My Doggie and I by Robert Michael Ballantyne (young adult books to read .TXT) 📖

/> "The Lord will provide," said Mrs Willis, from the bed.

She had overheard us. I hastened to her side.

"Yes, granny, He _will_ provide. Meanwhile He has given me enough money to spare a little for your immediate wants. I will send some things, which your kind neighbour, Mrs Jones, will cook for you. I'll give her directions as I pass her door. Slidder will go home with me and fetch you the medicines you require. Now, try to sleep till Mrs Jones comes with the food. You must not speak to me. It will make you worse."

"I only want to ask, John, have you any--any news about--"

"No, not yet, granny; but don't be cast down. If you can trust God for food, surely you can trust Him for protection, not only to yourself, but to Edie. Remember the words, `Commit thy way unto the Lord, and He will bring it to pass.'"

"Thank you, John," replied the old woman, as she sank back on her pillow with a little sigh.

After leaving Mrs Willis I was detained so long with some of my patients that it was late before I could turn my steps westward. The night was very cold, with a keen December wind blowing, and heavy black clouds driving across the dark sky. It was after midnight as I drew near the neighbourhood of the house in which I had left Dumps so hurriedly that morning. In my haste I had neglected to ask the name of the young lady with whom I had left him, or to note the number of the house; but I recollected its position, and resolved to go round by it for the purpose of ascertaining the name on the door.


CHAPTER FIVE.


CONSPIRACY AND VILLAINY, INNOCENCE AND TRAGEDY.

In one of the dirtiest of the dirty and disreputable dens of London, a man and a boy sat on that same dark December night engaged in earnest conversation.

Their seats were stools, their table was an empty flour-barrel, their apartment a cellar. A farthing candle stood awry in the neck of a pint bottle. A broken-lipped jug of gin-and-water hot, and two cracked tea-cups stood between them. The damp of the place was drawn out, rather than abated, by a small fire, which burned in a rusty grate, over which they sought to warm their hands as they conversed. The man was palpably a scoundrel. Not less so was the boy.

"Slogger," said the man, in a growling voice, "we must do it this wery night."

"Vell, Brassey, I'm game," replied the Slogger, draining his cup with a defiant air.

"If it hadn't bin for that old 'ooman as was care-taker all last summer," continued the man, as he pricked a refractory tobacco-pipe, "we'd 'ave found the job more difficult; but, you see, she went and lost the key o' the back door, and the doctor he 'ad to get another. So I goes an' gets round the old 'ooman, an' pumps her about the lost key, an' at last I finds it--d'ye see?"

"But," returned the Slogger, with a knowing frown, "seems to me as how you'd never get two keys into one lock--eh? The noo 'un wouldn't let the old 'un in, would it?"

"Ah, that's where it is," replied Mr Brassey, with a leer, as he raised his cup to his large ugly mouth and chuckled. "You see, the doctor's wife she's summat timmersome, an' looks arter the lockin' up every night herself--wery partikler. Then she 'as all the keys up into her own bedroom o' nights--so, you see, in consikence of her uncommon care, she keeps all the locks clear for you and me to work upon!"

The Slogger was so overcome by this instance of the result of excessive caution, that he laughed heartily for some minutes, and had to apply for relief to the hot gin-and-water.

"'Ow ever did you come for to find that hout?" asked the boy.

"Servants," replied the man.

"Ha!" exclaimed the boy, with a wink, which would have been knowing if the spirits had not by that time rendered it ridiculous.

"Yes, you see," continued the elder ruffian, blowing a heavy cloud of smoke like a cannon shot from his lips, "servants is wariable in character. Some is good, an' some is bad. I mostly take up wi' the bad 'uns. There's one in the doctor's 'ouse as is a prime favourite with me, an' knows all about the locks, she does. But there's a noo an' unexpected difficulty sprung up in the way this wery mornin'."

"Wot's that?" demanded the Slogger, with the air of a man prepared to defy all difficulties.

"They've bin an' got a dog--a little dog, too; the very wust kind for kickin' up a row. 'Owever, it ain't the fust time you an' I 'ave met an conkered such a difficulty. You'll take a bit of cat's meat in your pocket, you know."

"Hall right!" exclaimed the young housebreaker, with a reckless toss of his shaggy head, as he laid his hand on the jug: but the elder scoundrel laid his stronger hand upon it.

"Come, Slogger; no more o' that. You've 'ad too much already. You won't be fit for dooty if you take more."

"It's wery 'ard on a cove," growled the lad, sulkily.

Brassey looked narrowly into his face, then took up the forbidden jug, and himself drained it, after which he rose, grasped the boy by his collar, and forced him, struggling, towards a sink full of dirty water, into which he thrust his head, and shook it about roughly for a second or two.

