BLEAK HOUSE

Inapoi la Sumar

CHAPTER XXX  

Esther's Narrative

Richard had been gone away some time when a visitor came to pass a  few days with us.  It was an elderly lady.  It was Mrs. Woodcourt,  who, having come from Wales to stay with Mrs. Bayham Badger and  having written to my guardian, "by her son Allan's desire," to  report that she had heard from him and that he was well "and sent  his kind remembrances to all of us," had been invited by my  guardian to make a visit to Bleak House.  She stayed with us nearly  three weeks.  She took very kindly to me and was extremely  confidential, so much so that sometimes she almost made me  uncomfortable.  I had no right, I knew very well, to be  uncomfortable because she confided in me, and I felt it was  unreasonable; still, with all I could do, I could not quite help it.  She was such a sharp little lady and used to sit with her hands  folded in each other looking so very watchful while she talked to  me that perhaps I found that rather irksome.  Or perhaps it was her  being so upright and trim, though I don't think it was that,  because I thought that quaintly pleasant.  Nor can it have been the  general expression of her face, which was very sparkling and pretty  for an old lady.  I don't know what it was. 

Or at least if I do  now, I thought I did not then.  Or at least--but it don't matter.  Of a night when I was going upstairs to bed, she would invite me  into her room, where she sat before the fire in a great chair; and,  dear me, she would tell me about Morgan ap-Kerrig until I was quite  low-spirited!  Sometimes she recited a few verses from  Crumlinwallinwer and the Mewlinn-willinwodd (if those are the right  names, which I dare say they are not), and would become quite fiery  with the sentiments they expressed.  Though I never knew what they  were (being in Welsh), further than that they were highly  eulogistic of the lineage of Morgan ap-Kerrig. 

"So, Miss Summerson," she would say to me with stately triumph,  "this, you see, is the fortune inherited by my son.  Wherever my  son goes, he can claim kindred with Ap-Kerrig.  He may not have  money, but he always has what is much better--family, my dear." 

I had my doubts of their caring so very much for Morgan ap-Kerrig  in India and China, but of course I never expressed them.  I used  to say it was a great thing to be so highly connected. 

"It IS, my dear, a great thing," Mrs. Woodcourt would reply. 

"It  has its disadvantages; my son's choice of a wife, for instance, is  limited by it, but the matrimonial choice of the royal family is  limited in much the same manner." 

Then she would pat me on the arm and smooth my dress, as much as to  assure me that she had a good opinion of me, the distance between  us notwithstanding. 

"Poor Mr. Woodcourt, my dear," she would say, and always with some  emotion, for with her lofty pedigree she had a very affectionate  heart, "was descended from a great Highland family, the MacCoorts  of MacCoort.  He served his king and country as an officer in the  Royal Highlanders, and he died on the field.  My son is one of the  last representatives of two old families.  With the blessing of  heaven he will set them up again and unite them with another old  family." 

It was in vain for me to try to change the subject, as I used to  try, only for the sake of novelty or perhaps because--but I need  not be so particular.  Mrs. Woodcourt never would let me change it. 

"My dear," she said one night, "you have so much sense and you look  at the world in a quiet manner so superior to your time of life  that it is a comfort to me to talk to you about these family  matters of mine.  You don't know much of my son, my dear; but you  know enough of him, I dare say, to recollect him?" 

"Yes, ma'am.  I recollect him." 

"Yes, my dear.  Now, my dear, I think you are a judge of character,  and I should like to have your opinion of him." 

"Oh, Mrs. Woodcourt," said I, "that is so difficult!" 

"Why is it so difficult, my dear?" she returned. 

"I don't see it  myself." 

"To give an opinion--" 

"On so slight an acquaintance, my dear.  THAT'S true." 

I didn't mean that, because Mr. Woodcourt had been at our house a  good deal altogether and had become quite intimate with my  guardian.  I said so, and added that he seemed to be very clever in  his profession--we thought--and that his kindness and gentleness to  Miss Flite were above all praise. 

