Book: Ten Girls from Dickens

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TEN GIRLS FROM DICKENS

BY

KATE DICKINSON SWEETSER

AUTHOR OF

"TEN BOYS FROM DICKENS" "TEN GREAT ADVENTURERS"
"BOOK OF INDIAN BRAVES" ETC.

ILLUSTRATED BY GEORGE ALFRED WILLIAMS






[Illustration: LITTLE NELL AND HER GRANDFATHER]






PREFACE


As a companion volume to Ten Boys from Dickens, this book of girl-life,
portrayed by the great author, is offered.

The sketches have the same underlying motive as those of boy-life, and
have been compiled in the same manner, with the same purpose in view.

Among them will be found several of the most popular of the creations of
Dickens, notably, The Marchioness, Little Nell, Jenny Wren, and Florence
Dombey, and it is hoped that in this presentation as simple stories of
girlhood, their classic form and beauty may arouse in the young people
of our day a new interest in the novels from which they are taken.

This volume and its companion will have accomplished their purpose when
they have won fresh laurels and a wider audience for the famous writer
to whom they are indebted for their existence.

K.D.S. _April, 1902_.



CONTENTS

THE MARCHIONESS.

MORLEENA KENWIGS.

LITTLE NELL.

THE INFANT PHENOMENON.

JENNY WREN.

SISSY JUPE.

FLORENCE DOMBEY.

CHARLEY.

TILLY SLOWBOY.

AGNES WICKFIELD.



THE MARCHIONESS

[Illustration: THE MARCHIONESS AND DICK SWIVELLER]



THE MARCHIONESS

The Marchioness was a small servant employed by Sampson Brass and his
sister Sally, as general house-worker and drudge, in which capacity she
was discovered by Mr. Richard Swiveller, upon the very first day of his
entering the Brass establishment as clerk.

The Brasses' house was a small one in Bevis Marks, London, having upon
its door a plate, "Brass, Solicitor," and a bill tied to the knocker,
"First floor to let to a single gentleman," and served not only as
habitation, but likewise as office for Sampson Brass,--of none too good
legal repute,--and his sister; a gaunt, bony copy of her red-haired
brother, who was his housekeeper, as well as his business partner.

When the Brasses decided to keep a clerk, Richard Swiveller was chosen
to fill the place; and be it known to whom it may concern, that the said
Richard was the merriest, laziest, weakest, most kind-hearted fellow who
ever sowed a large crop of wild oats, and by a sudden stroke of
good-luck found himself raised to a salaried position.

Clad in a blue jacket with a double row of gilt buttons, bought for
acquatic expeditions, but now dedicated to office purposes, Richard
entered upon his new duties, and during that first afternoon, while Mr.
Brass and his sister were temporarily absent from the office, he began a
minute examination of its contents.

Then, after assuaging his thirst with a pint of mild porter, and
receiving and dismissing three or four small boys who dropped in on
legal errands from other attorneys, with about as correct an
understanding of their business as would have been shown by a clown in a
pantomime under similar circumstances, he tried his hand at a
pen-and-ink caricature of Miss Brass, in which work he was busily
engaged, when there came a rapping at the office-door.

"Come in!" said Dick. "Don't stand on ceremony. The business will get
rather complicated if I have many more customers. Come in!"

"Oh, please," said a little voice very low down in the doorway, "will
you come and show the lodgings?"

Dick leaned over the table, and descried a small slipshod girl in a
dirty coarse apron and bib, which left nothing of her visible but her
face and feet. She might as well have been dressed in a violin case.

"Why, who are you?" said Dick.

To which the only reply was, "Oh, please, will you come and show the
lodgings?"

There never was such an old-fashioned child in her looks and manner. She
must have been at work from her cradle. She seemed as much afraid of
Dick, as Dick was amazed at her.

"I haven't got anything to do with the lodgings," said Dick. "Tell 'em
to call again."

"Oh, but please will you come and show the lodgings?" returned the girl;
"it's eighteen shillings a week, and us finding plate and linen. Boots
and clothes is extra, and fires in winter-time is eightpence a day."

"Why don't you show 'em yourself? You seem to know all about 'em," said
Dick.

"Miss Sally said I wasn't to, because people wouldn't believe the
attendance was good if they saw how small I was, first."

"Well, but they'll see how small you are afterwards, won't they?" said
Dick.

"Ah! but then they'll have taken 'em for a fortnight certain," replied
the child, with a shrewd look; "and people don't like moving when
they're once settled."

