“I didn’t say he was Irish. I don’t know what he is. He was askin’ about Mrs. Conway, though she’s unbeknown to him, as any one might tell who heerd him questionin’. He wants Miss Nelly to bear him company at tea, and I don’t see why the child can’t come, if the mother ’ull let it. I won’t take it upon myself to bring the child in. I’ll speak to the mother when I see her. I like Mrs. Conway. She’s a nice-spoken lady, but seems to know a deal of grief, poor thing. It ’ud be a mussy if that husband of hers ’ud take it into his head to pull out all his own teeth. The cook at Mrs. Short’s was tellin’ me he’s grown that wicious there’s no wishin’ him a civil good mornin’. An’ drink! Didn’t I see him pass here yesterday evenin’, staggerin’ on his legs like a doll which a child tries to teach walkin’ to?”
“The ’pothecaries used to draw teeth in my day; now they must be all gentlefolks as looks into your mouth,” said the old woman, who had been three minutes searching in her pocket for the snuff-box that lay open, with some of its sand-coloured contents spilt, in her lap.
“Pretty gentlefolks!” exclaimed Mrs. Parrot, pulling up the old woman’s dress and tilting the spilt snuff into the box. “If they’re all like Mr. Conway, I’d rather carry a toothache to my grave than have it stopped wi’ the lockjaw, which they tell me he gave to Mr. Timpson; for drink had taken away the use of his mind, and he pushed the wrong instrayment into the man’s mouth and nearly choked him, he did, and then took out two wrong teeth after all; beautiful teeth they was, for Mr. Timpson showed them to me hisself, with the tears standin’ in his eyes, wropped up in silver paper.”
“Thank God! he can’t draw none o’ my teeth!” mumbled the old woman, talking through her nose in rapt enjoyment of the flavour of the snuff. “They’re all gone.”
“I noticed Mrs. Conway’s gownd to-day. If I was her husband, I’d scorn to let her appear in sitch a rag. And there was darns in the knees o’ that child’s stockings as made ’em look forty year old. They’re always i’ the same dresses, both of ’em. There’s a silk she puts on o’ Sundays, all wore thin over the buzzum, and I remember the bonnet she had on to-day iver since I’ve known her. Sitch a pretty face as she has, too! I expect he must ha’ told her some fine lies to get her to marry him. They say he niver did well, even when he was in the High Street, wi’ that show-box of his stuck up, filled wi’ gaping gums an’ naked teeth as turned the stomach to see. He must ha’ sold that piece of ugliness, for I don’t see it nowheres outside his house, which is a mussy, for I’d as lief see a skiliton on a pole for a sign! Fancy a doctor settin’ up a death’s-head to show his trade!”
She jumped from her chair with a face and gesture of disgust, and throwing some knitting with the pins through it into her mother’s lap, adjusted her cap before the glass, and left the room.
There is always some truth in gossip: and there was a great deal in what Mrs. Parrot had said of Mr. Conway, who, as we have seen, held no place at all in her opinion. But then sympathy for Dolly was to be expected from a woman who, if she did not know what it was to live with a drunkard, had known what it was to live with a surly man, whose eye was evil, and whose voice was thick, and whose characteristic method of expressing discontent was by holding his clenched fist under his wife’s nose.
Mr. Conway is passing Mrs. Parrot’s door at the very moment that Mrs. Parrot is leaving her mother’s bedroom; we shall not have an opportunity of seeing much of him, having the fortunes of a better kind of hero to deal with; so, while Holdsworth is away from his lodgings, we’ll step into the road and have a look at the dentist, and follow him into his house.
He is a man with sandy whiskers and light hair, but by no means ill-looking. On the contrary, there are materials in his face out of which a very pleasing countenance could be made; a well-shaped nose, a well-shaped forehead, a good chin, a facial outline clearly defined and perfectly symmetrical.