Charles Dickens Read Free Page A

he had had no such
expectation; he had been quite content to take them as they were.
And really he had reason. They were very comely.
    'It spoke the truth, John, when it seemed to say so; for you have
ever been, I am sure, the best, the most considerate, the most
affectionate of husbands to me. This has been a happy home, John;
and I love the Cricket for its sake!'
    'Why so do I then,' said the Carrier. 'So do I, Dot.'
    'I love it for the many times I have heard it, and the many
thoughts its harmless music has given me. Sometimes, in the
twilight, when I have felt a little solitary and down-hearted,
John—before baby was here to keep me company and make the house
gay—when I have thought how lonely you would be if I should die;
how lonely I should be if I could know that you had lost me, dear;
its Chirp, Chirp, Chirp upon the hearth, has seemed to tell me of
another little voice, so sweet, so very dear to me, before whose
coming sound my trouble vanished like a dream. And when I used to
fear—I did fear once, John, I was very young you know—that ours
might prove to be an ill-assorted marriage, I being such a child,
and you more like my guardian than my husband; and that you might
not, however hard you tried, be able to learn to love me, as you
hoped and prayed you might; its Chirp, Chirp, Chirp has cheered me
up again, and filled me with new trust and confidence. I was
thinking of these things to-night, dear, when I sat expecting you;
and I love the Cricket for their sake!'
    'And so do I,' repeated John. 'But, Dot?
I
hope and pray that I
might learn to love you? How you talk! I had learnt that, long
before I brought you here, to be the Cricket's little mistress,
Dot!'
    She laid her hand, an instant, on his arm, and looked up at him
with an agitated face, as if she would have told him something.
Next moment she was down upon her knees before the basket, speaking
in a sprightly voice, and busy with the parcels.
    'There are not many of them to-night, John, but I saw some goods
behind the cart, just now; and though they give more trouble,
perhaps, still they pay as well; so we have no reason to grumble,
have we? Besides, you have been delivering, I dare say, as you
came along?'
    'Oh yes,' John said. 'A good many.'
    'Why what's this round box? Heart alive, John, it's a wedding-
cake!'
    'Leave a woman alone to find out that,' said John, admiringly.
'Now a man would never have thought of it. Whereas, it's my belief
that if you was to pack a wedding-cake up in a tea-chest, or a
turn-up bedstead, or a pickled salmon keg, or any unlikely thing, a
woman would be sure to find it out directly. Yes; I called for it
at the pastry-cook's.'
    'And it weighs I don't know what—whole hundredweights!' cried Dot,
making a great demonstration of trying to lift it.
    'Whose is it, John? Where is it going?'
    'Read the writing on the other side,' said John.
    'Why, John! My Goodness, John!'
    'Ah! who'd have thought it!' John returned.
    'You never mean to say,' pursued Dot, sitting on the floor and
shaking her head at him, 'that it's Gruff and Tackleton the
toymaker!'
    John nodded.
    Mrs. Peerybingle nodded also, fifty times at least. Not in assent-
-in dumb and pitying amazement; screwing up her lips the while with
all their little force (they were never made for screwing up; I am
clear of that), and looking the good Carrier through and through,
in her abstraction. Miss Slowboy, in the mean time, who had a
mechanical power of reproducing scraps of current conversation for
the delectation of the baby, with all the sense struck out of them,
and all the nouns changed into the plural number, inquired aloud of
that young creature, Was it Gruffs and Tackletons the toymakers
then, and Would it call at Pastry-cooks for wedding-cakes, and Did
its mothers know the boxes when its fathers brought them homes; and
so on.
    'And that is really to come about!' said Dot. 'Why, she and I were
girls at school together, John.'
    He might have been thinking of her, or