Part 17

The blind girl never knew that they had a master, cold, exacting, and not caring how they got along--never knew that Tackleton was Tackleton, in fact. For Caleb led her to think his rough words were meant for jokes; that he was very good to them, and had a peculiarity in that he could not bear to be thanked for any favor he had done.

You know why he did this. It was because he felt so sorry for poor blind Bertha that he deceived her into thinking everything lovely and fair in order that she might be happier. He, too, had had a cricket singing on the hearth when his motherless girl was very young, and when he listened to its music, he made up his mind to cheer the little one’s dark way by every means he could devise.

Caleb and his daughter were at work together in their usual working room, which served them for their ordinary living room as well; and a strange place it was.

There were houses in it, furnished and unfurnished, for dolls of all stations in life. Nice houses for dolls of moderate means; smaller houses for dolls not so well off; fine town residences for dolls of high estate. Some of the houses were already furnished with a view to the conveniences of dolls of limited income; others could be furnished on notice from the shelves nearby which were full of chairs and tables, sofas, bedsteads, and other articles of furniture.

Then there were many dolls themselves of all kinds and from all stations in life.

There were various other samples of his handicraft besides dolls and dolls’ houses in Caleb Plummer’s room. There were Noah’s Arks in which the birds and beasts were an uncommonly tight fit, I assure you. There were scores of little carts, which, when the wheels went round, performed most doleful music. There were small fiddles and drums, and no end of cannon, shields and spears.

There were little fellows in red breeches who would tumble down head first along a piece of tape. There were old gentlemen dolls who would fly over trapeze bars when pressed in the right place. There were beasts of all sorts; horses, in particular, of every breed, from the little spotted gray on four legs, to the thoroughbred rocked on his highest mettle.

There were dozens and dozens of other little toys, but you already can imagine how the room looked.

In the midst of all these objects, Caleb and his daughter sat at work; the blind girl busy as a doll’s dressmaker; Caleb painting a desirable doll’s family mansion.

“So you were out in the rain last night, Father, in your beautiful new great-coat,” said Caleb’s daughter.

“In my beautiful new great-coat,” answered Caleb, glancing toward a clothes-rack in the room on which the burlap garment was carefully hung to dry.

“How glad I am you bought it, Father! And such a stylish tailor!”

“It’s too good for me,” said Caleb.

The blind girl rested from her work and laughed with delight. “Too good, Father! What can be too good for you?”

“I’m half ashamed to wear it, though,” said Caleb, watching the effect of what he said on her brightening face, “upon my word! When I hear the boys and people say behind me, ‘Hallo! Here’s a swell!’ I don’t know which way to look. And when the beggar wouldn’t go away last night; and when I said I am a very common man, said, ‘No, Your Honor! Bless Your Honor, don’t say that!’ I was quite ashamed. I really felt as if I hadn’t a right to wear it.”

Happy blind girl! How merry she was with the idea!

“I see you, Father,” she said, clasping her hands, “as plainly as if I had the eyes I never want when you are with me. A blue coat----”

“Bright blue,” said Caleb.

“Yes, yes! Bright blue!” exclaimed the girl, turning up her radiant face; “the color I can just remember in the blessed sky! You told me it was blue before. A bright blue coat----”

“Made loose to the figure,” suggested Caleb.

“Yes! loose to the figure!” cried the blind girl, laughing heartily; “and in it, you, dear Father, with your merry eye, your smiling face, your free step, and your dark hair--looking so young and handsome!”

“There! There!” said Caleb, “I shall be vain presently.”

“I think you are already!” cried the blind girl, pointing at him in her glee. “I know you, Father! Ha, ha, ha! I’ve found you out, you see!”

How different the picture in her mind from Caleb as he sat observing her. She had spoken of his free step. She was right in that. For years and years he had never once crossed their threshold with his own slow pace, but with a footfall free and sprightly, for her to hear; and never, even when his heart was heaviest, had he forgotten the light tread that was to render her own so cheerful and courageous.

“There we are,” said Caleb, falling back a step or two to better judge his work. “It’s a pity the whole front of this doll’s house opens at once! If there was only a staircase in it, now, and regular doors to go in at! But that’s the worst of my work, I’m always trying to make believe!”

