Volume Three—Chapter Twenty Seven.
In the Reflector.
Jared Pellet used to declare with a grim smile that he thought he had been more happy as a poor man in Duplex Street than he was now that he had inherited his brother’s property and thriving business; for he had never known how much misery, poverty, and wretchedness was in the world before the secretaries of different charities began taking ample care to keep him well-informed upon the subject. Jared used to say he thought, he was not sure though, he almost found the money a trouble to him; in fact, it would have been a burden if he had not somewhat lightened it by the arrangement he made respecting Harry and the money brought by his mother into the firm. He did not now find so much time for dreaming over his old organ, sooner than part from which he would almost have given up the worldly goods now in his possession.
The old house was kept on for some time in Duplex Street almost intact; and when it was decided to give it up, Mrs Jared had a good long cry over it, in spite of its pinched looks and bare rooms, but where she said that she had passed so many, many happy hours, gone never to return.
Wonderful was the collection of odds and ends brought away to be deposited in the wealthy new home—one and all articles that it was declared to be impossible to leave behind. One was Jared’s glue-pot, which showed its malignant disposition to the very last, and, after being wrapped up carefully in paper, proved to have a quantity of nasty, foul, sticky water somewhere in its internal regions, which ran out all over the other objects packed in the box.
Patty, too, must be obstinate about the old tin-kettle of a piano, with the rusty wires, being left behind. What were instruments of great compass from Broadwood or Collard? They could not make her feel that she was to desert old friends. How many boxes of strange pieces of ware, and fragments of this and that, were packed up under the name of playthings, it is hard to say.
One, at least, of Mrs Jared’s weaknesses has been already mentioned. This may not come in the same list, but during the arrangements what time the house in Duplex Street was turned what she called inside out, and the question was in full discussion as to what was to be taken, what left to be sold, this lady suddenly exclaimed, in answer to expostulations—“What! leave that rolling-pin and paste-board? No, not if I know it: I’ve had them twenty years, and—”
The remainder of Mrs Jared’s speech was inaudible from her head suddenly disappearing in the depths of a big box, where she was rolling the implements in question in the folds of an old scorched ironing-blanket for safety. It is worthy of remark, that at the time Mrs Jared was packing, her jacket was hung beside her on the knob of the door, and that jacket was handsome, and of ermine.