A House to Let by Charles Dickens (best ebook for manga TXT) đ
- Author: Charles Dickens
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But there was something to see even more extraordinary than the clothes the child was swaddled up in, and that was the game which he was playing at, all by himself; and which, moreover, explained in the most unexpected manner the faint scraping noise that had found its way down-stairs, through the half-opened door, in the silence of the empty house.
It has been mentioned that the child was on his knees in the garret, when Trottle first saw him. He was not saying his prayers, and not crouching down in terror at being alone in the dark. He was, odd and unaccountable as it may appear, doing nothing more or less than playing at a charwomanâs or housemaidâs business of scouring the floor. Both his little hands had tight hold of a mangy old blacking-brush, with hardly any bristles left in it, which he was rubbing backwards and forwards on the boards, as gravely and steadily as if he had been at scouring-work for years, and had got a large family to keep by it. The coming-in of Trottle and the old woman did not startle or disturb him in the least. He just looked up for a minute at the candle, with a pair of very bright, sharp eyes, and then went on with his work again, as if nothing had happened. On one side of him was a battered pint saucepan without a handle, which was his make-believe pail; and on the other a morsel of slate-coloured cotton rag, which stood for his flannel to wipe up with. After scrubbing bravely for a minute or two, he took the bit of rag, and mopped up, and then squeezed make-believe water out into his make-believe pail, as grave as any judge that ever sat on a Bench. By the time he thought he had got the floor pretty dry, he raised himself upright on his knees, and blew out a good long breath, and set his little red arms akimbo, and nodded at Trottle.
âThere!â says the child, knitting his little downy eyebrows into a frown. âDrat the dirt! Iâve cleaned up. Whereâs my beer?â
Benjaminâs mother chuckled till Trottle thought she would have choked herself.
âLord haâ mercy on us!â says she, âjust hear the imp. You would never think he was only five years old, would you, sir? Please to tell good Mr. Forley you saw him going on as nicely as ever, playing at being me scouring the parlour floor, and calling for my beer afterwards. Thatâs his regular game, morning, noon, and nightâheâs never tired of it. Only look how snug weâve been and dressed him. Thatâs my shawl a keepin his precious little body warm, and Benjaminâs nightcap a keepin his precious little head warm, and Benjaminâs stockings, drawed over his trowsers, a keepin his precious little legs warm. Heâs snug and happy if ever a imp was yet. âWhereâs my beer!ââsay it again, little dear, say it again!â
If Trottle had seen the boy, with a light and a fire in the room, clothed like other children, and playing naturally with a top, or a box of soldiers, or a bouncing big India-rubber ball, he might have been as cheerful under the circumstances as Benjaminâs mother herself. But seeing the child reduced (as he could not help suspecting) for want of proper toys and proper childâs company, to take up with the mocking of an old woman at her scouring-work, for something to stand in the place of a game, Trottle, though not a family man, nevertheless felt the sight before him to be, in its way, one of the saddest and the most pitiable that he had ever witnessed.
âWhy, my man,â says he, âyouâre the boldest little chap in all England. You donât seem a bit afraid of being up here all by yourself in the dark.â
âThe big winder,â says the child, pointing up to it, âsees in the dark; and I see with the big winder.â He stops a bit, and gets up on his legs, and looks hard at Benjaminâs mother. âIâm a good âun,â says he, âainât I? I save candle.â
Trottle wondered what else the forlorn little creature had been brought up to do without, besides candle-light; and risked putting a question as to whether he ever got a run in the open air to cheer him up a bit. O, yes, he had a run now and then, out of doors (to say nothing of his runs about the house), the lively little cricketâa run according to good Mr. Forleyâs instructions, which were followed out carefully, as good Mr. Forleyâs friend would be glad to hear, to the very letter.
As Trottle could only have made one reply to this, namely, that good Mr. Forleyâs instructions were, in his opinion, the instructions of an infernal scamp; and as he felt that such an answer would naturally prove the death-blow to all further discoveries on his part, he gulped down his feelings before they got too many for him, and held his tongue, and looked round towards the window again to see what the forlorn little boy was going to amuse himself with next.
The child had gathered up his blacking-brush and bit of rag, and had put them into the old tin saucepan; and was now working his way, as well as his clothes would let him, with his make-believe pail hugged up in his arms, towards a door of communication which led from the back to the front garret.
