When you and my boy are strong enough to do
it, come and take possession of your home."
Ada called him "her dearest cousin, John." But he said, no, it
must be guardian now. He was her guardian henceforth, and the
boy's; and he had an old association with the name. So she called
him guardian, and has called him guardian ever since. The children
know him by no other name. I say the children; I have two little
daughters.
It is difficult to believe that Charley (round-eyed still, and not
at all grammatical) is married to a miller in our neighbourhood;
yet so it is; and even now, looking up from my desk as I write
early in the morning at my summer window, I see the very mill
beginning to go round. I hope the miller will not spoil Charley;
but he is very fond of her, and Charley is rather vain of such a
match, for he is well to do and was in great request. So far as my
small maid is concerned, I might suppose time to have stood for
seven years as still as the mill did half an hour ago, since little
Emma, Charley's sister, is exactly what Charley used to be. As to
Tom, Charley's brother, I am really afraid to say what he did at
school in ciphering, but I think it was decimals. He is
apprenticed to the miller, whatever it was, and is a good bashful
fellow, always falling in love with somebody and being ashamed of
it.
Caddy Jellyby passed her very last holidays with us and was a
dearer creature than ever, perpetually dancing in and out of the
house with the children as if she had never given a dancing-lesson
in her life. Caddy keeps her own little carriage now instead of
hiring one, and lives full two miles further westward than Newman
Street. She works very hard, her husband (an excellent one) being
lame and able to do very little. Still, she is more than contented
and does all she has to do with all her heart. Mr. Jellyby spends
his evenings at her new house with his head against the wall as he
used to do in her old one. I have heard that Mrs. Jellyby was
understood to suffer great mortification from her daughter's
ignoble marriage and pursuits, but I hope she got over it in time.
She has been disappointed in Borrioboola-Gha, which turned out a
failure in consequence of the king of Borrioboola wanting to sell
everybody--who survived the climate--for rum, but she has taken up
with the rights of women to sit in Parliament, and Caddy tells me
it is a mission involving more correspondence than the old one. I
had almost forgotten Caddy's poor little girl. She is not such a
mite now, but she is deaf and dumb. I believe there never was a
better mother than Caddy, who learns, in her scanty intervals of
leisure, innumerable deaf and dumb arts to soften the affliction of
her child.
As if I were never to have done with Caddy, I am reminded here of
Peepy and old Mr. Turveydrop. Peepy is in the Custom House, and
doing extremely well. Old Mr. Turveydrop, very apoplectic, still
exhibits his deportment about town, still enjoys himself in the old
manner, is still believed in in the old way. He is constant in his
patronage of Peepy and is understood to have bequeathed him a
favourite French clock in his dressing-room--which is not his
property.
With the first money we saved at home, we added to our pretty house
by throwing out a little growlery expressly for my guardian, which
we inaugurated with great splendour the next time he came down to
see us.
