It was the only time she ever saw that brother, and she never knew it was he.
CHAPTER XXIX
HOW MICKY BECAME A LINKBOY. HIS IDEAS ON INVESTMENTS. DOG FOUND. NO SAFETY LIKE A THICK FOG. OLD MR. NIXON. HIS SELF-RESTRAINT, WIX'S MESSAGE. JULIA'S DILEMMA. HER VIEWS ON MARRIAGE LINES. DAMN LAWFUL POLLY! HOW MICKY'S MOTHER HELPED HIM TO DELIVER HIS MESSAGE. OUR OLD LADY—GONE! WHO WILL TELL DAVE AND DOLLY? HOW PUSSY WAS THE OTHERS. HOW MO DID NOT STOP AT THE SUN. A VISITOR IN HIS ABSENCE. THE END
The irresolute winter only wavered some forty-eight hours, setting to work in earnest on the second day after Christmas Day, following on suggestions of seasonableness on Boxing Day. London awoke to a dense fog and a hard frost, and its spirits went up. Its citizens became possessed with an unnatural cheerfulness, as is their wont when they cannot breathe without choking, when the gas has to be lighted at what should be the hour of daybreak, when the vapour lies thick in places, and will not move from contact; though now and again the darkness, where the sky was once, seems at odds with a languid something, that may be light, beyond. Then, fires within, heaped with fresh coal, regardless of expense, to keep the fog at bay, contribute more and more through chimney-pots without to the unspeakable opacities overhead, and each seeming ultimatum of blackness is followed by another blacker still. Then, while timid persons think the last day has come, the linkboys don't care whether it has or not, and enjoy themselves intensely.
A good example of the former class was Mrs. Treadwell, Michael Ragstroar's great-aunt at Hammersmith; of the latter, Michael himself. On the afternoon of that Wednesday in Christmas week he had conducted an old bloke of enormous wealth, on foot, from the said bloke's residence in Russell Square to his son-in-law's less pretentious one at Chiswick, and had earned liberal refreshments, golden opinions, and silver coin by his intrepidity and perception of London localities in Egyptian darkness. And he had never so much as once asked the name of a blooming street! So ran his communication to his great-aunt, on whom he called afterwards; being, as he said, handy.
"Now you do like I tell you, Micky, and bank it with the Savings Bank, and you'll live to be thankful." This referred to Micky's harphacrownd, just earned. That was his exact pronunciation, delivered ore rotundissimo, to do full justice to so large an amount.
Micky's reply was:—"Ketch me at it! I don't put no faith in any of these here Banks, like you see at street corners. The Bank, where you go on the green bus, is another pair o' stockin's.... No—I ain't going to put it on a 'orse. You carn't never say they ain't doctored." He went on to express an astute mistrust of investments, owing to the bad faith of Man, and wound up:—"The money won't run away of itself, so long as you don't let it out of your porket." Into which receptacle Micky returned it, slapping the same in ratification of its security.
"Then you button it in, Micky, and see you don't talk about it to no one. Only I should have said it would be safer put by, or giv' to some responsible person to take charge of." But Michael shook his head, assuming a farsighted expression. He was immovable. Mrs. Treadwell continued:—"Bein' here, I do declare you might be a useful boy, and write Dog Found large on a sheet of paper, and ask Miss Hawkins to put it up in her window for to find the owner."
"Wot's the dog?"