“You are speaking quite softly. Are you tired, Father?”

“Tired?” echoed Caleb with a great burst of enthusiasm. “What should tire me, Bertha? I was never tired. What does it mean?”

To give greater force to his words, he checked himself in the middle of a yawn, and began to hum a song. He sang it with a pretended care-free manner that made his face look a thousand times more meagre and more thoughtful than before.

_Tackleton Comes In_

Just then Tackleton put his head in at the door. “What! You’re singing, are you?” he thundered. “Go it! I can’t sing!”

Nobody would have suspected that he could. He hadn’t a singing face by any means.

“I can’t afford to sing,” said Tackleton. “I’m glad you can. I hope you can afford to work, too. Hardly time for both, I should think.”

Caleb turned toward his daughter, and said in a low tone, “If you could only see him, Bertha, how he’s winking at me. Such a man to joke! You’d think, if you didn’t know him, he was in earnest--wouldn’t you now?”

The blind girl smiled and nodded.

“The bird that can sing and won’t sing, must be made to sing,” grumbled Tackleton. “What about the owl that can’t sing, and oughtn’t to sing, and will sing. Is there anything that he should be made to do?”

“The way he’s winking at me this moment!” whispered Caleb to his daughter. “Oh, my gracious!”

“Always merry and light-hearted with us!” cried the smiling Bertha.

“Oh, you’re there, are you?” answered Tackleton. “Poor idiot!”

He really did believe she was an idiot; and, strange to say, he thought her an idiot because she was fond of him.

“Well! being there, how are you?” said Tackleton, in his grudging way.

“Oh, well; quite well. And as happy as even you could wish me to be--as happy as you would make the whole world, if you could.”

“Poor idiot!” muttered Tackleton. “No gleam of reason! Not a gleam!”

The blind girl took his hand, and held it a moment in her own two hands, and laid her cheek against it tenderly, before releasing it. There was so much affectionate gratitude in the act, that Tackleton himself was moved to say, in a milder growl than usual:

“What’s the matter now?”

“I stood the little plant beside my pillow when I went to sleep last night, and remembered it in my dreams. When the day came, and the glorious red sun--the red sun, Father?”

“Red in the mornings and in the evenings, Bertha,” said poor Caleb, with a woeful glance at his employer.

“When it rose, and bright light came into the room, I turned the little tree towards it, and blessed Heaven for making such precious things, and blessed you for sending it to cheer me.”

“Whew!” said Tackleton under his breath, “we’re getting on! The next thing will be the padded cell.”

Meanwhile Caleb looked as if he were uncertain whether Tackleton had done anything deserving of praise or not. Yet he knew that with his own hands he had brought the little rose tree home for her so carefully, and that with his own lips he had made her believe that it was a gift from Tackleton, in order to keep her from suspecting how much he every day denied himself to save the money it cost--that she might be the happier.

“Bertha!” said Tackleton, with for once a show of cordiality, “Come here.”

“Oh, I can come straight to you. You needn’t guide me!”

“Shall I tell you a secret, Bertha?”

“If you will,” she answered eagerly.

How bright the darkened face looked! How anxious the listening head!

“This is the day on which that spoiled child, John Peerybingle’s wife, pays her regular visit to you--makes what she calls her ‘picnic’ here, ain’t it?” said Tackleton, with a look of distaste for the affair.

“Yes,” replied Bertha, “this is the day.”

“I thought so,” said Tackleton. “I should like to join the party.”

“Do you hear that, Father?” cried Bertha in delight.

“Yes, yes, I heard it,” murmured Caleb, with the look somewhat of a sleepwalker, “but I don’t believe it.”

“You see,” said Tackleton, “I--I want to bring the Peerybingles a little more into the company of May Fielding, for I am going to be married to May.”

“Married!” cried the blind girl, starting from him.

“Oh! She’s such a confounded idiot,” muttered Tackleton, “that I was afraid she’d never comprehend. Ah, yes, Bertha! Married! Church, parson, clerk, bells, satin, veils, and all the rest of the tomfoolery. A wedding, you know; a wedding. Don’t you know what a wedding is?”

“I know,” replied the blind girl gently. “I understand.”

