“No; it isn’t that so much,” persisted my father; “it’s the pictur—the pictur that come afore me when I come in. I reckons it up comin’ along, and what do I make on it? ‘It’s all over now’ thinks I; ‘no more comfortable firesides, and kettles a-bilin’ ready waitin’ for you. The wittles you want, you must cook for yourself; and if you want a plaice, it’s no use you a-buyin’ of it unless you takes some wood; likewise a bit of drippin’ to fry it in.’ Look here, ma’am!”
So saying, my father took from his jacket some dripping in a piece of paper, and, with a sob, laid it gently on the table.
“But, shure, Jim Ballisat, if I may go the length of sayin’ as much, and knowin’, as I well know, how little throuble you give, and how little you expect, shure it might have crossed your mind that there was a craythur at home as lone and unfortunit as yourself, who wouldn’t see two motherless babies”—
“I thinks all this,” continued my father, pursuing the thread of his lamentation; “and home I comes, and what do I find? Why, I finds everything as though nothin’ had happened—as though more than nothin’ had happened, I might say.”
And then he took to weeping more violently than before.
“Shure and shure,” observed Mrs. Burke, turning away her head and raising her apron, “it was the very last of my thoughts to make you take on so, Mr. Ballisat; indade and indade it was.”
“No, Kitty, no,” sobbed my father; “I don’t think for a minnit that you thought to hurt my feelin’s; you’ve got too good a heart for that I always thought your heart was in the right place: now I’m sure of it”
“Shall you want anything else, Mr. Ballisat?” asked Mrs. Burke, respectfully, and as though she had not heard a word of my father’s last observation, and she was his humble servant to command, and nothing else. “Shall I pour you out a cup of tea, and then run away to my own room and cook the fish while you are gettin’ on?”
“No, thanky, ma’am,” returned my father, now slightly recovered, but still deeply despondent; “my ’art’s too full, I couldn’t tackle it.”
“Not a piece of the back part dipped in butther and browned to a turn?” said Mrs. Burke, persuasively.
“I couldn’t, really. Your kindness to me, an unfortnit fellow who didn’t oughter expect it, has took away all my wantin’ for the plaice. Don’t say no more to me, please, or I shan’t be able to eat any toast either.”
“Well, if there’s anything you want, you’ve only to give a call,” said Mrs. Burke, moving off towards her own room.
“Do you want to go particlar, missus?”
“I only go to oblige you, Mr. Ballisat.”
“Then just sit down and take a cup with us, that’s a good soul. It will be another favour what I shall owe you for, if you will be so good.” With an expressive shake of the head, as though she fully understood the state of my father’s feelings, and respected him for them, Mrs. Burke yielded to his persuasion, and drew a chair up to the tea-table. Father also drew up a chair.
“Do you like your tea sweet, Jim? Will this be too much?”
“Don’t you trouble about me, missus; you look arter yourself,” replied my father, politely.
“Tut! throuble indade!” said Mrs. Burke, as she put in the spoonful of sugar, and then tasted the tea in the spoon, and put in a little more sugar, and stirred it. “I think you’ll find that to your likin’,—just thry it.”
My father looked grateful, and, with a sigh, stooped forward and helped himself to toast.
“Whisha!” exclaimed Mrs. Burke, in a tone of alarm, as she made a snatch at the slice; “is it for the likes of me to see you atein’ the top piece of all, that’s been fryin’ before the fire this hour and more? Lave that for my atein’, if you plase, and let me help ye to a bit that’s soft and butthery.”
“We shall be spiled, Jimmy, if we’re treated like this,” observed my father, turning to me as he took the proffered slice.
“You ’re welcome to your joke, Jim,” said Mrs. Burke, with a pleasant little laugh: “but, as you of coorse know, being so long a married man, that it is just these shmall thrifles that make home happy.”
“I wasn’t a-joking, don’t you think it,” replied my father, biting the slice of toast to the backbone, and slowly masticating it as he gazed contemplatively on the fire. “It ain’t a joking matter; more t’other; as much more t’other, Kitty—’scuse the word, Mrs. B., but seein’ you sittin’ so familiar-like on that side, and me on this, comes nat’ral to cut your name short”—
(“Tut!” said Mrs. Burke, pulling out the bows of her cap-strings)—“as I was sayin’, what, you was sayin’ is as much more t’other from jokin’ as anythink I knows on.”
“Put your shtool furder in the corner, Jimmy, and then daddy ’ll get a bit more of the fire,” said Mrs. Burke.
“I’m all right, thanky,” returned my father. “Now don’t you move; fact is, I’d rather the fire didn’t ketch my feet. These new ‘jacks’ do draw ’em so you wouldn’t believe, and the fire ’ll make ’em wus. I shall be precious glad to get ’em off.”
“Then why not get out of ’em at once? Don’t you know your juty to yer father, Jimmy? Unlace his boots this moment, and get him his shlippers.”
“Get out with you,” returned my father, with a laugh. “What’s the use of your a-talkin’ to me about slippers? Anybody to hear you would think you didn’t know me, and mistook me for a gentl’man.”
“Got no slippers, Jim!” Mrs. Burke couldn’t have looked more amazed had my father suddenly disclosed to her as a fact that he had no feet, and that what she had been accustomed to regard as such were in reality but two wooden stumps.
“Never had a pair in all my life,” replied my father. “What does a rough and tumble chap like I am warnt with slippers?”
“What should he want wid’m? Shure you shurprise me by axin’ the question, James,” said the shocked Mrs. Burke. “As to the roughin’ and the tumblin’, it may be thrue while you are about gettin’ your honest livin’, but at home it’s different intirely. You know nothin’ about a wife’s affections, Jim, if you don’t think that she regards him as a gintleman as soon as he sits by his fireside, and she thrates him as sich if she’s the wife she shud be. Unlace your daddy’s boots as I bad ye, Jimmy; and if he’ll let us we’ll have his poor feet in comfort in a jiffy.”
It was not the first time I had unlaced my father’s boots, and while I busied myself about them, Mrs. Burke slipped into her room, and after, as could plainly be beard, much rummaging and hunting, returned with a pair of slippers in her hand. They were capital slippers, made of fine leather, and warmly lined, and must, when they were new, have cost a sum that no one but a person of means could afford to give. Probably Mrs. Burke had become possessed of them in the course of her charing, and empty-house cleaning experiences.
“They belonged to my good man that’s dead and gone—rest his sowl,” said Mrs. Burke; “and it’s like my preshumption, as you ’ll say, to offer ye the likes of sich rubbish; but it pains me to hear you complain of achin’ feet, poor fellow; and you’ll maybe pardon the liberty on that ground. P’r’aps they’re a thrifle damp, so we’ll warm ’em.”
So she did. She went down on her knees, and held the slippers to the fire until they were as warm as the toast by the side of them, by which time I had managed to haul off the heavy ankle-jacks. Then she turned about, still on her knees, and fitted the warm slippers on to my father’s feet, clapping her hands, and looking as delighted as though they were her feet that were being comforted, to find that they fitted so nicely.