"You do him justice!" said Mrs. Woodcourt, pressing my hand. 

"You  define him exactly.  Allan is a dear fellow, and in his profession  faultless.  I say it, though I am his mother.  Still, I must  confess he is not without faults, love." 

"None of us are," said I. 

"Ah! But his really are faults that he might correct, and ought to  correct," returned the sharp old lady, sharply shaking her head.   

"I am so much attached to you that I may confide in you, my dear,  as a third party wholly disinterested, that he is fickleness  itself." 

I said I should have thought it hardly possible that he could have  been otherwise than constant to his profession and zealous in the  pursuit of it, judging from the reputation he had earned. 

"You are right again, my dear," the old lady retorted, "but I don't  refer to his profession, look you."  "Oh!" said I. 

"No," said she. 

"I refer, my dear, to his social conduct.  He is  always paying trivial attentions to young ladies, and always has  been, ever since he was eighteen.  Now, my dear, he has never  really cared for any one of them and has never meant in doing this  to do any harm or to express anything but politeness and good  nature.  Still, it's not right, you know; is it?" 

"No," said I, as she seemed to wait for me. 

"And it might lead to mistaken notions, you see, my dear."  I supposed it might. 

"Therefore, I have told him many times that he really should be  more careful, both in justice to himself and in justice to others.   And he has always said, 'Mother, I will be; but you know me better  than anybody else does, and you know I mean no harm--in short, mean  nothing.' 

All of which is very true, my dear, but is no  justification.  However, as he is now gone so far away and for an  indefinite time, and as he will have good opportunities and  introductions, we may consider this past and gone.  And you, my  dear," said the old lady, who was now all nods and smiles,  "regarding your dear self, my love?" 

"Me, Mrs. Woodcourt?" 

"Not to be always selfish, talking of my son, who has gone to seek  his fortune and to find a wife--when do you mean to seek YOUR  fortune and to find a husband, Miss Summerson?  Hey, look you!  Now  you blush!"  I don't think I did blush--at all events, it was not important if I  did--and I said my present fortune perfectly contented me and I had  no wish to change it. 

"Shall I tell you what I always think of you and the fortune yet to  come for you, my love?" said Mrs. Woodcourt. 

"If you believe you are a good prophet," said I.   

"Why, then, it is that you will marry some one very rich and very  worthy, much older--five and twenty years, perhaps--than yourself.   And you will be an excellent wife, and much beloved, and very  happy." 

"That is a good fortune," said I. 

"But why is it to be mine?" 

"My dear," she returned, "there's suitability in it--you are so  busy, and so neat, and so peculiarly situated altogether that  there's suitability in it, and it will come to pass.  And nobody,  my love, will congratulate you more sincerely on such a marriage  than I shall."  It was curious that this should make me uncomfortable, but I think  it did.  I know it did.  It made me for some part of that night  uncomfortable.  I was so ashamed of my folly that I did not like to  confess it even to Ada, and that made me more uncomfortable still.   I would have given anything not to have been so much in the bright  old lady's confidence if I could have possibly declined it.  It  gave me the most inconsistent opinions of her. 

At one time I  thought she was a story-teller, and at another time that she was  the pink of truth.  Now I suspected that she was very cunning, next  moment I believed her honest Welsh heart to be perfectly innocent  and simple.  And after all, what did it matter to me, and why did  it matter to me?  Why could not I, going up to bed with my basket  of keys, stop to sit down by her fire and accommodate myself for a  little while to her, at least as well as to anybody else, and not  trouble myself about the harmless things she said to me?  Impelled  towards her, as I certainly was, for I was very anxious that she  should like me and was very glad indeed that she did, why should I  harp afterwards, with actual distress and pain, on every word she  said and weigh it over and over again in twenty scales?  Why was it  so worrying to me to have her in our house, and confidential to me  every night, when I yet felt that it was better and safer somehow  that she should be there than anywhere else?  These were  perplexities and contradictions that I could not account for.  At  least, if I could--but I shall come to all that by and by, and it  is mere idleness to go on about it now.  So when Mrs. Woodcourt went away, I was sorry to lose her but was  relieved too. 

