The Three Clerks Part 86

'We will not say there is nothing in the work indicative of talent. The hero's valet, Jacob Brush, and the heroine's lady's-maid, Jacintha Pintail, are both humorous and good in their way. Why it should be so, we do not pretend to say; but it certainly does appear to us that Mr. Tudor is more at home in the servants'

hall than in the lady's boudoir.'

'Abominable scoundrel!' said Charley.

'But what we must chiefly notice,' continued the article, 'in the furtherance of those views by which we profess that we are governed--'

'Now, I know, we are to have something very grandiloquent and very false,' said Charley.

'--Is this: that no moral purpose can be served by the volumes before us. The hero acts wrongly throughout, but nevertheless he is rewarded at last. There is no Nemesis--'

'No what?' said Charley, jumping up from his chair and looking over the table.

'No Nemesis,' said Mrs. Woodward, speaking with only half-sustained voice, and covering with her arms the doc.u.ment which she had been reading.

Charley looked sharply at his wife, then at Linda, then at Mrs.

Woodward. Not one of them could keep her face. He made a s.n.a.t.c.h at the patched-up ma.n.u.script, and as he did so, Katie almost threw out of her arms the baby she was holding.

'Take him, Harry, take him,' said she, handing over the child to his father. And then gliding quick as thought through the furniture of the drawing-room, she darted out upon the lawn, to save herself from the coming storm.

Charley was quickly after her; but as he made his exit, one chair fell to the right of him, and another to the left. Mrs. Woodward followed them, and so did Harry and Linda, each with a baby.

And then Captain Cutt.w.a.ter, waking from his placid nap, rubbed his eyes in wondering amazement.

'What the devil is all the row about?' said he. But there was n.o.body to answer him.