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The Cricket on the Hearth

Charles Dickens

'Poor old man, so it has!' cried Mrs. Peerybingle, instantly
becoming very active.  'Here!  Take the precious darling, Tilly,
while I make myself of some use.  Bless it, I could smother it with
kissing it, I could!  Hie then, good dog!  Hie, Boxer, boy!  Only
let me make the tea first, John; and then I'll help you with the
parcels, like a busy bee.  "How doth the little"--and all the rest
of it, you know, John.  Did you ever learn "how doth the little,"
when you went to school, John?'

'Not to quite know it,' John returned.  'I was very near it once.
But I should only have spoilt it, I dare say.'

'Ha ha,' laughed Dot.  She had the blithest little laugh you ever
heard.  'What a dear old darling of a dunce you are, John, to be
sure!'

Not at all disputing this position, John went out to see that the
boy with the lantern, which had been dancing to and fro before the
door and window, like a Will of the Wisp, took due care of the
horse; who was fatter than you would quite believe, if I gave you
his measure, and so old that his birthday was lost in the mists of
antiquity.  Boxer, feeling that his attentions were due to the
family in general, and must be impartially distributed, dashed in
and out with bewildering inconstancy; now, describing a circle of
short barks round the horse, where he was being rubbed down at the
stable-door; now feigning to make savage rushes at his mistress,
and facetiously bringing himself to sudden stops; now, eliciting a
shriek from Tilly Slowboy, in the low nursing-chair near the fire,
by the unexpected application of his moist nose to her countenance;
now, exhibiting an obtrusive interest in the baby; now, going round
and round upon the hearth, and lying down as if he had established
himself for the night; now, getting up again, and taking that
nothing of a fag-end of a tail of his, out into the weather, as if
he had just remembered an appointment, and was off, at a round
trot, to keep it.

'There!  There's the teapot, ready on the hob!' said Dot; as
briskly busy as a child at play at keeping house.  'And there's the
old knuckle of ham; and there's the butter; and there's the crusty
loaf, and all!  Here's the clothes-basket for the small parcels,
John, if you've got any there--where are you, John?'

'Don't let the dear child fall under the grate, Tilly, whatever you
do!'

It may be noted of Miss Slowboy, in spite of her rejecting the
caution with some vivacity, that she had a rare and surprising
talent for getting this baby into difficulties and had several
times imperilled its short life, in a quiet way peculiarly her own.
She was of a spare and straight shape, this young lady, insomuch
that her garments appeared to be in constant danger of sliding off
those sharp pegs, her shoulders, on which they were loosely hung.
Her costume was remarkable for the partial development, on all
possible occasions, of some flannel vestment of a singular
structure; also for affording glimpses, in the region of the back,
of a corset, or pair of stays, in colour a dead-green.  Being
always in a state of gaping admiration at everything, and absorbed,
besides, in the perpetual contemplation of her mistress's
perfections and the baby's, Miss Slowboy, in her little errors of
judgment, may be said to have done equal honour to her head and to
her heart; and though these did less honour to the baby's head,
which they were the occasional means of bringing into contact with
deal doors, dressers, stair-rails, bed-posts, and other foreign
substances, still they were the honest results of Tilly Slowboy's
constant astonishment at finding herself so kindly treated, and
installed in such a comfortable home.  For, the maternal and
paternal Slowboy were alike unknown to Fame, and Tilly had been
bred by public charity, a foundling; which word, though only
differing from fondling by one vowel's length, is very different in
meaning, and expresses quite another thing.

To have seen little Mrs. Peerybingle come back with her husband,
tugging at the clothes-basket, and making the most strenuous
exertions to do nothing at all (for he carried it), would have
amused you almost as much as it amused him.  It may have
entertained the Cricket too, for anything I know; but, certainly,
it now began to chirp again, vehemently.

'Heyday!' said John, in his slow way.  'It's merrier than ever, to-
night, I think.'

'And it's sure to bring us good fortune, John!  It always has done
so.  To have a Cricket on the Hearth, is the luckiest thing in all
the world!'

