Short Fiction

it; but there was a melancholy sameness about it, and an apparent absence of object, which would have been very depressing to our own spirits. It led nowhither, and had been erected solely with the view of accommodating decent people with small incomes. We at once priced the houses in our mind at ten and sixpence a week, and believed them to be inhabited by pianoforte-tuners, coach-builders, firemen, and public-office messengers. There was no squalor about the place, but it was melancholy, light-coloured and depressive. We made our way to No. 14, and finding the door open entered the passage. “Come in,” cried the voice of our friend; and in the little front parlour we found him seated with a child on each knee, while a winning little girl of about twelve was sitting in a corner of the room, mending her stockings. The room itself and the appearance of all around us were the very opposite of what we had expected. Everything no doubt was plain⁠—was, in a certain sense, poor; but nothing was poverty-stricken. The children were decently clothed and apparently were well fed. Mr. Molloy himself, when he saw me, had that twinkle of humour in his eye which I had before observed, and seemed to be afflicted at the moment with none of that extreme agony which he had exhibited more than once in our presence. “Please, Sir, mother aint in from the hospital⁠—not yet,” said the little girl, rising up from her chair; “but it’s past seven and she won’t be long.” This announcement created some surprise. We had indeed heard that of Mrs. Molloy which might make it very expedient that she should seek the accommodation of an hospital, but we could not understand that in such circumstances she should be able to come home regularly at seven o’clock in the evening. Then there was a twinkle in our friend Molloy’s eye which almost made us think for the moment that we had been made the subject of some, hitherto unintelligible, hoax. And yet there had been the man at the baths in Jermyn Street, and the two manuscripts had been in our hands, and the man had wept as no man weeps for a joke. “You would come, you know,” said Mr. Molloy, who had now put down the two bairns and had risen from his seat to greet us.

“We are glad to see you so comfortable,” we replied.

“Father is quite comfortable, Sir,” said the little girl. We looked into Mr. Molloy’s face and saw nothing but the twinkle in the eye. We had certainly been “done” by the most elaborate hoax that had ever been perpetrated. We did not regret the sovereign so much as those outpourings from the butter-boat of benevolence of which we felt that we had been cheated. “Here’s mother,” said the girl running to the door. Mr. Molloy stood grinning in the middle of the room with the youngest child again in his arms. He did not seem to be in the least ashamed of what he had done, and even at that moment conveyed to us more of liking for his affection for the little boy than of anger for the abominable prank that he had played us.

That he had lied throughout was evident as soon as we saw Mrs. Molloy. Whatever ailment might have made it necessary that she should visit the hospital, it was not one which could interfere at all with her power of going and returning. She was a strong hearty-looking woman of about forty, with that mixture in her face of practical kindness with severity in details which we often see in strong-minded women who are forced to take upon themselves the management and government of those around them. She courtesied, and took off her bonnet and shawl, and put a bottle into a cupboard, as she addressed us. “Mick said as you was coming, Sir, and I’m sure we is glad to see you;⁠—only sorry for the trouble, Sir.”

We were so completely in the dark that we hardly knew how to be civil to her⁠—hardly knew whether we ought to be civil to her or not. “We don’t quite understand why we’ve been brought here,” we said, endeavouring to maintain, at any rate a tone of good-humour. He was still embracing the little boy, but there had now come a gleam of fun across his whole countenance, and he seemed to be almost shaking his sides with laughter. “Your husband represented himself as being in distress,” we said gravely. We were restrained by a certain delicacy from informing the woman of the kind of distress to which Mr. Molloy had especially alluded⁠—most falsely.

“Lord love you, Sir,” said the woman, “just step in here.” Then she led us into a little back room in which there was a bedstead, and an old writing-desk or escritoire, covered with papers. Her story was soon told. Her husband was a madman.

“Mad!” we said, preparing for escape from what might be to us most serious peril.

“He wouldn’t hurt a mouse,” said Mrs. Molloy. “As for the children, he’s that good to them, there aint a young woman in all London that’d be better at handling ’em.” Then we heard her story, in which it appeared to us that downright affection for the man was the predominant characteristic. She herself was, as she told us, head day nurse at Saint Patrick’s Hospital, going there every morning at eight, and remaining till six or seven. For these services she received thirty shillings a week and her board, and she spoke of herself and her husband as being altogether removed from pecuniary distress. Indeed, while the money part of the question was being discussed, she opened a little drawer in the desk and handed us back our sovereign, almost without an observation. Molloy himself had “come of decent people.” On this point she insisted very often, and gave us to understand that he was at this moment in receipt of