and hotel
it, and inn it, and pub. it, like respectable folks, when it was wet, or
when we felt inclined for a change.
Montmorency hailed this compromise with much approval. He does not revel
in romantic solitude. Give him something noisy; and if a trifle low, so
much the jollier. To look at Montmorency you would imagine that he was
an angel sent upon the earth, for some reason withheld from mankind, in
the shape of a small fox-terrier. There is a sort of Oh-what-a-wicked-
world-this-is-and-how-I-wish-I-could-do-something-to-make-it-better-and-
nobler expression about Montmorency that has been known to bring the
tears into the eyes of pious old ladies and gentlemen.
When first he came to live at my expense, I never thought I should be
able to get him to stop long. I used to sit down and look at him, as he
sat on the rug and looked up at me, and think: "Oh, that dog will never
live. He will be snatched up to the bright skies in a chariot, that is
what will happen to him."
But, when I had paid for about a dozen chickens that he had killed; and
had dragged him, growling and kicking, by the scruff of his neck, out of
a hundred and fourteen street fights; and had had a dead cat brought
round for my inspection by an irate female, who called me a murderer; and
had been summoned by the man next door but one for having a ferocious dog
at large, that had kept him pinned up in his own tool-shed, afraid to
venture his nose outside the door for over two hours on a cold night; and
had learned that the gardener, unknown to myself, had won thirty
shillings by backing him to kill rats against time, then I began to think
that maybe they'd let him remain on earth for a bit longer, after all.
To hang about a stable, and collect a gang of the most disreputable dogs
to be found in the town, and lead them out to march round the slums to
fight other disreputable dogs, is Montmorency's idea of "life;" and so,
as I before observed, he gave to the suggestion of inns, and pubs., and
hotels his most emphatic approbation.
Having thus settled the sleeping arrangements to the satisfaction of all
four of us, the only thing left to discuss was what we should take with
us; and this we had begun to argue, when Harris said he'd had enough
oratory for one night, and proposed that we should go out and have a
smile, saying that he had found a place, round by the square, where you
could really get a drop of Irish worth drinking.
George said he felt thirsty (I never knew George when he didn't); and, as
I had a presentiment that a little whisky, warm, with a slice of lemon,
would do my complaint good, the debate was, by common assent, adjourned
to the following night; and the assembly put on its hats and went out.
CHAPTER III.
ARRANGEMENTS SETTLED. - HARRIS'S METHOD OF DOING WORK. - HOW THE ELDERLY,
FAMILY-MAN PUTS UP A PICTURE. - GEORGE MAKES A SENSIBLE, REMARK. -
DELIGHTS OF EARLY MORNING BATHING. - PROVISIONS FOR GETTING UPSET.
SO, on the following evening, we again assembled, to discuss and arrange
our plans. Harris said:
"Now, the first thing to settle is what to take with us. Now, you get a
bit of paper and write down, J., and you get the grocery catalogue,
George, and somebody give me a bit of pencil, and then I'll make out a
list."
That's Harris all over - so ready to take the burden of everything
himself, and put it on the backs of other people.
He always reminds me of my poor Uncle Podger. You never saw such a
commotion up and down a house, in all your life, as when my Uncle Podger
undertook to do a job. A picture would have come home from the frame-
maker's, and be standing in the dining-room, waiting to be put up; and
Aunt Podger would ask what was to be done with it, and Uncle Podger would
say:
"Oh, you leave that to ME. Don't you, any of you, worry yourselves about
that. I'LL do all that."
And then he would take off his coat, and begin. He would send the girl
out for sixpen'orth of nails, and then one of the boys after her to tell
her what size to get; and, from that, he would gradually work down, and
start the whole house.
"Now you go and get me my hammer, Will," he would shout; "and you bring
me the rule, Tom; and I shall want the step-ladder, and I had better have
a kitchen-chair, too; and, Jim! you run round to Mr. Goggles, and tell
him, `Pa's kind regards, and hopes his leg's better; and will he lend him
his spirit-level?' And don't you go, Maria, because I shall want
somebody to hold me the light; and when the girl comes back, she must go
out again for a bit of picture-cord; and Tom! - where's Tom? - Tom, you
come here; I shall want you to hand me up the picture."
