Chapter One.

An Independent Young Gentleman.

“I want do d’an’ma!”

This sudden and unexpected exclamation, uttered as it was in a shrill little voice like that of a piping bullfinch, and coming from nowhere in particular, as far as he could make out, for he had fancied himself all alone on the platform, made the tall railway porter almost jump out of his skin, as he expressed it, startling him out of his seven senses.

He was a stalwart, good-natured, black-bearded giant of a man, clad in a suit of dunduckety-mud-coloured velveteens, rather the worse for wear, and smeary with oil and engine-grease, which gave them a sort of highly-burnished appearance resembling that of a newly-polished black-leaded stove.

Doing nothing, and thinking of nothing specially, for the three-forty up-train had gone through the station, and it was a good hour yet before the five-ten down express was due, he had been lazily leaning in a half-dreamy and almost dozing state against the side of the booking-office.

From this coign of vantage, he was, as well as his blinking eyes would allow, gazing out over the rails at the fast-falling flakes of feathery snow that were quickly covering up the metals and permanent way with a mantle of white; when, all at once, without a “by your leave,” or seeing or hearing anyone approach, his attention was summarily brought back to the present by the strange announcement of the shrill little voice, while, at the same time, he felt the clutch of tiny fingers twitching at one of the legs of his shiny velveteen trousers, evidently as a further means of attracting his notice.

The touch made the porter look downwards, when, perceiving that his unknown interlocutor was a small mite barely reaching up to his knees, he became more reassured; and, bending his big body so as to bring his face somewhat on a level with the young person, he proceeded to interrogate him in familiar fashion.

“Well, my little man,” he said, desiring to learn how he might be of service, for he was a genial willing fellow, and always anxious to oblige people when he knew how—“what’s the matter?”

“I want do d’an’ma!” repeated the small mite in the same piping tones as before, speaking with the utmost assurance and in the most matter-of-fact way.

It seemed as if, having now explicitly notified his wants and wishes, he confidently looked forward, in all the innocent trust of childhood, to their being instantly acted upon and carried out without any demur or hesitation.

Jupp, the porter, was quite flabbergasted by the little chap’s sang-froid; so, in order the better to collect his ideas and enable him to judge what was best to be done under the circumstances, he took off his flat-peaked uniform cap with one hand and scratched his head reflectively with the fingers of the other, as is frequently the wont of those possessed of thick skulls and wits that are apt to go wool-gathering.

The operation appeared to have the effect desired; for, after indulging in this species of mental and physical cogitation for a moment or two, Jupp ventured upon asking the mite another question which had brilliantly suggested itself to him as opportune.

“Where is your grandma, sir?” he inquired with more deference than he had used before.

“Don-don,” replied the small person nonchalantly, as if the point was quite immaterial, looking the porter calmly and straight in the eyes unflinchingly, without turning a hair as the saying goes.

Jupp had never come across such a self-possessed young mannikin in his life before. Why, he might have been the station-master or traffic-manager, he appeared so much at his ease!

But, he was a little gentleman all the same, Jupp could readily see, in spite of the fact that his costume was not quite suited for travelling, the mite being attired in a very prominent and dirty pinafore, while his chubby face was tear-stained, and he had the look of having come out in a hurry and being perhaps unprepared for the journey he contemplated; although, mind you, he had his luggage with him all right—a small bundle tied up in a large pocket-handkerchief of a bright-red colour, which he held tightly clasped to his little stomach as if afraid of its being taken from him.

Jupp hardly knew off-hand how to deal with the case, it being of a more perplexing nature than had previously come within range of his own personal experience; still, he had his suspicions, and thought it best to entertain the young person in conversation for a bit, until he should be able to find out something about his belongings and where he came from.

“London’s a large place, sir,” he therefore observed tentatively, by way of drawing the mite out and getting some clue towards his identity.

The little chap, however, was quite equal to the occasion.

“Don’t tare,” he said defiantly, checking the porter’s artful attempt at cross-examination. “I want do d’an’ma!”

Certainly, he was a most independent young gentleman.

Jupp was at a nonplus again; however, he tried to temporise with the mite, the more especially from his noticing that his little legs were quite mottled and his tiny fingers blue with cold.

