As these remarks were quite unanswerable – which is the happy property of all remarks that are sufficiently wide of the purpose – they changed the current of the conversation, and diverted the general attention to the Veal and Ham-Pie, the cold mutton, the potatoes, and the tart. In order that the bottled beer might not be slighted, John Peerybingle proposed To-morrow: the Wedding-Day; and called upon them to drink a bumper to it, before he proceeded on his journey.
For you ought to know that he only rested there, and gave the old horse a bait. He had to go some four of five miles farther on; and when he returned in the evening, he called for Dot, and took another rest on his way home. This was the order of the day on all the Pic-Nic occasions, had been, ever since their institution.
There were two persons present, besides the bride and bridegroom elect, who did but indifferent honour to the toast. One of these was Dot, too flushed and discomposed to adapt herself to any small occurrence of the moment; the other, Bertha, who rose up hurriedly, before the rest, and left the table.
‘Good bye!’ said stout John Peerybingle, pulling on his dreadnought coat. ‘I shall be back at the old time. Good bye all!’
‘Good bye, John,’ returned Caleb.
He seemed to say it by rote, and to wave his hand in the same unconscious manner; for he stood observing Bertha with an anxious wondering face, that never altered its expression.
‘Good bye, young shaver!’ said the jolly Carrier, bending down to kiss the child; which Tilly Slowboy, now intent upon her knife and fork, had deposited asleep (and strange to say, without damage) in a little cot of Bertha’s furnishing; ‘good bye! Time will come, I suppose, when YOU’LL turn out into the cold, my little friend, and leave your old father to enjoy his pipe and his rheumatics in the chimney-corner; eh? Where’s Dot?’
‘I’m here, John!’ she said, starting.
‘Come, come!’ returned the Carrier, clapping his sounding hands. ‘Where’s the pipe?’
‘I quite forgot the pipe, John.’
Forgot the pipe! Was such a wonder ever heard of! She! Forgot the pipe!
‘I’ll – I’ll fill it directly. It’s soon done.’
But it was not so soon done, either. It lay in the usual place – the Carrier’s dreadnought pocket – with the little pouch, her own work, from which she was used to fill it, but her hand shook so, that she entangled it (and yet her hand was small enough to have come out easily, I am sure), and bungled terribly. The filling of the pipe and lighting it, those little offices in which I have commended her discretion, were vilely done, from first to last. During the whole process, Tackleton stood looking on maliciously with the half-closed eye; which, whenever it met hers – or caught it, for it can hardly be said to have ever met another eye: rather being a kind of trap to snatch it up – augmented her confusion in a most remarkable degree.
‘Why, what a clumsy Dot you are, this afternoon!’ said John. ‘I could have done it better myself, I verify believe!’
With these good-natured words, he strode away, and presently was heard, in company with Boxer, and the old horse, and the cart, making lively music down the road. What time the dreamy Caleb still stood, watching his blind daughter, with the same expression on his face.
‘Bertha!’ said Caleb, softly. ‘What has happened? How changed you are, my darling, in a few hours – since this morning. YOU silent and dull all day! What is it? Tell me!’
‘Oh father, father!’ cried the Blind Girl, bursting into tears. ‘Oh my hard, hard fate!’
Caleb drew his hand across his eyes before he answered her.
‘But think how cheerful and how happy you have been, Bertha! How good, and how much loved, by many people.’
‘That strikes me to the heart, dear father! Always so mindful of me! Always so kind to me!’
Caleb was very much perplexed to understand her.
‘To be – to be blind, Bertha, my poor dear,’ he faltered, ‘is a great affliction; but – ‘