And then Caddy Jellyby came down, and Caddy brought  such a packet of domestic news that it gave us abundant occupation.  First Caddy declared (and would at first declare nothing else) that  I was the best adviser that ever was known.  This, my pet said, was  no news at all; and this, I said, of course, was nonsense.  Then  Caddy told us that she was going to be married in a month and that  if Ada and I would be her bridesmaids, she was the happiest girl in  the world.  To be sure, this was news indeed; and I thought we  never should have done talking about it, we had so much to say to  Caddy, and Caddy had so much to say to us. 

It seemed that Caddy's unfortunate papa had got over his  bankruptcy--"gone through the Gazette," was the expression Caddy  used, as if it were a tunnel--with the general clemency and  commiseration of his creditors, and had got rid of his affairs in  some blessed manner without succeeding in understanding them, and  had given up everything he possessed (which was not worth much, I  should think, to judge from the state of the furniture), and had  satisfied every one concerned that he could do no more, poor man.   So, he had been honourably dismissed to "the office" to begin the  world again.  What he did at the office, I never knew; Caddy said  he was a "custom-house and general agent," and the only thing I  ever understood about that business was that when he wanted money  more than usual he went to the docks to look for it, and hardly  ever found it.  As soon as her papa had tranquillized his mind by becoming this  shorn lamb, and they had removed to a furnished lodging in Hatton  Garden (where I found the children, when I afterwards went there,  cutting the horse hair out of the seats of the chairs and choking  themselves with it), Caddy had brought about a meeting between him  and old Mr. Turveydrop; and poor Mr. Jellyby, being very humble and  meek, had deferred to Mr. Turveydrop's deportment so submissively  that they had become excellent friends.  By degrees, old Mr.  Turveydrop, thus familiarized with the idea of his son's marriage,  had worked up his parental feelings to the height of contemplating  that event as being near at hand and had given his gracious consent  to the young couple commencing housekeeping at the academy in  Newman Street when they would. 

"And your papa, Caddy.  What did he say?" 

"Oh! Poor Pa," said Caddy, "only cried and said he hoped we might  get on better than he and Ma had got on.  He didn't say so before  Prince, he only said so to me.  And he said, 'My poor girl, you  have not been very well taught how to make a home for your husband,  but unless you mean with all your heart to strive to do it, you bad  better murder him than marry him--if you really love him.'" 

"And how did you reassure him, Caddy?" 

"Why, it was very distressing, you know, to see poor Pa so low and  hear him say such terrible things, and I couldn't help crying  myself.  But I told him that I DID mean it with all my heart and  that I hoped our house would be a place for him to come and find  some comfort in of an evening and that I hoped and thought I could  be a better daughter to him there than at home.  Then I mentioned  Peepy's coming to stay with me, and then Pa began to cry again and  said the children were Indians." 

"Indians, Caddy?"  

"Yes," said Caddy, "wild Indians.  And Pa said"--here she began to  sob, poor girl, not at all like the happiest girl in the world-- "that he was sensible the best thing that could happen to them was  their being all tomahawked together." 

Ada suggested that it was comfortable to know that Mr. Jellyby did  not mean these destructive sentiments.  "No, of course I know Pa wouldn't like his family to be weltering  in their blood," said Caddy, "but he means that they are very  unfortunate in being Ma's children and that he is very unfortunate  in being Ma's husband; and I am sure that's true, though it seems  unnatural to say so."  I asked Caddy if Mrs. Jellyby knew that her wedding-day was fixed. 

"Oh! You know what Ma is, Esther," she returned. 

"It's impossible  to say whether she knows it or not.  She has been told it often  enough; and when she IS told it, she only gives me a placid look,  as if I was I don't know what--a steeple in the distance," said  Caddy with a sudden idea; "and then she shakes her head and says  'Oh, Caddy, Caddy, what a tease you are!' and goes on with the  Borrioboola letters." 

