A Little World

Brownjohn Street, Decadia, on a bright summer's morning, when improvements had not made the neighbourhood a little less dingy than of old; when the pleasant district named after...

"But you'll sit down, Mr Ruggles," said Mrs Jared, kindly, as the little man stood with one arm resting upon the chimney-piece, heedless of the chair Patty had set for him.

Mr Purkis stood in his shop carefully cutting out strips of white paper for the measurement of future customers' feet, when he heard the pattering of feet, and anticipating trad...

We leave it to the statistician to decide upon the number of bushels of whelks boiled and consumed, after deposition in little white saucers, and peppering with dust; the loads...

"Hullo! I say! what's all this here about?" cried a familiar voice, and D. Wragg began to jerk himself fiercely into the shop. "Don't you make no mistake. What! hullo! eh! I say...

Jared Pellet used to declare with a grim smile that he thought he had been more happy as a poor man in Duplex Street than he was now that he had inherited his brother's property...

Whish-ish! whoosh-oosh! over and over again, Ichabod had pumped the wind-chest full, till the handle came down heavily, and the boy had balanced himself upon it with the hard wo...

There were grand rejoicings in Duplex Street when Jared obtained official announcement, under the hand and seal of Mr Timson the tea-dealer, of his appointment to the post of or...

Time glided on, and the brothers Pellet did not meet. There was estrangement too between Richard Pellet and his stepson, who came up during his vacations, but only to leave home...

Mrs Ruggles thought that it was her place, and said so; but Mr Purkis was of opinion that it was his place, and he said so--bringing forward, too, the fact that he had looked af...

Harry Clayton had been gone three months, and, clothed in a perfect Joseph's coat of a dressing-gown, Lionel Redgrave lolled upon his sofa, talking pettishly to his landlord, wh...

"Yes, sir. A man came from down Bermondsey way, and said he had some news, and I daren't refuse him. You know, sir, it might be valuable, and it would not do for me to be shutti...

D. Wragg seemed to think that, in spite of his words, the mistake might be on his side if he made any complaints about the treatment he had received from the police. Once or twi...

"You see, ma'am," said Tim Ruggles, looking very mysterious, "that little one's name was Prosperine or Propserpine, I'm not sure which, unless I look at where we've got it writt...

Mr Richard Pellet was back at Norwood Station at about the same time as his stepson reached the terminus at Shoreditch, where he caught the express, and ran back to Cambridge, t...

The clerk whose duty it was to show visitors into Richard Pellet's private office ought to have been well paid, for he must have been a valuable acquisition to his employer. Dou...

Harry Clayton was fortunate, for he was shown into the great Mr Whittrick's presence directly; and, as soon as seated, he had the pleasure of feeling that the private inquirer w...

"I'm getting soft and stupid and blue-moulded," said Mr Timson, as he stood warming himself with his hands under his coat, and twitching them tail-fashion before the fire; "but...

"Pellet,"--repeated the clerk, hesitatingly; "I'm afraid he's engaged;" and he looked hard at the shabby visitor to Austin Friars, as much as to say, "You're a poor relation, or...

"Sarvant, gentlemen," said the new-comer, who must now be fully introduced. He made four steps forward into the room, each step being accomplished by the planting of a heavy boo...

This was a busy day in Duplex Street: in fact, most days were busy there, and Mrs Jared and Patty were in a state of bustle from morning till night. For, being a poor man's wife...

"Been here five minutes, sir," said Sergeant Falkner, as Harry Clayton entered the passage of the Regent Street house. "Yes, five minutes exactly," he continued, referring to hi...

"Brownjohn Street? First to the left, and secun' to the right. Better button up your pockets," said a policeman, setting his neck in his shining stock, and looking hard at the i...

Carnaby Street, Golden Square, where the private doors have their jambs ornamented with series of bell-pulls like the stops of an organ, and the knockers seem intended to form h...

"Now!" exclaimed Richard Pellet, as soon as he and his unwelcome visitor were in the cab, "will you wait patiently, if I take you somewhere, till I can place you where you will...

Matters wore a rather serious aspect at Duplex Street; for a whole month Jared had been enjoying all the sensations known only to the wealthy. He had been congratulated by his f...

"I'm always glad to get out of this place," said Mrs Jared; and she hurried her steps as they turned out of Brownjohn Street, where they had left Janet in safety, Monsieur Canau...

