Tink, tink, tink. The locksmith paused at last, and wiped his brow. The silence roused the cat, who, jumping softly down, crept to the door, and watched with tiger eyes a birdcage in an opposite window. Gabriel lifted Toby to his mouth, and took a hearty draught.
Then, as he stood upright, with his head flung back, and his portly chest thrown out, you would have seen that Gabriel’s lower man was clothed in military gear. Glancing at the wall beyond, there might have been espied, hanging on their several pegs, a cap and feather, broadsword, sash, and coat of scarlet; which any man learned in such matters would have known from their make and pattern to be the uniform of a serjeant in the Royal East London Volunteers.
As the locksmith put his mug down, empty, on the bench whence it had smiled on him before, he glanced at these articles with a laughing eye, and looking at them with his head a little on one side, as though he would get them all into a focus, said, leaning on his hammer:
“Time was, now, I remember, when I was like to run mad with the desire to wear a coat of that colour. If anyone (except my father) had called me a fool for my pains, how I should have fired and fumed! But what a fool I must have been, sure‑ly!”
“Ah!” sighed Mrs. Varden, who had entered unobserved. “A fool indeed. A man at your time of life, Varden, should know better now.”
“Why, what a ridiculous woman you are, Martha,” said the locksmith, turning round with a smile.
“Certainly,” replied Mrs. V. with great demureness. “Of course I am. I know that, Varden. Thank you.”
“I mean—” began the locksmith.
“Yes,” said his wife, “I know what you mean. You speak quite plain enough to be understood, Varden. It’s very kind of you to adapt yourself to my capacity, I am sure.”
“Tut, tut, Martha,” rejoined the locksmith; “don’t take offence at nothing. I mean, how strange it is of you to run down volunteering, when it’s done to defend you and all the other women, and our own fireside and everybody else’s, in case of need.”
“It’s unchristian,” cried Mrs. Varden, shaking her head.
“Unchristian!” said the locksmith. “Why, what the devil—”
Mrs. Varden looked at the ceiling, as in expectation that the consequence of this profanity would be the immediate descent of the four-post bedstead on the second floor, together with the best sitting-room on the first; but no visible judgment occurring, she heaved a deep sigh, and begged her husband, in a tone of resignation, to go on, and by all means to blaspheme as much as possible, because he knew she liked it.
The locksmith did for a moment seem disposed to gratify her, but he gave a great gulp, and mildly rejoined:
“I was going to say, what on earth do you call it unchristian for? Which would be most unchristian, Martha—to sit quietly down and let our houses be sacked by a foreign army, or to turn out like men and drive ’em off? Shouldn’t I be a nice sort of a Christian, if I crept into a corner of my own chimney and looked on while a parcel of whiskered savages bore off Dolly—or you?”
When he said “or you,” Mrs. Varden, despite herself, relaxed into a smile. There was something complimentary in the idea. “In such a state of things as that, indeed—” she simpered.
“As that!” repeated the locksmith. “Well, that would be the state of things directly. Even Miggs would go. Some black tambourine-player, with a great turban on, would be bearing her off, and, unless the tambourine-player was proof against kicking and scratching, it’s my belief he’d have the worst of it. Ha ha ha! I’d forgive the tambourine-player. I wouldn’t have him interfered with on any account, poor fellow.” And here the locksmith laughed again so heartily, that tears came into his eyes—much to Mrs. Varden’s indignation, who thought the capture of so sound a Protestant and estimable a private character as Miggs by a pagan negro, a circumstance too shocking and awful for contemplation.
The picture Gabriel had drawn, indeed, threatened serious consequences, and would indubitably have led to them, but luckily at that moment a light footstep crossed the threshold, and Dolly, running in, threw her arms round her old father’s neck and hugged him tight.
“Here she is at last!” cried Gabriel. “And how well you look, Doll, and how late you are, my darling!”
How well she looked? Well? Why, if he had exhausted every laudatory adjective in the dictionary, it wouldn’t have been praise enough. When and where was there ever such a plump, roguish, comely, bright-eyed, enticing, bewitching, captivating, maddening little puss in all this world, as Dolly! What was the Dolly of five years ago, to the Dolly of that day! How many coachmakers, saddlers, cabinetmakers, and professors of other useful arts, had deserted their fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, and, most of all, their cousins, for the love of her! How many unknown gentlemen—supposed to be of mighty fortunes, if not titles—had waited round the corner after dark, and tempted Miggs the incorruptible, with golden guineas, to deliver offers of marriage folded up in love-letters! How many disconsolate fathers and substantial tradesmen had waited on the locksmith for the same purpose, with dismal tales of how their sons had lost their appetites, and taken to shut themselves up in dark bedrooms, and wandering in desolate suburbs with pale faces, and all because of Dolly Varden’s loveliness and cruelty! How many young men, in all previous times of unprecedented steadiness, had turned suddenly wild and wicked for the same reason, and, in an ecstasy of unrequited love, taken to wrench off doorknockers, and invert the boxes of rheumatic watchmen! How had she recruited the king’s service, both by sea and
