In fact they did belong to her, and she stood in them, and a rosy comfortable-looking soul she was: with as much soap on her glossy face as in times of yore, but with whole elbows now, that had grown quite dimpled in her improved condition.
‘You’re late, Clemmy!’ said Mr. Britain.
‘Why, you see, Ben, I’ve had a deal to do!’ she replied, looking busily after the safe removal into the house of all the packages and baskets: ‘eight, nine, ten – where’s eleven? Oh! my basket’s eleven! It’s all right. Put the horse up, Harry, and if he coughs again give him a warm mash to-night. Eight, nine, ten. Why, where’s eleven? Oh! forgot, it’s all right. How’s the children, Ben?’
‘Hearty, Clemmy, hearty.’
‘Bless their precious faces!’ said Mrs. Britain, unbonneting her own round countenance (for she and her husband were by this time in the bar), and smoothing her hair with her open hands. ‘Give us a kiss, old man!’
Mr. Britain promptly complied.
‘I think,’ said Mrs. Britain, applying herself to her pockets and drawing forth an immense bulk of thin books and crumpled papers: a very kennel of dogs’-ears: ‘I’ve done everything. Bills all settled – turnips sold – brewer’s account looked into and paid – ‘bacco pipes ordered – seventeen pound four, paid into the Bank – Doctor Heathfield’s charge for little Clem – you’ll guess what that is – Doctor Heathfield won’t take nothing again, Ben.’
‘I thought he wouldn’t,’ returned Ben.
‘No. He says whatever family you was to have, Ben, he’d never put you to the cost of a halfpenny. Not if you was to have twenty.’
Mr. Britain’s face assumed a serious expression, and he looked hard at the wall.
‘An’t it kind of him?’ said Clemency.
‘Very,’ returned Mr. Britain. ‘It’s the sort of kindness that I wouldn’t presume upon, on any account.’
‘No,’ retorted Clemency. ‘Of course not. Then there’s the pony – he fetched eight pound two; and that an’t bad, is it?’
‘It’s very good,’ said Ben.
‘I’m glad you’re pleased!’ exclaimed his wife. ‘I thought you would be; and I think that’s all, and so no more at present from yours and cetrer, C. Britain. Ha ha ha! There! Take all the papers, and lock ’em up. Oh! Wait a minute. Here’s a printed bill to stick on the wall. Wet from the printer’s. How nice it smells!’
‘What’s this?’ said Ben, looking over the document.
‘I don’t know,’ replied his wife. ‘I haven’t read a word of it.’
‘”To be sold by Auction,”‘ read the host of the Nutmeg-Grater, ‘”unless previously disposed of by private contract.”‘
‘They always put that,’ said Clemency.
‘Yes, but they don’t always put this,’ he returned. ‘Look here, “Mansion,” &c. – “offices,” &c., “shrubberies,” &c., “ring fence,” &c. “Messrs. Snitchey and Craggs,” &c., “ornamental portion of the unencumbered freehold property of Michael Warden, Esquire, intending to continue to reside abroad”!’
‘Intending to continue to reside abroad!’ repeated Clemency.
‘Here it is,’ said Britain. ‘Look!’
‘And it was only this very day that I heard it whispered at the old house, that better and plainer news had been half promised of her, soon!’ said Clemency, shaking her head sorrowfully, and patting her elbows as if the recollection of old times unconsciously awakened her old habits. ‘Dear, dear, dear! There’ll be heavy hearts, Ben, yonder.’
Mr. Britain heaved a sigh, and shook his head, and said he couldn’t make it out: he had left off trying long ago. With that remark, he applied himself to putting up the bill just inside the bar window. Clemency, after meditating in silence for a few moments, roused herself, cleared her thoughtful brow, and bustled off to look after the children.
Though the host of the Nutmeg-Grater had a lively regard for his good-wife, it was of the old patronising kind, and she amused him mightily. Nothing would have astonished him so much, as to have known for certain from any third party, that it was she who managed the whole house, and made him, by her plain straightforward thrift, good-humour, honesty, and industry, a thriving man. So easy it is, in any degree of life (as the world very often finds it), to take those cheerful natures that never assert their merit, at their own modest valuation; and to conceive a flippant liking of people for their outward oddities and eccentricities, whose innate worth, if we would look so far, might make us blush in the comparison!