“Well then,” said the small servant, nodding; “when I was near the office keyhole—as you see me through, you know—I heard somebody saying that she lived here, and was the lady whose house you lodged at, and that you was took very bad, and wouldn’t nobody come and take care of you. Mr. Brass, he says, ‘It’s no business of mine;’ and Miss Sally, she says, ‘He’s a funny chap, but it’s no business of mine;’ and the lady went away, and slammed the door to, when she went out, I can tell you. So I run away that night, and come here, and told ’em you was my brother, and they believed me, and I’ve been here ever since.”
“This poor little Marchioness has been wearing herself to death!” cried Dick.
“No I haven’t,” she returned, “not a bit of it. Don’t you mind about me. I like sitting up, and I’ve often had a sleep, bless you, in one of them chairs. But if you could have seen how you tried to jump out o’ winder, and if you could have heard how you used to keep on singing and making speeches, you wouldn’t have believed it—I’m so glad you’re better, Mr. Liverer.”
“Liverer indeed!” said Dick thoughtfully. “It’s well I am a liverer. I strongly suspect I should have died, Marchioness, but for you.”
At this point, Mr. Swiveller took the small servant’s hand in his again, and being, as we have seen, but poorly, might in struggling to express his thanks have made his eyes as red as hers, but that she quickly changed the theme by making him lie down, and urging him to keep very quiet.
“The doctor,” she told him, “said you was to be kept quite still, and there was to be no noise nor nothing. Now, take a rest, and then we’ll talk again. I’ll sit by you, you know. If you shut your eyes, perhaps you’ll go to sleep. You’ll be all the better for it, if you do.”
The Marchioness, in saying these words, brought a little table to the bedside, took her seat at it, and began to work away at the concoction of some cooling drink, with the address of a score of chemists. Richard Swiveller, being indeed fatigued, fell into a slumber, and waking in about half an hour, inquired what time it was.
“Just gone half after six,” replied his small friend, helping him to sit up again.
“Marchioness,” said Richard, passing his hand over his forehead and turning suddenly round, as though the subject but that moment flashed upon him, “what has become of Kit?”
He had been sentenced to transportation for a great many years, she said.
“Has he gone?” asked Dick—“his mother—how is she—what has become of her?”
His nurse shook her head, and answered that she knew nothing about them. “But, if I thought,” said she, very slowly, “that you’d keep quiet, and not put yourself into another fever, I could tell you—but I won’t now.”
“Yes, do,” said Dick. “It will amuse me.”
“Oh! would it though?” rejoined the small servant, with a horrified look. “I know better than that. Wait till you’re better and then I’ll tell you.”
Dick looked very earnestly at his little friend: and his eyes being large and hollow from illness assisted the expression so much, that she was quite frightened, and besought him not to think any more about it. What had already fallen from her, however, had not only piqued his curiosity, but seriously alarmed him, wherefore he urged her to tell him the worst at once.
“Oh! there’s no worst in it,” said the small servant. “It hasn’t anything to do with you.”
“Has it anything to do with—is it anything you heard through chinks or keyholes—and that you were not intended to hear?” asked Dick, in a breathless state.
“Yes,” replied the small servant.
“In—in Bevis Marks?” pursued Dick hastily. “Conversations between Brass and Sally?”
“Yes,” cried the small servant again.
Richard Swiviller thrust his lank arm out of bed, and griping her by the wrist and drawing her close to him, bade her out with it, and freely too, or he would not answer for the consequences; being wholly unable to endure that state of excitement and expectation. She, seeing that he was greatly agitated, and that the effects of postponing her revelation might be much more injurious than any that were likely to ensue from its being made at once, promised compliance, on condition that the patient kept himself perfectly quiet, and abstained from starting up or tossing about.
“But if you begin to do that,” said the small servant, “I’ll leave off. And so I tell you.”
“You can’t leave off till you have gone on,” said Dick. “And do go on, there’s a darling. Speak, sister, speak. Pretty Polly say—Oh tell me when, and tell me where, pray Marchioness, I beseech you.”
Unable to resist these fervent adjurations, which Richard Swiveller poured out as passionately as if they had been of the most solemn and tremendous nature, his companion spoke thus:
“Well! Before I run away, I used to sleep in the kitchen—where we played cards, you know. Miss Sally used to keep the key of the kitchen door in her pocket, and she always come down at night to take away the candle and rake out the fire. When she had done that, she left me to go to bed in the dark, locked the door on the outside, put the key in her pocket again, and kept me locked up till she come down in the morning—very early I can tell you—and let me out. I was terrible afraid of being kept like this, because if there was a fire, I thought they might forget me and only take care of themselves you know. So whenever I see an old rusty key anywhere, I picked it up and tried if it would fit the door, and at last I found in the dust cellar, a key that did fit it.”
Here Mr. Swiveller made a violent demonstration with his legs.
