The miserable boy was only too glad to do so. He flung himself on the little heap pointed out, and the last thing he remembered seeing before the “sweet restorer” embraced him was the huge form of Ned Frog sitting in his own corner with his back to the wall, the pewter pot at his elbow, and a long clay pipe in his mouth.
Chapter Twenty Three.
Hopes revive.
Mr Thomas Balls, butler to Sir Richard Brandon, standing with his legs wide apart and his hands under his coat tails in the servants’ hall, delivered himself of the opinion that “things was comin’ to a wonderful pass when Sir Richard Brandon would condescend to go visitin’ of a low family in Whitechapel.”
“But the family is no more low than you are, Mr Balls,” objected Jessie Summers, who, being not very high herself, felt that the remark was slightly personal.
“Of course not, my dear,” replied Balls, with a paternal smile. “I did not for a moment mean that Mr Samuel Twitter was low in an offensive sense, but in a social sense. Sir Richard, you know, belongs to the hupper ten, an’ he ’as not been used to associate with people so much further down in the scale. Whether he’s right or whether he’s wrong ain’t for me to say. I merely remark that, things being as they are, the master ’as come to a wonderful pass.”
“It’s all along of Miss Diana,” said Mrs Screwbury. “That dear child ’as taken the firm belief into her pretty ’ead that all people are equal in the sight of their Maker, and that we should look on each other as brothers and sisters, and you know she can twist Sir Richard round her little finger, and she’s taken a great fancy to that Twitter family ever since she’s been introduced to them at that ’Ome of Industry by Mr Welland, who used to be a great friend of their poor boy that ran away. And Mrs Twitter goes about the ’Ome, and among the poor so much, and can tell her so many stories about poor people, that she’s grown quite fond of her.”
“But we ain’t all equal, Mrs Screwbury,” said the cook, recurring, with some asperity, to a former remark, “an’ nothink you or anybody else can ever say will bring me to believe it.”