Nuttie's FatherYonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
General
Nuttie's Father
Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
'Find him, you scoundrel, or never dare to see me again! I've borne
with your insolences long, and now you've brought them to a height. Go,
I say, find my boy!' exclaimed Mr. Egremont, with a fierce oath and
passionate gesture, and Gregorio vanished again.
'Bring the carriage--no, call a cab;' commanded Mr. Egremont, snatching
up his hat. 'Who is this Parker?'
The servants hesitated, but the butler said he believed the man to be a
friend of Gregorio's employed at one of the clubs. Nuttie meanwhile
begging her father not to go without her, flew upstairs to put on her
hat, and coming down at full speed found that Mr. Dutton, passing by
and seeing the open door and the terrified servants on the steps, had
turned in to ask what was the matter, and was hearing in no measured
terms from Mr. Egremont how the child had been taken away from his
nurse and lost in the Park while that scamp Gregorio was chattering to
some good-for-nothing friend.
To Nuttie's great relief, Mr. Dutton offered to go with the father to
assist in the search, and the coachman, far too anxious and excited to
let his master go without him in a cab, contrived to bring up the
carriage. Some of the servants were ordered off to the various police
offices. Poor nurse, who was nearly distracted, started in a hansom on
her own account, persuaded that she should see and recognise traces of
her darling at the scene of his loss, and she almost raced the
carriage, which was bound for the same spot.
Sluggish natures like Mr. Egremont's can sometimes be roused to great
violence, and then pour forth the long pent-up accumulations kept back
by indolence and indifference. His only occupation during the rapid
drive was to vituperate his valet, the curse of his life, he said. To
hear him talk, it would have seemed as if Gregorio had been the tyrant
who had kept him in bondage all these years, fully aware of his
falsehood, peculation, and other rascality, but as unable to break the
yoke as if he had been in truth the slave of anything but his own evil
habit and helpless acquiescence.
Would it last if Gregorio made his appearance at that instant with
Alwyn in his hand? Or even, as Mr. Dutton confidently predicted, a
policeman might bring the boy home, before many hours were passed. The
chief doubt here was that Alwyn's defective pronunciation, which had
been rather foolishly encouraged, might make it difficult to understand
his mode of saying his own name, or even that of the street, if he
knew it perfectly; but the year he had been absent from London had
prevented him from acquiring the curious ready local instinct of the
true town child, and he had been so much guarded and watched that he
was likely to be utterly at a loss when left alone; and Nuttie was
wretched at the thought of his terror and loneliness, even while Mr.
Dutton told her of speedy recoveries of lost children through kind
people or the police.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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