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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Doctor Marigold, by Charles Dickens
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Doctor Marigold
+
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+Release Date: April 3, 2005  [eBook #1415]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOCTOR MARIGOLD***
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1894 Chapman and Hall "Christmas Stories" edition by
+David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+
+DOCTOR MARIGOLD
+
+
+I am a Cheap Jack, and my own father's name was Willum Marigold.  It was
+in his lifetime supposed by some that his name was William, but my own
+father always consistently said, No, it was Willum.  On which point I
+content myself with looking at the argument this way: If a man is not
+allowed to know his own name in a free country, how much is he allowed to
+know in a land of slavery?  As to looking at the argument through the
+medium of the Register, Willum Marigold come into the world before
+Registers come up much,--and went out of it too.  They wouldn't have been
+greatly in his line neither, if they had chanced to come up before him.
+
+I was born on the Queen's highway, but it was the King's at that time.  A
+doctor was fetched to my own mother by my own father, when it took place
+on a common; and in consequence of his being a very kind gentleman, and
+accepting no fee but a tea-tray, I was named Doctor, out of gratitude and
+compliment to him.  There you have me.  Doctor Marigold.
+
+I am at present a middle-aged man of a broadish build, in cords,
+leggings, and a sleeved waistcoat the strings of which is always gone
+behind.  Repair them how you will, they go like fiddle-strings.  You have
+been to the theatre, and you have seen one of the wiolin-players screw up
+his wiolin, after listening to it as if it had been whispering the secret
+to him that it feared it was out of order, and then you have heard it
+snap.  That's as exactly similar to my waistcoat as a waistcoat and a
+wiolin can be like one another.
+
+I am partial to a white hat, and I like a shawl round my neck wore loose
+and easy.  Sitting down is my favourite posture.  If I have a taste in
+point of personal jewelry, it is mother-of-pearl buttons.  There you have
+me again, as large as life.
+
+The doctor having accepted a tea-tray, you'll guess that my father was a
+Cheap Jack before me.  You are right.  He was.  It was a pretty tray.  It
+represented a large lady going along a serpentining up-hill gravel-walk,
+to attend a little church.  Two swans had likewise come astray with the
+same intentions.  When I call her a large lady, I don't mean in point of
+breadth, for there she fell below my views, but she more than made it up
+in heighth; her heighth and slimness was--in short THE heighth of both.
+
+I often saw that tray, after I was the innocently smiling cause (or more
+likely screeching one) of the doctor's standing it up on a table against
+the wall in his consulting-room.  Whenever my own father and mother were
+in that part of the country, I used to put my head (I have heard my own
+mother say it was flaxen curls at that time, though you wouldn't know an
+old hearth-broom from it now till you come to the handle, and found it
+wasn't me) in at the doctor's door, and the doctor was always glad to see
+me, and said, "Aha, my brother practitioner!  Come in, little M.D.  How
+are your inclinations as to sixpence?"
+
+You can't go on for ever, you'll find, nor yet could my father nor yet my
+mother.  If you don't go off as a whole when you are about due, you're
+liable to go off in part, and two to one your head's the part.  Gradually
+my father went off his, and my mother went off hers.  It was in a
+harmless way, but it put out the family where I boarded them.  The old
+couple, though retired, got to be wholly and solely devoted to the Cheap
+Jack business, and were always selling the family off.  Whenever the
+cloth was laid for dinner, my father began rattling the plates and
+dishes, as we do in our line when we put up crockery for a bid, only he
+had lost the trick of it, and mostly let 'em drop and broke 'em.  As the
+old lady had been used to sit in the cart, and hand the articles out one
+by one to the old gentleman on the footboard to sell, just in the same
+way she handed him every item of the family's property, and they disposed
+of it in their own imaginations from morning to night.  At last the old
+gentleman, lying bedridden in the same room with the old lady, cries out
+in the old patter, fluent, after having been silent for two days and
+nights: "Now here, my jolly companions every one,--which the Nightingale
+club in a village was held, At the sign of the Cabbage and Shears, Where
+the singers no doubt would have greatly excelled, But for want of taste,
+voices and ears,--now, here, my jolly companions, every one, is a working
+model of a used-up old Cheap Jack, without a tooth in his head, and with
+a pain in every bone: so like life that it would be just as good if it
+wasn't better, just as bad if it wasn't worse, and just as new if it
+wasn't worn out.  Bid for the working model of the old Cheap Jack, who
+has drunk more gunpowder-tea with the ladies in his time than would blow
+the lid off a washerwoman's copper, and carry it as many thousands of
+miles higher than the moon as naught nix naught, divided by the national
+debt, carry nothing to the poor-rates, three under, and two over.  Now,
+my hearts of oak and men of straw, what do you say for the lot?  Two
+shillings, a shilling, tenpence, eightpence, sixpence, fourpence.
+Twopence?  Who said twopence?  The gentleman in the scarecrow's hat?  I
+am ashamed of the gentleman in the scarecrow's hat.  I really am ashamed
+of him for his want of public spirit.  Now I'll tell you what I'll do
+with you.  Come!  I'll throw you in a working model of a old woman that
+was married to the old Cheap Jack so long ago that upon my word and
+honour it took place in Noah's Ark, before the Unicorn could get in to
+forbid the banns by blowing a tune upon his horn.  There now!  Come!  What
+do you say for both?  I'll tell you what I'll do with you.  I don't bear
+you malice for being so backward.  Here!  If you make me a bid that'll
+only reflect a little credit on your town, I'll throw you in a warming-
+pan for nothing, and lend you a toasting-fork for life.  Now come; what
+do you say after that splendid offer?  Say two pound, say thirty
+shillings, say a pound, say ten shillings, say five, say two and six.  You
+don't say even two and six?  You say two and three?  No.  You shan't have
+the lot for two and three.  I'd sooner give it to you, if you was good-
+looking enough.  Here!  Missis!  Chuck the old man and woman into the
+cart, put the horse to, and drive 'em away and bury 'em!"  Such were the
+last words of Willum Marigold, my own father, and they were carried out,
+by him and by his wife, my own mother, on one and the same day, as I
+ought to know, having followed as mourner.
+
+My father had been a lovely one in his time at the Cheap Jack work, as
+his dying observations went to prove.  But I top him.  I don't say it
+because it's myself, but because it has been universally acknowledged by
+all that has had the means of comparison.  I have worked at it.  I have
+measured myself against other public speakers,--Members of Parliament,
+Platforms, Pulpits, Counsel learned in the law,--and where I have found
+'em good, I have took a bit of imagination from 'em, and where I have
+found 'em bad, I have let 'em alone.  Now I'll tell you what.  I mean to
+go down into my grave declaring that of all the callings ill used in
+Great Britain, the Cheap Jack calling is the worst used.  Why ain't we a
+profession?  Why ain't we endowed with privileges?  Why are we forced to
+take out a hawker's license, when no such thing is expected of the
+political hawkers?  Where's the difference betwixt us?  Except that we
+are Cheap Jacks and they are Dear Jacks, _I_ don't see any difference but
+what's in our favour.
