"You could never be repaid, sir, I see plainly enough," said Simnel; "there are few men who would have so acquitted themselves of each a charge, and I shall ever honour and esteem you for it. But may I ask how you came to be known to the other person of this story, who from some knowledge I guess to be Scadgers the bill-discounter?"
"It is easily explained. When I arrived in London from Germany, and determined to make my bread by literature, I wrote where I could, and for what I could get. Some article of mine was seen by Mr. Scadgers. who then owned, amongst other lucrative speculations, a weekly newspaper and a cheap periodical. Pleased with what he had read--or had recommended to him more likely--he sent for me, and after a little discussion, made me editor and manager of both his literary speculations. He paid liberally, and seemed pleased with all I did; then wanted me to undertake the management of others of his affairs, which I declined. But one night in his office he told me the story of this girl--incidentally, as a suggestion for a tale for the paper, I believe; and so interested me that I suggested his removing her from the life she was then leading, and giving her a chance of doing something for herself. After some discussion he agreed, on the understanding that he should never appear in the matter; but that if he provided the necessary funds, I would manage the whole business and undertake a kind of guardianship of the girl. I hesitated, until I saw her at the circus; then, being somewhat of a physiognomist, and thinking I saw in her face promise of what was wanted--honesty, endurance, and a power of keeping straight in front of adverse circumstances--I consented. The rest you know."
"Will you take my hand, Mr. Churchill?" said Simnel in a low voice; "God Almighty bless you for--for your kindness and your trust!"
"That's right!" said Kate on whom the action had not passed unobserved--"shake hands, you two, good fellows both of you! And now look here--but one word! I didn't catch all you said, Guardy, but you and Robert seem to have made it all right. And now I want to tell you about something--about--when I'm gone, you know--oh, you silly fellow, Robert, how can I speak if you go on so!--I've put away some money, you know; and I want you to have it, Guardy. You're married, some one told me; and you'll want all that; and you won't despise it, eh? You know it's all honestly come by, and you've seen how it's been made--my accounts, you know, you used to say they were very decently kept; and there'll be no shame in taking it--your wife, I mean, and that sort of thing; you can tell her about it. I wonder what she's like. I should have liked to have seen her, Guardy, though perhaps she wouldn't have cared for such as I. Oh, poor old Freeman and the men at The Den--let them have a year's wages; I've put it all regular in a will which I made last year; you'll find it in the desk; and sell the stud--high prices, most of them. I--my side's awful now; don't go yet; let me have a little--just a little rest. I'm faint, and in such--such dreadful pain!"
She fell back exhausted. Simnel still knelt by the bedside convulsed with grief; but Frank Churchill looked round the screen to summon the nurse. No one was there, so he went to the door and called softly. The nurse responded at once and passed by him; but as he turned back he saw the butler, who beckoned to him.
"Will you please to step this way, sir?" said the man; "you're wanted in the dining-room."
Churchill followed him; and as the dining-room door shut behind him, found himself face to face with his wife.
[CHAPTER XXXVIII.]
UNDER PRESSURE.
The dulness of the autumnal season causing a heavy depression every where, by no means relaxed its maleficent influence in room No. 120 of the Tin-Tax Office. The gentlemen therein located had each, as has every man in the world, his own private griefs, anxieties, and worries; and these never blossomed into such full vigour as in the autumn. In the first place, there was no more leave of absence to look forward to, which was, in itself, a dreadful thing; and then there was looming in the future the approach of Christmas, a dread season which each of the different denizens of No. 120, for different reasons, regarded with dismay. To kind genial Mr. Kinchenton the coming Christmas was specially fearful; for after a long struggle between inclination and duty, a struggle resulting in the victory of the latter, he had decided upon sending his boy Percy, the apple of his eye, to school after the Christmas holidays; and in the shadow of that coming event he was sitting moping and melancholy. Mr. Dibb was always bad in the autumn; his liver, always rebellious, was thoroughly intractable at that season known as the "fall of the leaf," and remained perfectly quiet, declining to perform any one of the functions intrusted to it, and calmly spurning any attempt to call it into action. So Mr. Dibb's complexion grew more and more like that of the cover of a well-worn school-copy of Ainsworth's Dictionary; and Mr. Dibb's temper became so cranky, that Mr. Crump, the extra-clerk, lived in a perfect cyclone of torn-up letters and accounts to "do over again;" so that said Crump bemoaned his hard fate, and expressed himself as perfectly certain that he should have an earlier attack of chilblains than usual that year. Mr. Boppy too had his private grief, in the shape of a visitor at his establishment, Mrs. Boppy's mamma, a lady of vast size from the manufacturing districts, who had arrived on a month's visit, had monopolised the best portion of Mr. Boppy's house, and who demanded to have life shown to her. So Mrs. Boppy had instructed Mr. Boppy to convey her and her mamma to the Thames Tunnel, the top of the Monument, the Crypt of St. Paul's, to the Tower, to Madame Tussaud's wax-work, and other exhibitions much sought after by country people, but seldom visited by Londoners; and had moreover stimulated her husband to ask for various half-holidays, which Mr. Kinchenton would readily have granted, but which were never obtained without a hand-to-hand combat with Mr. Dibb. "Very well, Mr. Kinchenton," he would say, "Mr. Boppy must go, sir, if you say so, of course. You're the head of this room, I believe; though how the work's to be got through with Mr. Prescott absent on leave, Mr. Crump next to useless, and Mr. Pringle, who always takes three-quarters of an hour to his lunch--"