“Perhaps, sir, you are Mr. Crawley?” he said, in a good-humoured, cheery voice. He was a good-humoured, cheery-looking man, about fifty years of age, with grizzled hair and sunburnt face, and large whiskers. Nobody would have taken him to be a partner in any of those great houses of which we have read in history—the Quirk, Gammon and Snaps of the profession, or the Dodson and Foggs, who are immortal.
“That is my name, sir,” said Mr. Crawley, taking off his hat and bowing low, “and I am here by appointment to meet Mr. Toogood, the solicitor, whose name I see affixed upon the doorpost.”
“I am Mr. Toogood, the solicitor, and I hope I see you quite well, Mr. Crawley.” Then the attorney shook hands with the clergyman and preceded him upstairs to the front room on the first floor. “Here we are, Mr. Crawley, and pray take a chair. I wish you could have made it convenient to come and see us at home. We are rather long, as my wife says—long in family, she means, and therefore are not very well off for spare beds—”
“Oh, sir.”
“I’ve twelve of ’em living, Mr. Crawley—from eighteen years, the eldest—a girl, down to eighteen months the youngest—a boy, and they go in and out, boy and girl, boy and girl, like the cogs of a wheel. They ain’t such far away distant cousins from your own young ones—only first, once, as we call it.”
“I am aware that there is a family tie, or I should not have ventured to trouble you.”
“Blood is thicker than water; isn’t it? I often say that. I heard of one of your girls only yesterday. She is staying somewhere down in the country, not far from where my sister lives—Mrs. Eames, the widow of poor John Eames, who never did any good in this world. I daresay you’ve heard of her?”
“The name is familiar to me, Mr. Toogood.”
“Of course it is. I’ve a nephew down there just now, and he saw your girl the other day;—very highly he spoke of her too. Let me see;—how many is it you have?”
“Three living, Mr. Toogood.”
“I’ve just four times three;—that’s the difference. But I comfort myself with the text about the quiver you know; and I tell them that when they’ve eat up all the butter, they’ll have to take their bread dry.”
“I trust the young people take your teaching in a proper spirit.”
“I don’t know much about spirit. There’s spirit enough. My second girl, Lucy, told me that if I came home today without tickets for the pantomime I shouldn’t have any dinner allowed me. That’s the way they treat me. But we understand each other at home. We’re all pretty good friends there, thank God. And there isn’t a sick chick among the boiling.”
“You have many mercies for which you should indeed be thankful,” said Mr. Crawley, gravely.
“Yes, yes, yes; that’s true. I think of that sometimes, though perhaps not so much as I ought to do. But the best way to be thankful is to use the goods the gods provide you. ‘The lovely Thais sits beside you. Take the goods the gods provide you.’ I often say that to my wife, till the children have got to calling her Thais. The children have it pretty much their own way with us, Mr. Crawley.”
By this time Mr. Crawley was almost beside himself, and was altogether at a loss how to bring in the matter on which he wished to speak. He had expected to find a man who in the hurry of London business might perhaps just manage to spare him five minutes—who would grapple instantly with the subject that was to be discussed between them, would speak to him half-a-dozen hard words of wisdom, and would then dismiss him and turn on the instant to other matters of important business;—but here was an easy familiar fellow, who seemed to have nothing on earth to do, and who at this first meeting had taken advantage of a distant family connection to tell him everything about the affairs of his own household. And then how peculiar were the domestic traits which he told! What was Mr. Crawley to say to a man who had taught his own children to call their mother Thais? Of Thais Mr. Crawley did know something, and he forgot to remember that perhaps Mr. Toogood knew less. He felt it, however, to be very difficult to submit the details of his case to a gentleman who talked in such a strain about his own wife and children.
But something must be done. Mr. Crawley, in his present frame of mind, could not sit and talk about Thais all day. “Sir,” he said, “the picture of your home is very pleasant, and I presume that plenty abounds there.”
“Well, you know, pretty toll-loll for that. With twelve of ’em, Mr. Crawley, I needn’t tell you they are not all going to have castles and parks of their own, unless they can get ’em off their own bats. But I pay upwards of a hundred a year each for my eldest three boys’ schooling, and I’ve been paying eighty for the girls. Put that and that together and see what it comes to. Educate, educate, educate; that’s my word.”
“No better word can be spoken, sir.”
“I don’t think there’s a girl in Tavistock Square that can beat Polly—she’s the eldest, called after her mother, you know;—that can beat her at the piano. And Lucy has read Lord Byron and Tom Moore all through, every word of ’em. By Jove, I believe she knows most of Tom Moore by