And then he would lift up the picture, and drop it, and it would come out
of the frame, and he would try to save the glass, and cut himself; and
then he would spring round the room, looking for his handkerchief. He
could not find his handkerchief, because it was in the pocket of the coat
he had taken off, and he did not know where he had put the coat, and all
the house had to leave off looking for his tools, and start looking for
his coat; while he would dance round and hinder them.
"Doesn't anybody in the whole house know where my coat is? I never came
across such a set in all my life - upon my word I didn't. Six of you! -
and you can't find a coat that I put down not five minutes ago! Well, of
all the - "
Then he'd get up, and find that he had been sitting on it, and would call
out:
"Oh, you can give it up! I've found it myself now. Might just as well
ask the cat to find anything as expect you people to find it."
And, when half an hour had been spent in tying up his finger, and a new
glass had been got, and the tools, and the ladder, and the chair, and the
candle had been brought, he would have another go, the whole family,
including the girl and the charwoman, standing round in a semi-circle,
ready to help. Two people would have to hold the chair, and a third
would help him up on it, and hold him there, and a fourth would hand him
a nail, and a fifth would pass him up the hammer, and he would take hold
of the nail, and drop it.
"There!" he would say, in an injured tone, "now the nail's gone."
And we would all have to go down on our knees and grovel for it, while he
would stand on the chair, and grunt, and want to know if he was to be
kept there all the evening.
The nail would be found at last, but by that time he would have lost the
hammer.
"Where's the hammer? What did I do with the hammer? Great heavens!
Seven of you, gaping round there, and you don't know what I did with the
hammer!"
We would find the hammer for him, and then he would have lost sight of
the mark he had made on the wall, where the nail was to go in, and each
of us had to get up on the chair, beside him, and see if we could find
it; and we would each discover it in a different place, and he would call
us all fools, one after another, and tell us to get down. And he would
take the rule, and re-measure, and find that he wanted half thirty-one
and three-eighths inches from the corner, and would try to do it in his
head, and go mad.
And we would all try to do it in our heads, and all arrive at different
results, and sneer at one another. And in the general row, the original
number would be forgotten, and Uncle Podger would have to measure it
again.
He would use a bit of string this time, and at the critical moment, when
the old fool was leaning over the chair at an angle of forty-five, and
trying to reach a point three inches beyond what was possible for him to
reach, the string would slip, and down he would slide on to the piano, a
really fine musical effect being produced by the suddenness with which
his head and body struck all the notes at the same time.
And Aunt Maria would say that she would not allow the children to stand
round and hear such language.
At last, Uncle Podger would get the spot fixed again, and put the point
of the nail on it with his left hand, and take the hammer in his right
hand. And, with the first blow, he would smash his thumb, and drop the
hammer, with a yell, on somebody's toes.
Aunt Maria would mildly observe that, next time Uncle Podger was going to
hammer a nail into the wall, she hoped he'd let her know in time, so that
she could make arrangements to go and spend a week with her mother while
it was being done.
"Oh! you women, you make such a fuss over everything," Uncle Podger would
reply, picking himself up. "Why, I LIKE doing a little job of this
sort."
And then he would have another try, and, at the second blow, the nail
would go clean through the plaster, and half the hammer after it, and
Uncle Podger be precipitated against the wall with force nearly
sufficient to flatten his nose.
Then we had to find the rule and the string again, and a new hole was
made; and, about midnight, the picture would be up - very crooked and
insecure, the wall for yards round looking as if it had been smoothed
down with a rake, and everybody dead beat and wretched - except Uncle
Podger.
"There you are," he would say, stepping heavily off the chair on to the
charwoman's corns, and surveying the mess he had made with evident pride.
"Why, some people would have had a man in to do a little thing like
that!"
Harris will be just that sort of man when he grows up, I know, and I told
him so. I said I could not permit him to take so much labour upon
himself. I said:
"No; YOU get the paper, and the pencil, and the catalogue, and George
write down, and I'll do the work."
The first list we made out had to be discarded. It was clear that the
upper reaches of the Thames would not allow of the navigation of a boat
sufficiently large to take the things we had set down as indispensable;
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