+
+For look here!  Say it's election time.  I am on the footboard of my cart
+in the market-place, on a Saturday night.  I put up a general
+miscellaneous lot.  I say: "Now here, my free and independent woters, I'm
+a going to give you such a chance as you never had in all your born days,
+nor yet the days preceding.  Now I'll show you what I am a going to do
+with you.  Here's a pair of razors that'll shave you closer than the
+Board of Guardians; here's a flat-iron worth its weight in gold; here's a
+frying-pan artificially flavoured with essence of beefsteaks to that
+degree that you've only got for the rest of your lives to fry bread and
+dripping in it and there you are replete with animal food; here's a
+genuine chronometer watch in such a solid silver case that you may knock
+at the door with it when you come home late from a social meeting, and
+rouse your wife and family, and save up your knocker for the postman; and
+here's half-a-dozen dinner plates that you may play the cymbals with to
+charm baby when it's fractious.  Stop!  I'll throw in another article,
+and I'll give you that, and it's a rolling-pin; and if the baby can only
+get it well into its mouth when its teeth is coming and rub the gums once
+with it, they'll come through double, in a fit of laughter equal to being
+tickled.  Stop again!  I'll throw you in another article, because I don't
+like the looks of you, for you haven't the appearance of buyers unless I
+lose by you, and because I'd rather lose than not take money to-night,
+and that's a looking-glass in which you may see how ugly you look when
+you don't bid.  What do you say now?  Come!  Do you say a pound?  Not
+you, for you haven't got it.  Do you say ten shillings?  Not you, for you
+owe more to the tallyman.  Well then, I'll tell you what I'll do with
+you.  I'll heap 'em all on the footboard of the cart,--there they are!
+razors, flat watch, dinner plates, rolling-pin, and away for four
+shillings, and I'll give you sixpence for your trouble!"  This is me, the
+Cheap Jack.  But on the Monday morning, in the same market-place, comes
+the Dear Jack on the hustings--_his_ cart--and, what does _he_ say?  "Now
+my free and independent woters, I am a going to give you such a chance"
+(he begins just like me) "as you never had in all your born days, and
+that's the chance of sending Myself to Parliament.  Now I'll tell you
+what I am a going to do for you.  Here's the interests of this
+magnificent town promoted above all the rest of the civilised and
+uncivilised earth.  Here's your railways carried, and your neighbours'
+railways jockeyed.  Here's all your sons in the Post-office.  Here's
+Britannia smiling on you.  Here's the eyes of Europe on you.  Here's
+uniwersal prosperity for you, repletion of animal food, golden
+cornfields, gladsome homesteads, and rounds of applause from your own
+hearts, all in one lot, and that's myself.  Will you take me as I stand?
+You won't?  Well, then, I'll tell you what I'll do with you.  Come now!
+I'll throw you in anything you ask for.  There!  Church-rates, abolition
+of more malt tax, no malt tax, universal education to the highest mark,
+or uniwersal ignorance to the lowest, total abolition of flogging in the
+army or a dozen for every private once a month all round, Wrongs of Men
+or Rights of Women--only say which it shall be, take 'em or leave 'em,
+and I'm of your opinion altogether, and the lot's your own on your own
+terms.  There!  You won't take it yet!  Well, then, I'll tell you what
+I'll do with you.  Come!  You _are_ such free and independent woters, and
+I am so proud of you,--you _are_ such a noble and enlightened
+constituency, and I _am_ so ambitious of the honour and dignity of being
+your member, which is by far the highest level to which the wings of the
+human mind can soar,--that I'll tell you what I'll do with you.  I'll
+throw you in all the public-houses in your magnificent town for nothing.
+Will that content you?  It won't?  You won't take the lot yet?  Well,
+then, before I put the horse in and drive away, and make the offer to the
+next most magnificent town that can be discovered, I'll tell you what
+I'll do.  Take the lot, and I'll drop two thousand pound in the streets
+of your magnificent town for them to pick up that can.  Not enough?  Now
+look here.  This is the very furthest that I'm a going to.  I'll make it
+two thousand five hundred.  And still you won't?  Here, missis!  Put the
+horse--no, stop half a moment, I shouldn't like to turn my back upon you
+neither for a trifle, I'll make it two thousand seven hundred and fifty
+pound.  There!  Take the lot on your own terms, and I'll count out two
+thousand seven hundred and fifty pound on the footboard of the cart, to
+be dropped in the streets of your magnificent town for them to pick up
+that can.  What do you say?  Come now!  You won't do better, and you may
+do worse.  You take it?  Hooray!  Sold again, and got the seat!"
+
+These Dear Jacks soap the people shameful, but we Cheap Jacks don't.  We
+tell 'em the truth about themselves to their faces, and scorn to court
+'em.  As to wenturesomeness in the way of puffing up the lots, the Dear
+Jacks beat us hollow.  It is considered in the Cheap Jack calling, that
+better patter can be made out of a gun than any article we put up from
+the cart, except a pair of spectacles.  I often hold forth about a gun
+for a quarter of an hour, and feel as if I need never leave off.  But
+when I tell 'em what the gun can do, and what the gun has brought down, I
+never go half so far as the Dear Jacks do when they make speeches in
+praise of _their_ guns--their great guns that set 'em on to do it.
+Besides, I'm in business for myself: I ain't sent down into the market-
+place to order, as they are.  Besides, again, my guns don't know what I
+say in their laudation, and their guns do, and the whole concern of 'em
+have reason to be sick and ashamed all round.  These are some of my
+arguments for declaring that the Cheap Jack calling is treated ill in
+Great Britain, and for turning warm when I think of the other Jacks in
+question setting themselves up to pretend to look down upon it.
+
+I courted my wife from the footboard of the cart.  I did indeed.  She was
+a Suffolk young woman, and it was in Ipswich market-place right opposite
+the corn-chandler's shop.  I had noticed her up at a window last Saturday
+that was, appreciating highly.  I had took to her, and I had said to
+myself, "If not already disposed of, I'll have that lot."  Next Saturday
+that come, I pitched the cart on the same pitch, and I was in very high
+feather indeed, keeping 'em laughing the whole of the time, and getting
+off the goods briskly.  At last I took out of my waistcoat-pocket a small
+lot wrapped in soft paper, and I put it this way (looking up at the
+window where she was).  "Now here, my blooming English maidens, is an
+article, the last article of the present evening's sale, which I offer to
+only you, the lovely Suffolk Dumplings biling over with beauty, and I
+won't take a bid of a thousand pounds for from any man alive.  Now what
+is it?  Why, I'll tell you what it is.  It's made of fine gold, and it's
+not broke, though there's a hole in the middle of it, and it's stronger
+than any fetter that ever was forged, though it's smaller than any finger
+in my set of ten.  Why ten?  Because, when my parents made over my
+property to me, I tell you true, there was twelve sheets, twelve towels,
+twelve table-cloths, twelve knives, twelve forks, twelve tablespoons, and
+twelve teaspoons, but my set of fingers was two short of a dozen, and
+could never since be matched.  Now what else is it?  Come, I'll tell you.
+It's a hoop of solid gold, wrapped in a silver curl-paper, that I myself
+took off the shining locks of the ever beautiful old lady in Threadneedle
+Street, London city; I wouldn't tell you so if I hadn't the paper to
+show, or you mightn't believe it even of me.  Now what else is it?  It's
+a man-trap and a handcuff, the parish stocks and a leg-lock, all in gold
+and all in one.  Now what else is it?  It's a wedding-ring.  Now I'll
+tell you what I'm a going to do with it.  I'm not a going to offer this
+lot for money; but I mean to give it to the next of you beauties that
+laughs, and I'll pay her a visit to-morrow morning at exactly half after
+nine o'clock as the chimes go, and I'll take her out for a walk to put up
+the banns."  She laughed, and got the ring handed up to her.  When I
+called in the morning, she says, "O dear!  It's never you, and you never
+mean it?"  "It's ever me," says I, "and I am ever yours, and I ever mean
+it."  So we got married, after being put up three times--which, by the
+bye, is quite in the Cheap Jack way again, and shows once more how the
+Cheap Jack customs pervade society.
+
+She wasn't a bad wife, but she had a temper.  If she could have parted
+with that one article at a sacrifice, I wouldn't have swopped her away in
+exchange for any other woman in England.  Not that I ever did swop her
+away, for we lived together till she died, and that was thirteen year.
+Now, my lords and ladies and gentlefolks all, I'll let you into a secret,
+though you won't believe it.  Thirteen year of temper in a Palace would
+try the worst of you, but thirteen year of temper in a Cart would try the
+best of you.  You are kept so very close to it in a cart, you see.
+There's thousands of couples among you getting on like sweet ile upon a
+whetstone in houses five and six pairs of stairs high, that would go to
+the Divorce Court in a cart.  Whether the jolting makes it worse, I don't
+undertake to decide; but in a cart it does come home to you, and stick to
+you.  Wiolence in a cart is _so_ wiolent, and aggrawation in a cart is
+_so_ aggrawating.
+
+We might have had such a pleasant life!  A roomy cart, with the large
+goods hung outside, and the bed slung underneath it when on the road, an
+iron pot and a kettle, a fireplace for the cold weather, a chimney for
+the smoke, a hanging-shelf and a cupboard, a dog and a horse.  What more
+do you want?  You draw off upon a bit of turf in a green lane or by the
+roadside, you hobble your old horse and turn him grazing, you light your
+fire upon the ashes of the last visitors, you cook your stew, and you
+wouldn't call the Emperor of France your father.  But have a temper in
+the cart, flinging language and the hardest goods in stock at you, and
+where are you then?  Put a name to your feelings.
+
+My dog knew as well when she was on the turn as I did.  Before she broke
+out, he would give a howl, and bolt.  How he knew it, was a mystery to
+me; but the sure and certain knowledge of it would wake him up out of his
+soundest sleep, and he would give a howl, and bolt.  At such times I
+wished I was him.
+
+The worst of it was, we had a daughter born to us, and I love children
+with all my heart.  When she was in her furies she beat the child.  This
+got to be so shocking, as the child got to be four or five year old, that
+I have many a time gone on with my whip over my shoulder, at the old
+horse's head, sobbing and crying worse than ever little Sophy did.  For
+how could I prevent it?  Such a thing is not to be tried with such a
+temper--in a cart--without coming to a fight.  It's in the natural size
+and formation of a cart to bring it to a fight.  And then the poor child
+got worse terrified than before, as well as worse hurt generally, and her
+mother made complaints to the next people we lighted on, and the word
+went round, "Here's a wretch of a Cheap Jack been a beating his wife."
+
+Little Sophy was such a brave child!  She grew to be quite devoted to her
+poor father, though he could do so little to help her.  She had a
+wonderful quantity of shining dark hair, all curling natural about her.
+It is quite astonishing to me now, that I didn't go tearing mad when I
+used to see her run from her mother before the cart, and her mother catch
+her by this hair, and pull her down by it, and beat her.
+
+Such a brave child I said she was!  Ah! with reason.
+
+"Don't you mind next time, father dear," she would whisper to me, with
+her little face still flushed, and her bright eyes still wet; "if I don't
+cry out, you may know I am not much hurt.  And even if I do cry out, it
+will only be to get mother to let go and leave off."  What I have seen
+the little spirit bear--for me--without crying out!
+
+Yet in other respects her mother took great care of her.  Her clothes
+were always clean and neat, and her mother was never tired of working at
+'em.  Such is the inconsistency in things.  Our being down in the marsh
+country in unhealthy weather, I consider the cause of Sophy's taking bad
+low fever; but however she took it, once she got it she turned away from
+her mother for evermore, and nothing would persuade her to be touched by
+her mother's hand.  She would shiver and say, "No, no, no," when it was
+offered at, and would hide her face on my shoulder, and hold me tighter
+round the neck.
+
+The Cheap Jack business had been worse than ever I had known it, what
+with one thing and what with another (and not least with railroads, which
+will cut it all to pieces, I expect, at last), and I was run dry of
+money.  For which reason, one night at that period of little Sophy's
+being so bad, either we must have come to a dead-lock for victuals and
+drink, or I must have pitched the cart as I did.
+
+I couldn't get the dear child to lie down or leave go of me, and indeed I
+hadn't the heart to try, so I stepped out on the footboard with her
+holding round my neck.  They all set up a laugh when they see us, and one
+chuckle-headed Joskin (that I hated for it) made the bidding, "Tuppence
+for her!"
+
+"Now, you country boobies," says I, feeling as if my heart was a heavy
+weight at the end of a broken sashline, "I give you notice that I am a
+going to charm the money out of your pockets, and to give you so much
+more than your money's worth that you'll only persuade yourselves to draw
+your Saturday night's wages ever again arterwards by the hopes of meeting
+me to lay 'em out with, which you never will, and why not?  Because I've
+made my fortunes by selling my goods on a large scale for seventy-five
+per cent. less than I give for 'em, and I am consequently to be elevated
+to the House of Peers next week, by the title of the Duke of Cheap and
+Markis Jackaloorul.  Now let's know what you want to-night, and you shall
+have it.  But first of all, shall I tell you why I have got this little
+girl round my neck?  You don't want to know?  Then you shall.  She
+belongs to the Fairies.  She's a fortune-teller.  She can tell me all
+about you in a whisper, and can put me up to whether you're going to buy
+a lot or leave it.  Now do you want a saw?  No, she says you don't,
+because you're too clumsy to use one.  Else here's a saw which would be a
+lifelong blessing to a handy man, at four shillings, at three and six, at
+three, at two and six, at two, at eighteen-pence.  But none of you shall
+have it at any price, on account of your well-known awkwardness, which
+would make it manslaughter.  The same objection applies to this set of
+three planes which I won't let you have neither, so don't bid for 'em.
