It Never Can Happen Again

by William De Morgan

Lizarann joined in the conversation. "Wunst you get him inside of the bust," she said, "the sconductor keeps his eye upon him. Yass!—All the way to Stockwell." Lizarann's confidence that her hearers knew the world had something very pretty and touching about it.

But Miss Caldecott, as the exponent of the League—which no one had asked her to form—checkmated Bridgetticks's relative. "We won't talk any more about him now, my dear," she said. The smallest shade passed over the Rector's face. However, it didn't matter for him. He could tickle Lizarann slightly, thanks to his position of vantage, and thus avoid being misunderstood.

With Challis it was otherwise. The effect upon his mind of the action of the League was that he now felt that Bridget's disreputable uncle was absolutely the only topic of conversation possible. He tried in vain to remember that anything else existed in the Universe.

"Mayn't we hear more about Miss Hicks's family?" said he, with some sense of proposing a compromise—not to run counter to the feeling of the League, as it were. Miss Caldecott said something confidentially to Space about not encouraging the child too much.

But she did not understand the earnestness and good faith of the said child. Lizarann had no suspicion that the gentleman's anxiety to know about her friend's connection was sheer affectation, and hastened to supply particulars. She proceeded to sketch the Hicks family, laying stress as much as possible on the excellence of its motives and the sobriety of its demeanour.

"Bridgetticks," she said, "she spinched her finger in the jam of the door, and felt it a week after in her shoulder-j'int. Yass—she did! And Mr. 'Icks, he don't take nothing till after gone twelve o'clock, and then mostly at meals. And Mrs. 'Icks, she never touches anything. Only then she never has scarcely no rheumatic pains to speak of."

"You see that point, Challis?" said the Rector parenthetically, in a quick undertone, over the heads of the two young ladies. "What Mr. 'Icks does touch is part of a course of treatment for rheumatism." Challis nodded the completeness of his understanding, and then the little girl Phœbe, who was listening with gravity, leaning on the shoulder of her father, said, "And then say why!"

Lizarann, prompted, continued, "Yass—she hasn't! Because of the nature of the suds. Because she's over her elbers all day, and can't roll nothin' up high enough, not to keep dry. And Dr. Ferris, he puts it down to the lump soda." An inquiring look of Challis's produced the additional information. "Yass!—you can buy it at the oilshop just acrost the road from the Robin Hood. Only it comes to less by the quarter-hundredweight." All this did the greatest credit to Lizarann's power of storing information.

But the League had been tolerating this sort of thing too long, and its Secretary or Solicitor—whichever Miss Caldecott was—struck in with, "Perhaps we've talked qui-ite enough now about Bridget Hicks and her family, my dear! We mustn't trespass too much on Mr. Challis's good-nature." Suspicion of the sinister intentions of the League gleamed in Lizarann's eye; for she disbelieved in its representative, while admitting her goodness. She might have ignored her intrusion if it had not been that the extraordinary sensitiveness of childhood to impressions that never penetrate the thick hide of manhood made her detect in Challis's disclaimer an understanding between himself and the League—one that civility had dictated reference to on his part, but that he would have preferred to conceal. Now Lizarann might have fallen back disconcerted on silence, even on tears, had it not been for Athelstan Taylor's keen understanding of children, and the supreme necessity for not letting them know allowances are being made for them. He said, with great presence of mind and an appearance of absolute sincerity: "Old Mrs. Fox sells it—where your Daddy lives, Lizarann. She'll let you have twopenny-worth if you say it's for me. So mind you bring it on with you when you come home." For Lizarann was to call on her Daddy on her way back from this visit. The Rector added that he should like old Christopher to try it, and this confirmed Lizarann's belief in his bona fides. She would not have believed his sister-in-law, who, with the best intentions, had been unfortunate enough to incur unpopularity by throwing doubt on the Flying Dutchman. This was her chief offence; but she had also questioned the accuracy of the surgical reports of the boy Frederick Hawkins, and other minor matters. So that Lizarann, while she acknowledged her kindness, took a low view—but secretly—of her intelligence.

When the children had gone away dutifully to play, discussing by the way such things as might be played at with advantage, the Rev. Athelstan said, "Now I must be getting home, or I shall be late for Mrs. Silverton." Said Mr. Challis: "Then I'll walk with you, Rector; I don't want any tea." Said the Rector: "Then I'll wait till you've had it," and waited. Presently they were walking through the long grass, overfield, having said little till the Rector spoke, as one who resumes conversation in earnest: