Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/721

. 20, 1862.] of work before her, arising from the gratuitous pail of water, she was feeling unusually cowed down.

“I wish I was a hundred mile off,” she cried. “Nobody’s fate was never so hard as mine.”

“It’ll take you a good two hour to red up,” observed Polly Dawson. “I’d rather you had to do it nor me.”

“I’d see it further—afore it should take me two hours—and Peckaby with it,” retorted Mrs. Peckaby, reviving to a touch of temper. “I shall but give it a lick and a promise; just mop up the wet, and dry the grate, and get a bit of fire alight. T’other things may go.”

Polly Dawson departed, and Mrs. Peckaby set to her work. By dint of some trouble, she contrived to obtain a cup of tea for herself after awhile, and then she sat on disconsolately as before. Night came on, and she had ample time to indulge her ruminations.

Peckaby had never been in. Mrs. Peckaby concluded he was solacing himself at that social rendezvous, the Plough and Harrow, and would come home in a state of beer. Between nine and ten, he entered—hours were early in Deerham—and, to Mrs. Peckaby’s surprise, he was not only sober, but social.

“It have turned out a pouring wet night,” cried he. And the mood was so unwonted, especially after the episode of the wet grate, that Mrs. Peckaby was astonished into answering pleasantly.

“Will ye have some bread and cheese?” asked she.

“I don’t mind if I do. Chuff, he gave me a piece of his bread and bacon at eight o’clock, so I ain’t over hungry.”

Mrs. Peckaby brought forth the loaf and the cheese, and Peckaby cut himself some, and eat it. Then he went up-stairs. She stayed to put the eatables away, raked out the fire, and followed. Peckaby was already in bed. To get into it was not a very ceremonious proceeding with him, as it is not with many others. There was no superfluous attire to throw off, there was no hindering time with ablutions, there were no prayers. Mrs. Peckaby favoured the same convenient mode, and she had just put the candle out when some noise struck upon her ear.

It came from the road outside. They slept back, the front room having been the one let to Brother Jarrum; but in those small houses, at that quiet hour, noises in the road were heard as distinctly back as front. There was a sound of talking, and then came a modest knock at Peckaby’s door.

Mrs. Peckaby went to the front room, opened the casement, and looked out. To say that her heart leaped into her mouth, would be a most imperfect figure of speech to describe the state of feeling that rushed over her. In the rainy obscurity of the night, she could discern something white drawn up to the door, and the figures of two men standing by it. The only wonder was, that she did not leap out; she might have done it, had the window been large enough.

“Do Susan Peckaby live here?” inquired a gruff voice, that seemed as if it were muffled.

“Oh, dear, good gentlemen, yes!” she responded, in a tremble of excitement. “Please what is it?”

“The white donkey’s come, to take her to New Jerusalem.”

With a shrieking cry of joy that might have been heard half-way up Clay Lane, Mrs. Peckaby tore back to her chamber.

“Peckaby,” she cried, “Peckaby, the thing’s come at last! The blessed animal that’s to bear me off. I always said it would.”

Peckaby—probably from drowsiness—made no immediate response. Mrs. Peckaby stooped down to the low bed, and shook him well by the shoulder.

“It’s the white quadruple, Peckaby, come at last!”

Peckaby growled out something that she was in a state of too great excitement to hear. She lighted the candle; she flung on some of the things she had taken off; she ran back to the front before they were fastened, lest the messengers, brute and human, should have departed, and put her head out at the casement again, all in the utmost fever of agitation.

“A minute or two yet, good gentlemen, please! I’m a’most ready. I’m a waiting to get out my purple gownd.”

“All right, missus,” was the muffled answer.

The “purple gownd” was kept in this very ex-room of Brother Jarrum’s, hid in a safe place between some sheets of newspaper. Had Mrs. Peckaby kept it open, to the view of Peckaby, there’s no saying what grief the robe might not have come to ere this. Peckaby, in his tantrums, would not have been likely to spare it. She put it on, and hooked it down the front, her trembling fingers scarcely able to accomplish it. That it was full loose for her, she was prepared to find: she had grown thin with fretting. Then she put on a shawl, last her bonnet, and some green leather gloves. The shawl was black, with worked coloured corners,—a thin small shawl, that hardly covered her shoulders; and the bonnet was a straw, trimmed with pink ribbons—the toilette which had been long prepared.

“Good bye, Peckaby,” said she, going in when she was ready. “You’ve said many a time as you wished I was off, and now you have got your wish. But I don’t wish to part nothing but friends.”

“Good bye,” returned Peckaby, in a hearty tone, as he turned himself round on his bed. “Give my love to the saints.”

To find him in this accommodating humour, was more than she had bargained for. A doubt had crossed her sometimes whether, when the white donkey did come, there might not arise a battle with Peckaby, ere she should get off. This apparently civil feeling on his part awoke a more social one towards him on hers; and a qualm of conscience darted across her, that she might have made him a better wife had she been so disposed. “He might have shook hands with me,” was her parting thought, as she unlocked the street door.

The donkey was waiting outside with all the patience for which donkeys are renowned. It had been drawn up under a sheltering ledge at a door or two’s distance, to be out of the rain. Its