“But there is one among you,” cried Mr. Vincent Squeers, “who has been innocently led away by your pernicious example, but whom the spirit of Justice, that dwells in the bosom of every Englishman, that hovers, genius-like, above this Bench to-day”—the chief clerk hastily produced a white handkerchief, and the reporters shook freedom into the flow of their Geyser pens—“will stretch forth a hand to protect and to aid. I speak of this simple, artless child....” A police-constable felt his nose, and another groped for his missing whisker as Sal o’ Peg’s stood up in the dock. “Lured from her humble home, from her laborious employment, from her upright-minded, honest associates, by these immodest and unwomanly women, cast a stranger upon the streets of London, this simple country blossom, wilting in the atmosphere tainted by habitual vice and common crime, appeals to the chivalry of every honest man who ever had a mother”—the chief clerk was carried from the court in hysterics—“ay, to the pity of every woman who is not bereft of that heavenly attribute.”
“Sheawt opp, thee donowt owd hosebird!” said Sal o’ Peg’s. “Dosta think ah niver weur in a teawzle in th’ streeawts or a skirmidge wi’ th’ police afeore? Dustha see th’ pickle theam girt big cheawps is in? If theay saay theay got theawee scratts an’ sogers fra’ eany wench but Sal o’ Peg’s, they be leears aw! Sitha? An’ as to yon weumen an’ lasses, yo ca’ baad neams, I ha’ nowt o’ truck wi’ they. I coom to Lunnon as a dollygeat fra myseln. Sitha?”
“The child speaks only the roughest dialect of her native Lancashire,” continued Mr. Vincent Squeers, “which, I own, I am unable to comprehend. How could the hapless young creature understand the poisonous shibboleth poured into her ears by the abandoned sisterhood whose leading evil spirits are now before me? They have denied all knowledge of or connection with her”—(as indeed they had)—“her who stands here—oh, shame and utter disgrace!—in the dock of a police court as a result of their vile and treacherous usage in dragging her from her home. She is sufficiently punished by this outrage upon that innate modesty which is as the bloom upon the peach, the—er, ah!—dew upon the daisy. Fined three-and-sixpence, and I will order that the same be discharged out of the Court poor-box. The Missionary will now take charge of the poor young creature, who will, I trust—ah!—be returned to her sorrowing family in the course of the next twenty-four hours. Good-day, my dear child—good-day!”
A clog whizzed from the dock and hit the paneling behind the Bench. The Magistrate looked another way, the constables coughed behind their large white gloves as Sal o’ Peg’s, weeping bitterly, was led away by the Court Missionary, a bearded person in rusty black, with a felt pudding-basin hat and a soiled white necktie. Robbed of the glory of battle, denied her meed of acknowledgment for doughty deeds achieved, bereft of her Amazonian reputation, Sal o’ Peg’s felt that life was “scarcelin’s weath livin’.” And the afternoon newspapers administered the final blow. Every leader-writer shed tears of pure ink over the child lured from home, the “daisy with the dew upon it” sprouted in a dozen paragraphs. Only in Smutchester there was Homeric jest and uproarious laughter. The girls of the cotton-mills, the policemen of the Lower Town—these knew their Sal o’ Peg’s, and were loud in their appreciation of the satiric humor of the London newspapers. The Missionary did not see his precious charge into the train for Smutchester; a clergyman’s daughter, who had come into accidentally compromising relations with an American gentleman’s diamond evening solitaire and “wad” of bank-notes, urgently required his ministrations. So a burly police-constable, with one whisker and a sore place on the denuded cheek, performed the charitable office. In the four-wheeler, turning into the Euston Road, Sal o’ Peg’s said suddenly:
“Thoo wastna’ sheaved this mearnin’, lad?”
“I ’adn’t no time, for one thing,” said the police-constable sulkily; “an’ for another, I ’ad to keep this whisker on as evidence that you’d pulled out the other. And a lot o’ good evidence does when Old Foxey”—this was the nickname bestowed upon Mr. Vincent Squeers by the staff of the Court—“’as made up ‘is mind not to listen to it.” He rubbed the remaining whisker thoughtfully.
“Eh, laad, laad!” cried Sal o’ Peg’s, bursting into tears and falling upon the neck of the astonished police-constable, “but theaw knows ah did it. Theaw said sa just neaw. Eh, laad, laad!”
“Are you a-crying?” asked the police-constable, over whose blue tunic meandered the heavy twists of fair hair which invariably tumbled down under stress of Sal o’ Peg’s emotion. “Are you a-crying because you’re sorry you pulled out my whisker, or glad as that you did it? Which?”
Sal o’ Peg’s lifted radiant, tearful blue eyes to the burly police-constable’s, which were little and piggish, but twinkling with something more than mere reproof.
“Ah be gleawd,” said Sal o’ Peg’s simply.