MY LITTLE GIRL. A Novel.

BY THE AUTHORS OF

"READY-MONEY MORTIBOY."

PART II.-AT HOME.

CHAPTER IV. (continued).

THEY were a kindly, dissolute, improvident race always sinning, always repentant, always sick and sorry. There was the old lady at the end of the court, who worked hard all the week and got drunk every Saturday night, and was wont to come out at twelve, with her hand to her head, crying aloud unto the four winds, "Oh, Lord, how bad I be!" There were the family of five brothers at No. 2, who fought most nights in pairs, the other three looking on. There were two or three laundresses of the Inn, who were even worse, as regards personal habits and appearance, than poor old Mrs. Peck, and envious of her superior fortune. There was a swarming population all day and all night; there was no peace, no quietness, no chance for anything but endurance.

Price 2d.

And in the midst of all this the poor girl had to spend her evenings and her nights. Sometimes she would cry aloud for shame and misery. Sometimes, when she was left alone, the squalor of her surroundings would appear so dreadful, so intolerable, so miserable, that she would resolve to beg and implore Mr. Venn to take her out of them. Sometimes she would shut out the world around her by building castles in the air, and so forget things. Only, as time went on, and things did not change but for the worse, she found it becoming daily more difficult to keep up the illusions of hope, and persuade herself that all this would have an end.

The poor grandmother was a trial. I am afraid the wicked old woman purloined half the money that Venn gave her for his ward, and put it into a stocking. She was not a nice old woman to look at. She had disagreeable habits. She was not reticent of speech. She was totally illiterate. She was interested mainly in the price of the commoner kinds of provisions, such as the bloater of Leather-lane. And when she was in a bad temper, which was often, she was a Nagster. From habit, Lollie always let her go on, till it was bed-time. Then, at least, she was free, for the little room at the back belonged to her. She could have comparative quiet there, at any rate. The old woman preferred sleeping among her pots and pans, as she had been brought up to do, in the front room. Besides, she was afraid of her grand-daughter, and yet proud and fond of her. She felt more comfortable when the child was gone to bed, and she could nag all to herself-audibly, it is true, and with the assistance of a little bottle containing some of Mr. Venn's brandy. On the whole she was well pleased that she had but little of the girl's society. For like will to like; and many were the cheerful little gatherings, not unenlivened with gin, which took place on that first floor, what time Lollie was gone to the theatre with Mr.

I think I see her now. "Tout ce qu'il y a du plus affreux." An antique "front" always twisted awry over a brow marbled, indeed, but not with thought. A countenance in which deep lines were marked with a deeper black than covered the rest. Small cunning eyes: if you lead a small, cunning life, your eyes do most inevitably become small and cunning of aspect. Fat lips, such as might come from always eating roast pork-the greatest luxury with which Mrs. Peck was acquainted. A bonnet never removed day or night. A dress-but, no; let us stop. Is there not a sort of sacrilege in describing, only to mock at her, a poor old creature who is what the conditions of life made her? Let us bring honour and reverence to old age. For Mrs. Peck no more shall be said. To her virtues very kind, Hartley Venn was to all her faults very blind. She cribbed everything. She never cleaned anything. She smashed everything. She cheatedbut she was Lollie's grandmother.

Lollie's education we have sufficiently described. It had, as we have hinted, one capital defect. There was not one word of religion about it. Venn-not because he was an infidel, which he was not; nor because he wished to make an experiment, which was not the case; but simply out of pure carelessness and indifference, and because he never went to church himself-taught his little girl no religion whatever. She knew, from reading, something-the something being the most curious medley possible, from a mixture of every kind of Latin, French, and English authors. Venn respected maidenly innocence so far as to keep harmful books, as he thought themthat is, directly harmful-out of her way; but he gave the child first a literary taste, and then access to writers whose ideas of religion were more "mixed" than would have been good for the most masculine intellect. The Bible she had never even seen; for the only copy in Venn's possession had, many years before, tumbled behind the bookcase, and was thus lost to view. And of ladies she knew but one, Miss Venn, who still asked her to tea once or twice a year, treated her with exemplary politeness, and sent her away with a frigid

kiss.