+Now I am a going to ask her what you do want."  (Then I whispered, "Your
+head burns so, that I am afraid it hurts you bad, my pet," and she
+answered, without opening her heavy eyes, "Just a little, father.")  "O!
+This little fortune-teller says it's a memorandum-book you want.  Then
+why didn't you mention it?  Here it is.  Look at it.  Two hundred
+superfine hot-pressed wire-wove pages--if you don't believe me, count
+'em--ready ruled for your expenses, an everlastingly pointed pencil to
+put 'em down with, a double-bladed penknife to scratch 'em out with, a
+book of printed tables to calculate your income with, and a camp-stool to
+sit down upon while you give your mind to it!  Stop!  And an umbrella to
+keep the moon off when you give your mind to it on a pitch-dark night.
+Now I won't ask you how much for the lot, but how little?  How little are
+you thinking of?  Don't be ashamed to mention it, because my
+fortune-teller knows already."  (Then making believe to whisper, I kissed
+her,--and she kissed me.)  "Why, she says you are thinking of as little
+as three and threepence!  I couldn't have believed it, even of you,
+unless she told me.  Three and threepence!  And a set of printed tables
+in the lot that'll calculate your income up to forty thousand a year!
+With an income of forty thousand a year, you grudge three and sixpence.
+Well then, I'll tell you my opinion.  I so despise the threepence, that
+I'd sooner take three shillings.  There.  For three shillings, three
+shillings, three shillings!  Gone.  Hand 'em over to the lucky man."
+
+As there had been no bid at all, everybody looked about and grinned at
+everybody, while I touched little Sophy's face and asked her if she felt
+faint, or giddy.  "Not very, father.  It will soon be over."  Then
+turning from the pretty patient eyes, which were opened now, and seeing
+nothing but grins across my lighted grease-pot, I went on again in my
+Cheap Jack style.  "Where's the butcher?"  (My sorrowful eye had just
+caught sight of a fat young butcher on the outside of the crowd.)  "She
+says the good luck is the butcher's.  Where is he?"  Everybody handed on
+the blushing butcher to the front, and there was a roar, and the butcher
+felt himself obliged to put his hand in his pocket, and take the lot.  The
+party so picked out, in general, does feel obliged to take the lot--good
+four times out of six.  Then we had another lot, the counterpart of that
+one, and sold it sixpence cheaper, which is always wery much enjoyed.
+Then we had the spectacles.  It ain't a special profitable lot, but I put
+'em on, and I see what the Chancellor of the Exchequer is going to take
+off the taxes, and I see what the sweetheart of the young woman in the
+shawl is doing at home, and I see what the Bishops has got for dinner,
+and a deal more that seldom fails to fetch 'em 'up in their spirits; and
+the better their spirits, the better their bids.  Then we had the ladies'
+lot--the teapot, tea-caddy, glass sugar-basin, half-a-dozen spoons, and
+caudle-cup--and all the time I was making similar excuses to give a look
+or two and say a word or two to my poor child.  It was while the second
+ladies' lot was holding 'em enchained that I felt her lift herself a
+little on my shoulder, to look across the dark street.  "What troubles
+you, darling?"  "Nothing troubles me, father.  I am not at all troubled.
+But don't I see a pretty churchyard over there?"  "Yes, my dear."  "Kiss
+me twice, dear father, and lay me down to rest upon that churchyard grass
+so soft and green."  I staggered back into the cart with her head dropped
+on my shoulder, and I says to her mother, "Quick.  Shut the door!  Don't
+let those laughing people see!"  "What's the matter?" she cries.  "O
+woman, woman," I tells her, "you'll never catch my little Sophy by her
+hair again, for she has flown away from you!"
+
+Maybe those were harder words than I meant 'em; but from that time forth
+my wife took to brooding, and would sit in the cart or walk beside it,
+hours at a stretch, with her arms crossed, and her eyes looking on the
+ground.  When her furies took her (which was rather seldomer than before)
+they took her in a new way, and she banged herself about to that extent
+that I was forced to hold her.  She got none the better for a little
+drink now and then, and through some years I used to wonder, as I plodded
+along at the old horse's head, whether there was many carts upon the road
+that held so much dreariness as mine, for all my being looked up to as
+the King of the Cheap Jacks.  So sad our lives went on till one summer
+evening, when, as we were coming into Exeter, out of the farther West of
+England, we saw a woman beating a child in a cruel manner, who screamed,
+"Don't beat me!  O mother, mother, mother!"  Then my wife stopped her
+ears, and ran away like a wild thing, and next day she was found in the
+river.
+
+Me and my dog were all the company left in the cart now; and the dog
+learned to give a short bark when they wouldn't bid, and to give another
+and a nod of his head when I asked him, "Who said half a crown?  Are you
+the gentleman, sir, that offered half a crown?"  He attained to an
+immense height of popularity, and I shall always believe taught himself
+entirely out of his own head to growl at any person in the crowd that bid
+as low as sixpence.  But he got to be well on in years, and one night
+when I was conwulsing York with the spectacles, he took a conwulsion on
+his own account upon the very footboard by me, and it finished him.
+
+Being naturally of a tender turn, I had dreadful lonely feelings on me
+arter this.  I conquered 'em at selling times, having a reputation to
+keep (not to mention keeping myself), but they got me down in private,
+and rolled upon me.  That's often the way with us public characters.  See
+us on the footboard, and you'd give pretty well anything you possess to
+be us.  See us off the footboard, and you'd add a trifle to be off your
+bargain.  It was under those circumstances that I come acquainted with a
+giant.  I might have been too high to fall into conversation with him,
+had it not been for my lonely feelings.  For the general rule is, going
+round the country, to draw the line at dressing up.  When a man can't
+trust his getting a living to his undisguised abilities, you consider him
+below your sort.  And this giant when on view figured as a Roman.
+
+He was a languid young man, which I attribute to the distance betwixt his
+extremities.  He had a little head and less in it, he had weak eyes and
+weak knees, and altogether you couldn't look at him without feeling that
+there was greatly too much of him both for his joints and his mind.  But
+he was an amiable though timid young man (his mother let him out, and
+spent the money), and we come acquainted when he was walking to ease the
+horse betwixt two fairs.  He was called Rinaldo di Velasco, his name
+being Pickleson.
