The good lady was still employed in ranging a set of teacups on the shelves of the dresser when Beck entered; and his old nurse, in the overflow of her gratitude, hobbled up to her foundling and threw her arms round his neck.
“That’s right!” said Mrs. Mivers, good-humouredly, turning round, and wiping the tear from her eye. “You ought to make much of him, poor lad,—he has turned out a godsend indeed; and, upon my word, he looks very respectable in his new clothes. But what is this,—a child’s coral?” as, opening a drawer in the dresser, she discovered Beck’s treasure. “Dear me, it is a very handsome one; why, these bells look like gold!” and suspicion of her protege’s honesty for a moment contracted her thoughtful brow. “However on earth did you come by this, Mrs. Becky?”
“Sure and sartin,” answered Becky, dropping her mutilated courtesy, “I be’s glad it be found now, instead of sum days afore, or I might have been vicked enough to let it go with the rest to the pop-shop; and I’m sure the times out of mind ven that ‘ere boy was a h-urchin that I’ve risted the timtashung and said, ‘No, Becky Carruthers, that maun’t go to my h-uncle’s!’”
“And why not, my good woman?”
“Lor’ love you, marm, if that curril could speak, who knows vot it might say,—eh, lad, who knows? You sees, marm, my good man had not a long been dead; I could not a get no vork no vays. ‘Becky Carruthers,’ says I, ‘you must go out in the streets a begging!’ I niver thought I should a come to that. But my poor husband, you sees, marm, fell from a scaffol’,—as good a man as hever—”
“Yes, yes, you told me all that before,” said Mrs. Mivers, growing impatient, and already diverted from her interest in the coral by a new cargo, all bright from the tinman, which, indeed, no less instantaneously, absorbed the admiration both of Beck and his nurse. And what with the inspection of these articles, and the comments each provoked, the coral rested in peace on the dresser till Mrs. Mivers, when just about to renew her inquiries, was startled by the sound of the Dutch clock striking four,—a voice which reminded her of the lapse of time and her own dinner-hour. So, with many promises to call again and have a good chat with her humble friend, she took her departure, amidst the blessings of Becky, and the less noisy, but not less grateful, salutations of Beck.
Very happy was the evening these poor creatures passed together over their first cup of tea from the new bright copper kettle and the almost forgotten luxury of crumpets, in which their altered circumstances permitted them without extravagance to indulge. In the course of conversation Beck communicated how much he had been astonished by recognizing the visitor of Grabman, the provoker of the irritable grave-stealer, in the familiar companion of his master; and when Becky told him how often, in the domestic experience her vocation of charing had accumulated, she had heard of the ruin brought on rich young men by gamblers and sharpers, Beck promised to himself to keep a sharp eye on Grabman’s showy acquaintance. “For master is but a babe, like,” said he, majestically; “and I’d be cut into mincemeat afore I’d let an ‘air on his ‘ead come to ‘arm, if so be’s h-as ‘ow I could perwent it.”
We need not say that his nurse confirmed him in these good resolutions.
“And now,” said Beck, when the time came for parting, “you’ll keep from the gin-shop, old ‘oman, and not shame the young master?”
“Sartin sure,” answered Becky; “it is only ven vun is down in the vorld that vun goes to the Ticker-shop. Now, h-indeed,”—and she looked round very proudly,—“I ‘as a ‘spectable stashion, and I vould n’t go for to lower it, and let ‘em say that Becky Carruthers does not know how to conduct herself. The curril will be safe enuff now; but p’r’aps you had best take it yourself, lad.”