Here Mrs. Williams entered, and told Arthur that the man was waiting for him. But seeing that he clasped his little sister still closer to his heart, she tore her forcibly from his arms, and bore her struggling form to another apartment.
“Who could have foreseen this, Mrs. Buckler? I wonder where the boy can be gone. I must certainly advertise him,” was said by a wealthy merchant, as he impatiently threw himself upon an elegant lounge, regardless of his lady’s favorite poodle, that lay upon its velvet covering, one eye half open, as if ruminating on the luxuries of his home, and of his importance in comparison with the rest of his canine race. From these cogitations he was aroused to a sense of danger by the descending form of his master. Giving a loud yelp, he endeavored to elude the honor, but not quickly enough to save one of his outstretched paws.
At this outcry, the lady sprung from her languid position, followed by her daughters, and folding the trembling dog to her bosom, exclaimed, “Oh dear, Mr. Buckler, you have killed my darling Adonis!” while the elder daughter flew to the bell and rang it violently. “Oh, Martha,” cried Mrs. Buckler, as the frightened domestic made her appearance, “for Heaven’s sake, make haste and bring the linen and hartshorn! I fear my sweet pet’s foot is broken.”
“This all comes, pa,” said Clementina, the younger daughter, “from your thinking so much of that low boy! Indeed, I feel relieved that he’s gone. To have a creature about one who has been the inmate of an Alms-House—it is so vulgar! And then one always feels afraid of being contaminated!”
“I do not know why you should be afraid of him, Clem; he’s a very gentlemanly little fellow, and I would not part with him for five hundred a year. The store has never been opened so early, nor things kept in such order since I have been in business, as during the time Arthur has been in it.”
“Why, papa, the cook told me to-day that he is in the habit of sitting up half the night studying and writing.”
“I don’t care what he did, nor how he sat up, as he was at the store, and all things ready betimes. And so provoking, to have him go away just at Christmas, when we have so much extra to do in the store, and so many bills to send out!”
“Do you think, my dear, it is possible he can have gone to the Alms-House? You know he left a sister there,” said Mrs. Buckler, looking up from her poodle, who had now been be-hartshorned and be-linened to her satisfaction.
“Oh, surely not—that is more than fifty miles distant. Beside, he has no money to pay his fare; and more than all, he does not know the way. But now, I think of it, he did want me to let him go there at Christmas; but I told him I could not spare him, and he had better not think of it. Beside, it was very unlikely he would find his sister there, as in all probability she had been taken out by some person before now.”