+
+This giant, otherwise Pickleson, mentioned to me under the seal of
+confidence that, beyond his being a burden to himself, his life was made
+a burden to him by the cruelty of his master towards a step-daughter who
+was deaf and dumb.  Her mother was dead, and she had no living soul to
+take her part, and was used most hard.  She travelled with his master's
+caravan only because there was nowhere to leave her, and this giant,
+otherwise Pickleson, did go so far as to believe that his master often
+tried to lose her.  He was such a very languid young man, that I don't
+know how long it didn't take him to get this story out, but it passed
+through his defective circulation to his top extremity in course of time.
+
+When I heard this account from the giant, otherwise Pickleson, and
+likewise that the poor girl had beautiful long dark hair, and was often
+pulled down by it and beaten, I couldn't see the giant through what stood
+in my eyes.  Having wiped 'em, I give him sixpence (for he was kept as
+short as he was long), and he laid it out in two three-penn'orths of gin-
+and-water, which so brisked him up, that he sang the Favourite Comic of
+Shivery Shakey, ain't it cold?--a popular effect which his master had
+tried every other means to get out of him as a Roman wholly in vain.
+
+His master's name was Mim, a wery hoarse man, and I knew him to speak to.
+I went to that Fair as a mere civilian, leaving the cart outside the
+town, and I looked about the back of the Vans while the performing was
+going on, and at last, sitting dozing against a muddy cart-wheel, I come
+upon the poor girl who was deaf and dumb.  At the first look I might
+almost have judged that she had escaped from the Wild Beast Show; but at
+the second I thought better of her, and thought that if she was more
+cared for and more kindly used she would be like my child.  She was just
+the same age that my own daughter would have been, if her pretty head had
+not fell down upon my shoulder that unfortunate night.
+
+To cut it short, I spoke confidential to Mim while he was beating the
+gong outside betwixt two lots of Pickleson's publics, and I put it to
+him, "She lies heavy on your own hands; what'll you take for her?"  Mim
+was a most ferocious swearer.  Suppressing that part of his reply which
+was much the longest part, his reply was, "A pair of braces."  "Now I'll
+tell you," says I, "what I'm a going to do with you.  I'm a going to
+fetch you half-a-dozen pair of the primest braces in the cart, and then
+to take her away with me."  Says Mim (again ferocious), "I'll believe it
+when I've got the goods, and no sooner."  I made all the haste I could,
+lest he should think twice of it, and the bargain was completed, which
+Pickleson he was thereby so relieved in his mind that he come out at his
+little back door, longways like a serpent, and give us Shivery Shakey in
+a whisper among the wheels at parting.
+
+It was happy days for both of us when Sophy and me began to travel in the
+cart.  I at once give her the name of Sophy, to put her ever towards me
+in the attitude of my own daughter.  We soon made out to begin to
+understand one another, through the goodness of the Heavens, when she
+knowed that I meant true and kind by her.  In a very little time she was
+wonderful fond of me.  You have no idea what it is to have anybody
+wonderful fond of you, unless you have been got down and rolled upon by
+the lonely feelings that I have mentioned as having once got the better
+of me.
+
+You'd have laughed--or the rewerse--it's according to your disposition--if
+you could have seen me trying to teach Sophy.  At first I was
+helped--you'd never guess by what--milestones.  I got some large
+alphabets in a box, all the letters separate on bits of bone, and saying
+we was going to WINDSOR, I give her those letters in that order, and then
+at every milestone I showed her those same letters in that same order
+again, and pointed towards the abode of royalty.  Another time I give her
+CART, and then chalked the same upon the cart.  Another time I give her
+DOCTOR MARIGOLD, and hung a corresponding inscription outside my
+waistcoat.  People that met us might stare a bit and laugh, but what did
+_I_ care, if she caught the idea?  She caught it after long patience and
+trouble, and then we did begin to get on swimmingly, I believe you!  At
+first she was a little given to consider me the cart, and the cart the
+abode of royalty, but that soon wore off.
+
+We had our signs, too, and they was hundreds in number.  Sometimes she
+would sit looking at me and considering hard how to communicate with me
+about something fresh,--how to ask me what she wanted explained,--and
+then she was (or I thought she was; what does it signify?) so like my
+child with those years added to her, that I half-believed it was herself,
+trying to tell me where she had been to up in the skies, and what she had
+seen since that unhappy night when she flied away.  She had a pretty
+face, and now that there was no one to drag at her bright dark hair, and
+it was all in order, there was a something touching in her looks that
+made the cart most peaceful and most quiet, though not at all melancholy.
+[N.B.  In the Cheap Jack patter, we generally sound it lemonjolly, and it
+gets a laugh.]
+
+The way she learnt to understand any look of mine was truly surprising.
+When I sold of a night, she would sit in the cart unseen by them outside,
+and would give a eager look into my eyes when I looked in, and would hand
+me straight the precise article or articles I wanted.  And then she would
+clap her hands, and laugh for joy.  And as for me, seeing her so bright,
+and remembering what she was when I first lighted on her, starved and
+beaten and ragged, leaning asleep against the muddy cart-wheel, it give
+me such heart that I gained a greater heighth of reputation than ever,
+and I put Pickleson down (by the name of Mim's Travelling Giant otherwise
+Pickleson) for a fypunnote in my will.
+
+This happiness went on in the cart till she was sixteen year old.  By
+which time I began to feel not satisfied that I had done my whole duty by
+her, and to consider that she ought to have better teaching than I could
+give her.  It drew a many tears on both sides when I commenced explaining
+my views to her; but what's right is right, and you can't neither by
+tears nor laughter do away with its character.
+
+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.
+
+Still, the loneliness that followed in the cart was not the old
+loneliness, because there was a term put to it, however long to look
+forward to; and because I could think, when I was anyways down, that she
+belonged to me and I belonged to her.  Always planning for her coming
+back, I bought in a few months' time another cart, and what do you think
+I planned to do with it?  I'll tell you.  I planned to fit it up with
+shelves and books for her reading, and to have a seat in it where I could
+sit and see her read, and think that I had been her first teacher.  Not
+hurrying over the job, I had the fittings knocked together in contriving
+ways under my own inspection, and here was her bed in a berth with
+curtains, and there was her reading-table, and here was her writing-desk,
+and elsewhere was her books in rows upon rows, picters and no picters,
+bindings and no bindings, gilt-edged and plain, just as I could pick 'em
+up for her in lots up and down the country, North and South and West and
+East, Winds liked best and winds liked least, Here and there and gone
+astray, Over the hills and far away.  And when I had got together pretty
+well as many books as the cart would neatly hold, a new scheme come into
+my head, which, as it turned out, kept my time and attention a good deal
+employed, and helped me over the two years' stile.
