“Why, surely, sir,” objected Colin, with some slight astonishment, “nobody would think of stealing such things as there are here!”
“What is worth buying and selling is worth stealing. I should think so, if it were my affair to rob; just as I think it worth guarding, being my business to hinder robbery.”
“Then, shall I sleep here?” demanded Colin.
“Well,” responded Mr. Veriquear, “I suppose you will, if you can. You want sleep, like me, I dare say; but that you must manage yourself. I can't make you sleep,—so it's no concern of mine.”
Our hero said nothing, but he thought the Fates could not have been in one of the most amiable of humours when they delivered him into the hands of Mr. Peter Veriquear.
Returning from this dim perambulation, the merchant led his assistant down a flight of brick steps into an underground kitchen, where a supper, consisting of a round mahogany-coloured cheese, which Colin mistook for a huge cricket-ball, three gaunt sticks of celery, and a brown loaf was placed upon a small round oak table, having one stem in the centre, and three crooked feet at the bottom, after the fashion of a washerwoman's Italian iron. The family of the Veriquears was here assembled. Mrs. Veri-quear, a sharp-nosed pyroligneous-acid-looking woman, sat on a low chair by the fireside, nursing a baby; a child of eighteen months old slept close by her in a wicker basket, which served at once for cradle and coach-body, as occasion might require, it being ingeniously contrived to fit a frame-work on four wheels, which stood up stairs, and thus served to carry the children about on a Sunday; while two other youngsters were squabbling on the hearthstone about their respective titles to a threelegged stool; and another, the eldest, was penning most villanous pot-hooks on the back of a piece of butter-paper, under the casual but severe superintendence of his worthy mother. Farthest removed from the fire, as well as the candle-light, sat one who was in the family, though not of it, a maiden of nineteen, Miss Aphra Marvel, a niece of Mr. Veriquear, who had been bequeathed to him by her father upon his death-bed, along with a small tenement worth about fifteen pounds a-year, the income from which was considered as a set-off against the cost of her board and bringing up. But could her departing parent have foreknown the great and multifarious services which his daughter was destined to perform in the family of his wife's brother, it is more than probable he would have acknowledged the propriety of charging fifteen pounds per annum as a compensation for her labour, rather than have left that sum in yearly requital of her cost. From twelve years of age to the present time, her duty it had been to make the fires, sweep the house, wash and nurse the babies, as they successively appeared upon the Veriquear stage of the world, wait on Mrs. Veriquear, prepare meals, make the beds, mend all the little masters' clothes, and, in short, do all and everything which could possibly require to be done; and yet she was regarded by her mistress and the children (whom she industriously instructed to that end) as an interloper, who was partly eating the bread out of their mouths every day, and consequently contributing to the eventual diminution of that stock which ought to be applied exclusively to the advancement of their own prospects in after-life.
When Colin entered, Miss Aphra cast her eyes momentarily up, and half blushed as she resumed her sewing. The children stared in wonder at him, as they might at the sudden appearance of a frog in the kitchen. The baby caught sight of him, and began to squeal like a sucking pig; while Mrs. Veriquear cast an ill-tempered eye upon him, as much as to say she wanted none of him there; and then shook her infant into an absolute scream with the exclamation,—“What are you crying at, you little fidget! He's not going to hurt you, I'll take care of that. Hush—hush—hush-sh-sh!” And away went the rocking-chair at a rate quite tantamount to the extreme urgency of the occasion.
When they sat down to supper, it was discovered that Master William had picked out the hearts of two sticks of celery, and extracted a plug three inches long, by way of taster, from the Dutch cheese. This being a case that imperatively demanded the application of summary punishment, Colin got nothing to eat until Mr. Veriquear had risen from the table, and applied a few inches of old cane to the lad's shoulders, which he did with this brief preparatory remark, “Now, my boy, as you have made it your business to pull that plug out, it becomes mine to try if I can't plug you.”
Master William howled like a jackal before he was touched; his younger brother Ned cried because Bill did; and Mrs. Veriquear stormed at her husband, because he could not thrash the lad without making noise enough over it to wake the very dead. Miss Marvel looked as solemn during this farce as though it had been a tragedy; while Colin squeezed his nose up in his handkerchief as forcibly as though a lobster had seized it between his nippers, in order to prevent Mrs. Veriquear seeing how irreverently his fancy was tickled at this exhibition of domestic enjoyments.
Uninviting as his dormitory over the warehouses had previously appeared, the character of the kitchen and its inhabitants seemed so much more so, that it was with comparative delight he heard the clock of Shoreditch church strike ten, as a signal for him to take possession of a tin lantern provided for the occasion. Accordingly, carrying a bunch of keys in his hand, wherewith to lock himself in, he strode across the yard to his solitary and comfortless chamber.