HOW UNCLE MO MADE THE DOOR-CHAIN SECURE, AND A SUNFLOWER LOOKED ON THE WHILE. HOW AUNT M'RIAR STOPPED HER EARS. A BIT OF UNCLE MO'S MIND. HOW DOLLY KISSED HIM THROUGH THE DOOR-CRACK, BUT NOT MRS. BURR. CONCERNING RATS, TO WHICH UNCLE MO TOOK THE OPPOSITE VIEW. OF ONE, OR SOME, WHICH TRAVELLED OUT TO AUSTRALIA WITH OLD MRS. PRICHARD. HOW DAVE MET THREE LADIES IN A CARRIAGE, NONE OF WHOM KISSED HIM. HOW UNCLE MO WENT UPSTAIRS WITH THE CHILDREN, IN CONNECTION WITH THE RATS HE HAD DISCREDITED, AND STAYED UP QUITE A TIME. HOW HE INTERVIEWED MR. BARTLETT ABOUT THEM

"You're never fidgeting about him?" said Aunt M'riar to Uncle Mo, one morning shortly after she had told him the story of her marriage. "He's safe out of the way by now. You may rely on your police-inspectin' friend to inspect him. Didn't he as good as say he was took, Mo?"

"That warn't precisely the exact expression used, M'riar," said Uncle Mo, who was doing something with a tool-box at the door that opened on the front-garden that opened on the Court. Dolly was holding his tools, by permission—only not chisels or gouges, or gimlets, or bradawls, or anything with an edge to it—and the sunflower outside was watching them. Uncle Mo was extracting a screw with difficulty, in spite of the fact that it was all but out already. He now elucidated the cause of this difficulty, and left the Police Inspector alone. "'Tain't stuck, if you ask me. I should say there never had been no holt to this screw from the beginning. But by reason there's no life in the thread, it goes round and round rayther than come out.... Got it!—wanted a little coaxin', it did." That is to say, a few back-turns with very light pressure brought the screw-head free enough for a finger-grip, and the rest was easy. "It warn't of any real service," said Uncle Mo. "One size bigger would ketch and hold in. This here one's only so much horse-tentation. Now I can't get a bigger one through the plate, and I can't rimer out the hole for want of a tool—not so much as a small round file.... Here's a long 'un, of a thread with the first. He'll ketch in if there's wood-backin' enough.... That's got him! Now it'll take a Hemperor, to get that out." Uncle Mo paused to enjoy a moment's triumph, then harked back:—"No—the precise expression made use of was, they might put their finger on him any minute."

"Which don't mean the same thing," said Aunt M'riar.

"No more it don't, M'riar, now you mention it. But he won't trust his nose down this Court. If he does, and I ain't here, just you do like I tell you...."

Aunt M'riar interrupted. "I couldn't find it in me to give him up, Mo. Not for all I'm worth!" She spoke in a quick undertone, with a stress in her voice that terrified Dolly, who nearly let go a hammer she had been allowed to hold, as harmless.

"Not if you knew what he's wanted for, this time?"

"Don't you tell me, Mo. I'd soonest know nothing.... No—no—don't you tell me a word about it!" And Aunt M'riar clapped her hands on her ears, leaving an iron, that she had been trying to abate to a professional heat, to make a brown island on its flannel zone of influence. All her colour—she had a fair share of it—had gone from her cheeks, and Dolly was in two minds whether she should drop the hammer and weep.

Uncle Mo's reassuring voice decided her to do neither, this time. "Don't you be frightened, M'riar," said he. "I wasn't for telling you his last game. Nor it wouldn't be any satisfaction to tell. I was only going to say that if he was to turn up in these parts, just you put the chain down—it's all square and sound now—and tell him he'll find me at The Sun." He closed the door and put the chain he had been revising on its mettle; adding as he did so, in defiance of Astronomy:—"'Tain't any so far off, The Sun." Dolly's amusement at the function of the chain, and its efficacy, was so great as to cause her aunt to rule, as a point of Law, that six times was plenty for any little girl, and that she must leave her uncle a minute's peace.

Dolly granting this, Aunt M'riar took advantage of it, to ask what course Uncle Mo would pursue, if she complied with his instructions. "If you gave him up to the Police, Mo," she said, "and I'd sent him to you, it would be all one as if I'd done it."

"I'll promise not to give him to the Police, if he comes to me off of your sending, M'riar. In course, if he's only himself to thank for coming my way, that's another pair of shoes."

