“Master’s shoes nor coat aint ready, of course?” she called from the landing. In a moment Richard’s light feet flew up the stairs, and he laid them on her bony arms.
“Then I’m sure he’s let the fire out, if these are done,” she muttered to herself. “There never was a boy that did not undo ten things while he did one!”
When she descended, she looked round, silenced by the change Richard had wrought in the den of a kitchen, and hardly knowing whether she ought to blame or praise.
“I don’t mean to pay you for all this fine work,” she said; “and there’s no breakfast for you—no, nor bit nor sup—it’s as much as I can do to manage for us three—master, and I, and Peter.”
“I have had my breakfast, thank you; and as I can do nothing here, I will go up stairs, if you will be so good as to tell me what I can do there.”
“Tell you what to do,” she repeated. “Are you an apprentice, that you want teaching? A pretty boy, indeed, you are for a place, if you can’t take down shutters, and sweep and dust a shop, and clean windows—I dare say you’ll break ’em when you do—and mop the pavement (always do _that_ in frosty weather, like the doctor’s boy next door, to break people’s legs, and make a job of their precious limbs)—and sweep the snow over the slides, that the old people may _slider_ about for your amusement.”
Richard felt a choking sensation at his throat, and as usual he flushed, but tried not to look angry.
“There!” she exclaimed, “don’t give me any impudence: quick lads are always impudent. I thought how it would be when you were _so mighty neat_.”
During this unsavory dialogue, and in direct opposition to her declared intention, she was cutting a remarkably thick piece of bread and butter; and having done so, she pushed it to the boy, saying—“There, go to your work now, and don’t say you are starved by Matthew Whitelock’s housekeeper.”
Richard was a peace-loving lad: he saw the storm gathering in Matty’s face, and, notwithstanding his boasted breakfast (he had slipped back one of the pieces of bread his mother had given him) he could from any other hands have eaten the bread with great _goût_; but the hands that fed him from infancy were delicately clean and white, and—it might be the darkness and murkiness of a January morning, but every thing, and above all things Matty, looked fearfully dirty—a favorite proverb of his mother’s took possession of his mind—