Dickory Dock

Dickory Dock, by L. T. Meade

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Title: Dickory Dock
Author: L. T. Meade

Release Date: June 26, 2007 [eBook #21942]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DICKORY
DOCK***

Transcribed from the [1890] W. & R. Chambers edition, by David
Price, email [email protected]
{Book cover: cover.jpg}

DICKORY DOCK
BY L. T. MEADE
AUTHOR OF 'SCAMP AND I,' 'DADDY'S BOY,' 'A WORLD OF
GIRLS,' 'POOR MISS CAROLINA,' &C.
W. & R. CHAMBERS, LIMITED LONDON AND EDINBURGH
Edinburgh: Printed by W. & R. Chambers, Limited.
CHAPTER I.
Of course there was a baby in the case--a baby and mongrel dog, and a
little boy and girl. They baby was small, and not particularly fair, but it
had round limbs and a dimple or two, and a soft, half-pathetic, half-
doggy look in its blue eyes, and the usual knack, which most helpless
little babies have, of twining itself round the hearts of those who took
care of it.
The caretakers of this baby were the two children and the dog. Of
course a woman, who went by the name of nurse, did duty somewhere
in the background; she washed the baby and dressed it in the morning,
and she undressed it at night, and she prepared food for it; but the
caretakers who called up smiles to the little white face, who caused the
baby to show that enticing little dimple which it had in one of its
cheeks, who made that strange, sweet, half-pathetic, half-humorous
look come into its eyes, were the children and the dog. The baby had a
sad history; it had entered the world with sorrow. Its mother had died at
its birth, and the little wee orphan creature had been brought away
almost directly to an uncle's house.
'We must do it, wife,' said Mr Franklin; 'there's poor John died two
months back, and now there's his widow following him, poor creature,
and no one to look after that wee mite of a babe. We must have it here,
it's our plain duty, and I don't suppose one extra mouth to feed can
make much difference.'

'That's all you men know,' replied Mrs Franklin, who was a very tall,
thin, fretful-looking woman. 'No difference indeed! A baby make no
difference! And who's to tend on the lodgers, and bring in the grist to
the mill, if all my time, day and night, is taken up minding the baby!'
'Well, well,' said Mr Franklin. He was as peaceable as his wife was the
reverse. He did not want the baby, but neither did he wish to send poor
John's child to the workhouse.
'You must make the best of it, wife,' he said. 'Martha'll help you, and I
daresay Peter and Flossy will take a turn in looking after the young 'un.'
Mrs Franklin said no more; she went up-stairs, and got a certain
disused attic into some sort of order. The attic was far away from the
rest of the house; it was the top story of a wing, which had been added
on to the tall, ramshackle old house. In some of the rooms underneath,
the Franklin family themselves slept; in others they lived, and in others
they cooked. The rest of the house, therefore, was free for the
accommodation of lodgers.
Mrs Franklin earned the family bread by taking in lodgers. She was far
more active than her husband, who had a very small clerkship in the
city; without her aid the children, Peter and Flossy, could scarcely have
lived, but by dint of toiling from morning to night, of saving every
penny, of turning and re-turning worn-out clothes, and scrubbing and
cooking and brushing and cleaning, Mrs Franklin contrived to make
two ends meet. Her lodgers said that the rooms they occupied were
clean and neat, that their food was well cooked, and above all things
that the house was quiet. Therefore they stayed on; year after year the
same people lived in the parlours, and occupied the genteel
drawing-room floor; and hard as her lot was, Mrs Franklin considered
herself a lucky woman, and her neighbours often envied her.
The house where the Franklins lived was in one of those remote
old-world half-forgotten squares which are to be found at the back of
Bloomsbury. In their day these squares had seen fashion and life, but
the gay world had long, long ago passed them by and forgotten them,
and in consequence,