“Do you?” muttered Tackleton. “It’s more than I expected.” Then aloud: “Well, on that account I want to join the party, and bring May and her mother. I’ll send in a little something or other before the afternoon--a cold leg of mutton, or some comfortable trifle of that sort. You’ll expect me?”

“Yes,” she answered, turning away.

“I don’t think you will,” muttered Tackleton, looking at her; “for you seem to have forgotten all about it already. Caleb!”

“I may venture to say I’m here, I suppose,” thought Caleb. “Sir?”

“Take care she don’t forget what I’ve been saying to her.”

“She never forgets,” returned Caleb; “it’s one of the few things she ain’t clever in.”

“‘Every man thinks his geese swans’,” observed the toy merchant, with a shrug of his shoulders. “Poor idiot!”

Having delivered this remark with much contempt, old Gruff and Tackleton went out.

_Bertha’s Eyes_

Bertha remained where he had left her, lost in thought. The gayety had vanished from her face, and it was very sad. Three or four times she shook her head as if bewailing some loss.

It was not until Caleb had been busy for some time in yoking a team of wooden horses to the tongue of a little wooden wagon by the simple means of nails, driven through the vital parts of their bodies, that she drew near his work-bench, and, sitting down beside him, said: “Father, I am lonely. I want to borrow your eyes.”

“Here they are,” said Caleb. “Always ready. They are more yours than mine, Bertha, any hour in the four-and-twenty. What shall your eyes do for you, dear?”

“My patient, willing eyes!” the blind girl said. “Will they look around the room, Father?”

“All right, no sooner said than done, Bertha.”

“Tell me about it.”

“It’s much the same as usual,” said Caleb. “Homely, but snug. The gay colors on the walls; the bright flowers on the plates and other dishes; the shining wood, where there are no panels; the general cheerfulness and neatness of the building; all make it very pretty.”

Cheerful and neat it was, wherever Bertha’s hands could busy themselves, but nowhere else were cheerfulness and neatness possible in the old crazy shed which Caleb’s fancy painted with such pleasant description.

“You have your working clothes on, and are not so gallant as when you wear the handsome coat?” said Bertha, touching him.

“Not quite so gallant,” answered Caleb. “Pretty lively, though.”

“Father,” said the blind girl, drawing close to his side, and putting one arm around his neck, “tell me something about May. Is she very pretty?”

“She is indeed,” said Caleb. And she was indeed. It was quite a rare thing for Caleb not to draw upon his imagination.

“I can imagine her,” said Bertha. “Her hair is dark, darker than mine. Her voice is sweet and musical, I know. I have often loved to hear it. Her form----”

“There’s not a doll in all the room can compare with her,” said Caleb. “And her eyes!”

He stopped; for Bertha’s arm around his neck had given a sudden pressure. He coughed a moment; hammered a moment; then began to sing the gay song about the sparkling bowl, a thing he always did when in such difficulties.

“Now, about your friend, our benefactor, Mr. Tackleton--I am never tired, you know, of hearing about him. Now, was I ever?” she said hastily.

“Of course not!” answered Caleb. “And with reason.”

“Ah, with much reason!” cried the blind girl so fervently that Caleb began to doubt if he had been wise in deceiving her.

“Tell me about him, dear father,” said Bertha. “Many times again! His face is kind and tender, honest and true, I am sure it is! The goodness in his heart shines out in his countenance.”

“And makes it noble,” added Caleb, who was rather desperate by now.

“And makes it noble!” cried the blind girl. “He is older than May, Father?”

“Yes, quite a little older; but that don’t signify,” said Caleb.

“Oh, no, Father! Just to think, she can do so much for him when he grows old and infirm, and can nurse him if he gets ill, and help him in every way. Will she do all this, Father?”

“No doubt of it,” said Caleb.

“I love her for that, Father. I love her with all my heart,” exclaimed the blind girl.

_The Carrier’s Cart_

In the meantime there had been a lively scene at John Peerybingle’s, for little Mrs. Peerybingle naturally couldn’t think of going anywhere without the baby; and to get the baby ready took time.

Not that there was so much of the baby, but there was so much to do about it, and it all had to be done by easy stages. For instance, when the baby was got, by hook or by crook, to a certain point in dressing, and you might have supposed that another touch or two would finish him off, and turn him out a tiptop baby, he was unexpectedly extinguished in a warm nightgown, and hustled off to bed; where he simmered, so to speak, between sheets and blankets, for the best part of an hour.