Miss Venn, you see, was suspicious. She always fancied her brother was going to marry the girl; and therefore made it her

She had two lovers-passed and rejected, bien entendu. One was a gallant young lawyer's clerk in the Inn, about her own age, who accosted her one morning with a letter, which she handed, unopened, to Venn. It contained honourable proposals. Venn descended to the court where the aspirant was waiting for an answer, and there and then administered a light chastisement with a walking-cane; the policeman-he of the big beard and the twinkling eyes, not the thin one-looking on with a grim but decided approval.

Then there was Sims the baker. A quiet, genteel young man of a Sunday, if you see him got up in his best, blue tie, and flower in his button hole, with a cane. He attacked the fortress through the grandmother, and persuaded her to accept the first offerings of love, in the shape of certain fancy ones, which greatly pleased the old lady. To her astonishment, the child threw the gifts out of window; and Mr. Venn went round the next day and had a serious talk with the young man. He put on mourning the next Sunday, and walked up and down the Gray's Inn-road all day in the disguise of a mute. But Lollie never saw him; so his silent sorrow was thrown away, and he returned to his Sally Lunns.

And this is all her story up to the point when we left her in Venn's chamber playing to him.

It was between nine and ten o'clock that she left Gray's Inn for home-not five minutes' walk, and one which she always took alone. Here she had a little adventure. For as she was striding fast along the pavement of Holborn, she became aware of a "gentleman" walking beside her, and gazing into her face. It was one of those moral cobras, common enough in London streets-venomous but cowardly, and certain to recoil harmless before a little exhibition of daring. He coughed twice. Lollie looked straight before her. Then he took off his hat, and spoke something to her. Then, finding she took no notice of him, he took her hand and tried to pass it under his arm. "We are old friends, my dear," he said, with an engaging smile.

She shook him off with terror, crying out.

common or street snob.

"Insulted a lady," said the champion to the bystanders, and going back to Lollie.

"Yah!" cried the little mob, closing round him, for he was down. And when Lothario emerged from that circle, his hat was battered in, and probably a whole quarter's salary of mischief done to his wardrobe. The moral of this shows how prudent it is not to be taken at a disadvantage. Also that it is best to get up at once if you are kicked into the gutter, and to cross the road; and, thirdly, that as the mob is sure to join the winning side, it is best to be the victor in all street encounters. Some historians give no moral at all to their incidents; for my part, my morals are my strong point. When I do not give one, it is only because the moral may be read so many ways that even the three volumes cannot stretch so far. "Permit me to see you safely part of your way at least," said Lollie's knight.

He was a gentleman, though apparently of a different kind to Mr. Venn, being very carefully and elaborately dressed. His face she hardly noticed, except that he had a small and very black moustache. But she was so frightened that she was not thinking of faces.

"I live close by," she said. "Permit me to thank you, sir, for your brave interference. I have never been insulted before. You have done me a great service. Good night."

She held out her hand with a pretty grace. He took it lightly, raised his hat, saying

"I am very happy. Perhaps we may meet again under more fortunate circumstances. Au revoir, mademoiselle; sans dire adieu."

She smiled, and turned into Gray's Innroad. She looked round once. No; her champion was a gentleman-he was not following her. Why did he speak in French? —‘Au revoir, sans dire adieu.' She found herself saying the words over and over again. Nonsense!-of course she would never see him again; and if she should, he was only a stranger to her.

She told Venn in the morning, who flew into a great rage, and promised always to take her home himself when she left his rooms later than six. In the course of the day he calmed down, and delivered an

If the British public had the patience of their grandfathers, I would write them a novel in thirty volumes, containing not only Venn's orations, but also an exhaustive Digest of Morality, Philosophy, and Religion; together with a complete Encyclopædia on the Art of Making Life Pleasant, from Prawn Curry with Perier Jouet down to a Crumpet Worry. But we must make the best of what we can get.

CHAPTER V.

