequence was, that my little cherub was so much worse, and in such a burning high fever, that I declare she lay almost powerless in my arms, not stirring a limb, with the lids half down over her eyes, as if she were stupified with pain in her head. I never was so much alarmed in all my life, and I kept bathing her temples with vinegar, and crying over her, expecting that every minute she would be going into convulsions, and that I should be having the cherub snatched from me.
When the doctor came, he lanced her gums and ordered her to be put in a warm bath directly, and to have three leeches put upon each temple. Betsy put the leeches on, for it made my flesh creep to see, let alone to handle, the nasty slimy things, like the fingers of wet black kid gloves; and, besides, I knew I should faint dead off directly I saw my poppit’s vital stream trickling down her little cheeks. When the nasty things were taken off my pet, that stupid Betsy came down to me to know if I should like them kept. “Kept!” I cried; “bless the woman, no; go and throw them over the garden, and let the fowls at the Simmondses have them, for Heaven’s sake.” Of course what must she do but take them down stairs first, just to let that young monkey of a Wittals catch sight of them, and no sooner did he set eyes upon them, than he went to work and wheedled my lady into letting him have the filthy things to keep in one of my old pickle bottles in his bedroom—though from all I had said to her about the crawling creatures, she very well knew that I wouldn’t have them in the house for all that anybody could give me; for I can’t say how it is, but I really had a presentiment at the time that if they were not destroyed, something awful would happen. Nor was I wrong, and all through that wicked, story-telling, perverse Betsy, and that good-for-nothing, careless, menagerie-keeping young imp of a Wittals—though, for the matter of that, he wasn’t half so much to blame as she was.
My beautiful poor little lamb of a Kate, though much better, was still so ill that I didn’t like to let her sleep with nurse; so I told Sarah to put her in our bed. But the little dove was so restless all night that I couldn’t get a wink of sleep, and had to be either sitting up in the bed trying to rock her off to sleep, or else taking it in turns with Edward to pace the room with her in my arms, and merely a shawl over my shoulders. The consequence of this was, that the cold and cough which had been hanging about me ever since I was wet through, were not at all improved the next day. So in the morning, when Mr. Jupp, our medical adviser, called to see my little trot, I asked him if he would be good enough to send me round another box of the very nice cough lozenges which he had in his shop, and which had already done me a world of good.
“Feed a cold and starve a fever,” says the old adage, and so I will, said I; but as I didn’t see the fun of leaving it to Miss Betsy to choose the very food that I was going to put into my mouth, I thought, that since it was a nice fine warm day, if I wrapt myself up as close as I could, and put my thick boots on with my cork socks in them, it couldn’t possibly do me any harm just toddling round to our butcher’s, to see what he had in his shop to tempt me. When I got there, I found to my great delight that he had got two of as lovely-looking little lambs’ sweetbreads as it was ever my good fortune to see; and I was just going to tell him to send them home when, as luck would have it, I turned round and caught sight of a most beautiful picture of a round of beef, all streaked with red and white like a barber’s pole; and when I thought how deliciously it would eat stewed, with plenty of vegetables chopped up, and a rich thick brown gravy—into which a glass of port wine had been poured—I was torn to pieces between the two; and went and looked first at the sweetbreads and then at the beef, for I didn’t know which I should like best, and I told the butcher’s wife that I really couldn’t tell what to do. At last she persuaded me to have the sweetbreads for dinner that day, and the round on the morrow, especially, as she very truly said, the beef would be all the better for keeping. So I had them both, and ordering three quarters of a pound of beef steak for Edward—which, with a batter pudding to follow, would do very well I thought for our dinner that evening—galloped back home, as pleased as Punch that I had stepped round to the butcher’s myself, little dreaming of what was to be the fate of my beautiful round of beef after all.
The sweetbreads were delicious! though that disagreeable monster of an Edward, seeing I was ill, of course tried to spoil my dinner, by declaring that his steaks were as tough and as stringy as corduroys. But I soon silenced my gentleman, by telling him that at any rate I had got a dinner for him on the morrow which was fit for the Emperor of China himself to sit down to; though I had a good bit of fun by not telling him what it was; and keeping on tantalizing him till I made him guess almost all through the cookery book, for, not being overfond of stewed beef, of course he never dreamt it was that.
Next morning, I went down into the kitchen, at my usual hour, to see about our dinner. To make sure that Miss Betsy had not been treating herself and that Wittals to a hot supper off my round of beef, as I knew, from the savoury smell there used to be down stairs very often of a night, she was in the habit of doing, though I had never been lucky enough to catch her in the fact, I just stepped into the larder to see that a slice hadn’t been taken off. At the first glance I caught of the round, I thought it had a very strange look about it, for it seemed to have lost the beautiful rich colour it had. So as our larder was rather dark, I told Betsy to carry it into the kitchen, and put it on the dresser. When I saw it fairly in the light, oh dear! oh dear! if it wasn’t as white as parchment! “What on earth have you been doing to this meat, you good-for-nothing woman, you?” I exclaimed, drawing it close to me; “and what, in the name of all that’s filthy, are these black things?” I continued, just going to take hold of one of them, when I saw it move, and then, goodness gracious, the truth burst upon me! “Oh, you shameful, disobedient minx, if these are not the very leeches that I told you to throw into Mr. Simmonds’s garden.” And when I came to look well into the bleached round of beef, positively there were as many as four of the filthy, slimy vampires, who, having sucked the thing quite white, and till they were nearly as big as small black puddings, were now hanging down the sides, for all the world like the tails on my imitation ermine tippet. “Where have you put the other two?” I exclaimed, in a most tremendous passion; “tell me this minute, or I’ll have you up before a magistrate, for wilfully destroying my property, I will.” This put my lady in such a fright that she wasn’t long in pointing them out to me on the wash-hand-stand in Wittals’s room; and it was lucky I found them as soon as I did, for their noses were just over the rim of the bottle, and if I’d been a minute later, I should have had them crawling about the house, and fastening upon the legs of goodness knows who.
I caught hold of the bottle, and poking the things back into the water with the end of the young urchin’s hair brush, I rushed with the whole concern down to the end of the garden, and threw the voracious little black monsters, bottle and all, right into the Simmondses’ garden—though, as it afterwards turned out, it would have been much better if I had left them where I had found them—for no sooner did that young monkey of a Wittals miss his darling leeches, and learn from Miss Betsy what had become of them, than he must needs go clambering over the wall, and, not content with bringing them back into the house again, must go putting them into one of my empty lozenge boxes, and leaving it on the dresser with the filthy things inside of it, while he went to get another bottle to keep them in, as I afterwards found out, to my cost.