"Beef-tea?"
"No—at least, have some ready, in case. But her temperature is too high. Especially at her time of life!" The doctor walked briskly away. He had not had the gig out, for such a short distance.
CHAPTER XXI
CHRISTMAS AND THE GREEK KALENDS. O NOBIS PRAETERITOS! THE WRITING-TABLE BACK. AN INFLEXIBLE GOVERNOR. HOW MR. JERRY DID NOT GO TO THE WORKHOUSE. BUT HOW CAME M'RIAR TO BE SO SHORT? THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA. UNCLE MO'S COLDBATH FIELDS FRIEND, AND HIS ALLOWANCE. UNCLE MO ON KEEPING ONE'S WORD. AND KEEPING ITS MEANING. JERRY'S CONSCIENTIOUS TREACHERY, AND HIS INTERVIEW WITH MR. ROWE. HOW M'RIAR HAD PROMISED LOVE, HONOUR, AND OBEDIENCE TO A THING A DEVIL HAD TAKEN A LONG LEASE OF. HOW SHE SENT A NOTE TO IT, BY MICHAEL RAGSTROAR. WHO REALISED THREE-HALFPENCE. HOW MISS HAWKINS, JEALOUSY MAD, TINKERED AUNT M'RIAR'S NOTE. EVE'S CIVILITY TO THE SERPENT. MUCH ABOUT NORFOLK ISLAND. DAVERILL'S SECOND VISIT TO ENGLAND, AND ITS CAUSES
Sapps Court was looking forward to Christmas with mixed feelings, considered as a Court. The feelings of each resident were in some cases quite defined or definable; as for instance Dave's and Dolly's. The children had required from their seniors a trustworthy assurance of the date of Mrs. Prichard's return, and had only succeeded in obtaining from Aunt M'riar a vague statement. Mrs. Prichard was a-coming some day, and that was plenty for children to know at their time of life. They might have remained humbly contented with their ignorance, if Uncle Mo had not added:—"So's Christmas!" meaning thereby the metaphorical Christmas used as an equivalent of the Greek Kalends. He overlooked, for rhetorical purposes, the near approach of the actual festival; and Dave and Dolly accepted this as fixing the date of Mrs. Prichard's return, to a nicety. The event was looked forward to as millennial; as a restoration of a golden age before her departure. For no child is so young as not to laudare a tempus actum; indeed, it is a fiction that almost begins with speech, that the restoration of the Past is the first duty of the Future.
Dolly never tired of recasting the arrangement of the tea-festivity that was to celebrate the event, discovering in each new disposition of the insufficient cups and unstable teapot a fresh satisfaction to gloat over, and imputing feelings in sympathy with her own to her offspring Gweng. It was fortunate for Gweng that her mamma understood her so thoroughly, as otherwise her fixed expression of a maximum of joy at all things in Heaven and Earth gave no clue to any emotions due to events of the moment. Even when her eyes were closed by manipulation of her spinal cord, and opened suddenly on a new and brilliant combination, any candid spectator must have admitted her stoicism—rapturous perhaps, but still stoicism. It was alleged—by her mamma—that she shed tears when Dave selfishly obstructed her line of sight. This was disputed by Dave, whom contact with an unfeeling World was hardening to a cruel literalism.
Dave, when he was not scheming a display of recent Academical acquirements to Mrs. Prichard, dwelt a good deal on the bad faith of the postman, who had not brought him the two letters he certainly had a right to expect, one from each of his Grannies. He had treasured the anticipation of reading their respective expressions of joyful gratitude at their discovery of their relationship, and no letter had come! Small blame to Dave that he laid this at the door of the postman; others have done the self-same thing, on the other side of their teens! The only adverse possibility that crossed his infant mind was that his Grannies were sorry, not glad; because really grown-up people were so queer, you never could be even with them. The laceration of a lost half-century was a thing that could not enter into the calculations of a septennarian. He had not tried Time, and Time had not tried him. He had odd misgivings, now and again, that there might be in this matter something outside his experience. But he did not indulge in useless speculation. The proximity of Christmas made it unnecessary.
Mrs. Burr and Aunt M'riar accepted the season as one beneficial to trade; production taking the form of a profusion of little muslin dresses for small girls at Christmas Trees and parties with a Conjurer—dresses in which the fullest possibilities of the human flounce became accomplished facts, and the last word was said about bows of coloured ribbons. To look at them was to breathe an involuntary prayer for eiderdown enclosures that would keep the poppet inside warm without disparagement to her glorious finery. Sapps Court under their influence became eloquent of quadrilles; "Les Rats" and the Lancers, jangled by four hands eternally on pianos no powers of sleep could outwit, and no execration do justice to. They murmured tales of crackers with mottoes; also of too much rich cake and trifle and lemonade, and consequences. So much space was needed to preserve them unsoiled and uncrushed until consigned to their purchasers, that Mrs. Burr and Aunt M'riar felt grateful for the unrestricted run of Mrs. Prichard's apartment, although both also felt anxious to see her at home again.
Mrs. Prichard's writing-table came back, done beautiful. Only the young man he refused to leave it without the money. He was compelled to this course by the idiosyncrasies of his employer. "You see," said he to Uncle Mo, with an appearance of concentrating accuracy by a shrewd insight, "it's like this it is, just like I tell you. Our Governor he's as good a feller—in hisself mind you!—as you'll come across this side o' Whitechapel. Only he's just got this one pecooliarity—like a bee has in his bonnet, as the sayin' is—he won't give no credit, not so much as to his own wife; or his medical adwiser, if you come to that. 'Cash across invoice'—that's his motter. And as for moving of him, you might just as easy move Mongblong." It is not impossible that this young man's familiarity with Mont Blanc was more apparent than real; perhaps founded on Albert Smith's entertainment of that name, which was popular at that time in London. The young man went on to say that he himself was trustful to a fault, and that if it depended on him, a'most any arrangement could be come to. But you had to take a party as you found him, and there it was!