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THE EVER GREEN.

VOL. II.

JANUARY, 1841

MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.*

BY CHARLES DICKENS, ESQ.

THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP.

CHAPTER XLVI.

It was the poor schoolmaster. No other than the poor schoolmaster. Scarcely less moved and surprised by his sight of the child than she had been on recognizing him, he stood for a moment silent and confounded by his unexpected apparition, without even the presence of mind to raise her from the ground.

But quickly recovering his self-possession, he threw down his stick and book, and dropping on one knee beside her, endeavored by such simple means as occurred to him, to restore her to herself; and implored her with many endearing expressions to speak to him, were it only a word. "She is quite exhausted," said the schoolmaster, glancing upward into his face. "You have taxed her powers too far, friend."

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"She is perishing of want," rejoined the old man. never thought how weak and ill she was, till now." Casting a look upon him, half-reproachful and half-compassionate, the schoolmaster took the child in his arms, and bidding the old man gather up her little basket and follow him directly, bore her away at his utmost speed.

There was a small inn within sight, to which it would seem he had been directing his steps when so unexpectedly over taken. Toward this place he hurried with his unconscious burden, and rushing into the kitchen, and calling upon the company there assembled to make way for God's sake, deposited it upon a chair before the fire.

The company, who rose in confusion upon the schoolmaster's entrance, did as people usually do under such circumstances. Every body called for his or her favorite remedy, which nobody brought; each cried for more air, at the same time carefully excluding what air there was, by closing round the object of sympathy; and all wondered why somebody else did n't do, what it never appeared to occur to them might be done by themselves.

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Why goodness gracious me, sir, it's cooking at the kitchen fire this instant!" cried the landlady. And so indeed it was, for the schoolmaster had ordered it to be put down, and it was getting on so well that the doctor might have smelt it if he had tried-perhaps he did.

"You may then," said the doctor, rising gravely, "give her a glass of hot-mulled port-wine, if she likes wine"And a toast, sir?" suggested the landlady. "Ay," said the doctor," in the tone of a man who makes a dignified confession. "And a toast-of bread. very particular to make it of bread, if you please ma'am.”

But be

With which parting injunction, slowly and portentously delivered, the doctor departed, leaving the whole house in admiration of that wisdom which tallied so closely with their own. Every body said he was a very shrewd doctor. indeed, and knew perfectly what people's constitutions were; which there appears some reason to suppose he did.

While the supper was preparing, the child fell into a refreshing sleep, from which they were obliged to rouse her when it was ready. As she evinced extraordinary uneasiness on learning that her grandfather was below stairs, and was greatly troubled at the thought of their being apart, he took his supper with her. Finding her still very restless on this head, they made him up a bed in an inner room, to which he presently retired. The key of this chamber happened by good fortune to be on that side of the door which was in Nell's room; she turned it on him when the landlady had withdrawn, and crept to bed again with a thankful heart.

The schoolmaster sat for a long time smoking his pipe by the kitchen fire, which was now deserted, thinking, with a very happy face, on the fortunate chance which had brought him so opportunely to the child's assistance, and parrying, as well as in his simple way he could, the inquisitive cross examination of the landlady, who had a great curiosity to be made acquainted with every particular of Nell's life and history. The poor schoolmaster was so open-hearted, and so little versed in the most ordinary cunning or deceit, that she could not have failed to succeed in the first five minutes, The landlady, however, who possessed more readiness but that he happened to be unacquainted with what she and activity than any of them, and who had withal a quick-wished to know; and so he told her. The landlady, by no er perception of the merits of the case, soon came running means satisfied with this assurance, which she considered in with a little hot brandy and water, followed hy her ser- an ingenious evasion of the question, rejoined that he had vant girl, carrying vinegar, hartshorn, and smelling-salts, his reasons of course. Heaven forbid that she should wish and such other restoratives; which being duly administered to pry into the affairs of her customers, which indeed were recovered the child so far as to enable her to thank them no business of hers, who had so many of her own. She had in a faint voice, and to extend her hand to the poor school- merely asked a civil question, and to be sure she knew it master, who stood, with an anxious face, hard by. With- would meet with a civil answer. She was quite satisfiedout suffering her to speak another word, or so much as to quite. She had rather perhaps that he would have said at stir a finger any more, the women straightway carried her once that he did n't choose to be communicative, because off to bed; and having covered her up warm, bathed her that would have been plain and intelligible. However, she cold feet, and wrapped them in flannel, they despatched a had no right to be offended of course. He was the best messenger for a doctor. judge, and had a perfect right to say what he pleased; noThe doctor, who was a red-nosed gentleman with a great body could dispute that for a moment. Oh dear, no! bunch of seals dangling below a waistcoat of ribbed black "I assure you, my good lady," said the mild schoolmaster, satin, arrived with all speed, and taking his seat by the bed-"that I have told you the plain truth—as I hope to be saved, side of poor Nell, drew out his watch, and felt her pulse I have told you the truth.". again, and while he did so, he eyed the half-emptied wineglass as if in profound abstraction.

