Charles Dickens Christmas Collection, Th The. Charles Dickens
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for them both—that life should be such a very ridiculous business as it was.
The Doctor never dreamed of inquiring whether his children, or either of them, helped in any way to make the scheme a serious one. But then he was a Philosopher.
A kind and generous man by nature, he had stumbled, by chance, over that common Philosopher’s stone (much more easily discovered than the object of the alchemist’s researches), which sometimes trips up kind and generous men, and has the fatal property of turning gold to dross, and every precious thing to poor account.
“Britain!” cried the Doctor. “Britain! Halloa!”
A small man, with an uncommonly sour and discontented face, emerged from the house, and returned to this call the unceremonious acknowledgment of “Now then!”
“Where’s the breakfast table?” said the Doctor.
“In the house,” returned Britain.
“Are you going to spread it out here, as you were told last night?” said the Doctor. “Don’t you know that there are gentlemen coming? That there’s business to be done this morning, before the coach comes by? That this is a very particular occasion?”
“I couldn’t do anything, Doctor Jeddler, till the women had done getting in the apples, could I?” said Britain, his voice rising with his reasoning, so that it was very loud at last.
“Well, have they done now?” returned the Doctor, looking at his watch, and clapping his hands. “Come! make haste! where’s Clemency?”
“Here am I, Mister,” said a voice from one of the ladders, which a pair of clumsy feet descended briskly. “It’s all done now. Clear away, gals. Everything shall be ready for you in half a minute, Mister.”
With that she began to bustle about most vigorously; presenting, as she did so, an appearance sufficiently peculiar to justify a word of introduction.
She was about thirty years old; and had a sufficiently plump and cheerful face, though it was twisted up into an odd expression of tightness that made it comical. But the extraordinary homeliness of her gait and manner, would have superseded any face in the world. To say that she had two left legs, and somebody else’s arms; and that all four limbs seemed to be out of joint, and to start from perfectly wrong places when they were set in motion; is to offer the mildest outline of the reality. To say that she was perfectly content and satisfied with these arrangements, and regarded them as being no business of hers, and took her arms and legs as they came, and allowed them to dispose of themselves just as it happened, is to render faint justice to her equanimity. Her dress was a prodigious pair of self-willed shoes, that never wanted to go where her feet went; blue stockings; a printed gown of many colours, and the most hideous pattern procurable for money; and a white apron. She always wore short sleeves, and always had, by some accident, grazed elbows, in which she took so lively an interest that she was continually trying to turn them round and get impossible views of them. In general, a little cap perched somewhere on her head; though it was rarely to be met with in the place usually occupied in other subjects, by that article of dress; but from head to foot she was scrupulously clean, and maintained a kind of dislocated tidiness. Indeed her laudable anxiety to be tidy and compact in her own conscience as well as in the public eye, gave rise to one of her most startling evolutions, which was to grasp herself sometimes by a sort of wooden handle (part of her clothing, and familiarly called a busk), and wrestle as it were with her garments, until they fell into a symmetrical arrangement.
Such, in outward form and garb, was Clemency Newcome; who was supposed to have unconsciously originated a corruption of her own christian name, from Clementina (but nobody knew, for the deaf old mother, a very phenomenon of age, whom she had supported almost from a child, was dead, and she had no other relation); who now busied herself in preparing the table; and who stood, at intervals, with her bare red arms crossed, rubbing her grazed elbows with opposite hands, and staring at it very composedly, until she suddenly remembered something else it wanted, and jogged off to fetch it.
“Here are them two lawyers a-coming, Mister!” said Clemency, in a tone of no very great good-will.
“Aha!” cried the Doctor, advancing to the gate to meet them. “Good morning, good morning! Grace, my dear! Marion! Here are Messrs. Snitchey and Craggs. Where’s Alfred?”
“He’ll be back directly, father, no doubt,” said Grace. “He had so much to do this morning in his preparations for departure, that he was up and out by daybreak. Good morning, gentlemen.”
“Ladies!” said Mr. Snitchey, “For Self and Craggs,” who bowed, “good morning. Miss,” to Marion, “I kiss your hand.” Which he did. “And I wish you”—which he might or might not, for he didn’t look, at first sight, like a gentleman troubled with many warm outpourings of soul, in behalf of other people, “a hundred happy returns of this auspicious day.”
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