Chapter LIII

“Well, I hope you have been comfortable in my absence, Mrs. Hall,” said Mrs. Skiddy, after despatching her husband to market, as she seated herself in the chair nearest the door; “ha! ha! John and I may call it quits now. He is a very good fellow—John; except these little tantrums he gets into once in a while; the only way is, to put a stop to it at once, and let him see who is master. John never will set a river on fire; there’s no sort of use in his trying to take the reins—the man wasn’t born for it. I’m too sharp for him, that’s a fact. Ha! ha! poor Johnny! I must tell you what a trick I played him about two years after our marriage.

“You must know he had to go away on business for Fogg & Co., to collect bills, or something of that sort. Well, he made a great fuss about it, as husbands who like to go away from home always do; and said he should ‘pine for the sight of me, and never know a happy hour till he saw me again,’ and all that; and finally declared he would not go, without I would let him take my Daguerreotype. Of course, I knew that was all humbug; but I consented. The likeness was pronounced ‘good,’ and placed by me in his travelling trunk, when I packed his clothes. Well, he was gone a month, and when he came back, he told me (great fool) what a comfort my Daguerreotype was to him, and how he had looked at it twenty times a day, and kissed it as many more; whereupon I went to his trunk, and opening it, took out the case and showed it to him—without the plate, which I had taken care to slip out of the frame just before he started, and which he had never found out! That’s a specimen of John Skiddy!—and John Skiddy is a fair specimen of the rest of his sex, let me tell you, Mrs. Hall. Well, of course he looked sheepish enough; and now, whenever I want to take the nonsense out of him, all I have to do is to point to that Daguerreotype case, which I keep lying on the mantel on purpose. When a woman is married, Mrs. Hall, she must make up her mind either to manage, or to be managed; I prefer to manage,” said the amiable Mrs. Skiddy; “and I flatter myself John understands it by this time. But, dear me, I can’t stand here prating to you all day. I must look round and see what mischief has been done in my absence, by that lazy-looking red-faced German girl,” and Mrs. Skiddy laughed heartily, as she related how she had sent her spinning through the front door the night before.

Half the forenoon was occupied by Mrs. Skiddy in counting up spoons, forks, towels, and baby’s pinafores, to see if they had sustained loss or damage during her absence.

“Very odd dinner don’t come,” said she, consulting the kitchen clock; “it is high time that beef was on, roasting.”

It was odd—and odder still that Skiddy had not appeared to tell her why the dinner didn’t come. Mrs. Skiddy wasted no time in words about it. No; she seized her bonnet, and went immediately to Fogg & Co., to get some tidings of him; they were apparently quite as much at a loss as herself to account for Skiddy’s non-appearance. She was just departing, when one of the sub-clerks, whom the unfortunate Skiddy had once snubbed, whispered a word in her ear, the effect of which was instantaneous. Did she let the grass grow under her feet till she tracked Skiddy to “the wharf,” and boarded the “Sea-Gull,” bound for California, and brought the crestfallen man triumphantly back to his domicil, amid convulsions of laughter from the amused captain and his crew? No.

“There, now,” said his amiable spouse, untying her bonnet, “there’s another flash in the pan, Skiddy. Anybody who thinks to circumvent Matilda Maria Skiddy, must get up early in the morning, and find themselves too late at that. Now hold this child,” dumping the doomed baby into his lap, “while I comb my hair. Goodness knows you weren’t worth bringing back; but when I set out to have my own way, Mr. Skiddy, Mount Vesuvius shan’t stop me.”

Skiddy tended the baby without a remonstrance; he perfectly understood, that for a probationary time he should be put “on the limits,” the street-door being the boundary line. He heaved no sigh when his coat and hat, with the rest of his wearing apparel, were locked up, and the key buried in the depths of his wife’s pocket. He played with Tommy, and made card-houses for Sammy and Johnny, wound several tangled skeins of silk for “Maria Matilda,” mended a broken button on the closet door, replaced a missing knob on one of the bureau drawers, and appeared to be in as resigned and proper a frame of mind as such a perfidious wretch could be expected to be in.

Two or three weeks passed in this state of incarceration, during which the errand-boy of Fogg & Co. had been repeatedly informed by Mrs. Skiddy, that the doctor hoped Mr. Skiddy would soon be sufficiently convalescent to attend to business. As to Skiddy, he continued at intervals to shed crocodile tears over his past short-comings, or rather his short-goings! In consequence of this apparently submissive frame of mind, he, one fine morning, received total absolution from Mrs. Skiddy, and leave to go to the store; which Skiddy peremptorily declined, desiring, as he said, to test the sincerity of his repentance by a still longer period of probation.

“Don’t be a fool, Skiddy,” said Maria Matilda, pointing to the Daguerreotype case, and then crowding his beaver down over his eyes; “don’t be a fool. Make a B line for the store, now, and tell Fogg you’ve had an attack of room-a-tism;” and Maria Matilda laughed at her wretched pun.

Skiddy obeyed. No Uriah Heep could have out-done him in “’umbleness,” as he crept up the long street, until a friendly corner hid him from the lynx eyes of Maria Matilda. Then “Richard was himself again”! Drawing a long breath, our flying Mercury whizzed past the mile-stones, and, before sun-down of the same day, was under full sail for California.

Just one half hour our Napoleon in petticoats spent in reflection, after being satisfied that Skiddy was really “on the deep blue sea.” In one day she had cleared her house of boarders, and reserving one room for herself and children, filled all the other apartments with lodgers; who paid her good prices, and taking their meals down town, made her no trouble beyond the care of their respective rooms.

About a year after a letter came from Skiddy. He was “disgusted” with ill-luck at gold-digging, and ill-luck everywhere else; he had been “burnt out,” and “robbed,” and everything else but murdered; and “’umbly” requested his dear Maria Matilda to send him the “passage-money to return home.”

Mrs. Skiddy’s picture should have been taken at that moment! My pen fails! Drawing from her pocket a purse well filled with her own honest earnings, she chinked its contents at some phantom shape discernible to her eyes alone; while through her set teeth hissed out, like ten thousand serpents, the word

“N—e—v—e—r!”