she could not really intend to prosecute the suit, and told us to mind our own business when we hinted that the law was an expensive amusement. “We, Sir,” she said, “will have the amusement, and you will have to pay the bill.” When we left her she was indignant, defiant, and self-confident.
And what will the reader suppose was the end of all this? The whole truth has been told as accurately as we can tell it. As far as we know our own business we were not wrong in any single step we took. Our treatment of Mrs. Brumby was courteous, customary, and conciliatory. We had treated her with more consideration than we had perhaps ever before shown to an unknown, would-be contributor. She had been admitted thrice to our presence. We had read at any rate enough of her trash to be sure of its nature. On the other hand, we had been insulted, and our clerk had had his ears boxed. What should have been the result? We will tell the reader what was the result. Mr. X. paid £10 to Messrs. Badger and Blister on behalf of the lieutenant; and we, under Mr. Sharp’s advice, wrote a letter to Mrs. Brumby in which we expressed deep sorrow for our clerk’s misconduct, and our own regret that we should have delayed—“the perusal of her manuscript.” We could not bring ourselves to write the words ourselves with our own fingers, but signed the document which Mr. Sharp put before us. Mr. Sharp had declared to Messrs. X., Y., Z., that unless some such arrangement were made, he thought that we should be cast for a much greater sum before a jury. For one whole morning in Paternoster Row we resisted this infamous tax, not only on our patience, but—as we then felt it—on our honour. We thought that our very old friend Mr. X. should have stood to us more firmly, and not have demanded from us a task that was so peculiarly repugnant to our feelings. “And it is peculiarly repugnant to my feelings to pay £10 for nothing,” said Mr. X., who was not, we think, without some little feeling of revenge against us; “but I prefer that to a lawsuit.” And then he argued that the simple act on our part of signing such a letter as that presented to us could cost us no trouble, and ought to occasion us no sorrow. “What can come of it? Who’ll know it?” said Mr. X. “We’ve got to pay £10, and that we shall feel.” It came to that at last, that we were constrained to sign the letter—and did sign it. It did us no harm, and can have done Mrs. Brumby no good but the moment in which we signed it was perhaps the bitterest we ever knew.
That in such a transaction Mrs. Brumby should have been so thoroughly successful, and that we should have been so shamefully degraded, has always appeared to us to be an injury too deep to remain unredressed forever. Can such wrongs be, and the heavens not fall! Our greatest comfort has been in the reflection that neither the lieutenant nor his wife ever saw a shilling of the £10. That, doubtless, never went beyond Badger and Blister.
Christmas Day at Kirkby Cottage
I
What Maurice Archer Said About Christmas
“After all, Christmas is a bore!”
“Even though you should think so, Mr. Archer, pray do not say so here.”
“But it is.”
“I am very sorry that you should feel like that; but pray do not say anything so very horrible.”
“Why not? and why is it horrible? You know very well what I mean.”
“I do not want to know what you mean; and it would make papa very unhappy if he were to hear you.”
“A great deal of beef is roasted, and a great deal of pudding is boiled, and then people try to be jolly by eating more than usual. The consequence is, they get very sleepy, and want to go to bed an hour before the proper time. That’s Christmas.”
He who made this speech was a young man about twenty-three years old, and the other personage in the dialogue was a young lady, who might be, perhaps, three years his junior. The “papa” to whom the lady had alluded was the Rev. John Lownd, parson of Kirkby Cliffe, in Craven, and the scene was the parsonage library, as pleasant a little room as you would wish to see, in which the young man who thought Christmas to be a bore was at present sitting over the fire, in the parson’s armchair, with a novel in his hand, which he had been reading till he was interrupted by the parson’s daughter. It was nearly time for him to dress for dinner, and the young lady was already dressed. She had entered the room on the pretext of looking for some book or paper, but perhaps her main object may have been to ask for some assistance from Maurice Archer in the work of decorating the parish church. The necessary ivy and holly branches had been collected, and the work was to be performed on the morrow. The day following would be Christmas Day. It must be acknowledged, that Mr. Archer had not accepted the proposition made to him very graciously.
Maurice Archer was a young man as to whose future career in life many of his elder friends shook their heads and expressed much fear. It was not that his conduct was dangerously bad, or that he spent his money too fast, but that he was abominably conceited, so said these elder friends; and then there was the unfortunate fact of his being altogether beyond control. He had neither father, nor mother, nor uncle, nor guardian. He was the owner of a small property not far from Kirkby Cliffe, which gave him an income of