"I should give her-" said the doctor at length, "a teaspoonful every now and then, of hot brandy and water." "Why, that's exactly what we 've done, sir!" said the delighted landlady.

"I should also," observed the doctor, who had passed the foot-bath on the stairs, "I should also," said the doctor, in the voice of an oracle, "put her feet in hot water, and wrap them up in flannel. I should likewise," said the doctor with increased solemnity, "give her something light for supper-the wing of a roasted fowl now—"

Continued from Vol. I, page 683.

"Why then, I do believe you are in earnest," rejoined the landlady, with ready good humor, " and I'm very sorry I have teazed you. But curiosity, you knew, is the curse of our sex, and that 's the fact."

The landlord scratched his head, as if he thought the curse sometimes involved the other sex likewise; but he was prevented from making any remark to that effect, if he had it in contemplation to do so, by the scholmaster's rejoinder.

"You should question me for half-a-dozen hours at a sitting, and welcome, and I would answer you patienly for the kindness of heart you have shown to-night, if I could," he said. "As it is, please to take care of her in the morn

and let me know early how she is; and to understand that I am paymaster for the three."

So, parting with them on most friendly terms, not the less cordial perhaps for this last direction, the schoolmaster went to his bed, and the host and hosters to theirs.

The report in the morning was, that the child was better, but was extremely weak, and would at least require a day's rest, and careful nursing, before she could proceed upon her journey. The schoolmaster received this communication with perfect cheerfulness, observing that he had a day to spare-two days for that matter-and could very well afford to wait. As the patient was to sit up in the evening, he appointed to visit her in her room at a certain hour, and rambling out with his book, did not return till the hour arrived.

Nell could not help weeping when they were left alone; whereat, and at sight of her pale face and wasted figure, the simple schoolmaster shed a few tears himself, at the same time showing in very energetic language how fooilsh it was to do so, and how very easily it could be avoided, if one tried.

"It makes me unhappy even in the midst of all this kindness," said the child, "to think that we should be a burden upon you. How can I ever thank you? If I had not met you so far from home, I must have died, and he would have been left alone."

"We'll not talk about dying," said the schoolmaster; "and as to burdens, I have made my fortune since you slept at my cottage.”

"Indeed!" cried the child, joyfully.

the schoolmaster, heartily. "The cause is too good a one to fail."

They arranged to proceed upon their journey next evening, as a stage wagon, which travelled for some distance on the same road as they must take, would stop at the inn to change horses, and the driver, for a small annuity, would give Nell a place inside. A bargain was soon struck when the wagon came, and in due time it rolled away, with the child comfortably bestowed among the softer packages, her grandfather aud the schoolmaster walking on beside the driver, and the landlady and all the good folks of the inn screaming out their good wishes and farewells.

