Black, White and Gray by Amy Walton (best novels to read to improve english TXT) 📕

small cottages, one of which he entered. A child's voice from a dark corner of the poorly-furnished kitchen cried, as he opened the door, "Mother, it ain't father; it's Dan;" and a woman, who was bending over a pot on the fire, turned towards him.

"Well," she said fretfully, "what makes _you_ so late? It's bad enough to have your father coming in at all hours and wanting his supper."

Dan made no answer, but hurried up to the corner from which the child's voice had sounded. "See here, Becky," he said softly; "see what I've brought you!"

The child, a girl of about eight years old, raised herself eagerly on the hard couch on which she was lying. She was very like Dan, with the same brown skin and dark eyes, but the eyes had no merry twinkle in them. Her face was thin and drawn, and had the appealing look which comes of suffering borne with patience.

"Is it a rabbit, Dan?" she asked, peering at the soft furry thing in her brother's arms.

"It's a little cat," said Dan, putting the kitten gently down by her side, "as Bill was going to ill-treat."

Becky touched the kitten with her thin fingers. "Its eyes is shut," she said. "Oh Dan, I'm feared it's dead."

The woman had now drawn near to look at the kitten too. She had a fair skin and very pale blue eyes, which were always wide open, as though she were surprised at something; when this expression changed, it became a fretful one, which had also got into the tone of her voice.

"Give us a drop o' milk, mother," said Dan; "that'll do it good."

"Milk indeed!" said Mrs Tuvvy; "and what next? Where's the money to come from to buy milk for cats, when goodness knows if we shall soon have bit or drop to put into our own mouths?"

Neither of the children took any notice of their mother's remarks, or answered the questions which she continued to put.

"How do you suppose we're going to live, now yer father's got turned off? Who's a-goin' to pay the doctor's bill, I should like to know?"

Dan rose and fetched from the table a small basin covered with a saucer.

"That's yer supper," said Mrs Tuvvy mournfully. "You ain't never goin' to give it to the cat! Well, you won't get no more."

Dan knelt by the couch, and tried to put a little warm milk into the kitten's mouth with the spoon, but its teeth were firmly shut.

"You open its mouth, Dan, and I'll feed it," said Becky eagerly. "There, it swallowed that--now some more. See; it's better already."

For the kitten had opened its eyes, and given itself a little stretch. Soon it was able to lap some milk out of the saucer, and to eat some crumbled bread.

"Ain't it a little dear?" said Becky, her thin face lighted up with pleasure. "Oh Dan, it's purring! It must be quite well, mustn't it?"

"I expect it'll want a good long sleep first," said Dan, looking gravely at the kitten, which had curled itself up by Becky's side, and begun a faint little song of thankfulness; "it's been through a deal."

He took his neglected supper, and sat down to eat it at the foot of Becky's couch, while Mrs Tuvvy returned to her cooking at the fire, still grumbling half aloud. There was not much bread and milk, and Dan, who always had a good appetite, was unusually hungry after his exertions that afternoon. He had been through a deal, as well as the kitten. But by dint of talking to his sister between each spoonful, he managed to eke out the meal, and make it seem much more. Becky listened with the most eager interest, meanwhile, to all the details of the fight, the policeman, and the escape of Dan with the kitten. When there was no more to tell, and very little more to eat, she leaned back on her couch and sighed.

"He's a reg'lar bad un, that Bill!" she said presently. "Will he want to fight again?"

Dan shook his head. "I shan't come across him no more," he said; "not now I'm going to a place."

"I forgot," said Becky wearily. "Oh Dan, how long the days'll be when you don't come home to dinner. Whatever shall I do?"

"Why," said Dan soothingly, "you won't be alone now. You'll have the kit."

Becky gave a faint little smile.

"I mean to get you a good long bit of string," went on Dan, "and tie a cork to the end, and then, you see, you'll bounce it about for the kit to play with, and carry on fine, without moving."

"I suppose it'll get to know me after a bit, won't it?" said Becky, evidently pleased with Dan's idea.

"Just about," answered her brother decidedly. Becky looked down fondly at the small grey form on her arm.

"Dr Price's dogs came in with him to-day," she said, "but they mustn't come in no more now. They'd worry it to death. Mother told him to-day," she added in a lower tone, "as how she couldn't pay his bill, because of father."

"What did he say?" asked Dan.

"He said, `That's a bad job, Mrs Tuvvy, but it can't be helped.'"

"Did he say you were getting better?" asked Dan again, scraping his basin carefully round with his spoon.

"He said I wanted plenty of rest, and plenty of nourishing food," said Becky. "What's nourishing food, Dan?"

"Nice things," said Dan, balancing his spoon on the edge of his basin, and smacking his hungry lips; "chickens, and jellies, and pies, and such like."

