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Read books online » Fiction » Fighting the Flames by R. M. Ballantyne (rooftoppers .TXT) 📖

Book online «Fighting the Flames by R. M. Ballantyne (rooftoppers .TXT) 📖». Author R. M. Ballantyne



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this is the fairy,” he said, in quite an altered tone, as he went to the bed, and took one of his sister’s thin hands in both of his. “Ziza, this is the feller I told ye of, as wanted to see you, dear; b’longs to Mr Tippet.”

Ziza smiled faintly, as she extended her hand to Willie, who took it and pressed it gently.

Willie felt a wonderfully strong sensation within his heart as he looked into the sufferer’s large liquid eyes; and for a few seconds he could not speak. Suddenly he exclaimed, “Well, you ain’t one bit like what I expected to see. You’re more like a angel than a fairy.”

Ziza smiled again, and said she didn’t feel like either the one or the other.

“My poor lamb,” said the clown, sitting down on the bed, and parting the dark hair on Ziza’s forehead, with a hand as gentle as that of a mother, “we’re goin’ now. Time’s up. Shall I ask Mrs Smith to stay with you again, till we come back?”

“Oh, no, no!” cried the child hurriedly, and squeezing her fingers into her eyes, as if to shut out some disagreeable object. “Not Mrs Smith. I’d rather be alone.”

“I wish I could stay with you, Ziza,” said Jim earnestly.

“It’s of no use wishin’, Jim,” said his father, “you can’t get off a single night. If you was to fail ’em you’d lose your engagement, and we can’t afford that just at this time, you know; but I’ll try to get Mrs James to come. She’s a good woman, I know, and—”

“Mister Cattley,” interrupted Willie, “if you’ll allow a partic’larly humble individual to make a observation, I would say there’s nothin’ in life to prevent me from keeping this ’ere fairy company till you come back. I’ve nothin’ particular to do as I knows on, an’ I’m raither fond of lonely meditation; so if the fairy wants to go to sleep, it’ll make no odds to me, so long’s it pleases her.”

“Thankee, lad,” said the clown; “but you’ll git wearied, I fear, for we won’t be home till mornin’—”

“Ah!” interrupted Willie, “till daylight does appear. But that’s no odds, neither—’cause I’m not married yet, so there’s nobody awaitin’ for me—and” (he winked to Jim at this point) “my mother knows I’m out.”

The clown grinned at this. “You’d make one of us, youngster,” said he, “if ye can jump. Howsever, I’m obliged by your offer, so you can stay if Ziza would like it.”

Ziza said she would like it with such goodwill, that Willie adored her from that moment, and vowed in his heart he would nurse her till she—he did not like to finish the sentence; yet, somehow, the little that he had heard and seen of the child led him irresistibly to the conclusion that she was dying.

This having been satisfactorily arranged, the Cattleys, senior and junior, threw cloaks round them, exchanged their wigs for caps; and, regardless of the absurd appearance of their faces, hurried out to one of the minor theatres, with heavy hearts because of the little fairy left so ill and comfortless at home.

In a few minutes they were tumbling on the stage, cracking their jokes, and convulsing the house with laughter.

Chapter Sixteen. Willie in a New Light.

Left alone with the fairy, Willie Willders began his duties as sick-nurse, a sphere of action into which he had never thought of being introduced, even in his wildest dreams.

He began by asking the fairy if she was all right and comfortable, to which she replied that she was not; upon which he explained that he meant, was she as right and comfortable as could be expected in the circumstances; could he do anything for her, in fact, or get her anything that would make her more comfortable than she was—but the fairy shook her poor head and said, “No.”

“Come now, won’t you have somethin’ to eat? What had you for dinner?” said Willie, in a cheery voice, looking round the room, but not discovering any symptoms of food beyond a few empty plates and cups (the latter without handles), and a tea-pot with half a spout.

“I had a little bread and butter,” said the fairy.

“No tipple?” inquired the nurse.

“No, except water.”

“Ain’t there none in the house?”

“No.”

“D’ye git nothin’ better at other times?” inquired Willie in surprise.

“Not often. Father is very poor. He was ill for a long time, too, and if it hadn’t been for your kind master I think we should all have starved. He’s better now, but he needs pretty good living to keep him up to his work—for there’s a deal of training to be done, and it wears him out if he don’t get meat. But the pantomimes began and we were getting on better, when the fire came and burnt everything we had almost, so we can’t afford much meat or beer, and I don’t like beer, so I’ve got them persuaded to let me live on bread and butter and water. I would like tea better, because it’s hot, but we can’t afford that.”

Here was a revelation! The fairy lived upon bread and butter and water! Willie thought that, but for the interpolation of the butter, it would have borne marvellous resemblance to prison fare.

“When had you dinner?” inquired Willie suddenly.

“I think about four o’clock.”

“An’ can’t you eat nothin’ now?”

Again the fairy shook her head.

“Nor drink?”

“Look if there’s anything in the tea-pot,” said the fairy.

Willie looked, shook his head, and said, “Not a drop.”

“Any leaves?”

“Why, y–yes,” he brought the pot nearer to the candle; “there are a few used-up ones.”

