Read Online Charles Dickens by The Cricket on the Hearth - Free Book Online Page A

made no sign of interest in what had passed.
The good lady her mother now interposed, observing, in the first
instance, that girls were girls, and byegones byegones, and that so
long as young people were young and thoughtless, they would
probably conduct themselves like young and thoughtless persons:
with two or three other positions of a no less sound and
incontrovertible character. She then remarked, in a devout spirit,
that she thanked Heaven she had always found in her daughter May, a
dutiful and obedient child; for which she took no credit to
herself, though she had every reason to believe it was entirely
owing to herself. With regard to Mr. Tackleton she said, That he
was in a moral point of view an undeniable individual, and That he
was in an eligible point of view a son-in-law to be desired, no one
in their senses could doubt. (She was very emphatic here.) With
regard to the family into which he was so soon about, after some
solicitation, to be admitted, she believed Mr. Tackleton knew that,
although reduced in purse, it had some pretensions to gentility;
and if certain circumstances, not wholly unconnected, she would go
so far as to say, with the Indigo Trade, but to which she would not
more particularly refer, had happened differently, it might perhaps
have been in possession of wealth. She then remarked that she
would not allude to the past, and would not mention that her
daughter had for some time rejected the suit of Mr. Tackleton; and
that she would not say a great many other things which she did say,
at great length. Finally, she delivered it as the general result
of her observation and experience, that those marriages in which
there was least of what was romantically and sillily called love,
were always the happiest; and that she anticipated the greatest
possible amount of bliss—not rapturous bliss; but the solid,
steady-going article—from the approaching nuptials. She concluded
by informing the company that to-morrow was the day she had lived
for, expressly; and that when it was over, she would desire nothing
better than to be packed up and disposed of, in any genteel place
of burial.
    As these remarks were quite unanswerable—which is the happy
property of all remarks that are sufficiently wide of the purpose—
they changed the current of the conversation, and diverted the
general attention to the Veal and Ham-Pie, the cold mutton, the
potatoes, and the tart. In order that the bottled beer might not
be slighted, John Peerybingle proposed To-morrow: the Wedding-Day;
and called upon them to drink a bumper to it, before he proceeded
on his journey.
    For you ought to know that he only rested there, and gave the old
horse a bait. He had to go some four of five miles farther on; and
when he returned in the evening, he called for Dot, and took
another rest on his way home. This was the order of the day on all
the Pic-Nic occasions, had been, ever since their institution.
    There were two persons present, besides the bride and bridegroom
elect, who did but indifferent honour to the toast. One of these
was Dot, too flushed and discomposed to adapt herself to any small
occurrence of the moment; the other, Bertha, who rose up hurriedly,
before the rest, and left the table.
    'Good bye!' said stout John Peerybingle, pulling on his dreadnought
coat. 'I shall be back at the old time. Good bye all!'
    'Good bye, John,' returned Caleb.
    He seemed to say it by rote, and to wave his hand in the same
unconscious manner; for he stood observing Bertha with an anxious
wondering face, that never altered its expression.
    'Good bye, young shaver!' said the jolly Carrier, bending down to
kiss the child; which Tilly Slowboy, now intent upon her knife and
fork, had deposited asleep (and strange to say, without damage) in
a little cot of Bertha's furnishing; 'good bye! Time will come, I
suppose, when YOU'LL turn out into the cold, my little friend, and
leave your old father to enjoy his pipe and his rheumatics in the
chimney-corner;