half-way up, and there he had to stay till”—
“Humbug, Dick!” interrupted Mrs. Winkship, in a pet; “if you don’t want to take him, say so. Don’t stand there sending your soul to Old Nick with a bushel of lies. You didn’t find me humming and hawing, and making tuppeny excuses, when you came over here askin’ favours of me, remember. But never mind.”
From the bottom of my heart I wished that Mr. Belcher, with his awful talk about boys sticking in sawmill chimney-shafts ninety-eight feet high, would get in a pet too, and take himself off as he came; but this he evidently was not disposed to do. Whatever the nature of the favour conferred, once upon a time, by Mrs. Winkship on her sister’s husband, her allusion to it was enough to make him alter his tone.
“Who said I wouldn’t take him?” said he.
“’Course I ’ll take him. What I meant was, that it’s a pity that he’s just goin’ into the trade when Acts o’ Parlyment and machinery are risin’ up to knock it over. He’s welcome to come along o ’me and learn the trade, such as it is.”
After this declaration of Mr. Belcher, (which had the effect of completely mollifying his sister-in-law,) there ensued between the contracting parties a long conversation, all concerning me, but in which I took not the least interest. It was enough for me to know that I was to be made a sweep of; that the man with the white pockmarked face, and the yellow overhanging teeth, was to be my master; and that I was not to be allowed to gain an ounce more flesh than now covered my bony frame, to make me perfectly miserable.
“Then that settles it,” observed Mr. Belcher, after a while. “When will he be ready to come?”
“He’s ready now—as ready as ever he’ll be,” replied Mrs. Winkship.
“What! now—to-night, do you mean? Take him off with me to-night?” inquired my future master.
“I should take it as a favour if you would take him off to-night. The sooner he goes the better.”
“Just as you please; one time ’s as good as another, as far as I know. Put your cap on, boy.”
There was no use in making a fuss over what couldn’t be avoided; besides, when it came to this, I felt a little spiteful towards Mrs. Winkship that she should have been so very anxious to pack me off at once; and I am ashamed to confess that my response to her tearful “Good-bye” was not so cordial as it might have been. Mr. Belcher’s pony and cart were waiting at the end of the alley, in charge of a boy who stood at the pony’s head. And here occurred an illustration of how the artfullest plots and schemes may be frustrated in a single instant, and that by a means least expected. The boy at the pony’s head was one that Mr. Belcher had promiscuously hailed from among a dozen loitering about the alley; it was my old enemy, Jerry Pape. As good luck willed it, however, that treacherous scoundrel was too intently watching Mr. Belcher, with an eye to halfpence for holding the pony, to take any heed of me; and so we drove away.
It was growing quite late by the time we reached Camberwell, and that part of it where Mr. Belcher resided. It was in a little dirty street, close by the canal. From what I could see of the houses in the street, they were of the poorest sort; but Mr. Belcher’s house figured amongst them brilliant as a new toy on a dust-heap. It was the richest house as regards bright brass that ever I clapped eyes on. The door, shone on by the lamp that overhung it, was absolutely dazzling: it had a brass knocker; number twenty-six in bold brass figures; a brass key-hole; a brass plate with the inscription “Belcher, Chimney-Sweep,” in red letters on it; and a brass bell, big as those attached to a Piccadilly mansion, with “Belcher” in more red letters on the knob of it, and “Sweep’s Bell” in bright green on the flat part round the knob. Inside the parlour window was a wire blind, blood red, and deeply edged with shiny brass; and on the blind was an effective representation of Buckingham Palace with one of its chimneys on fire, the pot splintered into a hundred fragments, and the flames mounting to the heavens; while her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, wearing her crown as a night-cap, leant out at a bed-room window, with affrighted eyes and dishevelled hair, beckoning imploringly with her sceptre to Mr. Belcher, who, loyally responding to the call of his sovereign by waving his brush and scraper, was hastening across the park to the rescue as fast as his legs could carry him. The name of “R. Belcher” appeared on the cap the running sweep wore, as well as on his brush and on his scraper; but in order to obviate the possibility of any mistake as to his identification, the sentry at the palace gate was seen to be shouting, (the words were carefully preserved in a band just in front of his nose,) “Come on, R. Belcher! We thought you wasn’t coming, as the Prince of Wales, who has been over to your place, said that you was gone to another job.” “So I was—at the Duke of Wellington’s,” replies R. Belcher; “but at the calls of my Queen I left it blazin’—and here I am.”
A boy about my own age, and as ragged and black as either of Mr. Pike’s boys, hearing the sound of the cart wheels, made his appearance from the side of the house, (it stood at a corner,) and took the pony by the head. Mr. Belcher got out of the cart, leaving me in it, and applied himself to the brass knocker.
“Let me help you out, young sir,” said the little sweep, obsequiously addressing me; “or p’r’aps you’d better, gov’nor. I might spoil his togs if I touched ’em.”
“Young sir be—,” Mr. Belcher observed, with a laugh; “he ain’t a sir, you young fool; he’s a new boy.”
“A new boy, eh! Why, you must be ravin’ mad, Dick! What the deuce do you want another boy for?” This observation was made by a female, who responded to Mr. Belcher’s appeal to the brass knocker—a fat, blowsy female, with a shrill voice, and a cap with plenty of brilliant flowers in it perched atop of her untidy head of hair, and earrings in her ears as flashy as the brass knocker, but who was, nevertheless, unmistakably Mrs. Winkship’s sister.
“Want! Yes, I wanted him a lot!” I heard Mr. Belcher growl; “it was either have him, or offend your blessed sister, and that wouldn’t do, you know. Be off in, and I’ll tell you all about it.” Then turning to the boy, he threw him the reins. “Take him” (meaning me) “round to the kitchen with you, Sam; I’ll call him when I want him.”
Never once removing his astonished gaze from my face, Sam did as he was bid, and led the pony round to the back of the sweep’s premises, where there was a large yard, the end of which was open to the Surrey Canal; and at that part of the yard nearest the back of the house was a long black-looking shed, with two doors to it, as could be seen by the light of the lantern Sam carried.
“Out you come, my tulip,” exclaimed he, with an insolent familiarity which I suppose he thought he was entitled to as some compensation for the former civil speech he had been inveigled into wasting over me; “out you come; that there’s the kitchen. Don’t you make too much noise goin’ in, or you might wake the cove wot’s asleep there, and then you might get a hidin’. I’ll be with you in a minnit, soon as I’ve bedded the pony down. No ’casion to knock; shove—it’ll come open.”
The door I was requested to shove was exactly the same in appearance as that which by this time Sam had opened, and which showed the place to be a stable. If there was any difference, indeed, the “kitchen” door was the ugliest and dirtiest door of the two. It came open with a slight push, and I entered. The place was very dark, except for a coke fire that burnt redly in a skillet perched on a bit of paving-stone in the middle of the shed, and at first I could see nothing but the fire; but in a few moments my eyes grew more accustomed to the gloom, and I could make out, close by the fire, a little table and a couple