+
+Without being of an awaricious temper, I like to be the owner of things.
+I shouldn't wish, for instance, to go partners with yourself in the Cheap
+Jack cart.  It's not that I mistrust you, but that I'd rather know it was
+mine.  Similarly, very likely you'd rather know it was yours.  Well!  A
+kind of a jealousy began to creep into my mind when I reflected that all
+those books would have been read by other people long before they was
+read by her.  It seemed to take away from her being the owner of 'em
+like.  In this way, the question got into my head: Couldn't I have a book
+new-made express for her, which she should be the first to read?
+
+It pleased me, that thought did; and as I never was a man to let a
+thought sleep (you must wake up all the whole family of thoughts you've
+got and burn their nightcaps, or you won't do in the Cheap Jack line), I
+set to work at it.  Considering that I was in the habit of changing so
+much about the country, and that I should have to find out a literary
+character here to make a deal with, and another literary character there
+to make a deal with, as opportunities presented, I hit on the plan that
+this same book should be a general miscellaneous lot,--like the razors,
+flat-iron, chronometer watch, dinner plates, rolling-pin, and looking-
+glass,--and shouldn't be offered as a single indiwidual article, like the
+spectacles or the gun.  When I had come to that conclusion, I come to
+another, which shall likewise be yours.
+
+Often had I regretted that she never had heard me on the footboard, and
+that she never could hear me.  It ain't that _I_ am vain, but that _you_
+don't like to put your own light under a bushel.  What's the worth of
+your reputation, if you can't convey the reason for it to the person you
+most wish to value it?  Now I'll put it to you.  Is it worth sixpence,
+fippence, fourpence, threepence, twopence, a penny, a halfpenny, a
+farthing?  No, it ain't.  Not worth a farthing.  Very well, then.  My
+conclusion was that I would begin her book with some account of myself.
+So that, through reading a specimen or two of me on the footboard, she
+might form an idea of my merits there.  I was aware that I couldn't do
+myself justice.  A man can't write his eye (at least _I_ don't know how
+to), nor yet can a man write his voice, nor the rate of his talk, nor the
+quickness of his action, nor his general spicy way.  But he can write his
+turns of speech, when he is a public speaker,--and indeed I have heard
+that he very often does, before he speaks 'em.
+
+Well!  Having formed that resolution, then come the question of a name.
+How did I hammer that hot iron into shape?  This way.  The most difficult
+explanation I had ever had with her was, how I come to be called Doctor,
+and yet was no Doctor.  After all, I felt that I had failed of getting it
+correctly into her mind, with my utmost pains.  But trusting to her
+improvement in the two years, I thought that I might trust to her
+understanding it when she should come to read it as put down by my own
+hand.  Then I thought I would try a joke with her and watch how it took,
+by which of itself I might fully judge of her understanding it.  We had
+first discovered the mistake we had dropped into, through her having
+asked me to prescribe for her when she had supposed me to be a Doctor in
+a medical point of view; so thinks I, "Now, if I give this book the name
+of my Prescriptions, and if she catches the idea that my only
+Prescriptions are for her amusement and interest,--to make her laugh in a
+pleasant way, or to make her cry in a pleasant way,--it will be a
+delightful proof to both of us that we have got over our difficulty."  It
+fell out to absolute perfection.  For when she saw the book, as I had it
+got up,--the printed and pressed book,--lying on her desk in her cart,
+and saw the title, DOCTOR MARIGOLD'S PRESCRIPTIONS, she looked at me for
+a moment with astonishment, then fluttered the leaves, then broke out a
+laughing in the charmingest way, then felt her pulse and shook her head,
+then turned the pages pretending to read them most attentive, then kissed
+the book to me, and put it to her bosom with both her hands.  I never was
+better pleased in all my life!
+
+But let me not anticipate.  (I take that expression out of a lot of
+romances I bought for her.  I never opened a single one of 'em--and I
+have opened many--but I found the romancer saying "let me not
+anticipate."  Which being so, I wonder why he did anticipate, or who
+asked him to it.)  Let me not, I say, anticipate.  This same book took up
+all my spare time.  It was no play to get the other articles together in
+the general miscellaneous lot, but when it come to my own article!  There!
+I couldn't have believed the blotting, nor yet the buckling to at it, nor
+the patience over it.  Which again is like the footboard.  The public
+have no idea.
+
+At last it was done, and the two years' time was gone after all the other
+time before it, and where it's all gone to, who knows?  The new cart was
+finished,--yellow outside, relieved with wermilion and brass
+fittings,--the old horse was put in it, a new 'un and a boy being laid on
+for the Cheap Jack cart,--and I cleaned myself up to go and fetch her.
+Bright cold weather it was, cart-chimneys smoking, carts pitched private
+on a piece of waste ground over at Wandsworth, where you may see 'em from
+the Sou'western Railway when not upon the road.  (Look out of the right-
+hand window going down.)
+
+"Marigold," says the gentleman, giving his hand hearty, "I am very glad
+to see you."
+
+"Yet I have my doubts, sir," says I, "if you can be half as glad to see
+me as I am to see you."
+
+"The time has appeared so long,--has it, Marigold?"
+
+"I won't say that, sir, considering its real length; but--"
+
+"What a start, my good fellow!"
+
+Ah!  I should think it was!  Grown such a woman, so pretty, so
+intelligent, so expressive!  I knew then that she must be really like my
+child, or I could never have known her, standing quiet by the door.
+
+"You are affected," says the gentleman in a kindly manner.
+
+"I feel, sir," says I, "that I am but a rough chap in a sleeved
+waistcoat."
+
+"I feel," says the gentleman, "that it was you who raised her from misery
+and degradation, and brought her into communication with her kind.  But
+why do we converse alone together, when we can converse so well with her?
+Address her in your own way."
+
+"I am such a rough chap in a sleeved waistcoat, sir," says I, "and she is
+such a graceful woman, and she stands so quiet at the door!"
+
+"_Try_ if she moves at the old sign," says the gentleman.
+
+They had got it up together o' purpose to please me!  For when I give her
+the old sign, she rushed to my feet, and dropped upon her knees, holding
+up her hands to me with pouring tears of love and joy; and when I took
+her hands and lifted her, she clasped me round the neck, and lay there;
+and I don't know what a fool I didn't make of myself, until we all three
+settled down into talking without sound, as if there was a something soft
+and pleasant spread over the whole world for us.
