Next morning Mrs. Little gave her son the benefit of her night's reflections.
"You must let me have some money--all you can spare from your business; and whilst I am doing something with it for you, you must go to London, and do exactly what I tell you to do."
"Exactly? Then please write it down."
"A very good plan. Can you go by the express this morning?"
"Why, yes, I could; only then I must run down to the works this minute and speak to the foreman."
"Well, dear, when you come back, your instructions shall be written, and your bag packed."
"I say, mother, you are going into it in earnest. All the better for me."
At twelve he started for London, with a beautiful set of carving-tools in his bag, and his mother's instructions in his pocket: those instructions sent him to a fashionable tailor that very afternoon.
With some difficulty he prevailed on this worthy to make him a dress-suit in twenty-four hours. Next day he introduced himself to the London trade, showed his carving-tools, and, after a hard day's work, succeeded in obtaining several orders.
Then he bought some white ties and gloves and an opera hat, and had his hair cut in Bond Street.
At seven he got his clothes at the tailor's, and at eight he was in the stalls of the opera. His mother had sent him there, to note the dress and public deportment of gentlemen and ladies, and use his own judgment. He found his attention terribly distracted by the music and the raptures it caused him; but still he made some observations; and, consequently, next day he bought some fashionable shirts and sleeve studs and ribbon ties; ordered a morning suit of the same tailor, to be sent to him at Hillsborough; and after canvassing for customers all day, telegraphed his mother, and reached Hillsborough at eleven P.M.
At first sight of him Mrs. Little exclaimed:
"Oh! What have you done with your beautiful hair?"
He laughed, and said this was the fashion.
"But it is like a private soldier."
"Exactly. Part of the Volunteer movement, perhaps."
"Are you sure it is the fashion, dear?"
"Quite sure. All the swells in the opera were bullet-headed just like this."
"Oh, if it is the fashion!" said Mrs. Little; and her mind succumbed under that potent word.
She asked him about the dresses of the ladies in the opera.
His description was very lame. He said he didn't know he was expected to make notes of them.
"Well, but you might be sure I should like to know. Were there no ladies dressed as you would like to see your mother dressed?"
"Good heavens, no! I couldn't fancy you in a lot of colors; and your beautiful head deformed into the shape of a gourd, with a beast of a chignon stuck out behind, made of dead hair."
"No matter. Mr. Henry; I wish I had been with you at the opera. I should have seen something or other that would have become me. She gave a little sigh.
He was not to come home to dinner that day, but stay at the works, till she sent for him.
At six o'clock, Jael Dence came for him in a fly, and told him he was to go home with her.
"All right," said he; "but how did you come there?"
"She bade me come and see her again--that day I brought the bust.
So I went to see her, and I found her so busy, and doing more than she was fit, poor thing, so I made bold to give her a hand. That was yesterday; and I shall come every day--if 'tis only for an hour--till the curtains are all up."
"The curtains! what curtains?"
"Ask no questions, and you will hear no lies."
Henry remonstrated; Jael recommended patience; and at last they reached a little villa half way up Heath Hill. "You are at home now," said Jael, dryly. The new villa looked very gay that evening, for gas and fires were burning in every room.
The dining-room and drawing room were both on the ground-floor; had each one enormous window with plate glass, and were rooms of very fair size, divided by large folding-doors. These were now open, and Henry found his mother seated in the dining-room, with two workwomen, making curtains, and in the drawing-room were two more, sewing a carpet.
The carpet was down in the dining-room. The tea-table was set, and gave an air of comfort and housewifely foresight, in the midst of all the surrounding confusion.
Young Little stared. Mrs. Little smiled.
"Sit down, and never mind us: give him his tea, my good Jael."
Henry sat down, and, while Jael was making the tea, ventured on a feeble expostulation. "It's all very fine, mother, but I don't like to see you make a slave of yourself."
"Slaving!" said Jael, with a lofty air of pity. "Why, she is working for her own." Rural logic!
"Oh," said Mrs. Little to her, "these clever creatures we look up to so are rather stupid in some things. Slave! Why, I am a general leading my Amazons to victory." And she waved her needle gracefully in the air.
"Well, but why not let the shop do them, where you bought the curtains?'
"Because, my dear, the shop would do them very badly, very dearly, and very slowly. Do you remember reading to me about Caesar, and what he said--'that a general should not say to his troops "GO and attack the enemy," "but COME and attack the enemy"?' Well, that applies to needle-work. I say to these ladies, 'COME sew these curtains with me;' and the consequence is, we have done in three days what no shop in Hillsborough would have done for us in a fortnight; but, as for slaves, the only one has been my good Jael there. She insisted on moving all the heavy boxes herself. She dismissed the porter; she said he had no pith in his arms--that was your expression, I think?"
"Ay, ma'am; that was my word: and I never spoke a truer; the useless body. Why, ma'am, the girls in Cairnhope are most of them well-grown hussies, and used to work in the fields, and carry full sacks of grain up steps. Many's the time I have RUN with a sack of barley on my back: so let us hear no more about your bits of boxes. I wish my mind was as strong."
"Heaven forbid!" said Mrs. Little, with comic fervor. Henry laughed. But Jael only stared, rather stupidly. By-and-by she said she must go now.
"Henry shall take you home, dear."
"Nay, I can go by myself."