Jerome Jerome - Tommy and Co

"You've done very well --"

"Thank you," said Peter Hope sarcastically. "It's very kind of you. Perhaps when you've time, you'll write me out a testimonial."

"--up till now," concluded the imperturbable Clodd. "A girl of eighteen wants to know something else besides mathematics and the classics. You don't understand them."

"I do understand them," asserted Peter Hope. "What do you know about them? You're not a father."

"You've done your best," admitted William Clodd in a tone of patronage that irritated Peter greatly; "but you're a dreamer; you don't know the world. The time is coming when the girl will have to think of a husband."

"There's no need for her to think of a husband, not for years," retorted Peter Hope. "And even when she does, is strumming on the piano going to help her?"

"I tink--I tink," said Dr. Smith, who had hitherto remained a silent listener, "our young frent Clodd is right. You haf never quite got over your idea dat she was going to be a boy. You haf taught her de tings a boy should know."

"You cut her hair," added Clodd.

"I don't," snapped Peter.

"You let her have it cut--it's the same thing. At eighteen she knows more about the ancient Greeks and Romans than she does about her own frocks."

"De young girl," argued the doctor, "what is she? De flower dat makes bright for us de garden of life, de gurgling brook dat murmurs by de dusty highway, de cheerful fire--"

"She can't be all of them," snapped Peter, who was a stickler for style. "Do keep to one simile at a time."

"Now you listen to plain sense," said William Clodd. "You want--we all want--the girl to be a success all round."

"I want her--" Peter Hope was rummaging among the litter on the desk. It certainly was not there. Peter pulled out a drawer-two drawers. "I wish," said Peter Hope, "I wish sometimes she wasn't quite so clever."

The old doctor rummaged among dusty files of papers in a corner. Clodd found it on the mantelpiece concealed beneath the hollow foot of a big brass candlestick, and handed it to Peter.

Peter had one vice--the taking in increasing quantities of snuff, which was harmful for him, as he himself admitted. Tommy, sympathetic to most masculine frailties, was severe, however, upon this one.

"You spill it upon your shirt and on your coat," had argued Tommy. "I like to see you always neat. Besides, it isn't a nice habit. I do wish, dad, you'd give it up."

"I must," Peter had agreed. "I'll break myself of it. But not all at once--it would be a wrench; by degrees, Tommy, by degrees."

So a compromise had been compounded. Tommy was to hide the snuff-box. It was to be somewhere in the room and to be accessible, but that was all. Peter, when self-control had reached the breaking-point, might try and find it. Occasionally, luck helping Peter, he would find it early in the day, when he would earn his own bitter self-reproaches by indulging in quite an orgie. But more often Tommy's artfulness was such that he would be compelled, by want of time, to abandon the search. Tommy always knew when he had failed by the air of indignant resignation with which he would greet her on her return. Then perhaps towards evening, Peter, looking up, would see the box open before his nose, above it, a pair of reproving black eyes, their severity counterbalanced by a pair of full red lips trying not to smile. And Peter, knowing that only one pinch would be permitted, would dip deeply.

"I want her," said Peter Hope, feeling with his snuff-box in his hand more confidence in his own judgment, "to be a sensible, clever woman, capable of earning her own living and of being independent; not a mere helpless doll, crying for some man to come and take care of her."

"A woman's business," asserted Clodd, "is to be taken care of."

"Some women, perhaps," admitted Peter; "but Tommy, you know very well, is not going to be the ordinary type of woman. She has brains; she will make her way in the world."

"It doesn't depend upon brains," said Clodd. "She hasn't got the elbows."

"The elbows?"

"They are not sharp enough. The last 'bus home on a wet night tells you whether a woman is capable of pushing her own way in the world. Tommy's the sort to get left on the kerb."

"She's the sort," retorted Peter, "to make a name for herself and to be able to afford a cab. Don't you bully me!" Peter sniffed self-assertiveness from between his thumb and finger.

"Yes, I shall," Clodd told him, "on this particular point. The poor girl's got no mother."

Fortunately for the general harmony the door opened at the moment to admit the subject of discussion.

"Got that Daisy Blossom advertisement out of old Blatchley," announced Tommy, waving triumphantly a piece of paper over her head.

"No!" exclaimed Peter. "How did you manage it?"

"Asked him for it," was Tommy's explanation.

"Very odd," mused Peter; "asked the old idiot for it myself only last week. He refused it point-blank."

Clodd snorted reproof. "You know I don't like your doing that sort of thing. It isn't proper for a young girl--"

"It's all right," assured him Tommy; "he's bald!"

"That makes no difference," was Clodd's opinion.

"Yes it does," was Tommy's. "I like them bald."

Tommy took Peter's head between her hands and kissed it, and in doing so noticed the tell-tale specks of snuff.

"Just a pinch, my dear," explained Peter, "the merest pinch."

Tommy took up the snuff-box from the desk. "I'll show you where I'm going to put it this time." She put it in her pocket. Peter's face fell.

"What do you think of it?" said Clodd. He led her to the corner. "Good idea, ain't it?"

"Why, where's the piano?" demanded Tommy.

Clodd turned in delighted triumph to the others.

"Humbug!" growled Peter.

"It isn't humbug," cried Clodd indignantly. "She thought it was a bookcase--anybody would. You'll be able to sit there and practise by the hour," explained Clodd to Tommy. "When you hear anybody coming up the stairs, you can leave off."

"How can she hear anything when she--" A bright idea occurred to Peter. "Don't you think, Clodd, as a practical man," suggested Peter insinuatingly, adopting the Socratic method, "that if we got her one of those dummy pianos--you know what I mean; it's just like an ordinary piano, only you don't hear it?"

Clodd shook his head. "No good at all. Can't tell the effect she is producing."

"Quite so. Then, on the other hand, Clodd, don't you think that hearing the effect they are producing may sometimes discourage the beginner?"

Clodd's opinion was that such discouragement was a thing to be battled with.

Tommy, who had seated herself, commenced a scale in contrary motion.

"Well, I'm going across to the printer's now," explained Clodd, taking up his hat. "Got an appointment with young Grindley at three. You stick to it. A spare half-hour now and then that you never miss does wonders. You've got it in you." With these encouraging remarks to Tommy, Clodd disappeared.

"Easy for him," muttered Peter bitterly. "Always does have an appointment outside the moment she begins."

Tommy appeared to be throwing her very soul into the performance. Passers-by in Crane Court paused, regarded the first-floor windows of the publishing and editorial offices of Good Humour with troubled looks, then hurried on.

"She has--remarkably firm douch!" shouted the doctor into Peter's ear. "Will see you--evening. Someting--say to you."

The fat little doctor took his hat and departed. Tommy, ceasing suddenly, came over and seated herself on the arm of Peter's chair.

"Feeling grumpy?" asked Tommy.

"It isn't," explained Peter, "that I mind the noise. I'd put up with that if I could see the good of it."

"It's going to help me to get a husband, dad. Seems to me an odd way of doing it; but Billy says so, and Billy knows all about everything."