A House to Let, et al | Page 7

again, with an aggravating

accent on the third syllable:
"SophonISba!"
I don't burn lamps, because I can't abide the smell of oil, and wax
candles belonged to my day. I hope the convenient situation of one of
my tall old candlesticks on the table at my elbow will be my excuse for
saying, that if he did that again, I would chop his toes with it. (I am
sorry to add that when I told him so, I knew his toes to be tender.) But,
really, at my time of life and at Jarber's, it is too much of a good thing.
There is an orchestra still standing in the open air at the Wells, before
which, in the presence of a throng of fine company, I have walked a
minuet with Jarber. But, there is a house still standing, in which I have
worn a pinafore, and had a tooth drawn by fastening a thread to the
tooth and the door-handle, and toddling away from the door. And how
should I look now, at my years, in a pinafore, or having a door for my
dentist?
Besides, Jarber always was more or less an absurd man. He was
sweetly dressed, and beautifully perfumed, and many girls of my day
would have given their ears for him; though I am bound to add that he
never cared a fig for them, or their advances either, and that he was
very constant to me. For, he not only proposed to me before my
love-happiness ended in sorrow, but afterwards too: not once, nor yet
twice: nor will we say how many times. However many they were, or
however few they were, the last time he paid me that compliment was
immediately after he had presented me with a digestive dinner- pill
stuck on the point of a pin. And I said on that occasion, laughing
heartily, "Now, Jarber, if you don't know that two people whose united
ages would make about a hundred and fifty, have got to be old, I do;
and I beg to swallow this nonsense in the form of this pill" (which I
took on the spot), "and I request to, hear no more of it."
After that, he conducted himself pretty well. He was always a little
squeezed man, was Jarber, in little sprigged waistcoats; and he had
always little legs and a little smile, and a little voice, and little
round-about ways. As long as I can remember him he was always going
little errands for people, and carrying little gossip. At this present time
when he called me "Sophonisba!" he had a little old-fashioned lodging
in that new neighbourhood of mine. I had not seen him for two or three
years, but I had heard that he still went out with a little

perspective-glass and stood on door-steps in Saint James's Street, to see
the nobility go to Court; and went in his little cloak and goloshes
outside Willis's rooms to see them go to Almack's; and caught the
frightfullest colds, and got himself trodden upon by coachmen and
linkmen, until he went home to his landlady a mass of bruises, and had
to be nursed for a month.
Jarber took off his little fur-collared cloak, and sat down opposite me,
with his little cane and hat in his hand.
"Let us have no more Sophonisbaing, if YOU please, Jarber," I said.
"Call me Sarah. How do you do? I hope you are pretty well."
"Thank you. And you?" said Jarber.
"I am as well as an old woman can expect to be."
Jarber was beginning:
"Say, not old, Sophon- " but I looked at the candlestick, and he left off;
pretending not to have said anything.
"I am infirm, of course," I said, "and so are you. Let us both be thankful
it's no worse."
"Is it possible that you look worried?" said Jarber.
"It is very possible. I have no doubt it is the fact."
"And what has worried my Soph-, soft-hearted friend," said Jarber.
"Something not easy, I suppose, to comprehend. I am worried to death
by a House to Let, over the way."
Jarber went with his little tip-toe step to the window-curtains, peeped
out, and looked round at me.
"Yes," said I, in answer: "that house."
After peeping out again, Jarber came back to his chair with a tender air,
and asked: "How does it worry you, S-arah?"
"It is a mystery to me," said I. "Of course every house IS a mystery,
more or less; but, something that I don't care to mention" (for truly the
Eye was so slight a thing to mention that I was more than half ashamed
of it), "has made that House so mysterious to me, and has so fixed it in
my mind, that