"And about your wardrobe, Caddy?" said I.  For she was under no  restraint with us. 

"Well, my dear Esther,'' she returned, drying her eyes, "I must do  the best I can and trust to my dear Prince never to have an unkind  remembrance of my coming so shabbily to him.  If the question  concerned an outfit for Borrioboola, Ma would know all about it and  would be quite excited.  Being what it is, she neither knows nor  cares." 

Caddy was not at all deficient in natural affection for her mother,  but mentioned this with tears as an undeniable fact, which I am  afraid it was.  We were sorry for the poor dear girl and found so  much to admire in the good disposition which had survived under  such discouragement that we both at once (I mean Ada and I)  proposed a little scheme that made her perfectly joyful.  This was  her staying with us for three weeks, my staying with her for one,  and our all three contriving and cutting out, and repairing, and  sewing, and saving, and doing the very best we could think of to  make the most of her stock.  My guardian being as pleased with the  idea as Caddy was, we took her home next day to arrange the matter  and brought her out again in triumph with her boxes and all the  purchases that could be squeezed out of a ten-pound note, which Mr.  Jellyby had found in the docks I suppose, but which he at all  events gave her.  What my guardian would not have given her if we  had encouraged him, it would be difficult to say, but we thought it  right to compound for no more than her wedding-dress and bonnet.   He agreed to this compromise, and if Caddy had ever been happy in  her life, she was happy when we sat down to work.  She was clumsy enough with her needle, poor girl, and pricked her  fingers as much as she had been used to ink them.  She could not  help reddening a little now and then, partly with the smart and  partly with vexation at being able to do no better, but she soon  got over that and began to improve rapidly.  So day after day she,  and my darling, and my little maid Charley, and a milliner out of  the town, and I, sat hard at work, as pleasantly as possible.  Over and above this, Caddy was very anxious "to learn  housekeeping," as she said.  Now, mercy upon us!  The idea of her  learning housekeeping of a person of my vast experience was such a  joke that I laughed, and coloured up, and fell into a comical  confusion when she proposed it.  However, I said, "Caddy, I am sure  you are very welcome to learn anything that you can learn of ME, my  dear," and I showed her all my books and methods and all my fidgety  ways.  You would have supposed that I was showing her some  wonderful inventions, by her study of them; and if you had seen  her, whenever I jingled my housekeeping keys, get up and attend me,  certainly you might have thought that there never was a greater  imposter than I with a blinder follower than Caddy Jellyby. 

So what with working and housekeeping, and lessons to Charley, and  backgammon in the evening with my guardian, and duets with Ada, the  three weeks slipped fast away.  Then I went home with Caddy to see  what could be done there, and Ada and Charley remained behind to  take care of my guardian.  When I say I went home with Caddy, I mean to the furnished lodging  in Hatton Garden.  We went to Newman Street two or three times,  where preparations were in progress too--a good many, I observed,  for enhancing the comforts of old Mr. Turveydrop, and a few for  putting the newly married couple away cheaply at the top of the  house--but our great point was to make the furnished lodging decent  for the wedding-breakfast and to imbue Mrs. Jellyby beforehand with  some faint sense of the occasion.  The latter was the more difficult thing of the two because Mrs.  Jellyby and an unwholesome boy occupied the front sitting-room (the  back one was a mere closet), and it was littered down with waste- paper and Borrioboolan documents, as an untidy stable might be  littered with straw.  Mrs. Jellyby sat there all day drinking  strong coffee, dictating, and holding Borrioboolan interviews by  appointment.  The unwholesome boy, who seemed to me to be going  into a decline, took his meals out of the house.  When Mr. Jellyby  came home, he usually groaned and went down into the kitchen.   