What a soothing, luxurious, drowsy way of travelling to be inside that slowly-moving mountain, listening to the tinkling of the horses' bells, the occasional smacking of the carter's whip, the smooth rolling of the great broad wheels, the rattle of the harness, the cheery good-nights of passing travellers jogging past on little short-stepping horses-all made pleasantly indistinct by the thick awning, which seemed made for lazy listening under, till one fell asleep! The very going to sleep, still with an indistinct idea, as the head jogged to and fro upon the pillow, of moving onward with no trouble or fatigue, and hearing all these sounds like dreamy music, lulling to the senses-and the slow waking up, and finding one's self staring out through the breezy curtain, half opened in the front, far up into the cold, bright sky, with its countless stars, and downward at the driver's and marshes, and sideways at the dark, grim trees, and forlantern, dancing on like its namesake Jack of the swamps ward at the long, bare road rising up, up, up, until it stopped abruptly at a sharp, high ridge, as if there were no more road, and all beyond was sky-and the stopping at the inn to bait, and being helped out, and going into a room with fire and candles, and winking very much, and being agreeably reminded that the night was cold, and anxious for very

"Oh yes" returned her friend. "I have been appointed clerk and schoolmaster to a village a long way from here -and a long way from the old one as you may supposeat five-and-thirty pounds a-year. Five-and-thirty pounds!" "I am very glad," said the child-"so very, very glad." comfort's sake to think it colder than it was!-What a de"I am on my way there now," resumed the schoolmaster.licious journey was that journey in the wagon! "They allowed me the stage-coach hire-outside stagecoach hire all the way. Bless you, they grudge me nothing But as the time at which I am expected there, left me ample leisure, I determined to walk instead. How glad I am,

to think I did so!"

"How glad should we be!"

"Yes, yes," said the schoolmaster, moving restlessly in his chair, "certainly, that 's very true. But you-where are you going, where are you coming from, what have you been doing since you left me, what had y u been doing before? Now tell me-do tell me. I know very little of the world, and perhaps you are better fitted to advise me in its affairs than I am qualified to give advice to you; but I am very sincere, and I have a reason (you have not forgotten it) for loving you. I have felt since that time as if my love for him who died, had been transferred to you who stood beside his bed. If this " he added, looking upward, is the beautiful creation that springs from ashes, let its peace prosper with me, as I deal tenderly and compassionately with this young child!”

The plain, frank kindness of the honest schoolmaster, the affectionate earnestness of his speech and manner, and the truth which was stamped upon his every word and look, gave the child a confidence in him, which the utmost arts of treachery and dissimulation could never have awakened in her breast. She told him all-that they had no friend or relative that she had fled with the old man, to save him from a mad-house and all the miseries he dreaded-that she was flying now to save him from himself-and that she sought an asylum in some remote and primitive place, where the temptation before which he fell would never enter, and her late sorrows and distresses could have no place. The schoolmaster heard her with astonishment. child!" he thought-" Has this child heroically persevered, under all doubts and dangers, struggled with poverty and suffering, upheld and sustained by strong affection and the consciousness of rectitude alone? And yet the world is full of such heroism. Have I yet to learn that the hardest and best borne trials are those which are never chronicled in any earthly record, and are suffered every day? And should I be surprised to hear the story of this child?"

66 This

What more he thought or said matters not. It was concluded that Nell and her grandfather should accompany him to the village whither he was bound, and that he should endeavor to find them some humble occupation by which they could subsist. "We shall be sure to succeed," said

terwards so sleepy. The waking from a sound nap as the Then the going on again-so fresh at first, and 'shortly afing lamps and rattling hoofs, and visions of a guard behind, mail came dashing past like a highway comet, with gleamstanding up to keep his feet warm, and of a gentleman in a the stopping at the turnpike where the man was gone to fur cap opening his eyes and looking wild and stupifiedbed, and knocking at the door until he answered with a smothered shout from under the bed-clothes in the little room above, where the faint light was burning, and presently came down, night-capped and shivering, to throw the day. The cold, sharp interval between night and morngate wide open, and wish all wagons off the road except by ing-the distant streak of light widening and spreading, and turning from grey to white, and from white to yellow, and from yellow to burning red-the presence of day, with all its cheerfulness and life-men and horses at the ploughbirds in the trees and hedges, and boys in solitary fields frightening them away with rattles. The coming to a town-people busy in the market-light carts and chaises round the tavern yard-tradesmen standing at their doorsmen running horses up and down the street for sale-pigs plunging and grunting in the dirty distance, getting off with long strings on their legs, running into clean chemists' shops and being dislodged with brooms by 'prentices-the night coach changing horses-the passengers cheerless, cold, ugly, and discontented, with three months' growth of hair in one night-the coachman fresh as from a bandbox, and exquisitely beautiful by contrast-so much bustle, so many things in motion, such a variety of incidents!-when was there a journey with so many delights as that journey in the wagon?

