“I found them by a drawing of hers. But I will go on straightforward with my story.
“I couldn’t stay a dolt, though I had to drudge for many a day after I first saw little Ellen, and she gave me the daisy and named God to me. Whenever I could get away, and that was only once a quarter or a half-year, I went up to see her. She made a friend of me, and told me to take care of her father. He was very much down, quite broken and helpless, with just enough strength to do half his appointed work. So I helped him with the rest.
“After a long time the owners found out that he had education, and they took him into the office. All the men were sorry to lose Gentleman Hugh, and when he went, I lost heart, and took to drinking up my miserable earnings with the rest. There I was, a drudge in the dark, and getting to be a drunkard, when Gentleman Hugh came to me and told me how some one had left him a legacy, and I must get out of the pit and share with him. He said little Ellen would not be happy unless she had me.
“So he took me up into the air and sun, and put me to school. But I could never learn much out of books. Put tools in my hands and I can make things, and that is what my business is in the world. You see those arms, well made as your own. You see those hands, strong as a vice, and those fingers, fine as a woman’s. They are tools, and able to handle tools. The rest of my body is stunted; my brain is stunted. I’m no fool; but I’m not the man I ought to be. Every day I feel that I cannot put my thoughts into the highest form.”
“Every man of any power feels that,” I said, “by whatever machinery his power finds expression.”
“Perhaps so. Well, when Mr. Clitheroe had once given me a start in the open air, and I had got tools in my hands, pretty soon they began to talk of me as one of the masters in Lancashire. There’s a great call in England for thorough workmen. I came up to London. I fell in with the gentleman who sent you here, and I got on well. There’s as much good work goes out of this little shop as out of some big establishments with great names over the door. People try to get me to start a great shop, and make a great fortune, and have George Padiham talked about. But I’m Dwarf George, born in a coal-mine and stunted in a coal-mine; and Lamely Court, with my little shop in the basement, suits me best.
“I never forgot how I owed all my good luck to Gentleman Hugh and my dear little Ellen. If it had not been for them, I should have died underground of hard work, before thirty, as most of my mates did. Their help of me gave me a kindly feeling toward broken-down gentlefolks. I owed the class my luck, and when I got on and had money to spend, having no one of my own to spend it for, I looked up people as badly off as Gentleman Hugh was when I first knew him, and helped them. They are a hard class to help—proud as Lucifer sometimes, with their own kind. I took this house here, out of the way as much as any spot in London. Whenever I knew of a gentleman, or a gentlewoman, given out, or worn out, so that they couldn’t take care of themselves, I brought them in here. If they were only given out, I put stuff into them again, cheered them up, and found some work for them to do. Gentlefolks are not such fools, if they only had education. If I found one that was worn out beyond all patching, I packed him into a snug corner up-stairs, and let him lie there. They like it better than public hospitals and retreats.
“All the while I was getting on and getting rich in a small way, with some small shares in patents I own. But I kept my eye on Gentleman Hugh. I knew what would come to him, and I never took in ten shillings that I did not put away one for him and his daughter.
“I knew of his going to America with the Mormons,—damn ’em! I went down to Clitheroe to persuade him to give up the plan. He would not. He quarrelled with me,—our first hard words. He forbade his daughter to write to me.
“I knew he would come back some time or other, stripped and needy. I watched the packet’s lists of passengers. He did not come under his own name; but I saw last winter an old Lancashire name on a list of arrivals,—the name of that worn-out shaft where Ellen had picked the daisy for me. It was a favorite spot of his. Part of his money had gone down it, and he used to sit and stare into it as if the money was going to bubble up again. I traced them by that to London. Here for a time I lost them.