Chapter Thirty Nine.
Which parts me from the Reader, but not from my Friend Smith.
And now, reader, my story is all but done. One short scene more, and then my friend Smith and I must retire out of sight.
It was on a Christmas day, three years after the event last narrated, that a little party assembled in a tiny house in Hackney to spend a very quiet evening.
It was, I daresay, as modest a party in as modest a house as could have been found that Christmas-time in all London.
The house had hardly yet lost the smell of paint and varnish which had greeted its occupants when they first moved into it a week ago. To-day, however, that savour is seriously interfered with by another which proceeds from the little kitchen behind, and which dispenses a wonderfully homelike influence through the small establishment. In fact, the dinner now in course of preparation will be the first regular meal which that household has celebrated, and the occasion being more or less of a state one, the two ladies of the house are in a considerable state of flutter over the preparations.
While they are absorbed in the mysterious orgies of the kitchen, the four gentlemen are sitting round the cheery little parlour fire with their feet on the fender, talking about a great many things.
One of the gentlemen is middle-aged, with hair turning white, and a face which looks as if it had seen stormy weather in its journey through life. He is the quietest of the party, the talk being chiefly sustained by two younger men of about twenty-one years, considerably assisted by a boy who appears to be very much at home on every subject, especially boots and mothers. Indeed, this boy (who might be ten, or might be fifteen, there is nothing in his figure or face or voice to say which), is the liveliest member of the party, and keeps the others, even occasionally the older gentleman, amused.
In due time the ladies appear, as trim and unconcerned as if they had never put their foot in a kitchen all their lives, and the circle round the fire widens to admit them. The elder of these ladies is a careworn but pleasant, motherly-looking body, who calls the elder gentleman “sir” when she speaks to him, and invariably addresses one of the two young men—the one with the black eyes—as Mister Johnny. As for the younger lady, whose likeness to Mister Johnny is very apparent, she is all sunshine and smiles, and one wonders how the little parlour was lighted at all before she entered it.
At least the other young man—he without the black eyes—wonders thus as he looks towards where she sits with the elder gentleman’s hand in her own, and her smiles putting even the hearth to shame.