“That he didn’t!” cried Merry, most decisively.
“A stingy old dog he is,” said Jonas. “Well?”
“Griffin!” cried Miss Mercy, in counterfeit amazement; “what are you doing, Griffin?”
“Only giving you a squeeze,” said the discomfited Jonas. “There’s no harm in that, I suppose?”
“But there is great deal of harm in it, if I don’t consider it agreeable,” returned his cousin. “Do go along, will you? You make me so hot!”
Mr. Jonas withdrew his arm, and for a moment looked at her more like a murderer than a lover. But he cleared his brow by degrees, and broke silence with:
“I say, Mel!”
“What do you say, you vulgar thing, you low savage?” cried his fair betrothed.
“When is it to be? I can’t afford to go on dawdling about here half my life, I needn’t tell you, and Pecksniff says that father’s being so lately dead makes very little odds; for we can be married as quiet as we please down here, and my being lonely is a good reason to the neighbours for taking a wife home so soon, especially one that he knew. As to crossbones (my uncle, I mean), he’s sure not to put a spoke in the wheel, whatever we settle on, for he told Pecksniff only this morning, that if you liked it he’d nothing at all to say. So, Mel,” said Jonas, venturing on another squeeze; “when shall it be?”
“Upon my word!” cried Merry.
“Upon my soul, if you like,” said Jonas. “What do you say to next week, now?”
“To next week! If you had said next quarter, I should have wondered at your impudence.”
“But I didn’t say next quarter,” retorted Jonas. “I said next week.”
“Then, Griffin,” cried Miss Merry, pushing him off, and rising. “I say no! not next week. It shan’t be till I choose, and I may not choose it to be for months. There!”
He glanced up at her from the ground, almost as darkly as he had looked at Tom Pinch; but held his peace.
“No fright of a Griffin with a patch over his eye shall dictate to me or have a voice in the matter,” said Merry. “There!”
Still Mr. Jonas held his peace.
“If it’s next month, that shall be the very earliest; but I won’t say when it shall be till tomorrow; and if you don’t like that, it shall never be at all,” said Merry; “and if you follow me about and won’t leave me alone, it shall never be at all. There! And if you don’t do everything I order you to do, it shall never be at all. So don’t follow me. There, Griffin!”
And with that, she skipped away, among the trees.
“Ecod, my lady!” said Jonas, looking after her, and biting a piece of straw, almost to powder; “you’ll catch it for this, when you are married. It’s all very well now—it keeps one on, somehow, and you know it—but I’ll pay you off scot and lot by-and-by. This is a plaguey dull sort of a place for a man to be sitting by himself in. I never could abide a mouldy old churchyard.”
As he turned into the avenue himself, Miss Merry, who was far ahead, happened to look back.
“Ah!” said Jonas, with a sullen smile, and a nod that was not addressed to her. “Make the most of it while it lasts. Get in your hay while the sun shines. Take your own way as long as it’s in your power, my lady!”
XXV
Is in part professional; and furnishes the reader with some valuable hints in relation to the management of a sick chamber.
Mr. Mould was surrounded by his household gods. He was enjoying the sweets of domestic repose, and gazing on them with a calm delight. The day being sultry, and the window open, the legs of Mr. Mould were on the window-seat, and his back reclined against the shutter. Over his shining head a handkerchief was drawn, to guard his baldness from the flies. The room was fragrant with the smell of punch, a tumbler of which grateful compound stood upon a small round table, convenient to the hand of Mr. Mould; so deftly mixed that as his eye looked down into the cool transparent drink, another eye, peering brightly from behind the crisp lemon-peel, looked up at him, and twinkled like a star.
Deep in the City, and within the ward of Cheap, stood Mr. Mould’s establishment. His Harem, or, in other words, the common sitting room of Mrs. Mould and family, was at the back, over the little countinghouse behind the shop; abutting on a churchyard small and shady. In this domestic chamber Mr. Mould now sat; gazing, a placid man, upon his punch and home. If, for a moment at a time, he sought a wider prospect, whence he might return with freshened zest to these enjoyments, his moist glance wandered like a sunbeam through a rural screen of scarlet runners, trained on strings before the window, and he looked down, with an artist’s eye, upon the graves.
The partner of his life, and daughters twain, were Mr. Mould’s companions. Plump as any partridge was each Miss Mould, and Mrs. M. was plumper than the two together. So round and chubby were their fair proportions, that they might have been the bodies once belonging to the angels’ faces in the shop below, grown up, with other heads attached to make them mortal. Even their peachy cheeks were puffed out and distended, as though they ought of right to be performing on celestial trumpets. The bodiless cherubs in the shop, who were depicted as constantly blowing those instruments forever and ever without any lungs, played, it is to be presumed, entirely by ear.
Mr. Mould looked lovingly at Mrs. Mould, who sat hard by, and was a helpmate to him in his punch as in all other things. Each seraph daughter, too, enjoyed her share of his regards, and smiled upon him in
