Christmas Stories

Toby was only joking, for he gravely shook his head in self-depreciation.

“Why! Lord!” said Toby. “The Papers is full of obserwations as it is; and so’s the Parliament. Here’s last week’s paper, now;” taking a very dirty one from his pocket, and holding it from him at arm’s length; “full of obserwations! Full of obserwations! I like to know the news as well as any man,” said Toby, slowly; folding it a little smaller, and putting it in his pocket again: “but it almost goes against the grain with me to read a paper now. It frightens me almost. I don’t know what we poor people are coming to. Lord send we may be coming to something better in the New Year nigh upon us!”

“Why, father, father!” said a pleasant voice, hard by.

But Toby, not hearing it, continued to trot backwards and forwards: musing as he went, and talking to himself.

“It seems as if we can’t go right, or do right, or be righted,” said Toby. “I hadn’t much schooling, myself, when I was young; and I can’t make out whether we have any business on the face of the earth, or not. Sometimes I think we must have—a little; and sometimes I think we must be intruding. I get so puzzled sometimes that I am not even able to make up my mind whether there is any good at all in us, or whether we are born bad. We seem to be dreadful things; we seem to give a deal of trouble; we are always being complained of and guarded against. One way or other, we fill the papers. Talk of a New Year!” said Toby, mournfully. “I can bear up as well as another man at most times; better than a good many, for I am as strong as a lion, and all men an’t; but supposing it should really be that we have no right to a New Year—supposing we really are intruding—”

“Why, father, father!” said the pleasant voice again.

Toby heard it this time; started; stopped; and shortening his sight, which had been directed a long way off as seeking the enlightenment in the very heart of the approaching year, found himself face to face with his own child, and looking close into her eyes.

Bright eyes they were. Eyes that would bear a world of looking in, before their depth was fathomed. Dark eyes, that reflected back the eyes which searched them; not flashingly, or at the owner’s will, but with a clear, calm, honest, patient radiance, claiming kindred with that light which Heaven called into being. Eyes that were beautiful and true, and beaming with Hope. With Hope so young and fresh; with Hope so buoyant, vigorous, and bright, despite the twenty years of work and poverty on which they had looked; that they became a voice to Trotty Veck, and said: “I think we have some business here—a little!”

Trotty kissed the lips belonging to the eyes, and squeezed the blooming face between his hands.

“Why, Pet,” said Trotty. “What’s to do? I didn’t expect you to-day, Meg.”

“Neither did I expect to come, father,” cried the girl, nodding her head and smiling as she spoke. “But here I am! And not alone; not alone!”

“Why you don’t mean to say,” observed Trotty, looking curiously at a covered basket which she carried in her hand, “that you—”

“Smell it, father dear,” said Meg. “Only smell it!”

Trotty was going to lift up the cover at once, in a great hurry, when she gaily interposed her hand.

“No, no, no,” said Meg, with the glee of a child. “Lengthen it out a little. Let me just lift up the corner; just the lit-tle ti-ny cor-ner, you know,” said Meg, suiting the action to the word with the utmost gentleness, and speaking very softly, as if she were afraid of being overheard by something inside the basket; “there. Now. What’s that?”

Toby took the shortest possible sniff at the edge of the basket, and cried out in a rapture:

“Why, it’s hot!”

“It’s burning hot!” cried Meg. “Ha, ha, ha! It’s scalding hot!”

“Ha, ha, ha!” roared Toby, with a sort of kick. “It’s scalding hot!”

“But what is it, father?” said Meg. “Come. You haven’t guessed what it is. And you must guess what it is. I can’t think of taking it out, till you guess what it is. Don’t be in such a hurry! Wait a minute! A little bit more of the cover. Now guess!”

Meg was in a perfect fright lest he should guess right too soon; shrinking away, as she held the basket towards him; curling up her pretty shoulders; stopping her ear with her hand, as if by so doing she could keep the right word out of Toby’s lips; and laughing softly the whole time.

Meanwhile Toby, putting a hand on each knee, bent down his nose to the basket, and took a long inspiration at the lid; the grin upon his withered face expanding in the process, as if he were inhaling laughing gas.

“Ah! It’s very nice,” said Toby. “It an’t—I suppose it an’t Polonies?”

“No, no, no!” cried Meg, delighted. “Nothing like Polonies!”

“No,” said Toby, after another sniff. “It’s—it’s mellower than Polonies. It’s very nice. It improves every moment. It’s too decided for Trotters. An’t it?”