From this place of inaction, he was recalled, shining very much, and roaring violently, to partake of his luncheon. After which, he went to sleep again.

Then Mrs. Peerybingle took the opportunity to make herself look as fine as possible, and Miss Slowboy put on her best bib-and-tucker.

By this time, the baby, being all alive again, was dressed by the united efforts of Mrs. Peerybingle and Miss Slowboy, and put into his cream-colored coat and flannel cap; and so, in course of time, they all three got to the door, where John’s old horse stood tearing up the road with impatient autographs, and from where Boxer might be seen a little distance down the road, looking back, tempting the horse to come on without orders.

If you think that Mrs. Peerybingle needed a chair or anything of that kind to help her climb into the cart, you are mistaken, or you don’t know John Peerybingle, for before you could have seen him, he lifted her from the ground; and there she was in place, fresh and rosy, saying, “Oh, John, how can you!”

“All ready?” asked John, starting off, after Miss Slowboy and the baby were in place.

“John, you’ve got the basket with the veal-and-ham-pie and other things?” asked Dot. “If you haven’t, you must turn around again this very minute.”

“You’re a nice little article,” replied the carrier, “to be talking about turning round after keeping me a full quarter of an hour behind my time.”

“I am sorry for it, John,” said Dot, “but I really could not think of going to Bertha’s--I would not do it, John, on any account--without the veal-and-ham-pie and things. Whoa!” This last word was addressed to the horse, who didn’t mind at all.

“Oh, do turn round, John,” begged Mrs. Peerybingle. “Please!”

“It’ll be time enough to do that,” said John, “when I begin to leave things behind me. The basket’s here safe enough.”

“What a hard-hearted monster you must be, John, not to have said so at once, and saved me such a turn! I declare I wouldn’t go to Bertha’s without the veal-and-ham-pie and things for any money. Regularly, once a fortnight, ever since we have been married we have had our little picnic. If anything were to go wrong with it, I should almost think we were never to be lucky again.”

“It was a kind thought in the first place,” said the carrier, “and I honor you for it, little woman.”

“My dear John,” replied Dot, turning very red, “don’t talk about honoring me. Good gracious!”

“By-the-bye--” observed the carrier, “that old gentleman----”

Dot looked embarrassed.

“He’s an odd fish,” said the carrier. “I can’t make him out. I don’t believe there’s any harm in him, though.”

“None at all. I’m--I’m sure there’s none at all.”

“Yes?” said the carrier, with his eyes attracted to her face because she had spoken so earnestly. “Well, I am glad you feel so certain about it, because it makes me feel surer. It’s curious he should have taken it into his head to ask us for lodgings, ain’t it? Things come about so strangely.”

“So very strangely,” she rejoined in a low voice, scarcely audible.

“However, he’s a good-natured old gentleman,” said John, “and pays as a gentleman, and I think his word is to be relied upon, like a gentleman’s. I had quite a long talk with him this morning. He can hear me better already he says, as he gets more used to my voice. He told me a great deal about himself, and I told him a good deal about myself; and a rare lot of questions he asked me. I told him about having two routes, you know, in my business; one day going to the right from our house and back again, another day going left from our house and back again (for he’s a stranger, and don’t know the names of the places about here); and he seemed quite pleased. ‘Why,’ he says, ‘then I shall be returning your way to-night. I thought I’d be coming in exactly the opposite direction. That’s capital! I may trouble you for another lift, perhaps, but I’ll promise not to fall asleep again.’ He was sound asleep surely! Dot, what are you thinking of?”

“Thinking of, John? I--I was listening to you.”

“Oh! that’s all right!” said the carrier. “I was afraid, from the look of your face, that I had gone rambling on so long as to set you thinking of something else. I was very near it, I’ll be bound.”

Dot making no reply, they jogged on for some time in silence. But it was not very easy to remain silent long in John Peerybingle’s cart, for everybody on the road had something to say, though it might only be, “How are you?” and indeed it was very often nothing else. Sometimes passengers on foot or on horseback plodded on a little way beside the cart just for the pleasure of having a chat.