âI say,â says he, looking round sharply over his shoulder, âwhat are you two stopping here for? Iâm going to bed nowâand so I tell you!â
With that, he opened the door, and walked into the front room. Seeing Trottle take a step or two to follow him, Benjaminâs mother opened her wicked old eyes in a state of great astonishment.
âMercy on us!â says she, âhavenât you seen enough of him yet?â
âNo,â says Trottle. âI should like to see him go to bed.â
Benjaminâs mother burst into such a fit of chuckling that the loose extinguisher in the candlestick clattered again with the shaking of her hand. To think of good Mr. Forleyâs friend taking ten times more trouble about the imp than good Mr. Forley himself! Such a joke as that, Benjaminâs mother had not often met with in the course of her life, and she begged to be excused if she took the liberty of having a laugh at it.
Leaving her to laugh as much as she pleased, and coming to a pretty positive conclusion, after what he had just heard, that Mr. Forleyâs interest in the child was not of the fondest possible kind, Trottle walked into the front room, and Benjaminâs mother, enjoying herself immensely, followed with the candle.
There were two pieces of furniture in the front garret. One, an old stool of the sort that is used to stand a cask of beer on; and the other a great big ricketty straddling old truckle bedstead. In the middle of this bedstead, surrounded by a dim brown waste of sacking, was a kind of little island of poor beddingâan old bolster, with nearly all the feathers out of it, doubled in three for a pillow; a mere shred of patchwork counter-pane, and a blanket; and under that, and peeping out a little on either side beyond the loose clothes, two faded chair cushions of horsehair, laid along together for a sort of makeshift mattress. When Trottle got into the room, the lonely little boy had scrambled up on the bedstead with the help of the beer-stool, and was kneeling on the outer rim of sacking with the shred of counterpane in his hands, just making ready to tuck it in for himself under the chair cushions.
âIâll tuck you up, my man,â says Trottle. âJump into bed, and let me try.â
âI mean to tuck myself up,â says the poor forlorn child, âand I donât mean to jump. I mean to crawl, I doâand so I tell you!â
With that, he set to work, tucking in the clothes tight all down the sides of the cushions, but leaving them open at the foot. Then, getting up on his knees, and looking hard at Trottle as much as to say, âWhat do you mean by offering to help such a handy little chap as me?â he began to untie the big shawl for himself, and did it, too, in less than half a minute. Then, doubling the shawl up loose over the foot of the bed, he says, âI say, look here,â and ducks under the clothes, head first, worming his way up and up softly, under the blanket and counterpane, till Trottle saw the top of the large nightcap slowly peep out on the bolster. This over-sized head-gear of the childâs had so shoved itself down in the course of his journey to the pillow, under the clothes, that when he got his face fairly out on the bolster, he was all nightcap down to his mouth. He soon freed himself, however, from this slight encumbrance by turning the ends of the cap up gravely to their old place over his eyebrowsâlooked at Trottleâsaid, âSnug, ainât it? Good-bye!ââpopped his face under the clothes againâand left nothing to be seen of him but the empty peak of the big nightcap standing up sturdily on end in the middle of the bolster.
âWhat a young limb it is, ainât it?â says Benjaminâs mother, giving Trottle a cheerful dig with her elbow. âCome on! you wonât see no more of him to-night!â
âAnd so I tell you!â sings out a shrill, little voice under the bedclothes, chiming in with a playful finish to the old womanâs last words.
If Trottle had not been, by this time, positively resolved to follow the wicked secret which accident had mixed him up with, through all its turnings and windings, right on to the end, he would have probably snatched the boy up then and there, and carried him off from his garret prison, bed-clothes and all. As it was, he put a strong check on himself, kept his eye on future possibilities, and allowed Benjaminâs mother to lead him down-stairs again.
âMind them top bannisters,â says she, as Trottle laid his hand on them. âThey are as rotten as medlars every one of âem.â
âWhen people come to see the premises,â says Trottle, trying to feel his way a little farther into the mystery of the House, âyou donât bring many of them up here, do you?â
âBless your heart alive!â says she, ânobody ever comes now. The outside of the house is quite enough to warn them off. Mores the pity, as
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