Ten Girls from Dickens Part 1

Ten Girls from d.i.c.kens.

by Kate d.i.c.kinson Sweetser.

PREFACE

As a companion volume to Ten Boys from d.i.c.kens, this book of girl-life, portrayed by the great author, is offered.

The sketches have the same underlying motive as those of boy-life, and have been compiled in the same manner, with the same purpose in view.

Among them will be found several of the most popular of the creations of d.i.c.kens, notably, The Marchioness, Little Nell, Jenny Wren, and Florence Dombey, and it is hoped that in this presentation as simple stories of girlhood, their cla.s.sic form and beauty may arouse in the young people of our day a new interest in the novels from which they are taken.

This volume and its companion will have accomplished their purpose when they have won fresh laurels and a wider audience for the famous writer to whom they are indebted for their existence.

K.D.S. _April, 1902_.

THE MARCHIONESS

The Marchioness was a small servant employed by Sampson Bra.s.s and his sister Sally, as general house-worker and drudge, in which capacity she was discovered by Mr. Richard Swiveller, upon the very first day of his entering the Bra.s.s establishment as clerk.

The Bra.s.ses' house was a small one in Bevis Marks, London, having upon its door a plate, "Bra.s.s, Solicitor," and a bill tied to the knocker, "First floor to let to a single gentleman," and served not only as habitation, but likewise as office for Sampson Bra.s.s,--of none too good legal repute,--and his sister; a gaunt, bony copy of her red-haired brother, who was his housekeeper, as well as his business partner.

When the Bra.s.ses decided to keep a clerk, Richard Swiveller was chosen to fill the place; and be it known to whom it may concern, that the said Richard was the merriest, laziest, weakest, most kind-hearted fellow who ever sowed a large crop of wild oats, and by a sudden stroke of good-luck found himself raised to a salaried position.

Clad in a blue jacket with a double row of gilt b.u.t.tons, bought for acquatic expeditions, but now dedicated to office purposes, Richard entered upon his new duties, and during that first afternoon, while Mr.

Bra.s.s and his sister were temporarily absent from the office, he began a minute examination of its contents.

Then, after a.s.suaging his thirst with a pint of mild porter, and receiving and dismissing three or four small boys who dropped in on legal errands from other attorneys, with about as correct an understanding of their business as would have been shown by a clown in a pantomime under similar circ.u.mstances, he tried his hand at a pen-and-ink caricature of Miss Bra.s.s, in which work he was busily engaged, when there came a rapping at the office-door.

"Come in!" said d.i.c.k. "Don't stand on ceremony. The business will get rather complicated if I have many more customers. Come in!"

"Oh, please," said a little voice very low down in the doorway, "will you come and show the lodgings?"

d.i.c.k leaned over the table, and descried a small slipshod girl in a dirty coa.r.s.e ap.r.o.n and bib, which left nothing of her visible but her face and feet. She might as well have been dressed in a violin case.

"Why, who are you?" said d.i.c.k.

To which the only reply was, "Oh, please, will you come and show the lodgings?"

There never was such an old-fas.h.i.+oned child in her looks and manner. She must have been at work from her cradle. She seemed as much afraid of d.i.c.k, as d.i.c.k was amazed at her.

"I haven't got anything to do with the lodgings," said d.i.c.k. "Tell 'em to call again."

"Oh, but please will you come and show the lodgings?" returned the girl; "it's eighteen s.h.i.+llings a week, and us finding plate and linen. Boots and clothes is extra, and fires in winter-time is eightpence a day."

"Why don't you show 'em yourself? You seem to know all about 'em," said d.i.c.k.

"Miss Sally said I wasn't to, because people wouldn't believe the attendance was good if they saw how small I was, first."

"Well, but they'll see how small you are afterwards, won't they?" said d.i.c.k.

"Ah! but then they'll have taken 'em for a fortnight certain," replied the child, with a shrewd look; "and people don't like moving when they're once settled."

"This is a queer sort of thing," muttered d.i.c.k, rising. "What do you mean to say you are--the cook?"

"Yes; I do plain cooking," replied the child. "I'm housemaid too. I do all the work of the house."

Just then certain sounds on the pa.s.sage and staircase seemed to denote the applicant's impatience. Richard Swiveller, therefore, hurried out to meet and treat with the single gentleman.

He was a little surprised to perceive that the sounds were occasioned by the progress upstairs of a trunk, which the single gentleman and his coachman were endeavoring to convey up the steep ascent. Mr. Swiveller followed slowly behind, entering a new protest on every stair against the house of Mr. Sampson Bra.s.s being thus taken by storm.

To these remonstrances the single gentleman answered not a word, but when the trunk was at last got into the bedroom, sat down upon it, and wiped his bald head with his handkerchief. He then announced abruptly that he would take the room for two years, whereupon, handing a ten-pound note to the astonished Mr. Swiveller, he began to make ready to retire, as if it were night instead of day, and Mr. Swiveller walked downstairs into the office again, filled with wonderment concerning both the strange new lodger and the small servant who had appeared to answer the bell.

After that day, one circ.u.mstance troubled Mr. Swiveller's mind very much, and that was, that the small servant always remained somewhere in the bowels of the earth under Bevis Marks, and never came to the surface unless a bell rang, when she would answer it, and immediately disappear again. She never went out, or came into the office, or had a clean face, or took off the coa.r.s.e ap.r.o.n, or looked out of any of the windows, or stood at the street door for a breath of air, or had any rest or enjoyment whatever. n.o.body ever came to see her, n.o.body spoke of her, n.o.body cared about her.

"Now," said d.i.c.k, one day, walking up and down with his hands in his pockets; "I'd give something--if I had it--to know how they use that child, and where they keep her. I _should_ like to know how they use her!"

At that moment he caught a glimpse of Miss Bra.s.s flitting down the kitchen stairs. "And, by Jove!" thought d.i.c.k, "She's going to feed the small servant. Now or never!"

First peeping over the handrail, he groped his way down, and arrived at the kitchen door immediately after Miss Bra.s.s had entered the same, bearing in her hand a cold leg of mutton.

It was a very dark, miserable place, very low and very damp; the walls disfigured by a thousand rents and blotches. The water was trickling out of a leaky b.u.t.t, and a most wretched cat was lapping up the drops with the sickly eagerness of starvation. The grate was screwed up so tight as to hold no more than a thin sandwich of fire. Everything was locked up; the coal-cellar, the candle-box, the salt-box, the meat-safe, were all padlocked. There was nothing that a beetle could have lunched on.

The small servant stood with humility in presence of Miss Sally, and hung her head.

"Are you there?" said Miss Sally.

"Yes ma'am," was the answer, in a weak voice.

"Go further away from the leg of mutton, or you'll be picking it, I know," said Miss Sally.

The girl withdrew into a corner, while Miss Bra.s.s opened the safe, and brought from it a dreary waste of cold potatoes, looking as eatable as Stonehenge. This she placed before the small servant, and then, taking up a great carving-knife, made a mighty show of sharpening it.

"Do you see this?" she said, slicing off about two square inches of cold mutton, and holding it out on the point of a fork.

The small servant looked hard enough at it with her hungry eyes to see every shred of it and answered, "Yes."

"Then don't you ever go and say," retorted Miss Sally, "that you hadn't meat here. There, eat it up."

This was soon done.

"Now, do you want any more?" said Miss Sally.

The hungry creature answered with a faint "No." They were evidently going through an established form.