PYTHAGORAS once compared life to the letter Y. This letter, starting with a trunk, presently diverges into two branches, which represent respectively the two lines of life: the good and consequently happy-that is the thin line to the right; and the bad and consequently miserable-the thick black one to the left. It is an elementary comparison, and hardly shows the sage at his best. For as to happiness and misery, they seem to me somehow dependent on public opinion and the length of a man's purse. A man with a hundred thousand a year may really do anything-not only without incurring ignominy, but even with a certain amount of applause. He will not, of course, practise murder as one of the Fine Arts, nor will he cheat at whist, and he will have little difficulty in resisting the ordinary temptation to commit burglary. But for the poor man public opinion is a mighty engine of repression. Virtue is his stern, and often bitter, portion. Public opinion exacts from him a life strictly moral and rigidly virtuous. In all places except London, it forces him to go to church: in a manner, it drives him Heavenwards with a thick stick. The rich man, in whose favour any good point—even the most rudimentary-is carefully scored, may be as bad as he pleases; the poor man, against whom we score all we can, is just as bad as he dares to be. This is one objection to the Pythagorean comparison. Another is, that young men never set off deliberately down the thick line. It is, I admit, a more crowded line than the other; but then there are constant passings and re-passings to and fro, and I have seen many an honest fellow, once a roysterer, trudging painfully, in after-years, along the narrow and prickly path, dragged on by

wife and children-though casting, may be, longing looks at the gallant and careless men he has left.

"I knew that fellow, Philip Durnford," an old friend of his told me, "when first he joined. He was shy at first, and seemed to be feeling his way. We found out after awhile that he could do things rather better than most men, and more of them. If you cared about music, Durnford had a piano, and could play and sing, after a fashion. He could fence pretty well, too; played billiards, and made a little pot at pool: altogether, an accomplished man. He was free-handed with his money; never seemed to care what he spent, or how he spent it. Queer thing about him, that he was a smart officer, and knew his drill. I think he liked the routine of the regimental work. Somehow, though, he wasn't popular. Something grated. He was not quite like other men; and I don't suppose that, during the whole six years he was in the regiment, he made a single good friend in it. Perhaps he was always trying to be better than anybody else, and he used to flourish his confounded reading in your face; so that some of the fellows were afraid to open their lips. We didn't seem to care-eh? about John Stuart Mill. Then, he wouldn't take a line. The fast man we can understand, and the man who preaches on a tub and distributes tracts, and the army prig we know, and the reading man; but hang me if we could make out a man who wanted to be everything all at once, and the best man in every line. I can assure you we were all glad when we heard that Durnford was sending in his papers."

That was the state of the case. Phil Durnford started heroically down the thin line. When we meet him again, he is in the thick, the left-handed one, with the mob. This is very sad; because we shall have to see more than enough of him. You see, he wanted patience. He would gladly have won the Victoria Cross, but there was nothing in that way going just then. He would have liked to climb quickly up the tree of honour. But this is a tree which can be only attempted under certain conditions. Had he been a drummer in the French army, about the year 1790, he might have died Marshal of the French Empire. But he fell not upon the piping times of war. So he went in for being a dashing young officer: rode-only he did not ride so well

as some others; gambled-only not with the recklessness that brought glory to others; and was a fast man, but without high spirits. In personal appearance he was handsome, particularly in uniform. His cheek showed -which is common enough in men of the mixed breed-no signs of that black blood which always filled his heart with rage whenever he thought of it. His hair was black and curling, his features clear and regular. Perhaps he might have been an inch or two taller with advantage; while his chin was too weak, and his forehead too receding.

Always weak of will, his heroic element has now, though he is only six and twenty, almost gone out of him. He looks for little beyond physical enjoyment of life: he has no high aims, no purposes, no hopes. Worse than all, he has no friends or belongings. So his heart is covered with an incrustation, growing daily harder and deeper, of selfishness, cynicism, and unbelief. When the devil wanted to tempt him to do something worse than usual, it was his wont to show him his finger-nails, where lay that fatal spot of blue which never leaves the man of African descent, though his blood be crossed with ours for a dozen generations. Then he waxed fierce and reckless, and was ready for anything. If the consciousness of descent from a long line, which has sometimes done well and never done disgracefully, be an incentive to a noble life, surely the descent from a lower and inferior race must be a hindrance.

He thought nobody knew it, and trembled lest the secret should be discovered. Everybody knew it. The colonel and the major had been in Palmiste, and knew more. They knew that George Durnford, late of the 10th Hussars, had only one son by his marriage, and never had any brothers at all. Then they put things together, and formed a conclusion, and said nothing about it, being gentlemen and good fellows.

No brandishing of the sword in front of a wavering line of red; no leading of forlorn. hopes-nothing but garrison life and camp life: what should a young man do? Here my former informant comes again to my assistance.

"Durnford," he said, "used to be always trying to outpace some other fellow. Don't you know that a hunchback always makes himself out a devil of a lady-killer; and a parvenu is always the most exclusive; and