"This is a queer sort of thing," muttered Dick, rising. "What do you
mean to say you are--the cook?"

"Yes; I do plain cooking," replied the child. "I'm housemaid too. I do
all the work of the house."

Just then certain sounds on the passage and staircase seemed to denote
the applicant's impatience. Richard Swiveller, therefore, hurried out to
meet and treat with the single gentleman.

He was a little surprised to perceive that the sounds were occasioned by
the progress upstairs of a trunk, which the single gentleman and his
coachman were endeavoring to convey up the steep ascent. Mr. Swiveller
followed slowly behind, entering a new protest on every stair against
the house of Mr. Sampson Brass being thus taken by storm.

To these remonstrances the single gentleman answered not a word, but
when the trunk was at last got into the bedroom, sat down upon it, and
wiped his bald head with his handkerchief. He then announced abruptly
that he would take the room for two years, whereupon, handing a
ten-pound note to the astonished Mr. Swiveller, he began to make ready
to retire, as if it were night instead of day, and Mr. Swiveller walked
downstairs into the office again, filled with wonderment concerning both
the strange new lodger and the small servant who had appeared to
answer the bell.

After that day, one circumstance troubled Mr. Swiveller's mind very
much, and that was, that the small servant always remained somewhere in
the bowels of the earth under Bevis Marks, and never came to the surface
unless a bell rang, when she would answer it, and immediately disappear
again. She never went out, or came into the office, or had a clean face,
or took off the coarse apron, or looked out of any of the windows, or
stood at the street door for a breath of air, or had any rest or
enjoyment whatever. Nobody ever came to see her, nobody spoke of her,
nobody cared about her.

"Now," said Dick, one day, walking up and down with his hands in his
pockets; "I'd give something--if I had it--to know how they use that
child, and where they keep her. I _should_ like to know how they
use her!"

At that moment he caught a glimpse of Miss Brass flitting down the
kitchen stairs. "And, by Jove!" thought Dick, "She's going to feed the
small servant. Now or never!"

First peeping over the handrail, he groped his way down, and arrived at
the kitchen door immediately after Miss Brass had entered the same,
bearing in her hand a cold leg of mutton.

It was a very dark, miserable place, very low and very damp; the walls
disfigured by a thousand rents and blotches. The water was trickling out
of a leaky butt, and a most wretched cat was lapping up the drops with
the sickly eagerness of starvation. The grate was screwed up so tight as
to hold no more than a thin sandwich of fire. Everything was locked up;
the coal-cellar, the candle-box, the salt-box, the meat-safe, were all
padlocked. There was nothing that a beetle could have lunched on.

The small servant stood with humility in presence of Miss Sally, and
hung her head.

"Are you there?" said Miss Sally.

"Yes ma'am," was the answer, in a weak voice.

"Go further away from the leg of mutton, or you'll be picking it, I
know," said Miss Sally.

The girl withdrew into a corner, while Miss Brass opened the safe, and
brought from it a dreary waste of cold potatoes, looking as eatable as
Stonehenge. This she placed before the small servant, and then, taking
up a great carving-knife, made a mighty show of sharpening it.

"Do you see this?" she said, slicing off about two square inches of cold
mutton, and holding it out on the point of a fork.

The small servant looked hard enough at it with her hungry eyes to see
every shred of it and answered, "Yes."

"Then don't you ever go and say," retorted Miss Sally, "that you hadn't
meat here. There, eat it up."

This was soon done.

"Now, do you want any more?" said Miss Sally.

The hungry creature answered with a faint "No." They were evidently
going through an established form.

"You've been helped once to meat," said Miss Brass, summing up the
facts; "you have had as much as you can eat: you're asked if you want
any more, and you answer 'No.' Then don't you ever go and say you were
allowanced,--mind that!"

With those words, Miss Sally put the meat away, locked the meat-safe,
and then overlooked the small servant while she finished the potatoes.
After that, without the smallest cause, she rapped the child with the
blade of the knife, now on her hand, now on her head, and now on her
back. Then, after walking slowly backward towards the door, she darted
suddenly forward, and falling on the small servant again, gave her some
hard blows with her clenched fists. The victim cried, but in a subdued
manner, as if she feared to raise her voice; and Miss Sally ascended the
stairs just as Richard had safely reached the office, fairly beside
himself with anger over the poor child's misery and ill-treatment.