"It's all against rule and regulation, and that sort of thing," said the sergeant, as he and Harry Clayton were being jolted over the stones in a Hansom cab; "but ours is a part...

"Mr Pellet, sir," said Tim Ruggles, "I ran out of Mr Purkis's shop, sir, like a madman. Yesterday, sir, I think it was: no, it wasn't, it was the day before, or some other time,...

"Perhaps, after all, he has not come," said Harry to his silent companion, for no word left her lips; she only restlessly led him from place to place, pressing his arm with her...

Five minutes after, his brain in a whirl from the reaction that had taken place, when--wound up to expect some great horror--he had found nothing but that which was trifling and...

Mrs Winks was bound under contract to spend the next day at Duplex Street; but she made known just now her presence in the Dials, being busy enough in the lower regions of D. Wr...

"One o'clock, mum," said Mr James Chawner, cordwainer, and member of the society of Campanological Brothers, commonly known by the _soubriquet_ of Beaky Jem, tenor in St Runwald...

It was very evident to the young man that the father was losing hope, and that he was having a hard struggle to resign himself to what had fallen to his lot. Two months had now...

Jared Pellet was right. Mr Gray was in a sad way about the affair, for it was a problem that he was not likely to solve. At first he had made a point of keeping the matter secre...

"And the box not been touched since," muttered Jared Pellet,--"not been touched since;" and he repeated the words which he had heard from Mr Timson but a few days before, as he...

"Yes, Mr Canau is at home," said a very mealy-faced girl, who replied to Harry Clayton's knock; and he was shown into a barely-furnished but neat parlour, to wait while, apparen...

The letter which Harry Clayton found at his chambers was in answer to an advertisement in the _Times_; for, finding himself somewhat straitened for money, and, in his pride, det...

It was a bitter day without, and now it seemed as cold within. The very fire in the bright little grate appeared to have turned duller, and the air more chill. As to the cold sc...

Out into the keen night air went Jared Pellet; but as soon as he was outside his own door, his heart seemed to sink down, heavy, heavier, heaviest, for he was going for his last...

By nine o'clock in the morning of the day succeeding that of his dinner-party at Norwood, Mr Richard Pellet, eager and anxious, was in Borton Street. He would have been there ho...

Gentlemanly or ungentlemanly, to blame in making a friend of the churchwarden, a tea-dealer, or not, the vicar was thoroughly conscientious, and this constant plundering of a li...

There was far from being peace in the house of Wragg, for the place had gained a most unenviable notoriety. Wrong-doings were prevalent enough in Decadia, but they were ordinary...

"Five o'clock," said Harry Clayton, as the clerk came in to lay a couple of letters upon the table of his employer's private office. "How long have I been waiting this time?"

D. Wragg was out on business, down by the docks. He had left home directly after breakfast, telling his lodger, the little Frenchman, that he was "good to buy five hundred of ze...

For quite a month, as far as the vicar could tell, the poor-boxes had rest, and Mr Timson's ears were not so much troubled with the objectionable money texts. Divers games of cr...

"Was it ghostly--was it spiritual?" Jared Pellet asked himself, as he sat with strained nerves eager to catch the slightest sound. But now all was silent, and he listened in vai...

Upon the principle that it never rains but it pours, trouble seemed just now to be rife, and Patty took upon herself more than her share. Janet used to say again and again that...

Jared Pellet sat in the front parlour--_pro tem_, his workshop--while, to keep the sun from troubling him, Patty had been pinning up the broad sheet of a newspaper over the wind...

Mr D. Wragg rented the whole of the house in Brownjohn Street, and his lodgers were confined to Mrs Winks and the little Frenchman, the attics being used for store purposes--old...

Nimrod may have been a mighty hunter in his day, but he was never anything to compare with Jared Pellet, who for twenty long years--that is to say, years of the ordinary length-...

"I cannot refrain from writing to congratulate you, my dear Clayton," wrote Sir Francis Redgrave, in a letter the young man sat reading in his rooms at Cambridge, as he leaned b...

"There you are," said Tim Ruggles, shaking up a bottle, and carefully pouring out a dessert-spoonful of cod-liver oil into a wineglass, previously well wetted round with the thi...

"I was only thinking," was the reply, and then they walked on again in silence; for Harry Clayton was indeed thinking, deeply too, of his position. There was a vague sense of da...

