“Then, sir, you must look out for another housekeeper, that’s all: I’m not going to have two masters, and one of them no better than a dog-boy! Oh! that I should come to that! He’s bewitched you, so he has—put his comether over you. I shouldn’t wonder if you made him sit down at your table, and printed his poems.”
“His what?”
“Poems! Havn’t I heard you say many times that there was no good in books now, since there’s such a many writers; that a book is no longer a book, only a rubbish; and that all the half of the writers do is to spile paper and pens, and waste ink. Them’s your words, master, when you war in one of your pleasant humors, discoorsing upon the ruin that’s come into the world. And now this boy goes and writes poems, and you’ll print them!”
“Go down stairs, Matty, and bring me those poems.”
“And to be made a paper weight in my ould days—just to stand upon papers.”
“Do as I desire you.”
“I can’t: do you think I’d keep ’em in the kitchen? There they are!” she continued, throwing a roll of manuscript on the table; “there they are! As if he had any right to set up for a poet—as if his mother and him havn’t gone through starvation enough without that. That’s what comes of his neglecting the state of Europe, and hurrying over the knives: his mother wanted to tell you about it, but had no courage, and no wonder. It’s easy to see what’s before him now; and his poor mother blind and desolate. Poems! Oh! no wonder my hair’s gray! But it’s your fault, master—informing his mind! I wonder who ever troubled about my mind!” And out she flounced, while her master, not without some secret apprehension—more anxiety, in fact, for Richard than he had ever felt before—unrolled the manuscript, and, after wiping and putting on his spectacles, commenced its perusal.
[To be continued.