“What a coward you are, ain’t you?” said Polly when replaced.
“Yes, I am rather nervous,” he replied. “Whew! Don’t, Polly! Don’t flourish your spoon, or you’ll go over sideways. Don’t tilt up your legs when you laugh, Polly, or you’ll go over backwards. Whew! Polly, Polly, Polly,” said Barbox Brothers, nearly succumbing to despair, “we are environed with dangers!”
Indeed, he could descry no security from the pitfalls that were yawning for Polly, but in proposing to her, after dinner, to sit upon a low stool. “I will, if you will,” said Polly. So, as peace of mind should go before all, he begged the waiter to wheel aside the table, bring a pack of cards, a couple of footstools, and a screen, and close in Polly and himself before the fire, as it were in a snug room within the room. Then, finest sight of all, was Barbox Brothers on his footstool, with a pint decanter on the rug, contemplating Polly as she built successfully, and growing blue in the face with holding his breath, lest he should blow the house down.
“How you stare, don’t you?” said Polly in a houseless pause.
Detected in the ignoble fact, he felt obliged to admit, apologetically:
“I am afraid I was looking rather hard at you, Polly.”
“Why do you stare?” asked Polly.
“I cannot,” he murmured to himself, “recall why.—I don’t know, Polly.”
“You must be a simpleton to do things and not know why, mustn’t you?” said Polly.
In spite of which reproof, he looked at the child again intently, as she bent her head over her card structure, her rich curls shading her face. “It is impossible,” he thought, “that I can ever have seen this pretty baby before. Can I have dreamed of her? In some sorrowful dream?”
He could make nothing of it. So he went into the building trade as a journeyman under Polly, and they built three stories high, four stories high; even five.
“I say! Who do you think is coming?” asked Polly, rubbing her eyes after tea.
He guessed: “The waiter?”
“No,” said Polly, “the dustman. I am getting sleepy.”
A new embarrassment for Barbox Brothers!
“I don’t think I am going to be fetched to-night,” said Polly. “What do you think?”
He thought not, either. After another quarter of an hour, the dustman not merely impending, but actually arriving, recourse was had to the Constantinopolitan chamber-maid: who cheerily undertook that the child should sleep in a comfortable and wholesome room, which she herself would share.
“And I know you will be careful, won’t you,” said Barbox Brothers, as a new fear dawned upon him, “that she don’t fall out of bed?”
Polly found this so highly entertaining that she was under the necessity of clutching him round the neck with both arms as he sat on his footstool picking up the cards, and rocking him to and fro, with her dimpled chin on his shoulder.
“Oh, what a coward you are, ain’t you?” said Polly. “Do you fall out of bed?”
“N—not generally, Polly.”
“No more do I.”
With that, Polly gave him a reassuring hug or two to keep him going, and then giving that confiding mite of a hand of hers to be swallowed up in the hand of the Constantinopolitan chamber-maid, trotted off, chattering, without a vestige of anxiety.
He looked after her, had the screen removed and the table and chairs replaced, and still looked after her. He paced the room for half an hour. “A most engaging little creature, but it’s not that. A most winning little voice, but it’s not that. That has much to do with it, but there is something more. How can it be that I seem to know this child? What was it she imperfectly recalled to me when I felt her touch in the street, and, looking down at her, saw her looking up at me?”
“Mr. Jackson!”
With a start he turned towards the sound of the subdued voice, and saw his answer standing at the door.
“Oh, Mr. Jackson, do not be severe with me! Speak a word of encouragement to me, I beseech you.”
“You are Polly’s mother.”
“Yes.”
Yes. Polly herself might come to this, one day. As you see what the rose was in its faded leaves; as you see what the summer growth of the woods was in their wintry branches; so Polly might be traced, one day, in a careworn woman like this, with her hair turned grey. Before him were the ashes of a dead fire that had once burned bright. This was the woman he had loved. This was the woman he had lost. Such had been the constancy of his imagination to her, so had Time spared her under its withholding, that now, seeing how roughly the inexorable hand had struck her, his soul was filled with pity and amazement.
He led her to a chair, and stood leaning on a corner of the chimney-piece, with his head resting on his hand, and his face half averted.
“Did you see me in the street, and show me to your child?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Is the little creature, then, a party to deceit?”
“I hope there is no deceit. I said to her, ‘We have lost our way, and I must try to find mine by myself. Go to that gentleman, and tell him you are lost. You shall be fetched by-and-by.’ Perhaps you have not thought how very young she is?”
