Post Haste by R. M. Ballantyne (mystery books to read .txt) 📕

A bosom friend is a pleasant possession. Miss Lillycrop had one. She was a strong-minded woman. We do not say this to her disparagement. A strong mind is as admirable in woman as in man. It is only when woman indicates the strength of her mind by unfeminine self-assertion that we shrink from her in alarm. Miss Lillycrop’s bosom friend was a warm-hearted, charitable, generous, hard-featured, square-shouldered, deep-chested, large-boned lady of middle age and quick temper. She was also in what is styled comfortable circumstances, and dwelt in a pretty suburban cottage. Her name was Maria Stivergill.

“Come with me, child,” said Miss Stivergill to Miss Lillycrop one day, “and spend a week at The Rosebud.”

It must not be supposed that the good lady had given this romantic name to her cottage. No, when Miss Stivergill bought it, she found the name on the two gate-posts; found that all the tradespeople in the vicinity had imbibed it, and therefore quietly accepted it, as she did all the ordinary affairs of life.

“Impossible, dear Maria,” said her friend, with a perplexed look, “I have so many engagements, at least so many duties, that—”

“Pooh!” interrupted Miss Stivergill. “Put ’em off. Fulfil ’em when you come back. At all events,” she continued, seeing that Miss Lillycrop still hesitated, “come for a night or two.”

“But—”

“Come now, Lilly”—thus she styled her friend—“but give me no buts. You know that you’ve no good reason for refusing.”

“Indeed I have,” pleaded Miss Lillycrop; “my little servant—”

“What, the infant who opened the door to me?”

“Yes, Tottie Bones; she is obliged to stay at nights with me just now, owing to her mother, poor thing, being under the necessity of shutting up her house while she goes to look after a drunken husband, who has forsaken her.”

“Hah!” exclaimed Miss Stivergill, giving a nervous pull at her left glove, which produced a wide rent between the wrist and the thumb. “I wonder why women marry!”

“Don’t you think it’s a sort of—of—unavoidable necessity?” suggested Miss Lillycrop, with a faint smile.

“Not at all, my dear, not at all. I have avoided it. So have you. If I had my way, I’d put a stop to marriage altogether, and bring this miserable world to an abrupt close.—But little Bones is no difficulty: we’ll take her along with us.”

“But, dear Maria—”

“Well, what further objections, Lilly?”

“Tottie has charge of a baby, and—”

“What! one baby in charge of another?”

“Indeed it is too true; and, you know, you couldn’t stand a baby.”

“Couldn’t I?” said Miss Stivergill sharply. “How d’you know that? Let me see it.”

Tottie being summoned with the baby, entered the room staggering with the rotund mountain of good-natured self-will entirely concealing her person, with exception of her feet and the pretty little coal-dusted arms with which she clasped it to her heaving breast.

“Ha! I suppose little Bones is behind it,” said Miss Stivergill.—“Set the baby down, child, and let me see you.”

Tottie obeyed. The baby, true to his principles, refused to stand. He sat down and stared at those around him in jovial defiance.

“What is your age, little Bones?”

“Just turned six, m’m,” replied Tottie, with a courtesy, which Miss Lillycrop had taught her with great pains.

“You’re sixty-six, at the least, compared with male creatures of the same age,” observed her interrogator.

“Thank you, m’m,” replied Tottie, with another dip.

“Have you a bonnet and shawl, little Bones?”

Tottie, in a state of considerable surprise, replied that she had.

“Go and put ’em on then, and get that thing also ready to go out.”

Miss Stivergill pointed to the baby contemptuously, as it were, with her nose.

“He’s a very good bybie”—so the child pronounced it—“on’y rather self-willed at times, m’m,” said Tottie, going through the athletic feat of lifting her charge.

“Just so. True to your woman’s nature. Always ready to apologise for the male monster that tyrannises over you. I suppose, now, you’d say that your drunken father was a good man?”

Miss Stivergill repented of the speech instantly on seeing the tears start into Tottie’s large eyes as she replied quickly—“Indeed I would, m’m. Oh! you’ve no notion ’ow kind father is w’en ’e’s not in liquor.”

