“And displeased with me? Yes, displeased that I have taken you suddenly away from the pretty young gentleman, who was so kind to you, without encouraging the chance that you were to meet with him again.”
“It was not like you, Grandy,” answered Sophy; and her under-lip slightly pouted, while the big tears swelled to her eye.
“True,” said the vagabond; “anything resembling common-sense is not like me. But don’t you think that I did what I felt was best for you? Must I not have some good cause for it, whenever I have the heart deliberately to vex you?”
Sophy took his hand and pressed it, but she could not trust herself to speak, for she felt that at such effort she would have burst out into hearty crying. Then Waife proceeded to utter many of those wise sayings, old as the hills, and as high above our sorrows as hills are from the valley in which we walk. He said how foolish it was to unsettle the mind by preposterous fancies and impossible hopes. The pretty young gentleman could never be anything to her, nor she to the pretty young gentleman. It might be very well for the pretty young gentleman to promise to correspond with her, but as soon as he returned to his friends he would have other things to think of, and she would soon be forgotten; while she, on the contrary, would be thinking of him, and the Thames and the butterflies, and find hard life still more irksome. Of all this, and much more, in the general way of consolers who set out on the principle that grief is a matter of logic, did Gentleman Waife deliver himself with a vigour of ratiocination which admitted of no reply, and conveyed not a particle of comfort. And feeling this, that great actor—not that he was acting then-suddenly stopped, clasped the child in his arms, and murmured in broken accents,—“But if I see you thus cast down, I shall have no strength left to hobble on through the world; and the sooner I lie down, and the dust is shovelled over me, why, the better for you; for it seems that Heaven sends you friends, and I tear you from them.”
And then Sophy fairly gave way to her sobs: she twined her little arms round the old man’s neck convulsively, kissed his rough face with imploring pathetic fondness, and forced out through her tears, “Don’t talk so! I’ve been ungrateful and wicked. I don’t care for any one but my own dear, dear Grandy.”
After this little scene, they both composed themselves, and felt much lighter of heart. They pursued their journey, no longer apart, but side by side, and the old man leaning, though very lightly, on the child’s arm. But there was no immediate reaction from gloom to gayety. Waife began talking in softened undertones, and vaguely, of his own past afflictions; and partial as was the reference, how vast did the old man’s sorrows seem beside the child’s regrets; and yet he commented on them as if rather in pitying her state than grieving for his own.
“Ah, at your age, my darling, I had not your troubles and hardships. I had not to trudge these dusty roads on foot with a broken-down good-for-nothing scatterling; I trod rich carpets, and slept under silken curtains. I took the air in gay carriages,—I such a scapegrace; and you, little child, you so good! All gone, all melted away from me, and not able now to be sure that you will have a crust of bread this day week.”
“Oh, yes! I shall have bread, and you too, Grandy,” cried Sophy, with cheerful voice. “It was you who taught me to pray to God, and said that in all your troubles God had been good to you: and He has been so good to me since I prayed to Him; for I have no dreadful Mrs. Crane to beat me now, and say things more hard to bear than beating; and you have taken me to yourself. How I prayed for that! And I take care of you too, Grandy,—don’t I? I prayed for that too; and as to carriages,” added Sophy, with superb air, “I don’t care if I am never in a carriage as long as I live; and you know I have been in a van, which is bigger than a carriage, and I didn’t like that at all. But how came people to behave so ill to you, Grandy?”
“I never said people behaved ill to me, Sophy.”
“Did not they take away the carpets and silk curtains, and all the fine things you had as a little boy?”