pair, admire "that sweet, beautiful young man, with his bright face and his golden hair, looking like the angels themselves, as if he gave out light, as I've seen it in a pictur - coming to drink tea with his poor parents. I'm afraid they are very poor." "I think, Mr. Bradley," she went on one day, after having indulged more than usual in poetry of the above description; for all the poetry in her nature all have it somewhere or other and we he's but was called to life by these lodgers of hers: "I've been thinking, Mr. Bradley, that it's a pity now the days are growing shorter, and bad weather coming on, that the young lad a lad - on a Saturday night should have to go muddling through the nasty street, I know not how far, to his own lodgings. You know there's the little blue closet has a camp bed in it; you don't intend to let it; suppose we give it up to the young gentleman?" "By all manner of means - what must we ask? Not much, I suppose It's a small bit of a place, but then it's just new papered, and a white cotton bed costs money, and wants washing." "Ask? You're not going to ask anything for it? If it could be had for paying for that is, if they could afford to pay for it do you think they would not have enquired about it long ago? John Bradley, it's no use mincing the matter, those people are as poor as church mice not a sixpence to throw away, as in my heart I believe." John Bradley gave a sort of discontented grunt. "Ay, ay, I know you're not fond of poor folk never was. But there's something about what's poor and not proud - who has had a right to be proud, mind, but's not proud - that goes to my heart. When one sees them poor souls the old habit of doing things like gentlefolks - coming up, and then a sigh, and the shilling put back into the pocket - I find it very touching. Forgetting it you see for a moment and then the memory coming back of what he is, John Bradley. I think it more moving than a play." "Ay, ay; and so, if you had not some one nigh you with a better noddle than your own, you'd soon be fooled out of your money." The good wife possessed that rarest and best of qualities in a wife. She was not swift to reply. She knew when to hold her peace, and so keep the peace. She poured out Mr. Bradley's cup of tea; sugared and creamed it; gently put pussy aside, who lay purring before the fender; lifted from the brass footman the most crisp and delicious of toasted muffins; and then, and not till then, renewed the attack. "I thought John Bradley loved to do a good-natured thing as well as anybody." "And so I do; but not to let my lodgings for nothing." "But you don't intend to let that room, you know; so what's the odds? If they could pay for it, wouldn't they? but as they can't, what matters it? You know you gets nothing, any how... He's such a good boy what our little Johnnie might have been, if the Lord had spared him, I somehow think So pious and loving to his father. Don't you think our poor little one would have had just that shining golden hair, like threads of sun-beams?" John Bradley gave a sigh. "And to think of his a-walking all that weary way of a Saturday night - rain or snow, sleet or hail because he will pay his duty to his father." "Have it your own way. Do just as you like." world, John Bradley, when you think of it." * * * This was the turning point. The first little, agreeable, unexpected event which had greeted them. It was touching to see how all were pleased and cheered by it they accepted it as an omen. To say nothing of the very real accommodation thus conferred, the pleasure of having their son every week from Saturday evening to Monday morning was very great. There is something so very encouraging in the first little turn of Fortune to those who have been exposed to all her stings and buffets - something so very sweet to those whom adversity hath made strangers even to a brother, in receiving a token of good will. The Du Chastels, however, were uneasy till they could hit upon some means of shewing their sense of the good woman's kindness but that was not long to seek. his landlady's good man, with her cat tabby Armand employed the time thus saved to him on a Saturday night, by making a candlelight study of her beloved upon his knee; and this he presented to her. She was delighted with it as many others, better skilled in such things, far less interested in John Bradley and the cat than she was - might have been. Du Chastel could not help exclaiming, when he saw it "I am no judge of such things; but it seems to me to have wonderful effect." The mother looked at it and sighed. "How good it is!" and sighed again. only a painter after all!" was her reflection would not give it words. "A painter! but she "The light of the candle falls so well and the old man is his very self and yet far better than he ever looks. And as for the cat, I think I could put my hand into her long fur." And she returned it to her son, and sighed again. CHAPTER XIII. "I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows, MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. PERSEVERANCE is, perhaps, of all the virtues of this world, the one that most invariably insures its own reward. It was not very long before this resolute persistence in doing what lay before him, be it what it might, irksome or not, and doing it as well as he could, secured its recompense to Armand. The proprietor of the business from which he received employment, was not long in perceiving the merits of the young stranger to whom he was giving work. His punctuality - his industry - the gentleness and softness of his manners, first excited his attention. In these qualities he far excelled his fellow-labourers, mostly negligent, rough young men, occupied in these lower branches outer confines, if we may be allowed to call them so of art. Which they undertook, because they were too idle to have made themselves capable of anything better, and were content, so that they earned enough for a few low indulgences, to grovel in the position of unskilled labourers for the remainder of their lives. What they did was just hurried through well enough to escape dismission - but that was all. Evelyn Marston. I. 14 |