“Well, come in here, sir, at all events, and warm yourself, and then we can talk the matter over comfortably together,” he said, throwing open the door of the waiting-room as he spoke, and politely motioning the little chap to enter.

The mite made no reply to the invitation, but he tacitly accepted it by following the porter into the apartment he had indicated, and the two were presently seated before a glowing fire, on which Jupp immediately emptied the scuttleful of coals, there being no stint of the fuel by reason of the company standing all expense.

Thawed by the genial warmth, rendered all the more enjoyable by the wintry scene outside, where the snow was now swirling down faster and faster as the afternoon advanced, the little chap began to get more communicative, egged on by Jupp in a series of apparently innocent questions.

“Nussy bad ooman,” he blurted out after a long silence, looking up at Jupp and putting his hand on his knee confidingly.

“Indeed, sir?” said the other cautiously, leading him on.

“Ess, man,” continued the mite. “See want take way my kitty.”

“You don’t mean that, sir!” exclaimed Jupp with well-feigned horror at such unprincipled behaviour on the part of the accused nurse.

“Ess, man, see did,” replied the little chap, nodding his small curly head with great importance; but the next instant his little roguish blue eyes twinkled with suppressed intelligence, and his red rosebud of a mouth expanded into a happy smile as he added, with much satisfaction in his tones, “but I dot kitty all wite now!”

“Have you really, sir?” said Jupp, pretending to be much surprised at the information, the little chap evidently expecting him to be so.

“Ess, man,” cried the mite with a triumphant shout; “I’se dot po’ ’ittle kitty here!”

“Never, sir!” ejaculated Jupp with trembling eagerness, as if his life depended on the solution of the doubt.

The little chap became completely overcome with merriment at having so successfully concealed his treasured secret, as he thought, that the porter had not even guessed it.

“Kitty’s in dundle!” he exclaimed gleefully, hugging his handkerchief parcel tighter to his little stomach as he spoke. “I dot kitty here, all wite!”

“You don’t mean that, sir—not in that bundle o’ yours surely, sir?” repeated Jupp with deep fictitious interest, appearing still not quite convinced on the point and as if wishing to have the difficulty cleared up.

This diplomatic course of procedure on the part of the porter removed any lingering scruples the mite had in respect of his good faith.

“Ess, man. I dot kitty here in dundle all wite,” he repeated earnestly in his very impressive little way. “Oo musn’t tell nobody and I’ll so her to ’oo!”

“I won’t breathe a word of it to a soul, sir,” protested Jupp as solemnly and gravely as if he were making his last dying deposition; whereupon the mite, quite convinced of the porter’s trustworthiness and abandoning all further attempt at concealment, deposited his little bundle tenderly on the floor in front of the fireplace, and began to open it with much deliberation.

The little fellow appeared so very serious about the matter, that Jupp could not help trying to be serious too; but it required the exercise of all the self-command he possessed to refrain from laughing when the motley contents of the red handkerchief were disclosed.

Before the last knot of the bundle was untied by the mite’s busy fingers there crawled out a tiny tortoise-shell kitten, with its diminutive little tail erect like a young bottle-brush, which gave vent to a “phiz-phit,” as if indignant at its long confinement, and then proceeded to rub itself against Jupp’s leg, with a purring mew on recognising a friend.

“So that’s kitty,” said Jupp, holding the little thing up on his knee and stroking it affectionately, the animal signifying its satisfaction by licking the back of his hand with its furry little red tongue, and straightening its tiny tail again as stiff as a small poker.

“Ess, man. Dat’s kitty,” murmured the mite, too much occupied undoing the last knots of the bundle to waste time in further speech for the moment, struggling as he was at the job with might and main.

In another second, however, he had accomplished his task; and, lifting up the corners of the red handkerchief, he rolled out the whole stock of his valued possessions on to the floor.

“Dere!” he exclaimed with much complacency, looking up into Jupp’s face in expectation of his admiring surprise.

The porter was again forced to act a part, and pretend that he could not guess anything.

“Dear me!” he said; “you have brought a lot of things! Going to take ’em with you to London, sir?”

“Ess. Da’n’ma tate tare of zem.”