During the following weeks, when he had become accustomed to the routine
of work which he was expected to accomplish, and being often left alone
in the office, Richard Swiveller began to find time hang heavy on his
hands. For the better preservation of his cheerfulness, therefore, he
accustomed himself to play at cribbage with a dummy. While he was
silently conducting one of these games Mr. Swiveller began to think that
he heard a kind of hard breathing sound, in the direction of the door,
which it occurred to him, after some reflection, must proceed from the
small servant, who always had a cold from damp living. Looking intently
that way, he plainly distinguished an eye gleaming and glistening at the
keyhole; and having now no doubt that his suspicions were correct he
stole softly to the door, and pounced upon her before she was aware of
his approach.

"Oh! I didn't mean any harm, indeed, upon my word I didn't," cried the
small servant; "it's so very dull downstairs. Please don't you tell upon
me, please don't."

"Tell upon you!" said Dick. "Do you mean to say you were looking through
the keyhole for company?"

"Yes, upon my word I was," replied the small servant.

"How long have you been cooling your eye there?" said Dick.

"Oh, ever since you first began to play them cards, and long before."

"Well--come in," said Mr. Swiveller, after a little consideration.
"Here--sit down, and I'll teach you how to play."

"Oh! I durstn't do it," rejoined the small servant; "Miss Sally 'ud kill
me if she knowed I come up here."

"Have you got a fire downstairs?" said Dick.

"A very little one," replied the small servant.

"Miss Sally couldn't kill me if she knowed I went down there, so I'll
come," said Richard, putting the cards into his pocket. "Why, how thin
you are! What do you mean by it?"

"It an't my fault."

"Could you eat any bread and meat?" said Dick, taking down his hat "Yes?
Ah! I thought so. Did you ever taste beer?"

"I had a sip of it once," said the small servant.

"Here's a state of things!" cried Mr. Swiveller, raising his eyes to the
ceiling. "She never tasted it--it can't be tasted in a sip! Why, how
old are you?"

"I don't know."

Mr. Swiveller opened his eyes very wide, and appeared thoughtful for a
moment; then, bidding the child mind the door until he came back,
vanished straightway.

Presently he returned, followed by a boy from the public-house, who bore
a plate of bread and beef, and a great pot filled with choice purl.
Relieving the boy of his burden, and charging his little companion to
fasten the door to prevent surprise, Mr. Swiveller followed her into
the kitchen.

"There!" said Richard, putting the plate before her. "First of all,
clear that off, and then you'll see what's next."

The small servant needed no second bidding, and the plate was soon
empty.

"Next," said Dick, handing the purl, "take a pull at that, but moderate
your transports, for you're not used to it. Well, is it good?"

"Oh, _isn't_ it!" said the small servant.

Mr. Swiveller appeared immensely gratified over her enjoyment, and when
she had satisfied her hunger, applied himself to teaching her the game,
which she soon learned tolerably well, being both sharp-witted
and cunning.

"Now," said Mr. Swiveller, "to make it seem more real and pleasant, I
shall call you the Marchioness, do you hear?"

The small servant nodded.

"Then, Marchioness," said Mr. Swiveller, "fire away!"

The Marchioness, holding her cards very tight in both hands, considered
which to play, and Mr. Swiveller, assuming the gay and fashionable air
which such society required, waited for her lead.

They had played several rubbers, when the striking of ten o'clock
rendered Mr. Swiveller mindful of the flight of time, and of the
expediency of withdrawing before Mr. Sampson and Miss Sally
Brass returned.

"With which object in view, Marchioness," said Mr. Swiveller gravely. "I
shall ask your ladyship's permission to put the board in my pocket, and
to retire. The Baron Sampsono Brasso and his fair sister are, you tell
me, at the Play?" added Mr. Swiveller, leaning his left arm heavily upon
the table, and raising his voice and his right leg after the manner of a
theatrical bandit.

The Marchioness nodded.

"Ha!" said Mr. Swiveller, with a portentous frown. "'Tis well.
Marchioness!--but no matter. Some wine there, ho! Marchioness,
your health."

The small servant, who was not so well acquainted with theatrical
conventionalities as Mr. Swiveller, was rather alarmed by his manner,
and showed it so plainly that he felt it necessary to discharge his
brigand bearing for one more suitable to private life.

"I suppose," said Dick, "that they consult together a good deal, and
talk about a great many people--about me, for instance, sometimes, eh,
Marchioness?"

The Marchioness nodded amazingly.

"Complimentary?" asked Mr. Swiveller.

The Marchioness shook her head violently.

"H'm!" Dick muttered. "Would it be any breach of confidence,
Marchioness, to relate what they say of the humble individual who has
now the honor to--?"

"Miss Sally says you are a funny chap," replied his friend.