Meg was in an ecstasy. He could not have gone wider of the mark than Trotters—except Polonies.

“Liver?” said Toby, communing with himself. “No. There’s a mildness about it that don’t answer to liver. Pettitoes? No. It an’t faint enough for pettitoes. It wants the stringiness of Cocks’ heads. And I know it an’t sausages. I’ll tell you what it is. It’s chitterlings!”

“No, it an’t!” cried Meg, in a burst of delight. “No, it an’t!”

“Why, what am I a-thinking of!” said Toby, suddenly recovering a position as near the perpendicular as it was possible for him to assume. “I shall forget my own name next. It’s tripe!”

Tripe it was; and Meg, in high joy, protested he should say, in half a minute more, it was the best tripe ever stewed.

“And so,” said Meg, busying herself exultingly with the basket, “I’ll lay the cloth at once, father; for I have brought the tripe in a basin, and tied the basin up in a pocket-handkerchief; and if I like to be proud for once, and spread that for a cloth, and call it a cloth, there’s no law to prevent me; is there, father?”

“Not that I know of, my dear,” said Toby. “But they’re always a-bringing up some new law or other.”

“And according to what I was reading you in the paper the other day, father; what the Judge said, you know; we poor people are supposed to know them all. Ha ha! What a mistake! My goodness me, how clever they think us!”

“Yes, my dear,” cried Trotty; “and they’d be very fond of any one of us that did know ’em all. He’d grow fat upon the work he’d get, that man, and be popular with the gentlefolks in his neighbourhood. Very much so!”

“He’d eat his dinner with an appetite, whoever he was, if it smelt like this,” said Meg, cheerfully. “Make haste, for there’s a hot potato besides, and half a pint of fresh-drawn beer in a bottle. Where will you dine, father? On the Post, or on the Steps? Dear, dear, how grand we are. Two places to choose from!”

“The steps to-day, my Pet,” said Trotty. “Steps in dry weather. Post in wet. There’s a greater conveniency in the steps at all times, because of the sitting down; but they’re rheumatic in the damp.”

“Then here,” said Meg, clapping her hands, after a moment’s bustle; “here it is, all ready! And beautiful it looks! Come, father. Come!”

Since his discovery of the contents of the basket, Trotty had been standing looking at her—and had been speaking too—in an abstracted manner, which showed that though she was the object of his thoughts and eyes, to the exclusion even of tripe, he neither saw nor thought about her as she was at that moment, but had before him some imaginary rough sketch or drama of her future life. Roused, now, by her cheerful summons, he shook off a melancholy shake of the head which was just coming upon him, and trotted to her side. As he was stooping to sit down, the Chimes rang.

“Amen!” said Trotty, pulling off his hat and looking up towards them.

“Amen to the Bells, father?” cried Meg.

“They broke in like a grace, my dear,” said Trotty, taking his seat. “They’d say a good one, I am sure, if they could. Many’s the kind thing they say to me.”

“The Bells do, father!” laughed Meg, as she set the basin, and a knife and fork, before him. “Well!”

“Seem to, my Pet,” said Trotty, falling to with great vigour. “And where’s the difference? If I hear ’em, what does it matter whether they speak it or not? Why bless you, my dear,” said Toby, pointing at the tower with his fork, and becoming more animated under the influence of dinner, “how often have I heard them bells say, ‘Toby Veck, Toby Veck, keep a good heart, Toby! Toby Veck, Toby Veck, keep a good heart, Toby!’ A million times? More!”

“Well, I never!” cried Meg.

She had, though—over and over again. For it was Toby’s constant topic.

“When things is very bad,” said Trotty; “very bad indeed, I mean; almost at the worst; then it’s ‘Toby Veck, Toby Veck, job coming soon, Toby! Toby Veck, Toby Veck, job coming soon, Toby!’ That way.”

“And it comes—at last, father,” said Meg, with a touch of sadness in her pleasant voice.

“Always,” answered the unconscious Toby. “Never fails.”

While this discourse was holding, Trotty made no pause in his attack upon the savoury meat before him, but cut and ate, and cut and drank, and cut and chewed, and dodged about, from tripe to hot potato, and from hot potato back again to tripe, with an unctuous and unflagging relish. But happening now to look all round the street—in case anybody should be beckoning from any door or window, for a porter—his eyes, in coming back again, encountered Meg: sitting opposite to him, with her arms folded and only busy in watching his progress with a smile of happiness.

“Why, Lord forgive me!” said Trotty, dropping his knife and fork. “My dove! Meg! why didn’t you tell me what a beast I was?”