"Oh," said Becky, with a patient sigh. "Well, we shan't have no money at all now, so we can't get any of 'em."

"I shall get six shillings a week when I begin work," said Dan; "and there's what mother gets charing. But then there's the rent, you see, and father getting nothing--"

He broke off, for the door opened, and Tuvvy himself appeared with his basket of tools on his shoulder. The children looked at him silently as he flung himself into a chair, but his wife began immediately in a tone of mild reproachfulness.

"Yer supper's been waiting this ever so long, and it wasn't much to boast of to begin with, but there--I s'pose we may be thankful to get a bit of dry bread now."

She poured the contents of the saucepan into a dish, sighing and lamenting over it as she did so.

"'Tain't what I've been used to, as was always brought up respectable, and have done my duty to the children. And there's the doctor's bill--I s'pose he won't come to see Becky no more till that's paid--and there she is on her back a cripple, as you may call it, for life p'r'aps. And what is it you mean to turn to, now you've lost a good place?"

As long as there was a mouthful of his supper left, Tuvvy preserved a strict silence; but when his plate was empty, he pushed it away, and said grimly, "Gaffer's goin' to let me stop on."

"Stop on!" repeated Mrs Tuvvy. She stopped short in her progress across the kitchen, and let the empty plate she was carrying fall helplessly at her side. "Stop on!" she repeated.

"Ain't I said so?" answered Tuvvy, pressing down the tobacco in his pipe with his thumb.

Mrs Tuvvy seemed incapable of further speech, and stood gazing at her husband with her mouth partly open. It was Becky who exclaimed, with a faint colour of excitement in her cheek, "Oh father, what made him?"

"Do tell us, father," added Dan, touching him gently on the arm.

Tuvvy looked round at the boy's earnest face, and then down at the table, and began to draw figures on it with the stem of his pipe. Mrs Tuvvy hovered a little nearer, and Becky sat upright on her couch, with eagerness in her eyes as her father began to speak.

"It was along of a little gentleman, Dennis Chester his name is, who used to come and see me work. He asked the gaffer, and gaffer said `No.' So then he says, `Will you let him stop,' says he, `if the others are agreeable?' and to that the gaffer says neither yes nor no. But this morning he sends for me, and `Tuvvy,' he says, `I've had a Round Robin about you.' `And what sort of a bird is that, master?' says I. `'Tain't a bird at all,' he says, `it's this,' and then he showed it me."

"What ever was it?" asked Dan, as his father paused.

Tuvvy made a large circle in the air with the stem of his pipe.

"'Twas a round drawed like that on a bit of card, and inside of it was wrote as follers: `We which have signed our names, ask Mr Solace to keep Mr Tuvvy in his service.' All the men's names was round the outside, and the little gentleman's name as well."

"What did Mr Solace say?" asked Dan.

"He said, `You ain't deserved it, Tuvvy.'"

"No more yer 'ave," said Mrs Tuvvy, regaining her speech.

"But," continued her husband, "the gaffer went on to say that, along of Master Chester, who'd taken such a lot of trouble, he'd give me another chance. So that's all about it."

"And in all my born days," broke out Mrs Tuvvy, "I never heard of anything so singuller. Whatever made Master Chester take such a fancy to _you_, I wonder?"

"So I'm to stop on," continued Tuvvy, putting his pipe in his mouth, and turning his back on his wife.

"And I hope," said poor Mrs Tuvvy, beginning to cry a little from the relief of the good news, "I _do_ hope, Benjamin, as it'll be a lesson as you'll take to 'art, and keep away from the drink; and if ever a man had reason to keep steady, you 'ave, with Dan growin' up, and Becky's doctor's bill to pay, and--" Mrs Tuvvy did not speak angrily, or raise her voice above a soft complaining drawl; but it seemed to have a disturbing effect upon her husband, who, when she reached this point, sprang up and flung himself towards the door.

"Look, father," said Becky's childish voice from her corner. "See here what Dan's brought me!"

"Filling the house with cats and dogs and rubbish," mourned Mrs Tuvvy, joining the remark to her interrupted sentence.

"We ain't got no dogs, anyhow, mother," said Dan, as his father turned from the door and went up to Becky's side; "a morsel of a kitten won't eat much. She'll have a bit of my supper till she's older, and then she'll catch mice and get her own living."


CHAPTER EIGHT.

BECKY.

"It seems as if it had brought luck, don't it?" said Becky.

She was lying on her hard little sofa, with her hands clasped behind her head, and her eyes fixed on the grey kitten, who was playing all sorts of pranks in a spot of sunlight it had found on the floor. There was a smile on her thin face as she watched the little