“No doubt, sir,” replied Jupp, who then went on to inspect gingerly the different articles of the collection, which was very varied in character.

They consisted, in addition to the tortoise-shell kitten fore-mentioned, of a musical snuff-box, a toy model of a ship, a small Noah’s ark, a half-consumed slice of bread and butter, an apple with a good-sized bite taken out of one side, a thick lump of toffee, and a darkish-brown substance like gingerbread, which close association in the bundle, combined with pressure, had welded together in one almost indistinguishable mass.

“I suppose, sir,” observed Jupp inquiringly, picking up all the eatables and putting them together apart on the seat next the little man—“I suppose as how them’s your provisions for the journey?”

“Ess. I ate dindin; an’, dat’s tea.”

“Indeed, sir! and very nice things for tea too,” said Jupp, beaming with admiration and good-humoured fun.

“I touldn’t det any milk, or I’d bought dat too,” continued the mite, explaining the absence of all liquid refreshment.

“Ah! that’s a pity,” rejoined the porter, thinking how well half a pint of milk would have mixed up with the other contents of the bundle; “but, perhaps, sir, the kitty would have lapped it up and there would have been none left. Would you like a cup of tea now, sir? I’m just agoing to have mine; and if you’d jine me, I’d feel that proud you wouldn’t know me again!”

“Dank ’oo, I’m so dirsty,” lisped the little man in affable acquiescence; and, the next moment, Jupp had spirited out a rough basket from under the seat in the corner, when extracting a tin can with a cork stopper therefrom, he put it on the fire to warm up.

From a brown-paper parcel he also turned out some thick slices of bread that quite put in the shade the half-eaten one belonging to the mite; and as soon as the tea began to simmer in the tin over the coals, he poured out some in a pannikin, and handed it to his small guest.

“Now, sir, we’ll have a regular picnic,” he said hospitably.

“All wite, dat’s jolly!” shouted the other in great glee; and the two were enjoying themselves in the highest camaraderie, when, suddenly, the door of the waiting-room was opened from without, and the face of a buxom young woman peered in.

“My good gracious!” exclaimed the apparition, panting out the words as if suffering from short breath, or from the effects of more rapid exertion than her physique usually permitted. “If there isn’t the young imp as comfortably as you please; and me a hunting and a wild-goose chasing on him all over the place! Master Teddy, Master Teddy, you’ll be the death of me some day, that you will!”

Jupp jumped up at once, rightly imagining that this lady’s unexpected appearance would, as he mentally expressed it, “put a stopper” on the mite’s contemplated expedition, and so relieve him of any further personal anxiety on his behalf, he having been puzzling his brains vainly for the last half hour how to discover his whereabouts and get him home to his people again; but, as for the little man himself, he did not seem in the least put out by the interruption of his plans.

“Dat nussy,” was all he said, clutching hold of Jupp’s trouser leg, as at first, in an appealing way: “Don’t ’et her, man, tate away poor kitty!”

“I won’t sir, I promise you,” whispered Jupp to comfort him; however, before he could say any more, the panting female had drawn nearer from the doorway and come up close to the fireplace, the flickering red light from which made her somewhat rubicund countenance appear all the ruddier.

Chapter Two.

Tells all about him.

“Pray, don’t ’ee be angry wi’ him, mum,” said Jupp appealingly, as the somewhat flustered female advanced towards the mite, laying hands on his collar with apparently hostile intentions.

“I ain’t a going to be angry,” she replied a trifle crossly, as perhaps was excusable under the circumstances, carrying out the while, however, what had evidently been her original idea of giving the mite “a good shaking,” and thereby causing his small person to oscillate violently to and fro as if he were crossing the Bay of Biscay in a Dutch trawler with a choppy sea running. “I ain’t angry to speak of; but he’s that tormenting sometimes as to drive a poor creature a’most out of her mind! Didn’t I tell ’ee,” she continued, turning round abruptly to the object of her wrath and administering an extra shake by way of calling him to attention. “Didn’t I tell ’ee as you weren’t to go outdoors in all the slop and slush—didn’t I tell ’ee now?”

But in answer the mite only harked back to his old refrain.

