Hard Cash. Charles Reade Reade

Julia was binding, hooding, etcetering them.

      How demurely she bent her lovely head over her charitable work, while Alfred poured his tale into her ears! How careful she was not to speak, when there was a chance of his speaking! How often she said one thing so as to express its opposite, a process for which she might have taken out a patent! How she and Alfred compared heart-notes, and their feelings at each stage of their passion! Their hearts put forth tendril after tendril, and so curled, and clung, round each other.

      In the afternoon of the second blissful day, Julia suddenly remembered that this was dull for her mother. To have such a thought was to fly to her; and she flew so swiftly that she caught Mrs. Dodd in tears, and trying adroitly and vainly to hide them.

      “What is the matter? I am a wretch. I have left you alone.”

      “Do not think me so peevish, love! you have but surprised the natural regrets of a mother at the loss of her child.”

      “Oh, mamma,” said Julia, warmly, “and do you think all the marriage in the world can ever divide you and me—can make me lukewarm to my own sweet, darling, beautiful, blessed, angel mother? Look at me: I am as much your Julia as ever; and shall be while I live. Your son is your son till he gets him a wife: but your daughter's your daughter, ALL—THE——DAYS—OF HER LIFE.”

      Divine power of native eloquence: with this trite distich you made hexameters tame; it gushed from that great young heart with a sweet infantine ardour, that even virtue can only pour when young, and youth when virtuous; and, at the words I have emphasised by the poor device of capitals, two lovely, supple arms flew wide out like a soaring albatross's wings, and then went all round the sad mother, and gathered every bit of her up to the generous young bosom.

      “I know it, I know it!” cried Mrs. Dodd, kissing her; “I shall never lose my daughter while she breathes. But I am losing my child. You are turning to a woman visibly: and you were such a happy child. Hence my misgivings, and these weak tears, which you have dried with a word: see!” And she contrived to smile. “And now go down, dearest: he may be impatient; men's love is so fiery.”

      The next day Mrs. Dodd took Julia apart and asked her whether there was an answer from Mr. Hardie. Julia replied, from Alfred, that Jane had received a letter last night, and, to judge by the contents, Mr. Hardie must have left London before Alfred's letter got there. “He is gone to see poor Uncle Thomas.”

      “Why do you call him 'poor?'”

      “Oh, he is not very clever; has not much mind, Alfred says; indeed, hardly any.”

      “You alarm me, Julia!” cried Mrs. Dodd. “What? madness in the family you propose to marry into?”

      “Oh no, mamma,” said Julia, in a great hurry; “no madness; only a little imbecility.”

      Mrs. Dodd's lip curved at this Julian answer; but just then her mind was more drawn to another topic. A serious doubt passed through her, whether, if Mr. Hardie did not write soon, she ought not to limit his son's attendance on her daughter. “He follows her about like a little dog,” said she half fretfully.

      Next day, by previous invitation, Dr. Sampson made Albion Villa his head-quarters. Darting in from London, he found Alfred sitting very close to Julia over a book.

      “Lordsake!” cried he, “here's 'my puppy,' and 'm' enthusiast,' cheek by chowl.” Julia turned scarlet, and Alfred ejaculated so loudly, that Sampson inquired “what on airth was the matter now?”

      “Oh, nothing; only here have I been jealous of my own shadow, and pestering her who 'your puppy' was: and she never would tell me. All I could get from her,” added he, turning suddenly from gratitude to revenge, “was that he was no greater a puppy than yourself, doctor.”

      “Oh, Alfred, no; I only said no vainer,” cried Julia in dismay.

      “Well, it is true,” said Sampson contentedly, and proceeded to dissect himself just as he would a stranger. “I am a vain man; a remarkably vain man. But then I'm a man of great mirit.”

      “All vain people are that,” suggested Alfred dryly.

      “Who should know better than you, young Oxford? Y' have got a hidache.”

      “No, indeed.”

      “Don't tell lies now. Ye can't deceive me; man, I've an eye like a hawk. And what's that ye're studying with her? Ovid, for a pound.”

      “No; medicine; a treatise on your favourite organ, the brain, by one Dr. Whately.”

      “He is chaffing you, doctor,” said Edward; “it is logic. He is coaching her; and then she will coach me.”

      “Then I forbid the chaff-cutting, young Pidant. Logic is an ill plaster to a sore head.”

      “Oh, 'the labour we delight in, physics pain.'”

      “Jinnyus, Jinnyus;

      Take care o' your carkuss,”

      retorted the master of doggrel. “And that is a profounder remark than you seem to think, by your grinning, all of ye.”

      Julia settled the question by putting away the book. And she murmured to Alfred, “I wish I could steal your poor dear headaches: you might give me half of them at least; you would, too, if you really loved me.”

      This sound remonstrance escaped criticism by being nearly inaudible, and by Mrs. Dodd entering at the same moment.

      After the first greeting, Sampson asked her with merry arrogance, how his prescription had worked? “Is her sleep broken still, ma'am? Are her spirits up and down? Shall we have to go back t' old Short and his black draught? How's her mookis membrin? And her biliary ducks? an'—she's off like a flash.”

      “And no wonder,” said Mrs. Dodd reproachfully.

      Thus splashed Sampson among the ducks: one of them did not show her face again till dinner.

      Jane Hardie accompanied her brother by invitation. The general amity was diversified and the mirth nowise lessened by constant passages of arms between Messrs. Sampson and Alfred Hardie.

      After tea came the first contretemps. Sampson liked a game of cards: he could play, yet talk chronothermalism, as the fair can knit babies' shoes and imbibe the poetasters of the day.

      Mrs. Dodd had asked Edward to bring a fresh pack. He was seen by his guardian angel to take them out of his pocket and undo them; presently Sampson, in his rapid way, clutched hold of them; and found a slip of paper curled round the ace of spades, with this written very clear in pencil,

      “REMEMBER THY CREATOR IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH!”

      “What is this?” cried Sampson, and read it out aloud. Jane Hardie coloured, and so betrayed herself. Her “word in season” had strayed. It was the young and comely Edward she wished to save from the diabolical literature, the painted perdition, and not the uninteresting old sinner Sampson, who proceeded to justify her preference by remarking that “Remember not to trump your partner's best card, ladies,” would be more to the point.

      Everybody, except this hardened personage, was thoroughly uncomfortable. As for Alfred, his face betrayed a degree of youthful mortification little short of agony. Mrs. Dodd was profoundly disgusted, but fortunately for the Hardies, caught sight of his burning cheeks and compressed lips. “Dr. Sampson,” said she, with cold dignity, “you will, I am sure, oblige me by making no more comments; sincerity is not always discreet; but it is always respectable: it is one of your own titles to esteem. I dare say,” added she with great sweetness, “our resources are not so narrow that we need shock anybody's prejudices, and, as it happens, I was just going to ask Julia to sing: open the piano, love, and try if you can persuade Miss Hardie to join you in a duet.”

      At this, Jane and Julia had an earnest conversation at the piano, and their words, uttered in a low voice, were covered by a contemporaneous discussion between Sampson and Mrs. Dodd.

      Jane. No, you must not ask me: I have forsworn these vanities.