There he got something to eat if the servant would give him  anything, and then, feeling that he was in the way, went out and  walked about Hatton Garden in the wet.  The poor children scrambled  up and tumbled down the house as they had always been accustomed to  do.  The production of these devoted little sacrifices in any  presentable condition being quite out of the question at a week's  notice, I proposed to Caddy that we should make them as happy as we  could on her marriage morning in the attic where they all slept,  and should confine our greatest efforts to her mama and her mama's  room, and a clean breakfast.  In truth Mrs. Jellyby required a good  deal of attention, the lattice-work up her back having widened  considerably since I first knew her and her hair looking like the  mane of a dustman's horse.  Thinking that the display of Caddy's wardrobe would be the best  means of approaching the subject, I invited Mrs. Jellyby to come  and look at it spread out on Caddy's bed in the evening after the  unwholesome boy was gone. 

"My dear Miss Summerson," said she, rising from her desk with her  usual sweetness of temper, "these are really ridiculous  preparations, though your assisting them is a proof of your  kindness.  There is something so inexpressibly absurd to me in the  idea of Caddy being married!  Oh, Caddy, you silly, silly, silly  puss!"  She came upstairs with us notwithstanding and looked at the clothes  in her customary far-off manner.  They suggested one distinct idea  to her, for she said with her placid smile, and shaking her head,  "My good Miss Summerson, at half the cost, this weak child might  have been equipped for Africa!"  On our going downstairs again, Mrs. Jellyby asked me whether this  troublesome business was really to take place next Wednesday.  And  on my replying yes, she said, "Will my room be required, my dear  Miss Summerson?  For it's quite impossible that I can put my papers  away."  I took the liberty of saying that the room would certainly be  wanted and that I thought we must put the papers away somewhere.   

"Well, my dear Miss Summerson," said Mrs. Jellyby, "you know best,  I dare say.  But by obliging me to employ a boy, Caddy has  embarrassed me to that extent, overwhelmed as I am with public  business, that I don't know which way to turn.  We have a  Ramification meeting, too, on Wednesday afternoon, and the  inconvenience is very serious." 

"It is not likely to occur again," said I, smiling. 

"Caddy will be  married but once, probably." 

"That's true," Mrs. Jellyby replied; "that's true, my dear.  I  suppose we must make the best of it!" 

The next question was how Mrs. Jellyby should be dressed on the  occasion.  I thought it very curious to see her looking on serenely  from her writing-table while Caddy and I discussed it, occasionally  shaking her head at us with a half-reproachful smile like a  superior spirit who could just bear with our trifling.  The state in which her dresses were, and the extraordinary  confusion in which she kept them, added not a little to our  difficulty; but at length we devised something not very unlike what  a common-place mother might wear on such an occasion.  The  abstracted manner in which Mrs. Jellyby would deliver herself up to  having this attire tried on by the dressmaker, and the sweetness  with which she would then observe to me how sorry she was that I  had not turned my thoughts to Africa, were consistent with the rest  of her behaviour.  The lodging was rather confined as to space, but I fancied that if  Mrs. Jellyby's household had been the only lodgers in Saint Paul's  or Saint Peter's, the sole advantage they would have found in the  size of the building would have been its affording a great deal of  room to be dirty in. 

I believe that nothing belonging to the  family which it had been possible to break was unbroken at the time  of those preparations for Caddy's marriage, that nothing which it  had been possible to spoil in any way was unspoilt, and that no  domestic object which was capable of collecting dirt, from a dear  child's knee to the door-plate, was without as much dirt as could  well accumulate upon it.  Poor Mr. Jellyby, who very seldom spoke and almost always sat when  he was at home with his head against the wall, became interested  when he saw that Caddy and I were attempting to establish some  order among all this waste and ruin and took off his coat to help.   But such wonderful things came tumbling out of the closets when  they were opened--bits of mouldy pie, sour bottles, Mrs. Jellyby's  caps, letters, tea, forks, odd boots and shoes of children,  firewood, wafers, saucepan-lids, damp sugar in odds and ends of  paper bags, footstools, blacklead brushes, bread, Mrs. Jellyby's  bonnets, books with butter sticking to the binding, guttered candle  ends put out by being turned upside down in broken candlesticks,  nutshells, heads and tails of shrimps, dinner-mats, gloves, coffee- grounds, umbrellas--that he looked frightened, and left off again.   But he came regularly every evening and sat without his coat, with  his head against the wall, as though he would have helped us if he  had known how. 