"Well, Marchioness," said Mr. Swiveller, "that's not uncomplimentary.
Merriment, Marchioness, is not a bad of a degrading quality. Old King
Cole was himself a merry old soul, if we may put any faith in the pages
of history."

"But she says," pursued his companion, "that you aren't to be trusted."

"Why, really, Marchioness," said Mr. Swiveller thoughtfully, "it's a
popular prejudice, and yet I'm sure I don't know why, for I've been
trusted in my time to a considerable amount, and I can safely say that I
never forsook my trust, until it deserted me--never. Mr. Brass is of the
same opinion, I suppose?"

His friend nodded again, adding imploringly, "But don't you ever tell
upon me, or I shall be beat to death."

"Marchioness," said Mr. Swiveller, rising, "the word of a gentleman is
as good as his bond--sometimes better, as in the present case, where his
bond might prove but a doubtful sort of security. I'm your friend, and I
hope we shall play many more rubbers together. But, Marchioness," added
Richard, "it occurs to me that you must be in the constant habit of
airing your eye at keyholes to know this."

"I only wanted," replied the trembling Marchioness, "to know where the
key of the meat-safe was hid--that was all; and I wouldn't have taken
much if I had found it--only enough to squench my hunger."

"You didn't find it, then?" said Dick, "but, of course, you didn't, or
of course you'd be plumper. Good-night, Marchioness, fare thee well, and
if forever, then forever fare thee well. And put up the chain,
Marchioness, in case of accidents!"

Upon repairing to Bevis Marks on the following morning, he found Miss
Brass much agitated over the disappearance from the office of several
small articles, as well as three half crowns, and Richard felt much
troubled over the matter, saying to himself, "Then, by Jove, I'm afraid
the Marchioness is done for!"

The more he discussed the subject in his thoughts, the more probable it
appeared to Dick that the miserable little servant was the culprit. When
he considered on what a spare allowance of food she lived, how neglected
and untaught she was, and how her natural cunning had been sharpened by
necessity and privation, he scarcely doubted it. And yet he pitied her
so much, and felt so unwilling to have a matter of such gravity
disturbing the oddity of their acquaintance, that he thought, rather
than receive fifty pounds down, he would have the Marchioness
proved innocent.

While the subject of the thefts was under discussion, Kit Nubbles, a lad
in the employ of a Mr. Garland, passed through the office, on his way
upstairs to the room of the Brasses' lodger, the single gentleman, who
was an intimate friend of Kit's employer. The single gentleman having
been confined to his room for some time by a slight illness, it had
become Kit's daily custom to convey to him messages and notes from Mr.
Garland, and not infrequently Sampson Brass would detain the lad in the
office for a few words of pleasant conversation.

Having discharged his errand, Kit came downstairs again, finding no one
in the office except Mr. Brass, who, after greeting him affably,
requested him to mind the office for one minute while he ran upstairs.
Mr. Brass returned almost immediately, Mr. Swiveller came in too, at the
same instant, likewise Miss Sally, and Kit, released, at once set off on
a run towards home, eager to make up for lost time. As he was running,
he was suddenly arrested and held in restraint, by no less a person than
Sampson Brass himself, accompanied by Mr. Swiveller.

A five-pound note was missing from the office. Kit had been alone there
for some minutes. Who could have taken it but Kit?

Pleased to have suspicion diverted from the Marchioness, but loath to
help in so unpleasant an affair, Mr. Swiveller reluctantly assisted in
bearing the captive back to the office, Kit protesting his innocence at
every step. They searched him, and there under the lining of his hat was
the missing bank-note!

Still protesting his innocence, and completely stunned by the calamity
which had come upon him, the lad was borne off to prison, where, after
eleven weary days had dragged away, he was brought to trial. Richard
Swiveller was called as a witness against Kit, and told his tale with
reluctance, and an evident desire to make the best of it, for the lad's
sake. His kind heart was also touched with pity for Kit's poor widowed
mother, who sobbed out again and again, that she had never had cause to
doubt her son's honesty, and she never would.

When the trial was ended, and Kit found guilty, Richard bore the lad's
fainting mother swiftly off in a coach he had ready for the purpose,
and on the way comforted her in his own peculiar fashion, perpetrating
the most astounding absurdities of quotation from song and poem that
ever were heard. Reaching her home, he stayed till she was recovered;
then returned to Bevis Marks, where Mr. Brass met him with the news that
his services would be no longer required in the establishment.

