The Maid of SkerBlackmore, R. D. (Richard Doddridge)
General
The Maid of Sker
Blackmore, R. D. (Richard Doddridge)
Foundlings -- Fiction; Romance fiction; Wales -- Fiction
Into this dark lonely passage I was led by a little body, too newly
inhabited by spirit to be at all afraid of it. And she came to a
cupboard door, and tugged, and made a face as usual, when the button was
hard to move. But as for allowing me to help her,--not a bit of it, if
you please. With many grunts and jerks of breath, at last she fetched it
outward, having made me promise first not to touch, however grand and
tempting might be the scene disclosed to me.
What do you think was there collected, and arranged in such a system
that no bee could equal it? Why, every bit of everything that every one
who loved her (which amounts to everybody) ever had bestowed upon her,
for her own sweet use and pleasure, since ashore she came to us. Not a
lollipop was sucked, not a bit of "taffy" tasted, not a plaything had
been used, but just enough to prove it; all were set in portions four,
two of which were double-sized of what the other two were. Nearly half
these things had come, I am almost sure, from Newton; and among the
choicest treasures which were stored in scollop shells, I descried one
of my own buttons which I had honestly given her, because two eyelets
had run together; item, a bowl of an unsmoked pipe (which had snapped in
my hand one evening); item, as sure as I am alive, every bit of the
sugar which the Dolly had taken from out my locker.
Times there are when a hardy man, at sense of things (however childish),
which have left their fibre in him, finds himself, or loses self, in a
sudden softness. So it almost was with me (though the bait on my hooks
all the time was drying), and for no better reason than the hopeless
hopes of a very young child. I knew what all her storehouse meant before
she began to tell me. And her excitement while she told me scarcely left
her breath to speak.
"'Nat for papa, with 'e kean pipe to 'moke, and 'nat for mamma with 'e
boofely bucken for her coke, and 'nat for my dear ickle bother, because
it just fit in between his teeth, and 'nis with 'e 'ooking-gass for
Susan, because she do her hair all day yong."
She held up the little bit of tin, and mimicked Susan's self-adornment,
making such a comic face, and looking so conceited, that I felt as if I
should know her Susan, anywhere in a hundred of women, if only she
should turn up so. And I began to smile a little; and she took it up
tenfold.
"'E make me yaff so, I do decare, 'e silly old Davy; I doesn't know 'hat
to do a'most. But 'e mustn't tell anybody."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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