“What does that signify?—the intention was the same. A good heart takes the will for the deed. Cox is a monster of ingratitude, and I withdraw my custom.”
“Sarve him right. Would your honour like a jarvey?”
“I would rather spend the money on something else,” said John Burley. “Give me your arm, I am not proud. After all, thank Heaven, I shall not sleep in the country.”
And John Burley made a night of it in the Fleet.
CHAPTER XII.
Miss Starke was one of those ladies who pass their lives in the direst of all civil strife,—war with their servants. She looked upon the members of that class as the unrelenting and sleepless enemies of the unfortunate householders condemned to employ them. She thought they ate and drank to their villanous utmost, in order to ruin their benefactors; that they lived in one constant conspiracy with one another and the tradesmen, the object of which was to cheat and pilfer. Miss Starke was a miserable woman. As she had no relations or friends who cared enough for her to share her solitary struggle against her domestic foes; and her income, though easy, was an annuity that died with herself, thereby reducing various nephews, nieces, or cousins to the strict bounds of a natural affection,—that did not exist; and as she felt the want of some friendly face amidst this world of distrust and hate,—so she had tried the resource of venal companions. But the venal companions had never stayed long, either they disliked Miss Starke, or Miss Starke disliked them. Therefore the poor woman had resolved upon bringing up some little girl, whose heart, as she said to herself, would be fresh and uncorrupted, and from whom she might expect gratitude. She had been contented, on the whole, with Helen, and had meant to keep that child in her house as long as she (Miss Starke) remained upon the earth,—perhaps some thirty years longer; and then, having carefully secluded her from marriage and other friendship, to leave her nothing but the regret of having lost so kind a benefactress. Conformably with this notion, and in order to secure the affections of the child, Miss Starke had relaxed the frigid austerity natural to her manner and mode of thought, and been kind to Helen in an iron way. She had neither slapped nor pinched her, neither had she starved. She had allowed her to see Leonard, according to the agreement made with Dr. Morgan, and had laid out tenpence on cakes, besides contributing fruit from her garden for the first interview,—a hospitality she did not think it fit to renew on subsequent occasions. In return for this, she conceived she had purchased the right to Helen bodily and spiritually, and nothing could exceed her indignation when she rose one morning and found the child had gone. As it never had occurred to her to ask Leonard’s address, though she suspected Helen had gone to him, she was at a loss what to do, and remained for twenty-four hours in a state of inane depression. But then she began to miss the child so much that her energies woke, and she persuaded herself that she was actuated by the purest benevolence in trying to reclaim this poor creature from the world into which Helen had thus rashly plunged.
Accordingly she put an advertisement into the “Times,” to the following effect, liberally imitated from one by which in former years she had recovered a favourite Blenheim:—
TWO GUINEAS’ REWARD.
STRAYED, from Ivy Cottage, Highgate, a Little Girl,—answers to the
name of Helen; with blue eyes and brown hair; white muslin frock,
and straw hat with blue ribbons. Whoever will bring the same to Ivy
Cottage, shall receive the above Reward.
N. B.—Nothing more will be offered.
Now it so happened that Mrs. Smedley had put an advertisement in the “Times” on her own account, relative to a niece of hers who was coming from the country, and for whom she desired to find a situation. So, contrary to her usual habit, she sent for the newspaper, and close by her own advertisement, she saw Miss Starke’s.