"Poor Pa!" said Caddy to me on the night before the great day, when  we really had got things a little to rights. 

"It seems unkind to  leave him, Esther.  But what could I do if I stayed!  Since I first  knew you, I have tidied and tidied over and over again, but it's  useless.  Ma and Africa, together, upset the whole house directly.   We never have a servant who don't drink.  Ma's ruinous to  everything." 

Mr. Jellyby could not hear what she said, but he seemed very low  indeed and shed tears, I thought.  "My heart aches for him; that it does!" sobbed Caddy. 

"I can't  help thinking to-night, Esther, how dearly I hope to be happy with  Prince, and how dearly Pa hoped, I dare say, to be happy with Ma.   What a disappointed life!" 

"My dear Caddy!" said Mr. Jellyby, looking slowly round from the  wail.  It was the first time, I think, I ever heard him say three  words together. 

"Yes, Pa!" cried Caddy, going to him and embracing him  affectionately. 

"My dear Caddy," said Mr. Jellyby.  "Never have--" 

"Not Prince, Pa?" faltered Caddy. 

"Not have Prince?" 

"Yes, my dear," said Mr. Jellyby. 

"Have him, certainly.  But,  never have--"  I mentioned in my account of our first visit in Thavies Inn that  Richard described Mr. Jellyby as frequently opening his mouth after  dinner without saying anything.  It was a habit of his.  He opened  his mouth now a great many times and shook his head in a melancholy  manner. 

"What do you wish me not to have?  Don't have what, dear Pa?" asked  Caddy, coaxing him, with her arms round his neck. 

"Never have a mission, my dear child."  Mr. Jellyby groaned and laid his head against the wall again, and  this was the only time I ever heard him make any approach to  expressing his sentiments on the Borrioboolan question.  I suppose  he had been more talkative and lively once, but he seemed to have  been completely exhausted long before I knew him.  I thought Mrs. Jellyby never would have left off serenely looking  over her papers and drinking coffee that night. 

It was twelve  o'clock before we could obtain possession of the room, and the  clearance it required then was so discouraging that Caddy, who was  almost tired out, sat down in the middle of the dust and cried.   But she soon cheered up, and we did wonders with it before we went  to bed.  In the morning it looked, by the aid of a few flowers and a  quantity of soap and water and a little arrangement, quite gay.   The plain breakfast made a cheerful show, and Caddy was perfectly  charming.  But when my darling came, I thought--and I think now-- that I never had seen such a dear face as my beautiful pet's.  We made a little feast for the children upstairs, and we put Peepy  at the head of the table, and we showed them Caddy in her bridal  dress, and they clapped their hands and hurrahed, and Caddy cried  to think that she was going away from them and hugged them over and  over again until we brought Prince up to fetch her away--when, I am  sorry to say, Peepy bit him.  Then there was old Mr. Turveydrop  downstairs, in a state of deportment not to be expressed, benignly  blessing Caddy and giving my guardian to understand that his son's  happiness was his own parental work and that he sacrificed personal  considerations to ensure it.  "My dear sir," said Mr. Turveydrop,  "these young people will live with me; my house is large enough for  their accommodation, and they shall not want the shelter of my  roof.  I could have wished--you will understand the allusion, Mr.  Jarndyce, for you remember my illustrious patron the Prince Regent --I could have wished that my son had married into a family where  there was more deportment, but the will of heaven be done!"  Mr. and Mrs. Pardiggle were of the party--Mr. Pardiggle, an  obstinate-looking man with a large waistcoat and stubbly hair, who  was always talking in a loud bass voice about his mite, or Mrs.  Pardiggle's mite, or their five boys' mites. 

Mr. Quale, with his  hair brushed back as usual and his knobs of temples shining very  much, was also there, not in the character of a disappointed lover,  but as the accepted of a young--at least, an unmarried--lady, a  Miss Wisk, who was also there.  Miss Wisk's mission, my guardian  said, was to show the world that woman's mission was man's mission  and that the only genuine mission of both man and woman was to be  always moving declaratory resolutions about things in general at  public meetings.  The guests were few, but were, as one might  expect at Mrs. Jellyby's, all devoted to public objects only.   Besides those I have mentioned, there was an extremely dirty lady  with her bonnet all awry and the ticketed price of her dress still  sticking on it, whose neglected home, Caddy told me, was like a  filthy wilderness, but whose church was like a fancy fair.  A very  contentious gentleman, who said it was his mission to be  everybody's brother but who appeared to be on terms of coolness  with the whole of his large family, completed the party.  A party, having less in common with such an occasion, could hardly  have been got together by any ingenuity.  Such a mean mission as  the domestic mission was the very last thing to be endured among  them; indeed, Miss Wisk informed us, with great indignation, before  we sat down to breakfast, that the idea of woman's mission lying  chiefly in the narrow sphere of home was an outrageous slander on  the part of her tyrant, man. 

One other singularity was that nobody  with a mission--except Mr. Quale, whose mission, as I think I have  formerly said, was to be in ecstasies with everybody's mission-- cared at all for anybody's mission.  Mrs. Pardiggle being as clear  that the only one infallible course was her course of pouncing upon  the poor and applying benevolence to them like a strait-waistcoat;  as Miss Wisk was that the only practical thing for the world was  the emancipation of woman from the thraldom of her tyrant, man.   Mrs. Jellyby, all the while, sat smiling at the limited vision that  could see anything but Borrioboola-Gha.  But I am anticipating now the purport of our conversation on the  ride home instead of first marrying Caddy.  We all went to church,  and Mr. Jellyby gave her away.  Of the air with which old Mr.  Turveydrop, with his hat under his left arm (the inside presented  at the clergyman like a cannon) and his eyes creasing themselves up  into his wig, stood stiff and high-shouldered behind us bridesmaids  during the ceremony, and afterwards saluted us, I could never say  enough to do it justice.  Miss Wisk, whom I cannot report as  prepossessing in appearance, and whose manner was grim, listened to  the proceedings, as part of woman's wrongs, with a disdainful face.   Mrs. Jellyby, with her calm smile and her bright eyes, looked the  least concerned of all the company.  We duly came back to breakfast, and Mrs. Jellyby sat at the head of  the table and Mr. Jellyby at the foot.  Caddy had previously stolen  upstairs to hug the children again and tell them that her name was  Turveydrop.  But this piece of information, instead of being an  agreeable surprise to Peepy, threw him on his back in such  transports of kicking grief that I could do nothing on being sent  for but accede to the proposal that he should be admitted to the  breakfast table. 

So he came down and sat in my lap; and Mrs.  Jellyby, after saying, in reference to the state of his pinafore,  "Oh, you naughty Peepy, what a shocking little pig you are!" was  not at all discomposed.  He was very good except that he brought  down Noah with him (out of an ark I had given him before we went to  church) and WOULD dip him head first into the wine-glasses and then  put him in his mouth.  My guardian, with his sweet temper and his quick perception and his  amiable face, made something agreeable even out of the ungenial  company.  None of them seemed able to talk about anything but his,  or her, own one subject, and none of them seemed able to talk about  even that as part of a world in which there was anything else; but  my guardian turned it all to the merry encouragement of Caddy and  the honour of the occasion, and brought us through the breakfast  nobly.  What we should have done without him, I am afraid to think,  for all the company despising the bride and bridegroom and old Mr.  Turveydrop--and old Mr. Thrveydrop, in virtue of his deportment,  considering himself vastly superior to all the company--it was a  very unpromising case.  At last the time came when poor Caddy was to go and when all her  property was packed on the hired coach and pair that was to take  her and her husband to Gravesend.  It affected us to see Caddy  clinging, then, to her deplorable home and hanging on her mother's  neck with the greatest tenderness. 

