believe me.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Fascination Fledgeby.
‘They say, “We know, Mr Riah, we know. We have but to look at you, and we know.”’
‘Oh, a good ‘un are you for the post,’ thought Fledgeby, ‘and a good ‘un was I to mark you out for it! I may be slow, but I am precious sure.’
Not a syllable of this reflection shaped itself in any scrap of Mr Fledgeby’s breath, lest it should tend to put his servant’s price up. But looking at the old man as he stood quiet with his head bowed and his eyes cast down, he felt that to relinquish an inch of his baldness, an inch of his grey hair, an inch of his coat-skirt, an inch of his hat-brim, an inch of his walking-staff, would be to relinquish hundreds of pounds.
‘Look here, Riah,’ said Fledgeby, mollified by these self-approving considerations. ‘I want to go a little more into buying-up queer bills. Look out in that direction.’
‘Sir, it shall be done.’
‘Casting my eye over the accounts, I find that branch of business pays pretty fairly, and I am game for extending it. I like to know people’s affairs likewise. So look out.’
‘Sir, I will, promptly.’
‘Put it about in the right quarters, that you’ll buy queer bills by the lump—by the pound weight if that’s all—supposing you see your way to a fair chance on looking over the parcel. And there’s one thing more. Come to me with the books for periodical inspection as usual, at eight on Monday morning.’
Riah drew some folding tablets from his breast and noted it down.
‘That’s all I wanted to say at the present time,’ continued Fledgeby in a grudging vein, as he got off the stool, ‘except that I wish you’d take the air where you can hear the bell, or the knocker, either one of the two or both. By-the-by how do you take the air at the top of the house? Do you stick your head out of a chimney-pot?’
‘Sir, there are leads there, and I have made a little garden there.’
‘To bury your money in, you old dodger?’
‘A thumbnail’s space of garden would hold the treasure I bury, master,’ said Riah. ‘Twelve shillings a week, even when they are an old man’s wages, bury themselves.’
‘I should like to know what you really are worth,’ returned Fledgeby, with whom his growing rich on that stipend and gratitude was a very convenient fiction. ‘But come! Let’s have a look at your garden on the tiles, before I go!’
The old man took a step back, and hesitated.
‘Truly, sir, I have company there.’
‘Have you, by George!’ said Fledgeby; ‘I suppose you happen to know whose premises these are?’
‘Sir, they are yours, and I am your servant in them.’
‘Oh! I thought you might have overlooked that,’ retorted Fledgeby, with his eyes on Riah’s beard as he felt for his own; ‘having company on my premises, you know!’
‘Come up and see the guests, sir. I hope for your admission that they can do no harm.’
Passing him with a courteous reverence, specially unlike any action that Mr Fledgeby could for his life have imparted to his own head and hands, the old man began to ascend the stairs. As he toiled on before, with his palm upon the stair-rail, and his long black skirt, a very gaberdine, overhanging each successive step, he might have been the leader in some pilgrimage of devotional ascent to a prophet’s tomb. Not troubled by any such weak imagining, Fascination Fledgeby merely speculated on the time of life at which his beard had begun, and thought once more what a good ‘un he was for the part.
Some final wooden steps conducted them, stooping under a low penthouse roof, to the house-top. Riah stood still, and, turning to his master, pointed out his guests.
Lizzie Hexam and Jenny Wren. For whom, perhaps with some old instinct of his race, the gentle Jew had spread a carpet. Seated on it, against no more romantic object than a blackened chimney-stack over which some bumble creeper had been trained, they both pored over one book; both with attentive faces; Jenny with the sharper; Lizzie with the more perplexed. Another little book or two were lying near, and a common basket of common fruit, and another basket full of strings of beads and tinsel scraps. A few boxes of humble flowers and evergreens completed the garden; and the encompassing wilderness of dowager old chimneys twirled their cowls and fluttered their smoke, rather as if they were bridling, and fanning themselves, and looking on in a state of airy surprise.
Taking her eyes off the book, to test her memory of something in it, Lizzie was the first to see herself observed. As she rose, Miss Wren likewise became conscious, and said, irreverently addressing the great chief of the premises: ‘Whoever you are, I can’t get up, because my back’s bad and my legs are queer.’
‘This is my master,’ said Riah, stepping forward.
(‘Don’t look like anybody’s master,’ observed Miss Wren to herself, with a hitch of her chin and eyes.)
‘This, sir,’ pursued the old man, ‘is a little dressmaker for little people. Explain to the master, Jenny.’
‘Dolls; that’s all,’ said Jenny, shortly. ‘Very difficult to fit too, because their figures are so uncertain. You never know where to expect their waists.’
‘Her friend,’ resumed the old man, motioning towards Lizzie; ‘and as industrious as virtuous. But that they both are. They are busy early and late, sir, early and late; and in bye-times, as on this holiday, they go to book-learning.’
‘Not much good to be got out of that,’ remarked Fledgeby.
‘Depends upon the person!’ quoth Miss Wren, snapping him up.
‘I made acquaintance with my guests, sir,’ pursued the Jew, with an evident purpose of drawing out the dressmaker, ‘through their coming here to buy of our damage and waste for Miss Jenny’s millinery. Our waste goes into the best of company, sir, on her rosy-cheeked little customers. They wear it in their hair, and on their ball-dresses, and even (so she tells me) are presented at Court with it.’
‘Ah!’ said Fledgeby, on whose intelligence this doll-fancy made rather strong demands; ‘she’s been buying that basketful to-day, I suppose?’
‘I suppose she has,’ Miss Jenny interposed; ‘and paying for it too, most likely!’
‘Let’s have a look at it,’ said the suspicious chief. Riah handed it to him. ‘How much for this now?’
‘Two precious silver shillings,’ said Miss Wren.
Riah confirmed her with two nods, as Fledgeby looked to him. A nod for each shilling.
‘Well,’ said Fledgeby, poking into the contents of the basket with his forefinger, ‘the price is not so bad. You have got good measure, Miss What-is-it.’
‘Try Jenny,’ suggested that young lady with great calmness.
‘You have got good measure, Miss Jenny; but the price is not so bad.—And you,’ said Fledgeby, turning to the other visitor, ‘do you buy anything here, miss?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Nor sell anything neither, miss?’
‘No, sir.’
Looking askew at the questioner, Jenny stole her hand up to her friend’s, and drew her friend down, so that she bent beside her on her knee.
‘We are thankful to come here for rest, sir,’ said Jenny. ‘You see, you don’t know what the rest of this place is to us; does he, Lizzie? It’s the quiet, and the air.’
‘The quiet!’ repeated