Rogues and Vagabonds

by George R. Sims

I don’t imagine that Mrs. Turvey had ever read Cowper: in fact, it is exceedingly improbable that Mrs. Turvey’s poetical readings had ever extended beyond the works of the late lamented Dr. Watts. This talented author had, it is pretty certain, come under her notice, for it is on record that she once reprimanded her niece, Topsey, for putting her fingers into the marmalade-pot, by telling her that—

‘Satan finds some mischief still

For idle hands to do.’

And fancying that this solemn warning by itself might not be sufficient, she had added to it a picture of the delights of an active life by requesting Topsey to contemplate the habits of the busy bee, who ‘improves each shining hour by gathering honey all the day from every opening flower.’ A quotation which was singularly inapt under the circumstance, for, substitute marmalade for honey, and open jam-pot for opening flower, and Topsey had been really doing her best to imitate the bright example aforesaid.

Topsey might have retorted to this effect had she been a sharp child, but unfortunately she was not. So she just wiped her sticky little fingers on her pinafore, looked up with a roguish smile at her ‘aunty,’ and darted from the room, to find as much mischief (or marmalade) as she could elsewhere.

Mrs. Turvey and Topsey, her twelve-year-old niece, were the sole inhabitants of a great old-fashioned house in a street near Russell Square. Mrs. Turvey was housekeeper to Mr. Gurth Egerton, a gentleman who was travelling abroad for the benefit of his health, and feeling lonely with fourteen rooms all to herself, not to speak of cellars, dark corners, and gloomy passages, she had, in an evil hour, obtained permission of her brother, a widower and a railway guard, to take his little daughter into her keeping, and so have the echoes of the desolate mansion occasionally awakened with a human voice.

Topsey woke the echoes, and no mistake. The echoes had a bad time of it if they were at all sleepy echoes. They did have forty winks now and then in the day, when Topsey ran errands; but as a rule they were only allowed to drop off and take their natural rest when Topsey took hers—at night.

See what a mischievous little thing this Topsey is. She has actually kept Cowper waiting while we are attending to her.

Let us hark back to Cowper and Mrs. Turvey at once.

There is a well-known passage in ‘The Winter’s Evening,’ which I never read, even on a hot June day, without wishing it was a winter’s evening, and I could take the poet’s advice. Thus it runs:—