"But if it was me, what'll you do, Mo?" Aunt M'riar wasn't getting on with those cuffs.

"What'll I do? Maybe I'll give him ... a bit of my mind."

"No—what'll you do, Mo?" There was a new apprehension in her voice as she dropped it to say:—"He's a younger man than you, by nigh twenty years."

The anticipation of that bit of Uncle Mo's mind had gripped his jaw and knitted his brow for an instant. It vanished, and left both free as he answered:—"You be easy, old girl! I won't give him a chance to do me no harm." Aunt M'riar bent a suspicious gaze on him for a moment, but it ended as an even more than usually genial smile spread over the old prizefighter's face, and he gave way to Dolly's request to be sut out only dest this once more; which ended in a Pyramus and Thisbe accommodation of kisses through as much thoroughfare as the chain permitted. They were painful and dangerous exploits; but it was not on either of those accounts that Mrs. Burr, coming home rather early, declined to avail herself of Dolly's suggestion that she also should take advantage of this rare opportunity for uncomfortable endearments; but rather in deference to public custom, whose rules about kissing Dolly thought ridiculous.

The door having to be really shut to release the chain, its reopening seemed to inaugurate a new chapter, at liberty to ignore Dolly's flagrant suggestions at the end of the previous one. Besides, it was possible for Uncle Mo to affect ignorance; as, after all, Dolly was outside. Mrs. Burr did not tax him with insincerity, and the subject dropped, superseded by less interesting matter.

"I looked in to see," said Aunt M'riar, replying to a question of Mrs. Burr's. "The old lady was awake and knitting, last time. First time she'd the paper on her knee, open. Next time she was gone off sound."

"That's her way, ma'am. Off and on—on and off. But she takes mostly to the knitting. And it ain't anything to wonder at, I say, that she drops off reading. I'm sure I can't hold my eyes open five minutes over the newspaper. And books would be worse, when you come to read what's wrote in them, if it wasn't for having to turn over the leaves. Because you're bound to see where, and not turn two at once, or it don't follow on." Aunt M'riar and Uncle Mo confirmed this view from their own experience. It was agreed further that small type—Parliamentary debates and the like—was more soporific than large, besides spinning out the length and deferring the relaxation of turning over, when in book-form. Short accidents, and not too prolix criminal proceedings were on the whole the most palatable forms of literature. It was not to be wondered at that old Mrs. Prichard should go to sleep over the newspaper at her age, seeing that none but the profoundest scholars could keep awake for five minutes while perusing it. The minute Dave came in from school he should take Dolly upstairs to pay the old lady a visit, and brighten her up a bit.

"Very like she's been extra to-day"—thus Mrs. Burr continued—"by reason of rats last night, and getting no sleep."

"There ain't any rats in your room, missis," said Uncle Mo. "We should hear 'em down below if there was."

"What it is if it ain't rats passes me then, Mr. Wardle. I do assure you there was a loud crash like a gun going off, and we neither of us hardly got any sleep after."

"Queer, anyhow!" said Uncle Mo. But he evidently doubted the statement, or at least thought it exaggerated.

"I'll be glad to tell her you take the opposite view to rats, Mr. Moses," said Mrs. Burr. "For it sets her on fretting when she gets thinking back. And now she'll never be tired of telling about the rats on the ship when she was took out to Australia. Running over her face, and starting her awake in the night! It gives the creeps only to hear."

"There, Dolly, now you listen to how the rats run about on Mrs. Picture when she was on board of the ship." Thus Aunt M'riar, always with that haunting vice of perverting Art, Literature, Morals, and Philosophy to the oppressive improvement of the young. She seldom scored a success, and this time she was hoisted with her own petard. For Dolly jumped with delight at the prospect of a romance of fascinating character, combining ZoÖlogy and Travel. She applied for a place to hear it, on the knee of Mrs. Burr, who, however, would have had to sit down to supply it. So she was forced to be content with a bald version of the tale, as Mrs. Burr had to see to getting their suppers upstairs. She was rather disappointed at the size and number of the rats. She enquired:—"Was they large rats, or small?" and would have preferred to hear that they were about the size of small cats—not larger, for fear of inconveniencing old Mrs. Picture. And a circumstance throwing doubt on their number was unwelcome to her. For it appeared that old Mrs. Picture slept with her fellow-passengers in a dark cabin, and no one might light a match all night for fear of the Captain. And rats ran over those passengers' faces! But it may have been all the same rat, and to Dolly that seemed much less satisfactory than troops. She was rather cast down about it, but there was no need to discourage Dave. She could invent some extra rats, when he came back from school.

