James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

“I’ll wait a little, thanky, ma’am,” said I. “I am not very hungry.”

Mrs. Burke worked at making potato-sacks; and when I told her that I would rather not begin my tea at present, she went into her own room, and in a minute returned, bringing with her three ready-made sacks and the materials for a fourth. The ready-made sacks she placed on a chair by her side, and then fastening a big canvas apron decently about her, so that her clean cotton gown might not suffer, she sat down to work.

It takes a good while to make a potato-sack. I don’t know how long exactly; but by the time Mrs. Burke had finished the one she had taken in hand, the candle had burned down full two inches. Mrs. Burke, during the last half-hour at least, had grown more and more fidgety. From time to time she got up from her work, and looked out at the window, and listened at the door, grumbling and muttering under her breath. Growing sleepy, I disregarded the pains she had been at to arrange my hair, and scratched it into uproar with both my hands. She rapped out at me in the spitefullest manner for this, and called me a name which, thanks to my mother’s diligence and solicitude, I did not deserve. She had one corner of the sack pinned to the table with a sort of bradawl.

“Come here, you (something) little pig,” said she: “you may as well hould the candle, as sit shnorin’ and rootin’ there.”

So I went and held the candle until the sack was finished; by which time the fire had burnt hollow, and, falling in, made a terrible litter over the white hearth. The toast was scorched dry; and a little gas coal, lurking in a chink at the back of the hob, suddenly spouted out a flame at the china butter-boat, and sputtered against it until you could scarcely tell the red from the blue for soot.

“Devil take the whole bilin’!” exclaimed Mrs. Burke, glaring round fiercely when she saw all this, and at the same time snatching up the butter-boat at the risk of burning her fingers. “Here am I, and there is he; and prisintly he’ll be rollin’ in as drunk as Davy’s sow! It’s cashtin’ pearls before shwine, intirely;” and for a moment she scowled about her, and at me in particular, as though I had deliberately, and out of malice, set the gas-coal at her butter-boat. But in the same breath as it were, she recovered, and turning her wrath to music, began humming the fag end of a tune.

“Never mind, Jimmy,” said she; “there’s worse misfortunes at say.” And then she turned to, briskly mending the fire, and sweeping and dusting. She wiped the soot from the butterboat, and gave it a polish on her canvas apron; she turned the pile of toast topside bottom; and fetching her hair-brush from the back room, smoothed my hair with it. Then she folded up the sack she had just finished, and laid it on the top of the other three. Then she went and fetched stuff for another sack, and sat down to work again quite comfortable.

I was roused from dozing on my stool by the sound of my father’s footsteps, blundering and uncertain, on the stairs. He pushed open the door and came in.

“Come in, Mr. Ballisat,” said Mrs. Burke, in a kind and cheerful voice, and as though my father had knocked.

My father came in. He took three or four steps into the room, and then he stood still, staring about him in amazement. That he had been drinking rather heavily was evident from the circumstance of his wearing the peak of his cap over his ear, instead of the front of his head. In one hand he carried a large plaice, and in the other a bundle of firewood.

“You’ve come home earlier than was expicted, Mr. Ballisat, and caught me at work, sir,” said Mrs. Burke, apologetically. “You’ll pardon the liberty of me sittin’ in your room; I’ll run away in a minit.”

So saying, she got up from her chair and began to bustle about, lifting back to the wall the chair on which the four made sacks were lying, as well as that which she had been sitting on at her work, and there she stood, looking so bright and kind, with the half-made sack on her arm, and her hand resting on the other four.

It was plain to see that my poor father was completely overcome. Balanced, as it were, between the fish and the firewood, he stood in the middle of the room, gazing in serious astonishment, first at the butter-boat on the hob; then at the baby, tucked up so clean and comfortable in bed. Then, with tears in his eyes, he looked at me, and at the toast and the tea-things, wagging his head in the most solemn manner; and presently he sank into a chair and buried his eyes in the cuffs of his jacket, the wood rolling away unheeded, and the plaice sliding from his grasp down on to the sanded floor.

“Shure you’re not well, James Ballisat,” said Mrs. Burke, solicitously. “The throubles of this day have been too much for you, poor man!”

“No, no; it isn’t not that so much. It’s—it’s”—

“Askin’ your pardon; but that’s what it is, and nothin’ else,” said Mrs. Burke. “But don’t mind me, poor fellow; it’s been my own exshperience, and I know exactly the state of your feelin’s, Jim.”

“No; it isn’t that so much,” persisted my father; “it’s the pictur—the pictur that come afore me when I come in. I reckons it up comin’ along, and what do I make on it? ‘It’s all over now’ thinks I; ‘no more comfortable firesides, and kettles a-bilin’ ready waitin’ for you. The wittles you want, you must cook for yourself; and if you want a plaice, it’s no use you a-buyin’ of it unless you takes some wood; likewise a bit of drippin’ to fry it in.’ Look here, ma’am!”

So saying, my father took from his jacket some dripping in a piece of paper, and, with a sob, laid it gently on the table.

“But, shure, Jim Ballisat, if I may go the length of sayin’ as much, and knowin’, as I well know, how little throuble you give, and how little you expect, shure it might have crossed your mind that there was a craythur at home as lone and unfortunit as yourself, who wouldn’t see two motherless babies”—

“I thinks all this,” continued my father, pursuing the thread of his lamentation; “and home I comes, and what do I find? Why, I finds everything as though nothin’ had happened—as though more than nothin’ had happened, I might say.”

And then he took to weeping more violently than before.

“Shure and shure,” observed Mrs. Burke, turning away her head and raising her apron, “it was the very last of my thoughts to make you take on so, Mr. Ballisat; indade and indade it was.”

“No, Kitty, no,” sobbed my father; “I don’t think for a minnit that you thought to hurt my feelin’s; you’ve got too good a heart for that I always thought your heart was in the right place: now I’m sure of it”

“Shall you want anything else, Mr. Ballisat?” asked Mrs. Burke, respectfully, and as though she had not heard a word of my father’s last observation, and she was his humble servant to command, and nothing else. “Shall I pour you out a cup of tea, and then run away to my own room and cook the fish while you are gettin’ on?”

“No, thanky, ma’am,” returned my father, now slightly recovered, but still deeply despondent; “my ’art’s too full, I couldn’t tackle it.”

“Not a piece of the back part dipped in butther and browned to a turn?” said Mrs. Burke, persuasively.

“I couldn’t, really. Your kindness to me, an unfortnit fellow who didn’t oughter expect it, has took away all my wantin’ for the plaice. Don’t say no more to me, please, or I shan’t be able to eat any toast either.”

“Well, if there’s anything you want, you’ve only to give a call,” said Mrs. Burke, moving off towards her own room.