It was she who told me their names—for Cheevers relished her fried potatoes and eels, though they went against me—and Nick and Nan they were then, and are now, though in such different circumstances, as you might fancy a fairy tale, if not known to be true, and told by an old woman as owes O! many, many prayers for ’em and blessin’s on ’em, more than a grateful heart can ever call down on them two grateful hearts.
So I began by nodding as they passed my door, and them—with their dirty little thumbs in their mouths at first—by and by nodded back; and me, with no more an idea, that they lived by themselves, like two wild animals up in that hole in the roof—which I would not insult a decent attic by giving it the name—until Mr. Rumsey called for his rent on a Saturday, the twenty-fourth of one bleak December, being Christmas Eve, and him stopping to pass a remark or two in a friendly way—for me and Cheevers paid our rent regular—gave me a turn, quite surprising by telling me how the land lay.
“The boy was brought here at three year old or thereabouts,” says he, “by a woman, who gave herself out as his mother, and was, I believe, because of a certain likeness between them.
“She had a superior kind of manner, for all her poverty and wretchedness. The attic up at the top of this house she rented of me, on and off, for several years, and I will say kept up to the mark as far as paying rent went.
“One day, about two years ago, she took her hook, leaving the boy Nick, as the lodgers call him, and a few bits of things only good for firewood.
“These I had took away, but, there being no lock on the door, the boy still hung about the place, it being the only home he has ever known; and a chimney having broke part of the roof in one windy night, and me—in regard of these hard times—not caring to go to the expense of having repairs done, and no lodgers unparticular enough—even in this unparticular locality—to take the place as it stands—there he has stopped to this hour. How he lives I could not tell you, ma’am, except that poor people are more sinfully prodigal as regards charity, than the rich ones as calls ’emselves philanthropists.”
Mr. Rumsey stopping to take breath, I throwed in a question respecting the girl.
“She’s the child of Nobody, and she comes from No Man’s Land,” says Mr. Rumsey, in his joking way. “The boy found her and brought her here, they tell me, and shares whatever he gets with her. And that ain’t enough to grow fat on,” he says, giving me a condescending wink.
“‘Nan’ she has come to be called, because ‘Nan’ was her way of saying ‘No’ when asked if she would like to go away from Nick and be took care of. I have heard, Mrs. Cheevers, that the French are in the habit of employing the same word as a negative.”
Mr. Rumsey was a very superior gentleman in his knowledge and conversation.