FullReads

The little fellow took the jeweled toy from his bosom and made for the door, proud of being possessed of a talisman, which he had seen so often made useful.

“There are wolves at Southampton,” he said, with rather a triumphant nod to Robert Audley. “My gran’pa says when he takes my watch that he does it to keep the wolf from the door. Are there wolves where you live?”

The young barrister did not answer the child’s question, but stopped him as he was dragging his grandfather toward the door.

“Your grandpapa does not want the watch to-day, Georgey,” he said, gravely.

“Why is he sorry, then?” asked Georgey, naively; “when he wants the watch he is always sorry, and beats his poor forehead so”—the boy stopped to pantomime with his small fists—”and says that she—the pretty lady, I think he means—uses him very hard, and that he can’t keep the wolf from the door; and then I say, ‘Gran’pa, have the watch;’ and then he takes me in his arms, and says, ‘Oh, my blessed angel! how can I rob my blessed angel?’ and then he cries, but not like to-day—not loud, you know; only tears running down his poor cheeks, not so that you could hear him in the passage.”

Painful as the child’s prattle was to Robert Audley, it seemed a relief to the old man. He did not hear the boy’s talk, but walked two or three times up and down the little room and smoothed his rumpled hair and suffered his cravat to be arranged by Mrs. Plowson, who seemed very anxious to find out the cause of his agitation.

“Poor dear old gentleman,” she said, looking at Robert.

“What has happened to upset him so?”

“His son-in-law is dead,” answered Mr. Audley, fixing his eyes upon Mrs. Plowson’s sympathetic face. “He died, within a year and a half after the death of Helen Talboys, who lies burried in Ventnor churchyard.”

The face into which he was looking changed very slightly, but the eyes that had been looking at him shifted away as he spoke, and Mrs. Plowson was obliged to moisten her white lips with her tongue before she answered him.

“Poor Mr. Talboys dead!” she said; “that is bad news indeed, sir.”

Little George looked wistfully up at his guardian’s face as this was said.

“Who’s dead?” he said. “George Talboys is my name. Who’s dead?”

“Another person whose name is Talboys, Georgey.”

“Poor person! Will he go to the pit-hole?”

The boy had that notion of death which is generally imparted to children by their wise elders, and which always leads the infant mind to the open grave and rarely carries it any higher.

“I should like to see him put in the pit-hole,” Georgey remarked, after a pause. He had attended several infant funerals in the neighborhood, and was considered valuable as a mourner on account of his interesting appearance. He had come, therefore, to look upon the ceremony of interment as a solemn festivity; in which cake and wine, and a carriage drive were the leading features.

“You have no objection to my taking Georgey away with me, Mr. Maldon?” asked Robert Audley.

The old man’s agitation had very much subsided by this time. He had found another pipe stuck behind the tawdry frame of the looking-glass, and was trying to light it with a bit of twisted newspaper.

“You do not object, Mr. Maldon?”

“No, sir—no, sir; you are his guardian, and you have a right to take him where you please. He has been a very great comfort to me in my lonely old age, but I have been prepared to lose him. I—I may not have always done my duty to him, sir, in—in the way of schooling, and—and boots. The number of boots which boys of his age wear out, sir, is not easily realized by the mind of a young man like yourself; he has been kept away from school, perhaps, sometimes, and occasionally worn shabby boots when our funds have got low; but he has not been unkindly treated. No, sir; if you were to question him for a week, I don’t think you’d hear that his poor old grandfather ever said a harsh word to him.”