“Oh, do pour some hot water into it; but I fear the water is cold, and the fire’s too low to boil it, and I know the coals are done; but father gets paid his salary to-morrow, and he’ll give me some tea then. He’s very kind to me, father is, and so is Jim.”

She sighed as she spoke, and shut her eyes.

“Ziza,” said Willie in a careless tone, “you won’t object to my leavin’ you for a few minutes; only a few; I want to get a little fresh air, an’ see what sort of a night it is; I won’t be long gone.”

Ziza, so far from objecting, said that she was used to being left alone for long, long hours at a time, and wouldn’t mind it. So Willie put the candle nearer to her bedside, placed a tea-cup of water within reach, went out, shut the door softly behind him, groped his way through the passage and up the stair, and got into the street.

That day his eccentric employer had paid him his first month’s wage, a sovereign, with many complimentary remarks as to his usefulness. The golden coin lay in his pocket. It was the first he had ever earned. He had intended to go straight home and lay the shining piece in his mother’s lap, for Willie was a peculiar boy, and had some strange notions in regard to the destination of “first-fruits.” Where he had got them nobody could tell. Perhaps his mother knew, but nobody ever questioned her upon the point.

Taking this gold piece from his pocket, he ran into the nearest respectable street, and selected there the most respectable grocer’s shop, into which he entered, and demanded a pound of the shopman’s best tea, a pound of his best sugar, a pound of his best butter, a cut of his best bacon, and one of his best wax-candles. Willie knew nothing about relative proportion in regard to such things; he only knew that they were usually bought and consumed together.

The shopman looked at the little purchaser in surprise, but as Willie emphatically repeated his demands he gave him the required articles. On receiving the sovereign he looked twice at Willie, rung the piece of money three times on the counter, and then returned the change.

Gathering the packages in his arms, and putting the candle between his vest and bosom, he went into a baker’s shop, purchased a loaf, and returned to the “subterraneous grotto” laden like the bee. To say that the fairy was surprised when he displayed these things, would be a feeble use of language. She opened her large eyes until Willie begged her in alarm not to open them wider for fear they should come out, at which sally she laughed, and then, being weak, she cried.

After that she fell in with her nurse’s humour, and the two proceeded to “have a night of it.” Ziza said she’d be a real fairy and tell him what to do, and Willie said he’d be a gnome or a he-fairy and do it.

At the outset Willie discovered that he had forgotten coals, but this was rectified by another five minutes’ airing, and a rousing fire was quickly roaring in the chimney, while the kettle sang and spluttered on it like a sympathetic thing, as no doubt it was. Willie cleared the small table that stood at the invalid’s bed side, and arranged upon it the loaf, the tea-pot, two cracked tea-cups, the butter and sugar, and the wax-candle—which latter was stuck into a quart bottle in default of a better candle-stick.

“Now, ain’t that jolly?” said the nurse, sitting down and rubbing his hands.

“Very!” replied the patient, her eyes sparkling with delight.

“It’s so like a scene in a play,” continued Willie.

“Only much more real,” suggested the fairy.

“Now, then, Ziza, have a cup o’ tea, fresh from the market o’ Chiny, as your dad would say, if he was sellin’ it by auction. He’s a knowin’ codger your dad is, Ziza. There. I knowed I forgot somethin’ else—the cream!”

“I don’t mind it, indeed I don’t,” said Ziza earnestly.

Willie had started up to run out and rectify this omission, but on being assured that the fairy liked tea almost as well without as with cream, and that there was no cream to be got near at hand, he sat down again and continued to do the honours of the table. First he made the fairy sit up in bed, and commented sadly on her poor thin neck as she did it, observing that she was nothing better than a skeleton in a skin. Then he took off his own jacket and put it on her shoulders, tying the arms round her neck. Next he placed a piece of board in front of her, saying that it was a capital tray, and on this he arranged the viands neatly.

“Now, then, go at it, Ziza,” he said, when all was arranged.

Ziza, who received his attentions with looks that were wonderfully gleeful for one in her weak state of health, went at it with such vigour that the bread was eaten and the tea drunk in a few minutes, and the supply had to be renewed. When she was in the middle of her second round of buttered toast (for Willie had toasted the bread), she stopped suddenly.

“Why don’t you go on?” asked Willie.

“Because you have not eaten or drunk one mouthful yet.”

“But I’m lookin’ at you, and ain’t that better? Howsever, if ye won’t go on, I’ll not keep you back,” and with that Willie set to work, and, being uncommonly hungry, did what he styled “terrible execution among the wittles.”

For some time the nurse and patient ate in comparative silence, but by degrees they began to talk, and as they became more confidential their talk became more personal.

“D’you like bein’ a fairy?” said Willie, after a lull in the conversation.

“No, I don’t,” replied Ziza.

“Why not?”

“Because—because—I don’t like the kind of things we have to do, and—and—in short, I don’t like it at all, and I often pray God to deliver me from it.”

“That’s strange, now,” said Willie, “I would have thought it great fun to be a fairy. I’d rather be a little clown or a he-fairy myself, now, than anything else I know of, except a fireman.”

“A fireman, Willie?”

“Yes, a fireman. My brother, Blaz—a—Frank, I mean, is one, and he saved the lives

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