Page:Once a Week Jul - Dec 1859.pdf/451

440 hereabouts, but I can’t inform you where. Better ask the pleaceman!”

This in the gruffest of tones, and the last words accompanied by a glance of peculiar meaning.

The stranger looks round, but sees not the official referred to. He smiles and walks on. Mrs. Robinson soliloquises bitterly:—

“He’s here for no good, that there man. wonder where’s that blessed pleaceman?”

With unusual interest in the movements of that functionary, she keeps her eyes at the same time rivetted on the door of the pastrycook’s shop through which the stranger has just disappeared.

Let us peep after him. At the moment of his entry, blooming Mary Pattypan happens to be engaged in ascertaining the weight of a loaf for a customer. She hastily flings a piece of bread into the scale as a make-weight, then slips the loaf into the woman’s basket and the money into the till, and, in the twinkling of an eye, having wiped her hands in her tasteful little apron, and pushed back her hair, she turns towards the stranger with a pleasant smile upon her rosy lips.

He inquires after the milliner.

“Four doors further up at the other side. Where you see the great sycamore tree!”

Just as Miss Mary arrives at the word “tree,” something about the stranger’s face seems particularly to attract her notice. Her voice quavers, and her colour becomes perceptibly heightened; she looks downwards, bites her lip, and seems to have no little difficulty in preventing her smile from broadening into the preliminaries of a laugh. The old gentleman looks sharply at her.

“Why that’s a stationer’s shop,” he rejoins, “I passed it not two minutes ago.”

“Ah, but Miss Smith has lately given up the millinery, and gone into the news line!”

“Oh, indeed! I thank you. Good day!”

And the bright-eyed old gentleman raises his hat, and the fair pastrycook performs an elaborate salute, which would have done credit to one of her Majesty’s Maids of Honour. She does not lift her eyes, however, until his back is turned, and then positively they are dancing in tears, and she is attempting to smother a hearty laugh with a dazzlingly white cambric pocket-handkerchief.

the little street with the big Greek name, the old gentleman walks on a few paces, and then, passing under the fine old sycamore tree, with its dark drapery of ivy, enters the stationer’s shop. And bright eyes are upon him, I can tell you. Pretty Miss Pattypan, ignoring the existence of a small boy who has just crept from the door to the counter, is looking anxiously over the way.

There’s the widow Robinson, too, has altogether forgotten her soles, and stands a fixture at the door of the Piscatorial Repository. What’s that? Can it be possible? Why there’s the venerable stranger chatting and laughing across the counter with the demure little milliner. Worse still remains behind! The lady and gentleman leave the shop to take care of itself, and entering the little parlour beyond, are lost to sight!

“Dear me, how very funny!” ejaculates Miss Pattypan.

“I wish that pleaceman ’d come by,” cries the fishwife. “The street isn’t safe till that man’s in the station-house. And as for that dressmaker—” The fishwife was at a loss for terms of abuse, and could only perspire in her helpless perplexity.

while the words I have just recorded are falling from the lips of the pretty pastrycook and the unlovely fishwife, our friend the old gentleman is creeping noiselessly up the stairs of the milliner’s house. On reaching the first landing-place, he turns at the right hand side, towards a door which happens to be slightly ajar. Through the aperture this inquisitive old fellow instantaneously casts those bright blue eyes of his. He keeps them in that position! Well, there certainly is some excuse for that lingering gaze! Let us peep into the room! At a small circular table, near the fire-place, sits a young lady in deep mourning, and with a face such as few persons could look on without interest. Her age might be two or three and twenty. Her figure is slight and graceful, and she has a very prettily shaped head, adorned with the richest, darkest brown hair you ever saw. Her features are charmingly regular, but her face is quite colourless. Her eyes you cannot see, for they are intently fixed on some needle-work upon which her fingers are busily employed.

All at once she heaves a deep sigh, and lets the work fall from her hands.

The old gentleman, who has now drawn quite close to the door, seems strangely affected by these movements.

“Egad, I believe it’s crying I am,” whimpers the sentimental old goose, wiping off a tear with the back of his hand.

Then she raises her fair head, and you see a pair of large loving brown eyes, surpassingly beautiful in shape and colour, but with the mournfullest expression imaginable.

There is a portfolio on the table, and the young creature turns it over as though she were looking for some particular page. She pauses. She has found what she sought for, as you may guess by that sweet sad smile. The old gentleman is wonderfully excited by all this.

“The darling little soul, how I do long to eat her up!” murmurs the horrid old cannibal.

By this time he has got very nervous indeed, and is unconsciously fiddling with the door-handle, which happens to be a flexible one. Suddenly he gives it a violent jerk, and he has now no option but either to advance, or to sneak off. He taps at the door.

“Come in!” from the gentlest, sweetest voice in the universe.

The old gentleman advances and bows. The young lady rises, with a graceful inclination of the head.

“I beg pardon for intruding, madam, but—”

This in a very hoarse voice; in such marked contrast, indeed, to the speaker’s tones either at the pastrycook’s or the fishmonger’s, that one is tempted into believing that he has suddenly caught a very bad cold.

“Pray don’t mention it, sir,” says a soft kind