CHAPTER V.

THE preparations for, and talk about, the coming christening reminded Robert Birt of the nameless situation of his own infant. It was clear that the boy could not go through life as he had begun it; as his "little kid," or even as "Young Coachey." It appeared that sponsors were requisite in order to make the matter legal; and, of course, it was as well that these should be as respectable as possible,—householders, or, at least, people with a floor to themselves. The landlord of the "Dog and Duck" was an influential man, and had permitted him to run up a pretty long score without remonstrance. It would certainly be a complimentary thing to make that gentleman a godfather, and a sort of acknowledgment as well. Master and man-Mr. Hollis and Birt-had very similar notions of sponsorship, and both found a little difficulty in getting the three offices filled to their satisfaction; neither butler nor footman were to be thought of by the latter parent, for they had

both joined the Cook and Lucy faction for obvious reasons, and contemned the nursery; the female domestics too were swayed by this great cabal, and Mr. Birt's acquaintance with the softer sex, beside these, was limited.

Mrs. Groves' offer to stand "for want of a better" was, therefore, eagerly accepted; and not only that, but he interrogated her as to whether a bottle of gin or so might induce her better half to be answerable for the little one at the baptismal font: he had not the luck of knowing Mr. G., he said, by which means he hoped it would not be thought a liberty.

"Not by any means," answered the lady; "but the gin had better be out of the question, as John is, thank Heaven, a teetotaller. Howsomever, I doubt of his undertaking the job kindly, because he is of a different religion like."

"Not a Hatheist, I ope," quoth the coachman, in orthodox alarm.

"Sure, I can't say," replied the tailor's wife, with some indifference; "but an old beggar-man, who lodged with us at one time, and knew a deal of these matters, told me he thought he was a bit of a Calvin. But my husband is as good a man as lives, whatever that may be, you may rely on't."

"Then," said the coachman, with simplicity,

"I am sure he will stand for my poor little motherless boy."

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Perhaps so, and perhaps not," replied the less sanguine lady. "You will find him at twelve o'clock at his dinner, and you had better go then and speak to him yourself."

It seems strange that the exquisite manners and customs of Bulbul Square should never have penetrated into Rag Street, which lay within twenty yards of it,-nay, that they should not even have so much as found their way down to the kitchen and servants' hall from the first and dining-room floors. But so it was; without even the avant courier of a visiting-card did Mr. Birt, coachman, invade the privacy of Mr. Groves, tailor, and choose for the period of his incursion, of all times in the world,—the dinner hour.

A short, thin, wiry-looking old man was Volney Groves; unnecessarily short, worn thin, prematurely old, but, luckily for him, as we have said, wiry. The task of providing with fifteen shillings a-week, which never increased, for a family which was continually increasing, was written upon his face; the autograph of care was set upon his stony brow as plainly as words upon a tombstone; and the short grey hair grew over it all sorts of ways, like withering grasses. To him, life had been a sort of perpetual treadmill,—a tramp, tramp,

tramp, every day and all day long, upon steps that led (almost certainly) to nothing,-by no means the rounds of a ladder such as we climb, my respectable classes, every step of which brings us nearer to something that we covet. Rent, firing, clothes, food for eight persons, to be procured with but fifteen shillings a-week!-one-hundredth part, at the very most, of the weekly income of the poorest dwellers in Bulbul Square, with whom times, they say, never were so bad; and what with the knavery of Irish tenants and the depreciation of Railway stock, whose daughters were almost reduced to wear winter bouquets of azalias instead of camelias! But even the fifteen shillings are not to be relied upon; for disease, which rarely visits the Square unless in some graceful form of "indisposition" or "nerves," abides in Rag Street under many a terrible alias. We must subtract, then, the subscription to a Medical Club. Death, too (can we say unhappily ?), comes far oftener to these pauperum taberna; and the funeral rites, however humble, must be paid, and paid for. We must subtract the money for the Burial Society as well. Volney Groves had seen three little deal coffins borne away from under his roof; nay, from the very room where the living parents, and brothers, and sisters, took their earthly rest. He had been himself struck down at different times

by cholera, by fever, by ague; and, while he lay powerless in his bed, he had seen his children lacking food.

Oh, ye mighty spirits, dead or alive, to whom, it seems, by your own account, Genius has worked such bitter wrongs,-you, consumed by your high passions, frenzied with publishers, drunk with the god, and you, Religionists, hair-splitting, sleek doubters, who are torn and convulsed in your inmost souls by a word more or less in a creed,—your wrongs, your sorrows, your doubts, are just as nothing, believe us, to the troubles of such men as Volney Groves,-less than nothing, and vanity, be sure, in the sight of your common Father.

There are very few things worse in the world than going without one's own dinner against one's will (although there is a certain sickly but pleasant sentimentalism in doing so voluntarily); there are none so bad as seeing those we love in want of theirs. We cannot say we think it unnaturalhowever reprehensible and faulty-that a certain feeling of irritation should exist in the ill-fed against the pampered; that Mr. Groves, in short, in company with his six children, over their very little bacon and their great deal of greens, should be disinclined to welcome an uninvited guest in the Hollis livery, and that to Mr. Birt's "Good