'I thought I might disturb you.'
'You do not; I like to hear you.'
The charm, however, was broken for that night, and my mother knew it, and sang but little. Two or three nights afterwards, when uncle Bryan was engrossed in his book, my mother began to sing again over her work. I knew every trick of her features, and I think she was designing enough to watch her opportunity, for there was never a more perfect master than she of the delicate cunning which kindness to rough and cross natures often requires. It was with much curiosity that I quietly observed uncle Bryan's behaviour while my mother sang. He held his book steadily before him, but he did not turn a page; and to my, perhaps, too curious eyes there appeared to be, in the very curve of his shoulders, a grateful recognition of my mother's wish to please him. I could not see his face, but I liked him better at that time than I had ever yet done. Truly, my mother was right; here at least was one sweet place found in the rough shell. She continued her singing in the same soft strains; and often afterwards sang when we three were sitting together of an evening.
Exactly three weeks after we had taken up our quarters with uncle Bryan, my mother and I paid a visit to the neighbourhood in which she had made the acquaintance of the fairy in the cotton-print dress; but although it was Saturday night we saw no trace of the little girl. My mother was much disappointed; and then she went to the house in which the young woman lived who had given her sixpence, and learned that she had moved, the landlady did not know whither. I was glad to get away from the neighbourhood, although I was almost as much disappointed as my mother was at not finding our little fairy.
Our new life, having thus fairly commenced, went on for a long time with but little variation. Uncle Bryan allowed my mother to do exactly as she pleased, and she, without in the slightest way disturbing his regular habits, made the house very different from what it was when she first entered it. Every room in it, down to the basement, where she did the cooking, was always sweet and clean. We also had flowers on the sill of our bedroom window, and their graceful forms and bright colours were a refreshing relief to the dark back wall. It delights me to see the taste for growing flowers cultivated by the poor. Flowers are purifiers; they breed good thoughts. Quite a rivalry was established between uncle Bryan and my mother in the care and attention which they bestowed on their respective window-sills. It went on silently and pleasantly, and my mother was not displeased because uncle Bryan was the victor. He trained some creepers from the window of his little back room to the window of our bedroom, and my mother watched them with intense interest creeping up, and up, until they reached the sill. 'They are like a message of love from your uncle, my dear,' she said. It is by such small precious links as these that heart is bound to heart. Yet the feelings with which uncle Bryan inspired me were by no means of a tender nature. He made no effort to win my affection; as a general rule, his bearing towards me was sufficiently cold to check tender impulse, and the words, 'I believe in nothing!' which I had heard him address sternly to my mother, had impressed me very seriously. I regarded him sometimes with fear and aversion.
I was sent to a cheap school, a very few pence a week being paid for my education. My career in the school is scarcely worthy of record. All that was taught there were reading, writing, and arithmetic; and when these were learned our education was completed. The master never allowed himself to be tripped up by his pupils. Arithmetic was his strong point, and the rule-of-three was his boundary.
In that happy hunting-ground we bought and sold the usual illimitable quantities of eggs, and yards of calico, and firkins of butter; and there we should have wallowed until we were old men, had we remained long enough, without ever reaching another heaven. My principal reminiscences of those days are connected with the bully of the school; who, whenever we met in the streets out of school-hours, compelled me to make three very low and humble bows to him before he would allow me to pass. I have not the satisfaction of being able to record that he met with the usual fate (in fiction) of school bullies--that of being soundly licked, and of being compelled to eat humble pie for ever afterwards. He was a successful tyrant. His position occasionally compelled him to fight two boys at a time--one down, the other come up--but he was never beaten. A tyrant he was, and a tyrant he remained until I lost sight of him. In his career, virtue was never triumphant.
[CHAPTER XI.]
IN WHICH I TAKE PART IN SOME LAWLESS EXPEDITIONS.
In his letter which offered us a home, uncle Bryan had stated, truly enough, that he was a poor man. Although he purchased his stock in very small quantities, he often had as much as he could do to pay his monthly bills. I remember well a certain occasion when he was seriously perplexed in this way. My mother, who had been attentively observant of him during the day, said in the evening: