FullReads

So I took her hand in mine, and I went with her one day to the Deaf and Dumb Establishment in London, and when the gentleman come to speak to us, I says to him: “Now I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you, sir. I am nothing but a Cheap Jack, but of late years I have laid by for a rainy day notwithstanding. This is my only daughter (adopted), and you can’t produce a deafer nor a dumber. Teach her the most that can be taught her in the shortest separation that can be named,–state the figure for it,–and I am game to put the money down. I won’t bate you a single farthing, sir, but I’ll put down the money here and now, and I’ll thankfully throw you in a pound to take it. There!” The gentleman smiled, and then, “Well, well,” says he, “I must first know what she has learned already. How do you communicate with her?” Then I showed him, and she wrote in printed writing many names of things and so forth; and we held some sprightly conversation, Sophy and me, about a little story in a book which the gentleman showed her, and which she was able to read. “This is most extraordinary,” says the gentleman; “is it possible that you have been her only teacher?” “I have been her only teacher, sir,” I says, “besides herself.” “Then,” says the gentleman, and more acceptable words was never spoke to me, “you’re a clever fellow, and a good fellow.” This he makes known to Sophy, who kisses his hands, claps her own, and laughs and cries upon it.

We saw the gentleman four times in all, and when he took down my name and asked how in the world it ever chanced to be Doctor, it come out that he was own nephew by the sister’s side, if you’ll believe me, to the very Doctor that I was called after. This made our footing still easier, and he says to me:

“Now, Marigold, tell me what more do you want your adopted daughter to know?”

“I want her, sir, to be cut off from the world as little as can be, considering her deprivations, and therefore to be able to read whatever is wrote with perfect ease and pleasure.”

“My good fellow,” urges the gentleman, opening his eyes wide, “why I can’t do that myself!”

I took his joke, and gave him a laugh (knowing by experience how flat you fall without it), and I mended my words accordingly.

“What do you mean to do with her afterwards?” asks the gentleman, with a sort of a doubtful eye. “To take her about the country?”

“In the cart, sir, but only in the cart. She will live a private life, you understand, in the cart. I should never think of bringing her infirmities before the public. I wouldn’t make a show of her for any money.”

The gentleman nodded, and seemed to approve.

“Well,” says he, “can you part with her for two years?”

“To do her that good,–yes, sir.”

“There’s another question,” says the gentleman, looking towards her,–“can she part with you for two years?”

I don’t know that it was a harder matter of itself (for the other was hard enough to me), but it was harder to get over. However, she was pacified to it at last, and the separation betwixt us was settled. How it cut up both of us when it took place, and when I left her at the door in the dark of an evening, I don’t tell. But I know this; remembering that night, I shall never pass that same establishment without a heartache and a swelling in the throat; and I couldn’t put you up the best of lots in sight of it with my usual spirit,–no, not even the gun, nor the pair of spectacles,–for five hundred pound reward from the Secretary of State for the Home Department, and throw in the honour of putting my legs under his mahogany arterwards.