Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/182

178 for it was now brushed, and combed, and dragged, and tortured into a state not so very far from smoothness; and it was furthermore turned up; an achievement in the hair-dressing line which it had taken her some years to effect, and which, when effected, was perhaps a little calculated to remind the admiring beholder of a good sized ball of black cotton with a hair-pin stuck through it.

What made Kuppins in such a state of excitement on this particular evening, who shall say? Certain it is that she was excited. At the first sound of the click of Mr. Peters's latchkey in the door of No. 5, Little Gulliver Street, Kuppins, with a lighted candle, flew to open it. How she threw her arms round Mr. Peters's neck and kissed him—how she left a lump of tallow in his hair, and a smell of burning in his whiskers—how, in her excitement she blew the candle out—and how, by a feat of leger-de-main, or leger-de-lungs, she blew it in again, must have been seen to be sufficiently appreciated. Her next proceeding was to drag Mr. Peters upstairs into the indoor Eden, which bore the very same appearance it had done eight years ago. One almost expected to find the red baby grown up—but it wasn't; and that dreadful attack of the mumps from which the infant had suffered when Mr. Peters first became acquainted with it did not appear to have abated in the least. Kuppins thrust the detective into his own particular chair, planted herself in an opposite seat, put the candlestick on the table, snuffed the candle, and then, with her eyes opened to the widest extent, evidently awaited his saying something.

He did say something—in his own way, of course; the fingers went to work. "I've d" said the fingers.

One it," cried Kuppins, dreadfully excited by this time, "done it! you've done it! Didn't I always say you would? Didn't I know you would? Didn't I always dream you would, three times running, and a house on fire?—that meant the river; and an army of soldiers—that meant the boat; and everybody in black clothes—meaning joy and happiness. It's come true; it's all come out. Oh, I'm so happy!" In proof of which Kuppins immediately commenced a series of evolutions of the limbs and exercises of the human voice, popularly known in the neighbourhood as strong hysterics—so strong, in fact, that Mr. Peters couldn't have held her still if he had tried. Perhaps that's why he didn't try; but he looked about in every direction for something cold to put down her back, and finding nothing handy but the poker, he stirred her up with that in the neighbourhood of the spinal marrow, as if she had been a bad fire; whereon she came to.

"And where's the blessed boy?" she asked, presently.

Mr. Peters signified upon his fingers that the blessed boy was