Sometimes walking for a mile or two while her grandfather rode inside, and sometimes even prevailing upon the schoolmaster to take her place and lie down to rest, Nell travelled on very happily until they come to a large town, where the wagon stopped, and where they spent a night.— They passed a large church, and in the streets were a number of old houses, built of a kind of earth or plaster, crossed and recrossed in a great many directions with black beams, which gave them a remarkable and very ancient look. The doors, too, were arched and low, some with oaken portals and quaint benches, where the former inhabitants had sat on summers evenings. The windows are latticed in little diamond panes, that seemed to wink and blink upon the passengers as if they were dim of sight. They had long

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It was not so near, however, but that they spent another night upon the road; not that their doing so was quite an act of necessity, but that the schoolmaster, when they approached within a few miles of his village, had a fidgety sense of his dignity as the new clerk, and was unwilling to make his entry in dusty shoes and travel-disordered dress. It was a fine, clear autumn morning when they came upon the scene of his promotion, and stopped to contemplate its beauties.

"See, here's the church!" cried the delighted schoolmaster, in a low voice; “and that old building close beside it is the school-house, I'll be sworn. Five-and-thirty pounds a year in this beautiful place!"

They admired every thing-the old grey porch, the mullioned windows, the venerable grave-stones dotting the green church-yard, the ancient tower, the very weathercock; the brown thatched roofs ef cottage, barn and homestead peeping from among the trees; the stream that rippled | by the distant watermill; the blue Welch mountains far away. It was for such a spot the child had wearied in the dense, dark, miserable haunts of labor Upon her bed of ashes, and amidst the squalid horrors through which they had forced their way, visions of such scenes-beautiful, indeed, but not more beautiful than this sweet reality-had been always present to her mind. They had seemed to melt into a dim, an airy distance, as the prospect of ever beholding them again grew fainter; but, as they receded, she had loved and panted for them more.

-Kit's mother and the single gentleman, speeding onward in the post-chaise and four, whose departure from the Notary's door we have already witnessed, soon left the town behind them, and struck fire from the flints of the broad highway.

The good woman, being not a little embarrassed by the novelty of her situation, and certain maternal apprehensions that perhaps by this time little Jacob, or the baby, or both, had fallen into the fire, or tumbled down stairs, or had been squeezed behind the doors, or had scalded their windpipes in endavoring to aliay their thirst at the spouts of teakettles, preserved an uneasy silence; and meeting from the window the eyes of turnpike men, omnibus-drivers, and others, felt in the dignity of her position like a mourner at a funeral, who, not being afflicted by the loss of the departed, recognizes his every-day acquaintance from the window of the mourning-coach, but is constrained to preserve a decent solemnity, and the appearance of being indifferent to all external objects.

To have been indifferent to the companionship of the single gentleman would have been tantamount to being gifted with nerves of steel. Never did chaise inclose, or horses draw, such a restless gentleman as he. He never sat in the same position for two minutes together, but was perpetually tossing his arms and legs about, pulling up the sashes and letting them violently down, or thrusting his head out of one window or draw it in again and thrust it out of another He carried in his pocket, too, a fire-box of mysterious and unknown construction; and as sure as ever Kit's mother closed her eyes, so surely-whisk, rattle, fizz-there was the single gentleman consulting his watch by a flame of fire, and letting the sparks fall down among the straw as if there were now no such thing as a possibility of himself and Kit's mother being roasted alive before the boys could "I must leave you somewhere for a few minutes," said stop their horses. Whenever they halted to change, there he the schoolmaster, at length breaking the silence into which was-out of the carriage without letting down the steps, bust they had fallen in their gladness. I have a letter to pre-ling about the inn yard like a lighted cracker, pulling out sent, and inquiries to make, you know. Where shall I take you? 10 the little inn yonder?"