Lay down the book, you who read, and give but a moment's thought to the strangeness of these two episodes, over half a century apart. One, in the black darkness of an emigrant's sleeping-quarters on a ship outward-bound, all its tenants huddled close in the stifling air; child and woman, weak and strong, sick and healthy even, penned in alike to sleep their best on ranks of shelves, a mere packed storage of human goods, to be delivered after long months of battle with the seas, ten thousand miles from home. Or, if you shrink from the thought that Maisie's luck on her first voyage was so cruel as that, conceive her interview with those rodent fellow-passengers as having taken place in the best quarters money could buy on such a ship—and what would they be, against a good steerage-berth nowadays?—and give her, at least, a couch to herself. Picture her, if you will, at liberty to start from it in terror and scramble up a companion ladder to an open deck, and pick her way through shrouds and a bare headway of restless sprits above, and Heaven knows what of coiled cordage and inexplicable bulkhead underfoot, to some haven where a merciful old mariner, alone upon his watch, shuts his eyes to his duty and tolerates the beautiful girl on deck, when he is told by her that she cannot sleep for the rats. Make the weather fair, to keep the picture at its best, and let her pass the hours till the coming of the dawn, watching the mainmast-truck sway to and fro against the Southern Cross, as the breeze falls and rises, and the bulwark-plash is soft or loud upon the waters.

And then—all has vanished! That was half a century ago, and more. And a very little girl with very blue eyes and a disgracefully rough shock of golden curls has just been told of those rats, and has resolved to add to their number—having power to do so, like a Committee—when she comes to retell the tale to her elder brother; and then they will both—and this is the strangest of all!—they will both go and make a noisy and excited application to an authority to have it confirmed or contradicted. And this authority will be that girl who sat on that deck beneath the stars, and listened to the bells sounding the hours through the night, to keep the ship's time for a forgotten crew, on a ship that may have gone to the bottom many a year ago, on its return voyage home perhaps—who knows?

Before Dave heard Dolly's version of the rats, he had a tale of his own to tell, coming in just after Mrs. Burr had departed. As he was excited by the event he was yearning to narrate, he did not put it so lucidly as he might have done. He said:—"Oy saw the lady, and another lady, and another lady, all in one carriage. And they see me. And the lady"—he still pronounced this word loydy—"she see me on the poyvement, and 'Stop' she says. And then she says, 'You're Doyvy, oyn't you, that had the ax-nent?' I says these was my books I took to scrool...."

"Didn't you say you was Davy?" said Uncle Mo. And Aunt M'riar she actually said:—"Well, I never!—not to tell the lady who you was!"

Dave was perplexed, looking with blue-eyed gravity from one to the other. "The loydy said I was Doyvy," said he, in a slightly injured tone. He did not at all like the suggestion that he had been guilty of discourtesy.

"In course the lady knew, and knew correct," said Uncle Mo, drawing a distinction which is too often overlooked. "Cut along and tell us some more. What more did the lady say?"

Dave concentrated his intelligence powerfully on accuracy:—"The loydy said to the yuther loydy—the be-yhooterful loydy...."

"Oh, there was a beautiful lady, was there?"

Dave nodded excessively, and continued:—"Said here's a friend of mine, Doyvy Wardle, and they was coming to poy a visit to, to-morrow afternoon."

"And what did the other lady say?"

Dave gathered himself together for an effort of intense fidelity:—"She said—she said—'He's much too dirty to kiss in the open street'—she said, 'and better not to touch.' Yorce!" He seemed magnanimous towards Gwen, in spite of her finical delicacy.

Aunt M'riar turned his face to the light, by the chin. "What's the child been at?" said she.

"The boys had some corks," was Dave's explanation. Nothing further seemed to be required; Uncle Mo merely remarking: "It'll come off with soap." However, there was some doubt about the identity of these carriage ladies. Was one of them the original lady of the rings; who had taken Dave for a drive or vice versa. "Not her!" said Dave; and went on shaking his head so long to give his statement weight, that Aunt M'riar abruptly requested him to stop, as her nervous system could not bear the strain. It was enough, she said, to make her eyes come out by the roots.

"She must have been somebody else. She couldn't have been nobody," said Uncle Mo cogently. "Spit it out, old chap, Who was she?"

