Having
helped the wayward 'prentice in, she faintly articulated the words
'Simmun is safe!' and yielding to her woman's nature, immediately became
insensible.
'I knew I should quench her,' said Sim, rather embarrassed by this
circumstance. 'Of course I was certain it would come to this, but there
was nothing else to be done--if I hadn't eyed her over, she wouldn't
have come down. Here. Keep up a minute, Miggs. What a slippery figure
she is! There's no holding her, comfortably. Do keep up a minute, Miggs,
will you?'
As Miggs, however, was deaf to all entreaties, Mr Tappertit leant her
against the wall as one might dispose of a walking-stick or umbrella,
until he had secured the window, when he took her in his arms again,
and, in short stages and with great difficulty--arising from her being
tall and his being short, and perhaps in some degree from that peculiar
physical conformation on which he had already remarked--carried her
upstairs, and planting her, in the same umbrella and walking-stick
fashion, just inside her own door, left her to her repose.
'He may be as cool as he likes,' said Miss Miggs, recovering as soon
as she was left alone; 'but I'm in his confidence and he can't help
himself, nor couldn't if he was twenty Simmunses!'
Chapter 10
It was on one of those mornings, common in early spring, when the year,
fickle and changeable in its youth like all other created things, is
undecided whether to step backward into winter or forward into summer,
and in its uncertainty inclines now to the one and now to the other, and
now to both at once--wooing summer in the sunshine, and lingering still
with winter in the shade--it was, in short, on one of those mornings,
when it is hot and cold, wet and dry, bright and lowering, sad and
cheerful, withering and genial, in the compass of one short hour, that
old John Willet, who was dropping asleep over the copper boiler, was
roused by the sound of a horse's feet, and glancing out at window,
beheld a traveller of goodly promise, checking his bridle at the Maypole
door.
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