Feeling sure that this verdict was in consequence of his defence of Kit,
Mr. Swiveller took his dismissal in profound silence, and turned his
back upon Bevis Marks, big with designs for the comforting of Kit's
mother, and the aid of Kit himself. His only regret in regard to the
matter was in having to leave the Marchioness alone and unprotected in
the hands of the Brasses, and little did he dream that to the small
servant herself, to the Marchioness, rather than to him, Kit and his
mother were to owe their heaviest debt of gratitude--but it was so
to be.

That very night Mr. Richard was seized with an alarming illness, and in
twenty-four hours was stricken with a raging fever, and lay tossing upon
his hot, uneasy bed, unconscious of anything but weariness and worry and
pain, until at length he sank into a deep sleep. He awoke, and with a
sensation of blissful rest better than sleep itself, began to dimly
remember, and to think what a long night it had been, and to wonder
whether he had not been delirious once or twice. Still, he felt
indifferent and happy, and having no curiosity to pursue the subject,
remained in a waking slumber until his attention was attracted by a
cough. This made him doubt whether he had locked his door last night,
and feel a little surprised at having a companion in the room. But he
lacked energy to follow up this train of thought, and in a luxury of
repose, lay staring at some green stripes on the bed furniture, and
associating them strangely, with patches of fresh turf, while the
yellow ground between made gravel walks, and so helped out a long
perspective of trim gardens.

He was rambling in imagination on these terraces, when he heard the
cough once more. Raising himself a little in the bed, he looked
about him.

The same room, certainly, but with what unbounded astonishment did he
see bottles, and basins, and articles of linen airing by the fire--all
very clean and neat, but quite different from anything he had left there
when he went to bed! The atmosphere too filled with a cool smell of
herbs and vinegar; the floor newly sprinkled; the--the what?--the
Marchioness!

Yes; playing cribbage with herself at the table. There she sat, intent
upon her game, coughing now and then in a subdued manner, as if she
feared to disturb him, going through all the mysteries of cribbage as if
she had been in full practice from her cradle!

Mr. Swiveller contemplated these things for a short time, then laid his
head on the pillow again.

"I'm dreaming," thought Richard, "that's clear. When I went to bed my
hands were not made of egg-shells, and now I can almost see through 'em.
If this is not a dream, I have woke up, by mistake, in an Arabian Night
instead of a London one. But I have no doubt I'm asleep. Not the least."

Here the small servant had another cough.

"Very remarkable!" thought Mr. Swiveller. "I never dreamed such a real
cough as that before. There's another--and another--I say!--I'm dreaming
rather fast!

"It's an Arabian Night; that's what it is," said Richard. "I'm in
Damascus or Grand Cairo. The Marchioness is a Genie and having had a
wager with another Genie about who is the handsomest young man alive,
and the worthiest to be the husband of the Princess of China, has
brought me away, room and all, to compare us together."

Not feeling quite satisfied with this explanation, Mr. Swiveller
determined to take the first opportunity of addressing his companion. An
occasion soon presented itself. The Marchioness dealt, turned up a
knave, and omitted to take the usual advantage, upon which Mr. Swiveller
called out as loud as he could--"Two for his heels!"

The Marchioness jumped up quickly, and clapped her hands.

"Arabian Night certainly," thought Mr. Swiveller; "they always clap
their hands, instead of ringing the bell. Now for the two thousand black
slaves with jars and jewels on their heads!"

It appeared however, that she had only clapped her hands for joy, as
directly afterward she began to laugh, and then to cry, declaring, not
in choice Arabic, but in familiar English, that she was "so glad she
didn't know what to do."

"Marchioness," said Mr. Swiveller, "will you have the goodness to inform
me where I shall find my voice; and what has become of my flesh?"

The Marchioness only shook her head mournfully, and cried again,
whereupon Mr. Swiveller (being very weak) felt his own eyes
affected likewise.

"I begin to infer, Marchioness," said Richard, after a pause, "that I
have been ill."

"You just have!" replied the small servant, wiping her eyes. "Haven't
you been a-talking nonsense!"

"Oh!", said Dick. "Very ill, Marchioness, have I been?"

"Dead, all but," replied the small servant. "I never thought you'd get
better."

Mr. Swiveller was silent for a long period. By and by he inquired how
long he had been there.

"Three weeks to-morrow." replied the small servant, "three long slow
weeks."

The bare thought of having been in such extremity caused Richard to fall
into another silence. The Marchioness, having arranged the bedclothes
more comfortably, and felt that his hands and forehead were quite cool,
cried a little more, and then applied herself to getting tea ready, and
making some thin dry toast.

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