Mr. Bartlett was on the spot, within an hour, taking measures for the immediate safety of the inmates, and his own ultimate pecuniary advantage. He pointed out it was quite unnecessary for anyone to turn out of the rooms below, although he admitted that the open air had got through the top story. His immediate resources were quite equal to a temporary arrangement practicable in a couple of hours or so. A contrivance of inconceivable slightness, involving no drawbacks whatever to families occupying the premises it was engendered in, was necessary to hold the roof up up tempory, for fear it should come with a run. It was really a'most nothing in the manner of speaking. You just shoved a len'th of quartering into each room, all down the house to the bottom, with a short scaffold-board top and bottom to distribute out the weight, and tapped 'em across with a 'ammer, and there you were! The top one ketched the roof coming down, and you had no need to be apprehensive, because it would take a tidy weight—double what Mr. Bartlett was going to put upon it.
This was a security against a complete collapse of the roof and upper floor, but if it come on heavy rain, what would keep Aunt M'riar's room dry? She and Dolly could not sleep in a puddle. Mr. Bartlett, however, pledged himself to make all that good with a few yards of tarpauling, and Aunt M'riar and Dolly went to bed, with sore misgivings as to whether they would wake alive next day. Dolly woke in the night and screamed with terror at what she conceived was a spectre from the grave, but which was really nothing but a short length of scaffold-pole standing upright at the foot of her bed.
This was bad enough, but it further appeared next day that a new floor would be de rigueur overhead in Mrs. Prichard's room. Not only were sundry timber balks shoved up against the house outside so they couldn't constitoot a hindrance to anyone—so Mr. Bartlett said when he giv' in a price for the job—but the street-door wouldn't above half shet to, and all the windows had to be seen to. Add to this afflictions from tarpaulings that would keep you bone-dry even if there come a thunderstorm—or perhaps, properly speaking, that would have done so only they were just a trifle wore at critical points—and smells of damp plaster that quite took away the relish from your food, and you will form some idea what remaining in the house during the repairs meant to Uncle Mo and his belongings.
Not that Dolly and Dave took their sufferings to heart much. The novelties of the position went far to compensate them for its drawbacks. One supreme grief there was for them, certainly. The avalanche of brickwork had destroyed, utterly and irrevocably, that cherished sunflower. They had clung to a lingering hope that, as soon as the claims of humanity had been discharged by the rescue of the victims of the catastrophe, the attention of the rescuers would be directed to carefully removing the débris from above their buried treasure. They were shocked at the callous indifference shown to its fate. It was an early revelation of the heartlessness of mankind. Nevertheless, the shattered sunflower was recovered in the end, and Dolly took it to bed with her, and cried herself to sleep over it.
So it seemed impossible for Dave and Dolly, and their uncle and aunt, all to remain on in the half-wrecked house. But then—where had they to go to? It was clear that Dolly and her aunt would have to turn out, and the only resource seemed to be that they should go away for a while to her grandmother's, an old lady at Ealing, who existed, but went no further. She had never entered Sapps Court, but her daughters, Aunt M'riar and Dolly's mother, had paid her dutiful visits. There was no ill-feeling—none whatever! So to Ealing Aunt M'riar went, two or three days later, and Dave went too, although he was convinced Uncle Mo couldn't do without him.
The old boy himself remained in residence, being fed by The Rising Sun; which sounds like poetry, but relates to chops and sausages and a half-a-pint, a monotonous dietary on which he subsisted until his family returned a month later to a reinstated mansion. He lived a good deal at The Sun during this period, relying on the society of his host and his friend Jerry. His retrospective chats with the latter recorded his impressions of the event which had deprived him of his household, and left him a childless wanderer on the surface of Marylebone.
"Red-nosed Tommy," said he, referring to Mr. Bartlett, "he wouldn't have put in that bit of bressemer to ketch up those rotten joists over M'riar's room if I hadn't told him. We should just have had the floor come through and p'r'aps my little maid and M'riar squashed dead right off. You see, they would have took it all atop, and no mistake. Pore Susan got it bad enough, but it wasn't a dead squelch in her case. It come sideways." Uncle Mo emptied his pipe on the table, and thoughtfully made the ash do duty first for Mrs. Burr, and then for Aunt M'riar and Dolly, by means of a side-push and a top-squash with his finger. He looked at the last result sadly as he refilled his pipe—a hypothetically bereaved man. Dolly might have been as flat as that!
"How's Susan Burr getting on?" asked Mr. Alibone.
"That's according to how much money you're inclined to put on the doctors. Going by looks only—what M'riar says—she don't give the idea of coming to time. Only then, there's Sister Nora—Miss Grahame they call her now; very nice lady—she's on the doctor's side, and says Mrs. Burr means to pull round. Hope so!"