John looked at her as if he had very nearly got the thought into
his head, that she was his Cricket in chief, and he quite agreed
with her.  But, it was probably one of his narrow escapes, for he
said nothing.

'The first time I heard its cheerful little note, John, was on that
night when you brought me home--when you brought me to my new home
here; its little mistress.  Nearly a year ago.  You recollect,
John?'

O yes.  John remembered.  I should think so!

'Its chirp was such a welcome to me!  It seemed so full of promise
and encouragement.  It seemed to say, you would be kind and gentle
with me, and would not expect (I had a fear of that, John, then) to
find an old head on the shoulders of your foolish little wife.'

John thoughtfully patted one of the shoulders, and then the head,
as though he would have said No, no; 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 nearly thinking of her,
perhaps, as she was in that same school time.  He looked upon her
with a thoughtful pleasure, but he made no answer.

'And he's as old!  As unlike her!--Why, how many years older than
you, is Gruff and Tackleton, John?'

'How many more cups of tea shall I drink to-night at one sitting,
than Gruff and Tackleton ever took in four, I wonder!' replied
John, good-humouredly, as he drew a chair to the round table, and
began at the cold ham.  'As to eating, I eat but little; but that
little I enjoy, Dot.'

Even this, his usual sentiment at meal times, one of his innocent
delusions (for his appetite was always obstinate, and flatly
contradicted him), awoke no smile in the face of his little wife,
who stood among the parcels, pushing the cake-box slowly from her
with her foot, and never once looked, though her eyes were cast
down too, upon the dainty shoe she generally was so mindful of.
Absorbed in thought, she stood there, heedless alike of the tea and
John (although he called to her, and rapped the table with his
knife to startle her), until he rose and touched her on the arm;
when she looked at him for a moment, and hurried to her place
behind the teaboard, laughing at her negligence.  But, not as she
had laughed before.  The manner and the music were quite changed.

The Cricket, too, had stopped.  Somehow the room was not so
cheerful as it had been.  Nothing like it.

'So, these are all the parcels, are they, John?' she said, breaking
a long silence, which the honest Carrier had devoted to the
practical illustration of one part of his favourite sentiment--
certainly enjoying what he ate, if it couldn't be admitted that he
ate but little.  'So, these are all the parcels; are they, John?'

'That's all,' said John.  'Why--no--I--' laying down his knife and
fork, and taking a long breath.  'I declare--I've clean forgotten
the old gentleman!'

'The old gentleman?'

'In the cart,' said John.  'He was asleep, among the straw, the
last time I saw him.  I've very nearly remembered him, twice, since
I came in; but he went out of my head again.  Holloa!  Yahip there!
Rouse up!  That's my hearty!'

John said these latter words outside the door, whither he had
hurried with the candle in his hand.

Miss Slowboy, conscious of some mysterious reference to The Old
Gentleman, and connecting in her mystified imagination certain
associations of a religious nature with the phrase, was so
disturbed, that hastily rising from the low chair by the fire to
seek protection near the skirts of her mistress, and coming into
contact as she crossed the doorway with an ancient Stranger, she
instinctively made a charge or butt at him with the only offensive
instrument within her reach.  This instrument happening to be the
baby, great commotion and alarm ensued, which the sagacity of Boxer
rather tended to increase; for, that good dog, more thoughtful than
its master, had, it seemed, been watching the old gentleman in his
sleep, lest he should walk off with a few young poplar trees that
were tied up behind the cart; and he still attended on him very
closely, worrying his gaiters in fact, and making dead sets at the
buttons.

'You're such an undeniable good sleeper, sir,' said John, when
tranquillity was restored; in the mean time the old gentleman had
stood, bareheaded and motionless, in the centre of the room; 'that
I have half a mind to ask you where the other six are--only that
would be a joke, and I know I should spoil it.  Very near though,'
murmured the Carrier, with a chuckle; 'very near!'

The Stranger, who had long white hair, good features, singularly
bold and well defined for an old man, and dark, bright, penetrating
eyes, looked round with a smile, and saluted the Carrier's wife by
gravely inclining his head.
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