The lady rose from her seat, and said with a smile of pleasure, “I hear a voice.”
The door opened, and in darted a grey-headed man, with handsome but strongly marked features, laughing and shouting like a schoolboy broke loose. He cried out, “Ah! I've found y' out at last.” Mrs. Dodd glided to meet him, and put out both her hands, the palms downwards, with the prettiest air of ladylike cordiality; he shook them heartily. “The vagabins said y' had left the town; but y' had only flitted from the quay to the subbubs; 'twas a pashint put me on the scint of ye. And how are y' all these years? an' how's Sawmill?”
“It's just your husband. Isn't his name Sawmill?”
“Ou, ay. I knew it was some Scripcher Petrarch or another, Daavid, or Naathan, or Sawmill. And how is he, and where is he?”
Mrs. Dodd replied that he was on the seas, but expect----
“Then I wish him well off 'em, confound 'em oncannall! Halloa! why, this will be the little girl grown up int' a wumman while ye look round.”
“Yes, my good friend; and her mother's darling.”
“And she's a bonny lass, I can tell ye. But no freend to the Dockers, I see.”
“Ah!” said Mrs. Dodd sadly, “looks are deceitful; she is under medical advice at this very----”
“Well, that won't hurt her, unless she takes it.” And he burst into a ringing laugh: but in the middle of it, stopped dead short, and his face elongated. “Lord sake, mad'm,” said he impressively, “mind what y' are at, though; Barkton's just a trap for fanciful femuls: there's a n'oily ass called Osmond, and a canting cut-throat called Stephenson and a genteel, cadaveris old assassin called Short, as long as a maypole; they'd soon take the rose out of Miss Floree's cheek here. Why, they'd starve Cupid, an' veneseck Venus, an' blister Pomonee, the vagabins.”
Mrs. Dodd looked a little confused, and exchanged speaking glances with Julia. “However,” she said calmly, “I _have_ consulted Mr. Osmond and Dr. Short; but have not relied on them alone. I have taken her to Sir William Best. And to Dr. Chalmers. And to Dr. Kenyon.” And she felt invulnerable behind her phalanx of learning and reputation.
“Good Hivens!” roared the visitor, “what a gauntlet o' gabies for one girl to run; and come out alive! And the picter of health. My faith, Miss Floree, y' are tougher than ye look.”