+
+* * * * *
+
+[A portion is here omitted from the text, having reference to the
+sketches contributed by other writers; but the reader will be pleased to
+have what follows retained in a note:
+
+"Now I'll tell you what I am a-going to do with you.  I am a-going to
+offer you the general miscellaneous lot, her own book, never read by
+anybody else but me, added to and completed by me after her first reading
+of it, eight-and-forty printed pages, six-and-ninety columns, Whiting's
+own work, Beaufort House to wit, thrown off by the steam-ingine, best of
+paper, beautiful green wrapper, folded like clean linen come home from
+the clear-starcher's, and so exquisitely stitched that, regarded as a
+piece of needlework alone, it's better than the sampler of a seamstress
+undergoing a Competitive examination for Starvation before the Civil
+Service Commissioners--and I offer the lot for what?  For eight pound?
+Not so much.  For six pound?  Less.  For four pound.  Why, I hardly
+expect you to believe me, but that's the sum.  Four pound!  The stitching
+alone cost half as much again.  Here's forty-eight original pages, ninety-
+six original columns, for four pound.  You want more for the money?  Take
+it.  Three whole pages of advertisements of thrilling interest thrown in
+for nothing.  Read 'em and believe 'em.  More?  My best of wishes for
+your merry Christmases and your happy New Years, your long lives and your
+true prosperities.  Worth twenty pound good if they are delivered as I
+send them.  Remember!  Here's a final prescription added, "To be taken
+for life," which will tell you how the cart broke down, and where the
+journey ended.  You think Four Pound too much?  And still you think so?
+Come!  I'll tell you what then.  Say Four Pence, and keep the secret."]
+
+* * * * *
+
+So every item of my plan was crowned with success.  Our reunited life was
+more than all that we had looked forward to.  Content and joy went with
+us as the wheels of the two carts went round, and the same stopped with
+us when the two carts stopped.  I was as pleased and as proud as a Pug-
+Dog with his muzzle black-leaded for a evening party, and his tail extra
+curled by machinery.
+
+But I had left something out of my calculations.  Now, what had I left
+out?  To help you to guess I'll say, a figure.  Come.  Make a guess and
+guess right.  Nought?  No.  Nine?  No.  Eight?  No.  Seven?  No.  Six?
+No.  Five?  No.  Four?  No.  Three?  No.  Two?  No.  One?  No.  Now I'll
+tell you what I'll do with you.  I'll say it's another sort of figure
+altogether.  There.  Why then, says you, it's a mortal figure.  No, nor
+yet a mortal figure.  By such means you got yourself penned into a
+corner, and you can't help guessing a _im_mortal figure.  That's about
+it.  Why didn't you say so sooner?
+
+Yes.  It was a immortal figure that I had altogether left out of my
+Calculations.  Neither man's, nor woman's, but a child's.  Girl's or
+boy's?  Boy's.  "I, says the sparrow with my bow and arrow."  Now you
+have got it.
+
+We were down at Lancaster, and I had done two nights more than fair
+average business (though I cannot in honour recommend them as a quick
+audience) in the open square there, near the end of the street where Mr.
+Sly's King's Arms and Royal Hotel stands.  Mim's travelling giant,
+otherwise Pickleson, happened at the self-same time to be trying it on in
+the town.  The genteel lay was adopted with him.  No hint of a van.  Green
+baize alcove leading up to Pickleson in a Auction Room.  Printed poster,
+"Free list suspended, with the exception of that proud boast of an
+enlightened country, a free press.  Schools admitted by private
+arrangement.  Nothing to raise a blush in the cheek of youth or shock the
+most fastidious."  Mim swearing most horrible and terrific, in a pink
+calico pay-place, at the slackness of the public.  Serious handbill in
+the shops, importing that it was all but impossible to come to a right
+understanding of the history of David without seeing Pickleson.
+
+I went to the Auction Room in question, and I found it entirely empty of
+everything but echoes and mouldiness, with the single exception of
+Pickleson on a piece of red drugget.  This suited my purpose, as I wanted
+a private and confidential word with him, which was: "Pickleson.  Owing
+much happiness to you, I put you in my will for a fypunnote; but, to save
+trouble, here's fourpunten down, which may equally suit your views, and
+let us so conclude the transaction."  Pickleson, who up to that remark
+had had the dejected appearance of a long Roman rushlight that couldn't
+anyhow get lighted, brightened up at his top extremity, and made his
+acknowledgments in a way which (for him) was parliamentary eloquence.  He
+likewise did add, that, having ceased to draw as a Roman, Mim had made
+proposals for his going in as a conwerted Indian Giant worked upon by The
+Dairyman's Daughter.  This, Pickleson, having no acquaintance with the
+tract named after that young woman, and not being willing to couple gag
+with his serious views, had declined to do, thereby leading to words and
+the total stoppage of the unfortunate young man's beer.  All of which,
+during the whole of the interview, was confirmed by the ferocious
+growling of Mim down below in the pay-place, which shook the giant like a
+leaf.
+
+But what was to the present point in the remarks of the travelling giant,
+otherwise Pickleson, was this: "Doctor Marigold,"--I give his words
+without a hope of conweying their feebleness,--"who is the strange young
+man that hangs about your carts?"--"The strange young _man_?"  I gives
+him back, thinking that he meant her, and his languid circulation had
+dropped a syllable.  "Doctor," he returns, with a pathos calculated to
+draw a tear from even a manly eye, "I am weak, but not so weak yet as
+that I don't know my words.  I repeat them, Doctor.  The strange young
+man."  It then appeared that Pickleson, being forced to stretch his legs
+(not that they wanted it) only at times when he couldn't be seen for
+nothing, to wit in the dead of the night and towards daybreak, had twice
+seen hanging about my carts, in that same town of Lancaster where I had
+been only two nights, this same unknown young man.
+
+It put me rather out of sorts.  What it meant as to particulars I no more
+foreboded then than you forebode now, but it put me rather out of sorts.
+Howsoever, I made light of it to Pickleson, and I took leave of
+Pickleson, advising him to spend his legacy in getting up his stamina,
+and to continue to stand by his religion.  Towards morning I kept a look
+out for the strange young man, and--what was more--I saw the strange
+young man.  He was well dressed and well looking.  He loitered very nigh
+my carts, watching them like as if he was taking care of them, and soon
+after daybreak turned and went away.  I sent a hail after him, but he
+never started or looked round, or took the smallest notice.
+
+We left Lancaster within an hour or two, on our way towards Carlisle.
+Next morning, at daybreak, I looked out again for the strange young man.
+I did not see him.  But next morning I looked out again, and there he was
+once more.  I sent another hail after him, but as before he gave not the
+slightest sign of being anyways disturbed.  This put a thought into my
+head.  Acting on it I watched him in different manners and at different
+times not necessary to enter into, till I found that this strange young
+man was deaf and dumb.