“There, there. Of course he is. I didn’t mean to say he wasn’t, little Bones. It’s a curious fact that many drun—, I mean people given to drink, are kind and amiable. It’s a disease. Go now, and get your things on, and do you likewise, Lilly. My cab is at the door. Be quick.”

In a few minutes the whole party descended to the street. Miss Stivergill locked the door with her own hand, and put the key in her pocket. As she turned round, Tottie’s tawdry bonnet had fallen off in her efforts to raise the baby towards the outstretched hands of her mistress, while the cabman stood looking on with amiable interest.

Catching up the bonnet, Miss Stivergill placed it on the child’s head, back to the front, twisted the strings round her head and face—anyhow—lifted her and her charge into the cab, and followed them.

“Where to, ma’am?” said the amiable cabman.

“Charing Cross,—you idiot.”

“Yes, ma’am,” replied the man, with a broad grin, touching his hat and bestowing a wink on a passing policeman as he mounted the box.

On their way to the station the good lady put out her head and shouted “Stop!”

The maligned man obeyed.

“Stay here, Lilly, with the baby.—Jump out, little Bones. Come with me.”

She took the child’s bonnet off and flung it under the cab, then grasped Tottie’s hand and led her into a shop.

“A hat,” demanded the lady of the shopwoman.

“What kind of hat, ma’am?”

“Any kind,” replied Miss Stivergill, “suitable for this child—only see that it’s not a doll’s hat. Let it fit her.”

The shopwoman produced a head-dress, which Tottie afterwards described as a billycock ’at with a feather in it. The purchaser paid for it, thrust it firmly on the child’s head, and returned to the cab.

A few minutes by rail conveyed them to a charmingly country-like suburb, with neat villas dotting the landscape, and a few picturesque old red brick cottages scattered about here and there.

Such a drive to such a scene, reader, may seem very commonplace to you, but what tongue can tell, or pen describe, what it was to Tottie Bones? That pretty little human flower had been born in the heart of London—in one of the dirtiest and most unsavoury parts of that heart. Being the child of a dissolute man and a hard-working woman, who could not afford to go out excursioning, she had never seen a green field in her life. She had never seen the Thames, or the Parks. There are many such unfortunates in the vast city. Of flowers—with the exception of cauliflowers—she knew nothing, save from what little she saw of them in broken pots in the dirty windows of her poor neighbourhood, and on the barrows and baskets of the people who hawked them about the city. There was a legend among the neighbours of Archangel Court that once upon a time—in some remote period of antiquity—a sunbeam had been in the habit of overtopping the forest of chimneys and penetrating the court below in the middle of each summer, but a large brick warehouse had been erected somewhere to the southward, and had effectually cut off the supply, so that sunshine was known to the very juvenile population only through the reflecting power of roofs and chimney-cans and gable windows. In regard to scents, it need scarcely be said that Tottie had had considerable experience of that class which it is impossible to term sweet.

Judge then, if you can, what must have been the feelings of this little town-sparrow when she suddenly rushed, at the rate of forty miles an hour, into the heavenly influences of fields and flowers, hedgerows, and trees, farm-yards and village spires, horse-ponds, country inns, sheep, cattle, hay-carts, piggeries, and poultry.

Her eyes, always large and liquid, became great crystal globes of astonishment, as, forgetful of herself, and almost of baby, she sat with parted lips and heaving breast, gazing in rapt ecstasy from the carriage window.

Miss Stivergill and Miss Lillycrop, being sympathetic souls, gazed with almost equal interest on the child’s animated face.

“She only wants wings and washing to make her an angel,” whispered the former to the latter.

But if the sights she saw on the journey inflated Tottie’s soul with joy, the glories of Rosebud Cottage almost exploded her. It was a marvellous cottage. Rosebushes surrounded it, ivy smothered it, leaving just enough of room for the windows to peep out, and a few of the old red bricks to show in harmony with the green. Creepers in great variety embraced it, and a picturesque clump of trees on a knoll behind sheltered it from the east wind. There was a farm-yard, which did not belong to itself, but was so close to it that a stranger could scarcely have told