"You ought to have been a woman, Mr Ruggles," said Mrs Jared, one Sunday, when Tim came to see them after church, bringing with him little Pine. "He had taken her for a treat,"...

A quarter of an hour after leaving the church, Jared was at the door of the vicar's residence, where his summons was answered by the old Lincolnshire woman who had come up to Lo...

"I don't know what to make of that child, ma'am," said Tim, on one of his visits to Duplex Street. "I'm afraid she's in a bad way, and that we ought to see another doctor;" and...

"I mean," said the vicar, taking not the slightest notice of the interruption, "she never seems to give offence about people's sittings; for her's is a delicate task, and one no...

On reaching Lionel's chambers, a show of cordiality was kept up; but during the walk back, Harry, filled with bitterness, had decided upon his future course--rashly enough, he k...

Upon several occasions when Monsieur Canau saw Patty home to the pleasant manufacturing shades of Duplex Street, he sought to open up this affair with Jared Pellet, so as to hea...

No doubt, if little Patty had been more highly educated, more refined, and had no more engrossing occupations than reading and paying visits, she too would have worn a Mariana-l...

A busy day at St Runwald's. Mrs Nimmer, the pew-opener, in a clean cap, like a white satin raised pie. Mr Purkis, the beadle--of "Purkis's Shoe Emporium," in private life--in fu...

Harry Clayton felt his breath come thick and fast as he caught sight of the low place by his side. It was a boat-house evidently, and was roughly built of the hole-filled planks...

There was no very great difficulty in the matter. Jared Pellet, under protest, wrote a note to the Rev. John Gray, the vicar, telling him that a friend--he haggled a great deal...

For the last half hour Jared had been wishing himself in Duplex Street, and for the last five minutes he had indulged in a hope that he would be passed over and forgotten. But a...

Harry Clayton stopped short upon entering D. Wragg's parlour, as if he had been smitten, for he found himself face to face with Patty, who stood before him pale and trembling, b...

Harry Clayton walked hastily back towards Lionel's chambers, his mind confused by what he had seen and heard. He was half pained, half pleased; at one moment he felt elate, and...

Harry Clayton's brain was very busy, for he was able to evoke from his imagination much of that which had in reality occurred. He did not give Lionel the credit of being worse t...

An hour later and the party were back in Duplex Street, having travelled home in silence, with Patty weeping her sin the whole way, while she now sat sobbing by the fireside alm...

"Some people are such fools!" said Richard Pellet; and, if public judgment was right, he knew what a fool was as well as any man in the great city of London. He was a big man wa...

The room door closed upon Mrs Ruggles' rigid figure, her loud step, indicative of the woman's firmness, was heard upon the stairs, and then Tim and little Pine ceased from their...

Mr John Screwby's face would have formed a worthy study for a painter; or, could some instantaneous photographer have secured his aspect, a _carte_ could have been produced that...

"Now then," said Tim Ruggles, "we mustn't have no more sobbing and sighing, you know, but get on with working, and eddication, and what not, before some one comes home, and goes...

Parted at last, for Harry had seen father and daughter into an omnibus, one which must have been Ben Jonson's "chariot at hand here of love, in which my lady rideth," and drawn...

Janet went to her lonely room, sad and sinking of heart, to kneel upon a box by the window, gazing out above the house-tops, as if her wishes were far away in the country from w...

"There! I told you I would," cried Lionel, who had hurried round the end of the counter, but not quickly enough to arrest the fleeing girl. "You know I met Wragg--"

As the rough, brutal fellow uttered those, words, accompanying them with a low cunning grin of satisfaction at his success, the walls of the room seemed to swim round before Har...

"No news," day after day--day after day, till Harry was weary of repeating the words to the troubled father. Sergeant Falkner came often enough to repeat his story, that so far...

"Ah! you are back!" he said, impatiently. "I fell asleep for quite two hours, and then I should have come after you, only the address the man gave had quite glided from my memor...

"Thanks! yes. A saucy little prude! she knows how to play her cards. We've got the receipt, and he's got the ten pounds; but I don't mean to go without value for my cash, if I t...

"Sarvant, sir--sarvant, sir!" exclaimed D. Wragg, flourishing his hat first at Sir Francis, and then at Harry Clayton, while he worked and jerked himself about in a way that was...

"Don't know what to say, ma'am," said Tim; "but somehow I fancy she's better since I changed her oil. This one seems to agree with her different to what the last one did. Oils v...