“Three minutes,” repeated Dick, holding up a warning finger.
Babel ceased; the nine pair of eyes (excepting those of the infant) became fixed, and Nora proceeded—
“I wanted to hear how you got on with Billy. Did they take him in at once? and what sort of place is the Grotto? You see I am naturally anxious to know, because it was a terrible thing to send a poor boy away from his only friend among strangers at such an age, and just after recovering from a bad illness; but you know I could not do otherwise. It would have been his ruin to have—”
She paused.
“To have stopped where he was, I s’pose you would say?” observed Dick. “Well, I ain’t sure o’ that, Nora. It’s quite true that the bad company he’d ’ave seen would ’ave bin against ’im; but to ’ave you for his guardian hangel might ’ave counteracted that. It would ’ave bin like the soda to the hacid, a fizz at first and all square arterwards. Hows’ever, that don’t signify now, cos he’s all right. I tuk him to the Grotto, the werry first thing arter I’d bin to the Trinity ’Ouse, and seed him cast anchor there all right, and—”
Again Babel burst forth, and riot reigned supreme for five minutes more. At the end of that time silence was proclaimed as before.
“Now then,” said Dick, “breakfast bein’ ready, place the chairs.”
The three elder children obeyed this order. Each member of this peculiar household had been “told off,” as Dick expressed it, to a special duty, which was performed with all the precision of discipline characteristic of a man-of-war.
“That’s all right; now go in and win,” said Dick. There was no occasion to appeal to the Yankee clock now. Tongues and throats as well as teeth and jaws were too fully occupied. Babel succumbed for full quarter of an hour, during which period Dick Moy related to Nora the circumstances connected with a recent visit to London, whither he had been summoned as a witness in a criminal trial, and to which, at Nora’s earnest entreaty, and with the boy’s unwilling consent, he had conveyed Billy Towler. We say unwilling, because Billy, during his long period of convalescence, had been so won by the kindness of Nora, that the last thing in the world he would have consented to bear was separation from her; but, on thinking over it, he was met by this insurmountable difficulty—that the last thing in the world he would consent to do was to disobey her! Between these two influences he went unwillingly to London—for the sake of his education, as Nora said to him—for the sake of being freed from the evil influence of her father’s example, as poor Nora was compelled to admit to herself.
“The Grotto,” said Dick, speaking as well as he could through an immense mouthful of bacon and bread, “is an institootion which I ’ave reason for to believe desarves well of its country. It is an institootion sitooate in Paddington Street, Marylebone, where homeless child’n, as would otherwise come to the gallows, is took in an’ saved—saved not only from sin an’ misery themselves, but saved from inflictin’ the same on society. I do assure you,” said Dick, striking the table with his fist in his enthusiasm, so that the crockery jumped, and some of the children almost choked by reason of their food going down what they styled their “wrong throats”—“I do assure you, that it would ’ave done yer ’art good to ’ave seed ’m, as I did the day I went there, so clean and comf’r’able and ’appy—no mistake about that. Their ’appiness was genooine. Wot made it come ’ome to me was, that I seed there a little boy as I ’appened to know was one o’ the dirtiest, wickedest, sharpest little willains in London—a mere spider to look at, but with mischief enough to fill a six-fut man to bu’stin’—an’ there ’ee was, clean an’ jolly, larnin’ his lessons like a good un—an’ no sham neither, cos ’e’d got a good spice o’ the mischief left, as was pretty clear from the way ’ee gave a sly pinch or pull o’ the hair now an’ again to the boys next him, an’ drawed monkey-faces on his slate. But that spider, I wos told, could do figurin’ like one o’clock, an’ could spell like Johnson’s Dictionairy.