Then, too, everybody knew Boxer, all along the road--especially the fowls and pigs, who, when they saw him coming, running with his body all on one side and his ears pricked up inquisitively, would make tracks and not wait for any nearer acquaintance. Wherever he went, somebody or other might cry, “Hello! Here’s Boxer!” and with that, out came at least two or three other somebodies to bid John Peerybingle and his pretty wife good-day.

The packages and parcels to be delivered were as numerous as usual, and it required many stops to give them out. This was not the worst part of the journey by any means. Some people were so full of wonder about their parcels, and other people so full of directions about the parcels they were sending off by John, and John took so keen an interest in all the parcels, that it was as good as a play, and Dot thoroughly enjoyed it, as she looked on from her seat in the cart.

The trip was a little foggy, to be sure, in the January weather; and was raw and cold. But who cared for such trifles? Not Dot, decidedly. Not Tilly Slowboy, for she deemed sitting in a cart, on any terms, the highest point of human joys. Not the baby, I’ll be bound; for it’s not in baby nature to be warmer or more sound asleep than the blessed young Peerybingle was, all the way.

You couldn’t see very far in the fog, of course; but you could see a great deal! It’s astonishing how much you may see in a thicker fog than that, if you will only take the trouble to look for it. Why, even to sit looking for hazy fairy rings, and ghostly figures near the hedges and trees was a pleasant occupation, to make no mention of the unexpected shapes in which the trees themselves came out of the mists and glided in again.

In one place there was a great mound of weeds burning, and they watched the fire flaring through the fog, with here and there a dash of red in it, until, because of getting “smoke up her nose,” as she explained, Miss Slowboy choked and woke the baby, who wouldn’t go to sleep again. But Boxer, who was in advance a quarter of a mile or so, had passed the outskirts of the town, and gained the corner of the street where Caleb and his daughter lived; and long before they reached the door, he and the blind girl were on the pavement waiting to receive them.

_The Party at Caleb’s_

May Fielding was already there; and so was her mother, a little querulous chip of an old lady with a peevish face. Gruff and Tackleton was also there, pretending to be agreeable and perfectly at home, and really quite as much out of his element as a fish out of water.

“May! My dear old friend!” cried Dot, running up to meet her. “What happiness to see you!”

Her old friend was as glad as she, and it really was, if you’ll believe me, a pleasant sight to see them embrace each other. Tackleton had shown taste, beyond all question. May was very pretty. And so was Dot pretty. They simply set each other’s beauty off and, as John Peerybingle came near saying, they ought to have been born sisters--which was the only improvement you could have suggested.

Tackleton had brought his leg of mutton, and, wonderful to relate, a tart beside--but he could afford such generosity this time; one doesn’t get married every day. And in addition to these dainties, there were the veal-and-ham-pie and “things,” as Mrs. Peerybingle called them; which were chiefly nuts and oranges and cakes.

When the repast was set forth on the table, together with Caleb’s contribution, a bowl of smoking potatoes, which was all he was allowed to provide, Tackleton led his future mother-in-law to the post of honor. Why, she was gotten up for the occasion; even wearing gloves. Caleb sat next his daughter. Dot and her old school friend were side by side. The carrier took care of the bottom of the table. Miss Slowboy was seated a little distance away, far from every other article of furniture but the chair she sat on, that she might have nothing to knock the baby’s head against. She was delighted not only to take care of the baby, but to stare around at the toys.

“Ah, May,” said Dot. “Dear, dear, what changes! To talk of those merry school days makes one young again.”

“Why, you ain’t particularly old at any time, are you?” said Tackleton.

“Look at my sober, plodding husband there,” returned Dot. “He adds twenty years to my age at least. Don’t you, John?”

“Forty,” John replied.

“How many _you’ll_ add to May’s I am sure I don’t know,” said Dot, laughing. “But she can’t be much less than a hundred years of age on her next birthday.”

“Ha, ha!” laughed Tackleton. Hollow as a drum was the laugh, though. And he looked as if he could have twisted Dot’s neck comfortably.

“Dear, dear,” said Dot. “Only think how we used to talk sometimes about the husbands we would choose. I don’t know how lively and gay mine was not to be! And as to May’s--ah, dear! I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I think what silly girls we were.”