“By all means.”
Mr. Tappertit raised himself on tiptoe, applied his lips to Mr. Chester’s ear, drew back his head without saying anything, looked hard at him, applied them to his ear again, again drew back, and finally whispered—“The name is Joseph Willet. Hush! I say no more.”
Having said that much, he beckoned the visitor with a mysterious aspect to follow him to the parlour-door, where he announced him in the voice of a gentleman-usher. “Mr. Chester.”
“And not Mr. Ed’dard, mind,” said Sim, looking into the door again, and adding this by way of postscript in his own person; “it’s his father.”
“But do not let his father,” said Mr. Chester, advancing hat in hand, as he observed the effect of this last explanatory announcement, “do not let his father be any check or restraint on your domestic occupations, Miss Varden.”
“Oh! Now! There! An’t I always a-saying it!” exclaimed Miggs, clapping her hands. “If he an’t been and took Missis for her own daughter. Well, she do look like it, that she do. Only think of that, mim!”
“Is it possible,” said Mr. Chester in his softest tones, “that this is Mrs. Varden! I am amazed. That is not your daughter, Mrs. Varden? No, no. Your sister.”
“My daughter, indeed, sir,” returned Mrs. V., blushing with great juvenility.
“Ah, Mrs. Varden!” cried the visitor. “Ah, ma’am—humanity is indeed a happy lot, when we can repeat ourselves in others, and still be young as they. You must allow me to salute you—the custom of the country, my dear madam—your daughter too.”
Dolly showed some reluctance to perform this ceremony, but was sharply reproved by Mrs. Varden, who insisted on her undergoing it that minute. For pride, she said with great severity, was one of the seven deadly sins, and humility and lowliness of heart were virtues. Wherefore she desired that Dolly would be kissed immediately, on pain of her just displeasure; at the same time giving her to understand that whatever she saw her mother do, she might safely do herself, without being at the trouble of any reasoning or reflection on the subject—which, indeed, was offensive and undutiful, and in direct contravention of the church catechism.
Thus admonished, Dolly complied, though by no means willingly; for there was a broad, bold look of admiration in Mr. Chester’s face, refined and polished though it sought to be, which distressed her very much. As she stood with downcast eyes, not liking to look up and meet his, he gazed upon her with an approving air, and then turned to her mother.
“My friend Gabriel (whose acquaintance I only made this very evening) should be a happy man, Mrs. Varden.”
“Ah!” sighed Mrs. V., shaking her head.
“Ah!” echoed Miggs.
“Is that the case?” said Mr. Chester, compassionately. “Dear me!”
“Master has no intentions, sir,” murmured Miggs as she sidled up to him, “but to be as grateful as his natur will let him, for everythink he owns which it is in his powers to appreciate. But we never, sir”—said Miggs, looking sideways at Mrs. Varden, and interlarding her discourse with a sigh—“we never know the full value of some wines and fig-trees till we lose ’em. So much the worse, sir, for them as has the slighting of ’em on their consciences when they’re gone to be in full blow elsewhere.” And Miss Miggs cast up her eyes to signify where that might be.
As Mrs. Varden distinctly heard, and was intended to hear, all that Miggs said, and as these words appeared to convey in metaphorical terms a presage or foreboding that she would at some early period droop beneath her trials and take an easy flight towards the stars, she immediately began to languish, and taking a volume of the Manual from a neighbouring table, leant her arm upon it as though she were Hope and that her Anchor. Mr. Chester perceiving this, and seeing how the volume was lettered on the back, took it gently from her hand, and turned the fluttering leaves.
“My favourite book, dear madam. How often, how very often in his early life—before he can remember”—(this clause was strictly true) “have I deduced little easy moral lessons from its pages, for my dear son Ned! You know Ned?”
Mrs. Varden had that honour, and a fine affable young gentleman he was.
“You’re a mother, Mrs. Varden,” said Mr. Chester, taking a pinch of snuff, “and you know what I, as a father, feel, when he is praised. He gives me some uneasiness—much uneasiness—he’s of a roving nature, ma’am—from flower to flower—from sweet to sweet—but his is the butterfly time of life, and we must not be hard upon such trifling.”
He glanced at Dolly. She was attending evidently to what he said. Just what he desired!
“The only thing I object to in this little trait of Ned’s, is,” said Mr. Chester, “—and the mention of his name reminds me, by the way, that I am about to beg the favour of a minute’s talk with you alone—the only thing I object to in it, is, that it does partake of insincerity. Now, however I may attempt to disguise the fact from myself in my affection for Ned, still I always revert to this—that if we are not sincere, we are nothing. Nothing upon earth. Let us be sincere, my dear madam—”
“—and Protestant,” murmured Mrs. Varden.
“—and Protestant above all things. Let us be sincere and Protestant, strictly moral, strictly just (though always with a leaning towards mercy), strictly honest, and strictly true, and we gain—it is a slight point, certainly, but still it is something tangible; we throw up a groundwork and foundation, so to speak, of goodness, on which we may afterwards erect some worthy superstructure.”
Now, to be sure, Mrs. Varden thought, here is a perfect character. Here is a meek, righteous, thoroughgoing Christian, who, having mastered all these qualities, so difficult of attainment; who, having dropped a pinch of salt on the tails of all the cardinal virtues,