"I am very sorry I couldn't go on writing from dictation, Ma,"  sobbed Caddy. 

"I hope you forgive me now." 

"Oh, Caddy, Caddy!" said Mrs. Jellyby. 

"I have told you over and  over again that I have engaged a boy, and there's an end of it." 

"You are sure you are not the least angry with me, Ma?  Say you are  sure before I go away, Ma?" 

"You foolish Caddy," returned Mrs. Jellyby, "do I look angry, or  have I inclination to be angry, or time to be angry?  How CAN you?" 

"Take a little care of Pa while I am gone, Mama!"  Mrs. Jellyby positively laughed at the fancy. 

"You romantic  child," said she, lightly patting Caddy's back. 

"Go along.  I am  excellent friends with you.  Now, good-bye, Caddy, and be very  happy!" 

Then Caddy hung upon her father and nursed his cheek against hers  as if he were some poor dull child in pain.  All this took place in  the hall.  Her father released her, took out his pocket  handkerchief, and sat down on the stairs with his head against the  wall.  I hope he found some consolation in walls.  I almost think  he did.  And then Prince took her arm in his and turned with great emotion  and respect to his father, whose deportment at that moment was  overwhelming. 

"Thank you over and over again, father!" said Prince, kissing his  hand. 

"I am very grateful for all your kindness and consideration  regarding our marriage, and so, I can assure you, is Caddy." 

"Very," sobbed Caddy. 

"Very!" 

"My dear son," said Mr. Turveydrop, "and dear daughter, I have done  my duty.  If the spirit of a sainted wooman hovers above us and  looks down on the occasion, that, and your constant affection, will  be my recompense.  You will not fail in YOUR duty, my son and  daughter, I believe?" 

"Dear father, never!" cried Prince. 

"Never, never, dear Mr. Turveydrop!" said Caddy. 

"This," returned Mr. Turveydrop, "is as it should be.  My children,  my home is yours, my heart is yours, my all is yours.  I will never  leave you; nothing but death shall part us.  My dear son, you  contemplate an absence of a week, I think?" 

"A week, dear father.  We shall return home this day week." 

"My dear child," said Mr. Turveydrop, "let me, even under the  present exceptional circumstances, recommend strict punctuality.   It is highly important to keep the connexion together; and schools,  if at all neglected, are apt to take offence." 

"This day week, father, we shall be sure to be home to dinner."  "Good!" said Mr. Turveydrop. 

"You will find fires, my dear  Caroline, in your own room, and dinner prepared in my apartment.   Yes, yes, Prince!" anticipating some self-denying objection on his  son's part with a great air. 

"You and our Caroline will be strange  in the upper part of the premises and will, therefore, dine that  day in my apartment.  Now, bless ye!"  They drove away, and whether I wondered most at Mrs. Jellyby or at  Mr. Turveydrop, I did not know.  Ada and my guardian were in the  same condition when we came to talk it over.  But before we drove  away too, I received a most unexpected and eloquent compliment from  Mr. Jellyby.  He came up to me in the hall, took both my hands,  pressed them earnestly, and opened his mouth twice.  I was so sure  of his meaning that I said, quite flurried, "You are very welcome,  sir.  Pray don't mention it!" 

"I hope this marriage is for the best, guardian," said I when we  three were on our road home. 

"I hope it is, little woman.  Patience.  We shall see." 

"Is the wind in the east to-day?" I ventured to ask him.  He laughed heartily and answered, "No." 

"But it must have been this morning, I think," said I.  He answered "No" again, and this time my dear girl confidently  answered "No" too and shook the lovely head which, with its  blooming flowers against the golden hair, was like the very spring.   

"Much YOU know of east winds, my ugly darling," said I, kissing her  in my admiration--I couldn't help it.  Well!  It was only their love for me, I know very well, and it is a  long time ago.  I must write it even if I rub it out again, because  it gives me so much pleasure.  They said there could be no east  wind where Somebody was; they said that wherever Dame Durden went,  there was sunshine and summer air.

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