"Let us wait here," rejoined Nell. "The gate is open. We will sit in the church porch till you come back."

"A good place, too," said the schoolmaster, disencumbering himself of his portmanteau, and placing it on the stone seat. "Be sure that I come back with good news, and am not long gone."

So the happy schoolmaster put on a bran-new pair of gloves which he had carried in a little parcel in his pocket all the way, and hurried off, full of ardor and excitement.

The child watched him from the porch until the intervening foliage hid him from her view, and then stepped softly out into the old church-yard-so solemn and quiet that every rustle of her dress upon the fallen leaves, which strewed the path and made her footsteps noiseless, seemed an invasion of its silence. It was a very aged, ghostly place: the church had been built many hundred years, and had once had a convent or monastery attached, for arches in ruins, remains of oriel windows, and fragments of blackened walls, were yet standing; while other portions of the old building, which had crumbled away and fallen down, were mingled with the church-yard earth and overgrown with grass, as if they too claimed a burying-place and sought to mix their ashes with the dust of men. Hard by these gravestones of dead years, and forming a part of the ruin which some pains had been taken to render habitable in modern times, were two small dwellings with sunken windows and oaken doors, fast hastening to decay, empty and desolate.

Upon these tenements the attention of the child became exclusively riveted. She knew not why. The church, the ruin, the antiquated graves, had equal claims at least upon a stranger's thoughts, but from the moment when her eyes first rested on these two dwellings she could turn to nothing else. Even when she had made the circuit of the inclosure and, returning to the porch, sat pensively waiting for there friend, she took her station where she could still look up to them, and felt as if fascinated toward that spot.

CHAPTER XLVII.

Kit's mother and the single gentleman-upon whose track it is expedient to follow with hurried steps, lest this history should be chargeable with inconstancy, and the offence of leaving its characters in situations of uncertainty and doub

his watch by lamplight and forgetting to look at it before he put it up again, and in short eommitting so many extravagancies that Kit's mother was quite afraid of him. Then, when the horses were to, in he came like a Harlequin, and before they had gone a mile, out came the watch and the fire-box together, and Kit's mother was wide awake again, with no hope of a wink of sleep for that stage.

"Are you comfortable ?" the single gentleman would say after one of these exploits, turning sharply round. "Quite, sir, thank you."

"Are you sure? An't you cold?”

"It is a little chilly, sir," Kit's mother would reply. "I knew it!" cried the single gentleman, letting down one of the front glasses. "She wants some brandy and water! Of course she does. How could I forget it? Halloo! Stop at the next inn, and call out for a glass of hot brandy and water."

It was in vain for Kit's mother to protest that she stood in need of nothing of the kind. The single gentleman was inexorable; and whenever he had exhausted all other modes and fashions of restlessness, it invariably occurred to him that Kit's mother wanted brandy and water.

In this way they travelled on until near midnight, when they stopped to supper, for which meal the single gentle. man ordered every thing eatable that the house contained; and because Kit's mother did n't eat every thing at once, and eat it all, he took it into his head that she must be ill.

"You 're faint," said the single gentleman, who did nothing himself but walk about the room. "I see what 's the matter with you, ma'am. You're faint."

"Thank you, sir, I'm not indeed."

"I know you are. I'm sure of it. I drag this poor wo man from the bosom of her family at a minute's notice, and she goes on getting fainter and fainter before my eyes. I'm a pretty fellow! How many children have you got, ma'am?"

"Two, sir, besides Kit."

Boys, ma'am?"

"Yes, sir."

"Are they christened?"

"Only half baptised as yet, sir."

"I'm godfather to both of 'em. Remember that, if you please ma'am. You had better have some mulled wine." "I could n't touch a drop indeed, sir."

"You must," said the single gentleman. "I see you want it. I ought to have thought of it before."

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