The fair little listener – for fair she was, and young: though something of what is called the dumpling shape; but I don’t myself object to that – lighted a candle, glanced at the Haymaker on the top of the clock, who was getting in a pretty average crop of minutes; and looked out of the window, where she saw nothing, owing to the darkness, but her own face imaged in the glass. And my opinion is (and so would yours have been), that she might have looked a long way, and seen nothing half so agreeable. When she came back, and sat down in her former seat, the Cricket and the kettle were still keeping it up[3], with a perfect fury of competition. The kettle’s weak side clearly being, that he didn’t know when he was beat.
There was all the excitement of a race about it. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket a mile ahead. Hum, hum, hum-m-m! Kettle making play in the distance, like a great top. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket round the corner. Hum, hum, hum-m-m! Kettle sticking to him in his own way; no idea of giving in. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket fresher than ever. Hum, hum, hum-m-m! Kettle slow and steady. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket going in to finish him. Hum, hum, hum-m-m! Kettle not to be finished. Until at last they got so jumbled together, in the hurry-skurry, helter-skelter, of the match, that whether the kettle chirped and the Cricket hummed, or the Cricket chirped and the kettle hummed, or they both chirped and both hummed, it would have taken a clearer head than yours or mine to have decided with anything like certainty. But, of this, there is no doubt: that, the kettle and the Cricket, at one and the same moment[4], and by some power of amalgamation best known to themselves, sent, each, his fireside song of comfort streaming into a ray of the candle that shone out through the window, and a long way down the lane. And this light, bursting on a certain person who, on the instant, approached towards it through the gloom, expressed the whole thing to him, literally in a twinkling, and cried, ‘Welcome home, old fellow! Welcome home, my boy!’
This end attained, the kettle, being dead beat, boiled over, and was taken off the fire. Mrs. Peerybingle then went running to the door, where, what with the wheels of a cart, the tramp of a horse, the voice of a man, the tearing in and out of an excited dog, and the surprising and mysterious appearance of a baby, there was soon the very What’s-his-name to pay.
Where the baby came from, or how Mrs. Peerybingle got hold of it in that flash of time, I don’t know. But a live baby there was, in Mrs. Peerybingle’s arms; and a pretty tolerable amount of pride she seemed to have in it, when she was drawn gently to the fire, by a sturdy figure of a man, much taller and much older than herself, who had to stoop a long way down, to kiss her. But she was worth the trouble. Six foot six, with the lumbago, might have done it.
‘Oh goodness, John!’ said Mrs. P. ‘What a state you are in with the weather!’
He was something the worse for it, undeniably. The thick mist hung in clots upon his eyelashes like candied thaw; and between the fog and fire together, there were rainbows in his very whiskers.
‘Why, you see, Dot,’ John made answer, slowly, as he unrolled a shawl from about his throat; and warmed his hands; ‘it – it an’t exactly summer weather. So, no wonder.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t call me Dot, John. I don’t like it,’ said Mrs. Peerybingle: pouting in a way that clearly showed she did like it, very much.
‘Why, what else are you?’ returned John, looking down upon her with a smile, and giving her waist as light a squeeze as his huge hand and arm could give. ‘A dot and’ – here he glanced at the baby – ‘a dot and carry – I won’t say it, for fear I should spoil it; but I was very near a joke. I don’t know as ever I was nearer.’
He was often near to something or other very clever, by his own account[5]: this lumbering, slow, honest John; this John so heavy, but so light of spirit; so rough upon the surface, but so gentle at the core; so dull without, so quick within; so stolid, but so good! Oh Mother Nature, give thy children the true poetry of heart that hid itself in this poor Carrier’s breast – he was but a Carrier by the way – and we can bear to have them talking prose, and leading lives of prose; and bear to bless thee for their company!
It was pleasant to see Dot, with her little figure, and her baby in her arms: a very doll of a baby: glancing with a coquettish thoughtfulness at the fire, and inclining her delicate little head just enough on one side to let it rest in an odd, half-natural, half-affected, wholly nestling and agreeable manner, on the great rugged figure of the Carrier. It was pleasant to see him, with his tender awkwardness, endeavouring to adapt his rude support to her slight need, and make his burly middle-age a leaning-staff not inappropriate to her blooming youth. It was pleasant to observe how Tilly Slowboy, waiting in the background for the baby, took special cognizance (though in her earliest teens) of this grouping; and stood with her mouth and eyes wide open, and her head thrust forward, taking it in as if it were air. Nor was it less agreeable to observe how John the Carrier, reference being made by Dot to the aforesaid baby, checked his hand when on the point of touching the infant, as if he thought he might crack it; and bending down, surveyed it from a safe distance, with a kind of puzzled pride, such as an amiable mastiff might be supposed to show, if he found himself, one day, the father of a young canary.
‘An’t he beautiful, John? Don’t he look precious in his sleep?’
‘Very precious,’ said John. ‘Very much so. He generally is asleep, an’t he?’
‘Lor, John! Good gracious no!’
‘Oh,’ said John, pondering. ‘I thought his eyes was generally shut. Halloa!’
‘Goodness, John, how you startle one!’
‘It an’t right for him to turn ’em up in that way!’ said the astonished Carrier, ‘is it? See how he’s winking with both of ’em at once! And look at his mouth! Why he’s gasping like a gold and silver fish!’
‘You don’t deserve to be a father, you don’t,’ said Dot, with all the dignity of an experienced matron. ‘But how should you know what little complaints children are troubled with, John! You wouldn’t so much as know their names, you stupid fellow.’ And when she had turned the baby over on her left arm, and had slapped its back as a restorative, she pinched her husband’s ear, laughing.
‘No,’ said John, pulling off his outer coat. ‘It’s very true, Dot. I don’t know much about it. I only know that I’ve been fighting pretty stiffly with the wind to-night. It’s been blowing north-east, straight into the cart, the whole way home.’
‘Poor old man, so it has!’ cried Mrs. Peerybingle, instantly becoming very active. ‘Here! Take the precious darling, Tilly, while I make myself of some use. Bless it, I could smother it with kissing it, I could! Hie then[6], good dog! Hie, Boxer, boy! Only let me make the tea first, John; and then I’ll help you with the parcels, like a busy bee. “How doth the little” – and all the rest of it, you know, John. Did you ever learn “how doth the little,” when you went to school, John?’
‘Not to quite know it,’ John returned. ‘I was very near it once. But I should only have spoilt it, I dare say.’
‘Ha ha,’ laughed Dot. She had the blithest little laugh you ever heard. ‘What a dear old darling of a dunce you are, John, to be sure!’
Not at all disputing this position, John went out to see that the boy with the lantern, which had been dancing to and fro before the door and window, like a Will of the Wisp, took due care of the horse; who was fatter than you would quite believe, if I gave you his measure, and so old that his birthday was lost in the mists of antiquity. Boxer, feeling that his attentions were due to the family in general, and must be impartially distributed, dashed in and out with bewildering inconstancy; now, describing a circle of short barks round the horse, where he was being rubbed down at the stable-door; now feigning to make savage rushes at his mistress, and facetiously bringing himself to sudden stops; now, eliciting a shriek from Tilly Slowboy, in the low nursing-chair near the fire, by the unexpected application of his moist nose to her countenance; now, exhibiting an obtrusive interest in the baby; now, going round and round upon the hearth, and lying down as if he had established himself for the night; now, getting up again, and taking that nothing of a fag-end of a tail of his, out into the weather, as if he had just remembered an appointment, and was off, at a round trot, to keep it.