"There, that'll sober you," said the man, releasing the boy, and sending him into the middle of the room with a kick. "Now, don't let your monkey rise, Slogger. It's all for your good. I'll be back in 'alf an hour. See that you have the tools ready."

So saying the man left the cellar, and the boy, who was much exasperated, though decidedly sobered, by his treatment, proceeded to dry himself with a jack-towel, and make preparations for the intended burglary.

The house in regard to which such interesting preparations were being made was buried, at the hour I write of, in profound repose. As its fate and its family have something to do with my tale, I shall describe it somewhat particularly. In the basement there was an offshoot, or scullery, which communicated with the kitchen. This scullery had been set apart that day as the bedroom of my little dog. (Of course I knew nothing of this, and what I am about to relate, at that time. I learned it all afterwards.) Dumps lay sound asleep on a flannel bed, made by loving hands, in the bottom of a soap-box. It lay under the shadow of a beer-cask--the servants' beer--a fresh cask--which, having arrived late that evening, had not been relegated to the cellar. The only other individual who slept on the basement was the footman.

That worthy, being elderly and feeble, though bold as a lion, had been doomed to the lower regions by his mistress, as a sure protection against burglars. He went to bed nightly with a poker and a pistol so disposed that he could clutch them both while in the act of springing from bed. This arrangement was made not to relieve his own fears, but by order of his mistress, with whom he could hold communication at night without rising, by means of a speaking-tube.

John--he chanced to bear my own name--had been so long subject to night alarms, partly from cats careering in the back yard, and his mistress demanding to know, through the tube, if he heard them; partly, also, from frequent ringing of the night-bell, by persons who urgently wanted "Dr McTougall," that he had become callous in his nervous system, and did much of his night-work as a semi-somnambulist.

The rooms on the first floor above, consisting of the dining-room, library, and consulting-room, etcetera, were left, as usual, tenantless and dark at night. On the drawing-room floor Mrs McTougall lay in her comfortable bed, sound asleep and dreamless. The poor lady had spent the first part of that night in considerable fear because of the restlessness of Dumps in his new and strange bedroom--her husband being absent because of a sudden call to a country patient. The speaking-tube had been pretty well worked, and John had been lively in consequence-- though patient--but at last the drowsy god had calmed the good lady into a state of oblivion.

On the floor above, besides various bedrooms, there were the night nursery and the schoolroom. In one of the bedrooms slumbered the young lady who had robbed me of my doggie!

In the nursery were four cribs and a cradle. Dr McTougall's family had come in what I may style annual progression. Six years had he been married, and each year had contributed another annual to the army.

The children were now ranged round the walls with mathematical precision--one, two, three, four, and five. The doctor liked them all to be together, and the nursery, being unusually large, permitted of this arrangement. A tall, powerful, sunny-tempered woman of uncertain age officered the army by day and guarded it by night. Jack and Harry and Job and Jenny occupied the cribs, Dolly the cradle. Each of these creatures had been transfixed by sleep in the very midst of some desperate enterprise during the earlier watches of that night, and all had fallen down in more or less _degage_ and reckless attitudes. Here a fat fist, doubled; there a fatter leg, protruded; elsewhere a spread eagle was represented, with the bedclothes in a heap on its stomach; or a complex knot was displayed, made up of legs, sheets, blankets, and arms. Subsequently the tall but faithful guardian had gone round, disentangled the knot, reduced the spread eagle, and straightened them all out. They now lay, stiff and motionless as mummies, roseate as the morn, deceptively innocent, with eyes tight shut and mouths wide open-- save in the case of Dolly, whose natural appetite could only be appeased by the nightly sucking of two of her own fingers.

In the attics three domestics slumbered in peace. Still higher, a belated cat reposed in the lee of a chimney-stack.

It was a restful scene, which none but a heartless monster could have ventured to disturb. Even Brassey and the Slogger had no intention of disturbing it--on the contrary, it was their earnest hope that they might accomplish their designs on the doctor's plate with as little disturbance as possible. Their motto was a paraphrase, "Get the plate-- quietly, if you can, but get the plate!"

In the midst of the universal stillness, when no sound was heard save the sighing of the night-wind or the solemn creaking of an unsuccessful smoke-curer, there came a voice of alarm down the tube--

"John, do you hear burglars?"

"Oh, dear! no, mum, I don't."

"I'm convinced I hear them at the back of the house!" tubed Mrs McTougall.

"Indeed it ain't, mum," tubed John in reply. "It's on'y that little dog as comed this morning and ain't got used to its noo 'ome yet. It's a-whinin', mum; that's wot it is."

"Oh! do