It was easy to say who she was; the strain of attestation had turned on who she wasn't. Dave became fluent:—"Whoy, the loydy what was a cistern, and took me in the roylwoy troyne and in the horse-coach to Granny Marrowbone." For he had never quite dissociated Sister Nora from ball-taps and plumbings. He added after reflection:—"Only not dressed up like then!"

At this point Dolly, whose preoccupation about those rats had stood, between her and a reasonable interest in Dave's adventure, struck in noisily and rudely with disjointed particulars about them, showing a poor capacity for narrative, and provoking Uncle Mo to tickling her with a view to their suppression. Aunt M'riar seized the opportunity to capture Dave and subject him to soap and water at the sink.

As soon as the boys' corks, or the effect of using them after ignition as face-pigments, had become a thing of the past, Dave and Dolly were ready to pay their promised visit to Mrs. Prichard. Uncle Mo suggested that he might act as their convoy as far as the top-landing. This was a departure from precedent, as stair-climbing was never very welcome to Uncle Mo. But Aunt M'riar consented, the more readily that she was all behind with her work. Uncle Mo not only went up with the children, but stayed up quite a time with the old lady and Mrs. Burr. When he came down he did not refer to his conversation with them, but went back to Dave's encounter with his aristocratic friends in the street.

"The lady that sighted our boy out," said he, "she'll be Miss What's-her-name that come on at the Hospital—her with the clean white tucker...." This referred to a vaguely recollected item of the costume in which Sister Nora was dressed up at the time of Dave's accident. It had lapsed, as inappropriate, during her nursing of her father in Scotland, and had not been resumed.

"That's her," said Aunt M'riar. "Sister of Charity—that's what she is. The others are ladyships, one or both. They all belong." The tone of remoteness might have been adopted in speaking of inhabitants of Mars and Venus.

"I thought her the right sort, herself," said Uncle Mo, implying that others of her monde might be safely assumed to be the wrong sort, pending proof of the contrary. "Anyways, she's coming to pay Dave a visit, and I'll be glad of a sight of her, for one!"

"Oh, I've no fault to find, Mo, if that's what you mean." Aunt M'riar was absorbed in her mystery, doing justice to what was probably a lady's nightgear, of imperial splendour. So she probably had spoken rather at random; and, indeed, seemed to think apology necessary. She took advantage of the end of an episode to say, while contemplating the perfection of two unimpeachable cuffs:—"So long as the others don't give theirselves no airs." Isolated certainly, as to structure; but, after all, has speech any use except to communicate ideas?

Uncle Mo presumably understood, as he accepted the form of speech, saying:—"And so long as we do ourselves credit, M'riar."

"Well, Mo, you never see me do anything but behave."

"That I never did, M'riar. Right you are!" Which ended a little colloquy that contained or implied a protest against the compulsory association of classes, expressed to a certain extent by special leniency towards an exceptional approach from without. Having entered his own share of the protest, Uncle Mo announced his intention of seeking Mr. Bartlett the builder, to speak to him about them rats. This saying Aunt M'riar did not even condemn as enigmatical, so completely did all that relates to buildings lie outside her jurisdiction.

"I've got my 'ands so full just now," said Mr. Bartlett, when Uncle Mo had explained the object of his visit, "or I'd step round to cast an eye on that bressumer. Only you may make your mind easy, and say I told you to it. If we was all of us to get into a perspiration whenever a board creaked or a bit of loose parging come down a chimley, we shouldn't have a minute's peace of our lives. Some parties is convinced of Ghosts the very first crack! Hysterical females in partic'lar." Mr. Bartlett did not seem busy, externally; but he contrived to give an impression that he was attending to a job at Buckingham Palace.

Uncle Mo felt abashed at his implied rebuke. It was not deserved, for he was guiltless of superstition. However, he had accepted the position of delegate of the top-floor, which, of course, was an hysterical floor, owing to the sex of its tenants. For Mr. Bartlett's meaning was the conventional one, that all women were hysterical, not some more than others. Uncle Mo felt that his position was insecure; and that he had better retire from it. Noises, he conceded, was usually nothing at all; but he had thought he would mention them, in this case.

Mr. Bartlett professed himself sincerely obliged to all persons who would mention noises, in spite of their equivocal claims to existence. It might save a lot of trouble in the end, and you never knew. As soon as he had a half an hour to spare he would give attention. Till Tuesday he was pretty well took up. No one need fidget himself about the noises he mentioned; least of all need the landlord be communicated with, as he was not a Practical Man, but in Independent Circumstances. Moreover, he lived at Brixton.