“And where do you think he found this most extraordinary instrument? At Shoreham, drawn up by the nets from the sea! And they said that it must have been dropped from a ship, many and many a year ago, when Shoreham was a place for foreign traffic. And he is almost sure that it must be a key of some very strange old-fashioned lock.”
“Then you may depend upon it, that it is a key, and nothing else,” said Bottler, with his fine soft smile. “That boy Bonny hath been about so much among odds, and ends, and rakings, that he knoweth a bit about everything.”
“An old-fashioned key from the sea at Shoreham? Let me think of something,” said Alice, leaning back on her pillow, with her head still full of the Woeburn. “I seem to remember something, and then I am not at all sure what it is. Oh! when is my father coming?”
“Your father hath sent orders, Miss Alice,” said Bottler, coming back with a good bold lie, “that you must go up to the house, if you please. He hath so much to see to with them Chapman lot, that he must not leave home nohow. The coach is a-coming for you now just.”
“Very well,” answered Alice, “I will do as I am told. I mean to do always whatever I am told for all the rest of my life, I am sure. But will you lend me Polly’s doll?”
“Lord bless you, Miss, I daren’t do it for my life. Polly would have the house down. She’m is the strangest child as you ever did see, until you knows how to manage her. Her requireth to be taken the right side up. Now, if I say ‘Poll’ to her, her won’t do nothing; but if I say ‘Polly dear,’—why, there she is!”
Alice was too weak and worn to follow this great question up. But Mabel was as wide awake as ever, although she had been up all night. “Now, Mr. Bottler, just do this: Go and say, ‘Polly, dear, will you lend your doll to the pretty lady, till it comes back covered with sugar-plums?’” Mr. Bottler promised that he would do this; and by the time Alice was ready to go, square Polly, with a very broad gait, came up and placed her doll without a word, in the hands of Alice and then ran away, and could never stop sobbing, until her father put the horse in on purpose, and got her between his legs in the cart. “Where are you going?” cried Mrs. Bottler. “We will drive to the end of the world,” he answered; “I’m blowed if I think there’ll be any gate to pay between this and that, by the look of things. Polly, hold on by daddy’s knees.”
CHAPTER LXXIV.
FROM HADES’ GATES.
In the old house and good household, warmth of opinion and heat of expression abounded now about everything. Pages might be taken up by saying what even one man thought, and tens of pages would not contain the half of what one woman said. Enough, that when poor Alice was brought back through the snow-drifts quietly, every moveable person in the house was at the door. Everybody loved her, and everybody admired her; but now with a pendulous conscience. Also, with much fear about themselves; as the household of Admetus gazed at the pale return of Alcestis.