“I want do d’an’ma,” he said with stolid defiance, unmoved alike by his shaking or the nurse’s expostulation.

“There, that’s jest it,” cried she, addressing Jupp the porter again, seeing that he was a fine handsome fellow and well-proportioned out of the corner of her eye without looking at him directly, in that unconscious and highly diplomatic way in which women folk are able to reckon up each other on the sly and take mental stock of mankind. “Ain’t he aggravating? It’s all that granma of his that spoils him; and I wish she’d never come nigh the place! When Master Teddy doesn’t see her he’s as good as gold, that he is, the little man!”

She then, with the natural inconsequence and variability of her sex, immediately proceeded to hug and kiss the mite as affectionately as she had been shaking and vituperating him the moment before, he putting up with the new form of treatment as calmly and indifferently as he had received the previous scolding.

“He’s a fine little chap,” said Jupp affably, conceiving a better opinion of the nurse from her change of manner as well as from noticing, now that her temporary excitement had evaporated, that she was a young and comely woman with a very kindly face. “He told me as how he were going to Lun’non.”

“Did he now?” she exclaimed admiringly.

“He’s the most owdacious young gen’leman as ever was, I think; for he’s capable, young as he is, not long turned four year old, of doin’ a’most anything. Look now at all them things of his as he’s brought from home!”

“That were his luggage like,” observed Jupp, smiling and showing his white teeth, which contrasted well with his black beard, making him appear very nice-looking really, the nurse thought.

“The little rogue!” said she enthusiastically, hugging the mite again with such effusion that Jupp wished he could change places with him, he being unmarried and “an orphan man,” as he described himself, “without chick or child to care for him.”

“He ought to be a good ’un with you a looking after him,” he remarked with a meaning glance, which, although the nurse noticed, she did not pretend to see.

“So he is—sometimes, eh, Master Teddy?” she said, bending down again over the mite to hide a sudden flush which had made her face somehow or other crimson again.

“Ess,” replied the hero of the occasion, who, soothed by all these social amenities passing around him, quickly put aside his stolid demeanour and became his little prattling self again.

However, such was his deep foresight that he did not forget to grasp so favourable an opportunity for settling the initial difficulty between himself and nurse in the matter of the kitten, which had led up logically to all that had happened, and so prevent any misunderstanding on the point in future.

“Oo won’t tate way kitty?” he asked pleadingly, holding up with both hands the struggling little animal, which Jupp had incontinently dropped from his knee when he rose up, on the door of the waiting-room being suddenly opened and the impromptu picnic organised by the mite and himself brought to an abrupt termination, by the unexpected advent of the nurse on the scene.

“No, Master Teddy, I promise you I won’t,” she replied emphatically. “You can bathe the poor little brute in the basin and then put it all wet in your bed afterwards, as you did this morning, or anything else you like. Bless you, you can eat it if it so please you, and I shan’t interfere!”

“All wite, den; we frens ’dain,” lisped the mite, putting up his little rosebud mouth so prettily for a kiss, in token of peace and forgiveness on his part, that the nurse could not help giving him another hug.

This display of affection had unfortunately the same effect on Jupp as before, causing the miserable porter to feel acute pangs of envy; although, by rights, he had no direct interest in the transaction, and was only an outside observer, so to speak!

By way of concealing his feelings, therefore, he turned the conversation.

“And have you come far arter him, miss, if I may make so bold as to ax the question?” he said hesitatingly, being somewhat puzzled in his mind as to whether “miss” or “mum” was the correct form in which to address such a pleasant young woman, who might or might not be a matron for all he could tell.

He evidently hit upon the right thing this time; for, she answered him all the more pleasantly, with a bright smile on her face.

“Why, ever so far!” she exclaimed. “Don’t you know that large red brick house t’other side of the village, where Mr Vernon lives—a sort of old-fashioned place, half covered with ivy, and with a big garden?”

“Parson Vernon’s, eh?”

“Yes, Master Teddy’s his little son.”

“Lor’, I thought he were a single man, lone and lorn like myself, and didn’t have no children,” said Jupp.

“That’s all you know about it,” retorted the nurse. “You must be a stranger in these parts; and, now I come to think on it, I don’t believe as I ever saw you here before.”