+
+The discovery turned me over, because I knew that a part of that
+establishment where she had been was allotted to young men (some of them
+well off), and I thought to myself, "If she favours him, where am I? and
+where is all that I have worked and planned for?"  Hoping--I must confess
+to the selfishness--that she might _not_ favour him, I set myself to find
+out.  At last I was by accident present at a meeting between them in the
+open air, looking on leaning behind a fir-tree without their knowing of
+it.  It was a moving meeting for all the three parties concerned.  I knew
+every syllable that passed between them as well as they did.  I listened
+with my eyes, which had come to be as quick and true with deaf and dumb
+conversation as my ears with the talk of people that can speak.  He was a-
+going out to China as clerk in a merchant's house, which his father had
+been before him.  He was in circumstances to keep a wife, and he wanted
+her to marry him and go along with him.  She persisted, no.  He asked if
+she didn't love him.  Yes, she loved him dearly, dearly; but she could
+never disappoint her beloved, good, noble, generous, and I-don't-know-
+what-all father (meaning me, the Cheap Jack in the sleeved waistcoat) and
+she would stay with him, Heaven bless him! though it was to break her
+heart.  Then she cried most bitterly, and that made up my mind.
+
+While my mind had been in an unsettled state about her favouring this
+young man, I had felt that unreasonable towards Pickleson, that it was
+well for him he had got his legacy down.  For I often thought, "If it
+hadn't been for this same weak-minded giant, I might never have come to
+trouble my head and wex my soul about the young man."  But, once that I
+knew she loved him,--once that I had seen her weep for him,--it was a
+different thing.  I made it right in my mind with Pickleson on the spot,
+and I shook myself together to do what was right by all.
+
+She had left the young man by that time (for it took a few minutes to get
+me thoroughly well shook together), and the young man was leaning against
+another of the fir-trees,--of which there was a cluster,--with his face
+upon his arm.  I touched him on the back.  Looking up and seeing me, he
+says, in our deaf-and-dumb talk, "Do not be angry."
+
+"I am not angry, good boy.  I am your friend.  Come with me."
+
+I left him at the foot of the steps of the Library Cart, and I went up
+alone.  She was drying her eyes.
+
+"You have been crying, my dear."
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"A headache."
+
+"Not a heartache?"
+
+"I said a headache, father."
+
+"Doctor Marigold must prescribe for that headache."
+
+She took up the book of my Prescriptions, and held it up with a forced
+smile; but seeing me keep still and look earnest, she softly laid it down
+again, and her eyes were very attentive.
+
+"The Prescription is not there, Sophy."
+
+"Where is it?"
+
+"Here, my dear."
+
+I brought her young husband in, and I put her hand in his, and my only
+farther words to both of them were these: "Doctor Marigold's last
+Prescription.  To be taken for life."  After which I bolted.
+
+When the wedding come off, I mounted a coat (blue, and bright buttons),
+for the first and last time in all my days, and I give Sophy away with my
+own hand.  There were only us three and the gentleman who had had charge
+of her for those two years.  I give the wedding dinner of four in the
+Library Cart.  Pigeon-pie, a leg of pickled pork, a pair of fowls, and
+suitable garden stuff.  The best of drinks.  I give them a speech, and
+the gentleman give us a speech, and all our jokes told, and the whole
+went off like a sky-rocket.  In the course of the entertainment I
+explained to Sophy that I should keep the Library Cart as my living-cart
+when not upon the road, and that I should keep all her books for her just
+as they stood, till she come back to claim them.  So she went to China
+with her young husband, and it was a parting sorrowful and heavy, and I
+got the boy I had another service; and so as of old, when my child and
+wife were gone, I went plodding along alone, with my whip over my
+shoulder, at the old horse's head.
+
+Sophy wrote me many letters, and I wrote her many letters.  About the end
+of the first year she sent me one in an unsteady hand: "Dearest father,
+not a week ago I had a darling little daughter, but I am so well that
+they let me write these words to you.  Dearest and best father, I hope my
+child may not be deaf and dumb, but I do not yet know."  When I wrote
+back, I hinted the question; but as Sophy never answered that question, I
+felt it to be a sad one, and I never repeated it.  For a long time our
+letters were regular, but then they got irregular, through Sophy's
+husband being moved to another station, and through my being always on
+the move.  But we were in one another's thoughts, I was equally sure,
+letters or no letters.
+
+Five years, odd months, had gone since Sophy went away.  I was still the
+King of the Cheap Jacks, and at a greater height of popularity than ever.
+I had had a first-rate autumn of it, and on the twenty-third of December,
+one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four, I found myself at Uxbridge,
+Middlesex, clean sold out.  So I jogged up to London with the old horse,
+light and easy, to have my Christmas-eve and Christmas-day alone by the
+fire in the Library Cart, and then to buy a regular new stock of goods
+all round, to sell 'em again and get the money.
+
+I am a neat hand at cookery, and I'll tell you what I knocked up for my
+Christmas-eve dinner in the Library Cart.  I knocked up a
+beefsteak-pudding for one, with two kidneys, a dozen oysters, and a
+couple of mushrooms thrown in.  It's a pudding to put a man in good
+humour with everything, except the two bottom buttons of his waistcoat.
+Having relished that pudding and cleared away, I turned the lamp low, and
+sat down by the light of the fire, watching it as it shone upon the backs
+of Sophy's books.
+
+Sophy's books so brought Sophy's self, that I saw her touching face quite
+plainly, before I dropped off dozing by the fire.  This may be a reason
+why Sophy, with her deaf-and-dumb child in her arms, seemed to stand
+silent by me all through my nap.  I was on the road, off the road, in all
+sorts of places, North and South and West and East, Winds liked best and
+winds liked least, Here and there and gone astray, Over the hills and far
+away, and still she stood silent by me, with her silent child in her
+arms.  Even when I woke with a start, she seemed to vanish, as if she had
+stood by me in that very place only a single instant before.
+
+I had started at a real sound, and the sound was on the steps of the
+cart.  It was the light hurried tread of a child, coming clambering up.
+That tread of a child had once been so familiar to me, that for half a
+moment I believed I was a-going to see a little ghost.
+
+But the touch of a real child was laid upon the outer handle of the door,
+and the handle turned, and the door opened a little way, and a real child
+peeped in.  A bright little comely girl with large dark eyes.
+
+Looking full at me, the tiny creature took off her mite of a straw hat,
+and a quantity of dark curls fell about her face.  Then she opened her
+lips, and said in a pretty voice,
+
+"Grandfather!"
+
+"Ah, my God!" I cries out.  "She can speak!"
+
+"Yes, dear grandfather.  And I am to ask you whether there was ever any
+one that I remind you of?"
+
+In a moment Sophy was round my neck, as well as the child, and her
+husband was a-wringing my hand with his face hid, and we all had to shake
+ourselves together before we could get over it.  And when we did begin to
+get over it, and I saw the pretty child a-talking, pleased and quick and
+eager and busy, to her mother, in the signs that I had first taught her
+mother, the happy and yet pitying tears fell rolling down my face.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOCTOR MARIGOLD***
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