Christmas stories, English; Holidays -- Fiction; Short stories
After that, there was a spread in the dining-room of the most magnificent
kind. Fowls, tongues, preserves, fruits, confectionaries, jellies,
neguses, barley-sugar temples, trifles, crackers—eat all you can and
pocket what you like—all at Old Cheeseman’s expense. After that,
speeches, whole holiday, double and treble sets of all manners of things
for all manners of games, donkeys, pony-chaises and drive yourself,
dinner for all the masters at the Seven Bells (twenty pounds a-head our
fellows estimated it at), an annual holiday and feast fixed for that day
every year, and another on Old Cheeseman’s birthday—Reverend bound down
before the fellows to allow it, so that he could never back out—all at
Old Cheeseman’s expense.
And didn’t our fellows go down in a body and cheer outside the Seven
Bells? O no!
But there’s something else besides. Don’t look at the next story-teller,
for there’s more yet. Next day, it was resolved that the Society should
make it up with Jane, and then be dissolved. What do you think of Jane
being gone, though! “What? Gone for ever?” said our fellows, with long
faces. “Yes, to be sure,” was all the answer they could get. None of
the people about the house would say anything more. At length, the first
boy took upon himself to ask the Reverend whether our old friend Jane was
really gone? The Reverend (he has got a daughter at home—turn-up nose,
and red) replied severely, “Yes, sir, Miss Pitt is gone.” The idea of
calling Jane, Miss Pitt! Some said she had been sent away in disgrace
for taking money from Old Cheeseman; others said she had gone into Old
Cheeseman’s service at a rise of ten pounds a year. All that our fellows
knew, was, she was gone.
It was two or three months afterwards, when, one afternoon, an open
carriage stopped at the cricket field, just outside bounds, with a lady
and gentleman in it, who looked at the game a long time and stood up to
see it played. Nobody thought much about them, until the same little
snivelling chap came in, against all rules, from the post where he was
Scout, and said, “It’s Jane!” Both Elevens forgot the game directly, and
ran crowding round the carriage. It _was_ Jane! In such a bonnet! And
if you’ll believe me, Jane was married to Old Cheeseman.
It soon became quite a regular thing when our fellows were hard at it in
the playground, to see a carriage at the low part of the wall where it
joins the high part, and a lady and gentleman standing up in it, looking
over. The gentleman was always Old Cheeseman, and the lady was always
Jane.
The first time I ever saw them, I saw them in that way. There had been a
good many changes among our fellows then, and it had turned out that Bob
Tarter’s father wasn’t worth Millions! He wasn’t worth anything. Bob
had gone for a soldier, and Old Cheeseman had purchased his discharge.
But that’s not the carriage. The carriage stopped, and all our fellows
stopped as soon as it was seen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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