Cousin Kate Read Free

there were times when I didn't know how to keep my tongue between my teeth! He never took thought to the morrow, and nor did my poor dear mistress neither. You never knew where you was, for there wouldn't be enough money to buy one scraggy chicken in the market one day, and the next he'd come in singing out that the dibs was in tune, and not a thought in his head or my mistress' but how to spend it quickest. Well, he told me once that it was no use ringing a peal over him for going to low gaminghouses, because he was born with a spring in his elbow, and there was no sport in playing cards and such in the regiment, for nearly all the officers was living on their pay, same as he was himself. But this I will say for him! there was never a sweeter-tempered nor a kinder-hearted man alive!'
    'Ay,' had agreed Mr Nidd, rather doubtfully. 'Though it don't seem to me as he behaved very kind to Miss Kate, leaving her like he done with a lot of debts to pay, and nobbut his prize-money to do it with-what was left of it, which, by what you told me, wasn't so very much neither.'
    'He always thought he'd win a fortune! And how was he to know he was going to meet his end like he has? Oh, Joe, I wish he'd been killed at Waterloo, for this is worse than anything! When I think of him that was always so gay, and up to the knocker, no matter whether he was plump in the pocket or regularly in the basket, being knocked down by a common tax-cart, well, it makes me thankful my poor mistress ain't alive to see it, which is a thing I never thought to be! And my lamb left alone, without a sixpence to scratch with, and she so devoted to her pa! I never ought to have married you, Joe, and it weighs on me that I let you wheedle me into it, for if ever Miss Kate needed me she needs me now!'
    'I need you too, Sarey,' had said Mr Nidd, with difficulty.
    Observing the look of anxiety on his face, Sarah had mopped her eyes, and implanted a smacking kiss on his cheek, saying: 'And a good, kind husband you are, Joe, and if there was more as faithful as what you proved yourself to be the world would be a better place!'
    Colouring darkly, Mr Nidd had uttered an inarticulate protest, but this rare tribute from his sharp-tongued spouse had been well earned. Falling deeply in love with a much younger Sarah, who had been on the eve of accompanying her mistress and her nursling to Portugal, and had rejected his offer, he had indeed remained faithful. Seven years later ('Just like Jacob!' had said Kate, urging her nurse to the altar), when Sarah had come back to England with her widowed master and his daughter, he had renewed his suit, and his constancy had been rewarded: Miss Sarah Publow had changed her name to Nidd, and had lost no time at all in assuming the control of her husband's family, and vastly improving their fortunes. Within a year, she had bullied and cajoled her aged father-in-law into spending his jealously hoarded savings on the acquisition of the inn which now provided the firm with spacious headquarters, and had transformed it from a single carrier into an establishment which, if it did not yet rival Pickford's, was in a fair way to providing Pickford's with some healthy competition. Her husband adored her; his father, while losing no opportunity to get the better of her, had been known to inform his cronies at the Cock, when mellowed by a sufficient quantity of what he inelegantly termed belly-juice, that she was a sure card; his sisters wavered between ineffective resentment of her managing disposition, and a comfortable dependence on her willingness to assist them in any difficulty; and his nephews, all as inarticulate as he was himself, said simply that you wouldn't get a more bang-up dinner anywhere than what Aunt Sarey would give you.
    Even Miss Malvern, for all her four-and-twenty years, turned instinctively to her in times of trouble, and was insensibly reassured by her air of competence. Tucked now into bed, told that there was no need to get