‘Good evening, John!’ said the little man. ‘Good evening, Mum. Good evening, Tilly. Good evening, Unbeknown! How’s Baby, Mum? Boxer’s pretty well I hope?’

‘All thriving, Caleb,’ replied Dot. ‘I am sure you need only look at the dear child, for one, to know that.’

‘And I’m sure I need only look at you for another,’ said Caleb.

He didn’t look at her though; he had a wandering and thoughtful eye which seemed to be always projecting itself into some other time and place, no matter what he said; a description which will equally apply to his voice.

‘Or at John for another,’ said Caleb. ‘Or at Tilly, as far as that goes^[15]. Or certainly at Boxer.’

‘Busy just now, Caleb?’ asked the Carrier.

‘Why, pretty well, John,’ he returned, with the distraught air of a man who was casting about for the Philosopher’s stone, at least. ‘Pretty much so. There’s rather a run on Noah’s Arks at present. I could have wished to improve upon the Family, but I don’t see how it’s to be done at the price. It would be a satisfaction to one’s mind, to make it clearer which was Shems and Hams, and which was Wives. Flies an’t on that scale neither, as compared with elephants you know! Ah! well! Have you got anything in the parcel line for me^[16], John?’

The Carrier put his hand into a pocket of the coat he had taken off; and brought out, carefully preserved in moss and paper, a tiny flower-pot.

‘There it is!’ he said, adjusting it with great care. ‘Not so much as a leaf damaged. Full of buds!’

Caleb’s dull eye brightened, as he took it, and thanked him.

‘Dear, Caleb,’ said the Carrier. ‘Very dear at this season.’

‘Never mind that. It would be cheap to me, whatever it cost,’ returned the little man. ‘Anything else, John?’

‘A small box,’ replied the Carrier. ‘Here you are!’

‘“For Caleb Plummer,”’ said the little man, spelling out the direction. ‘“With Cash.” With Cash, John? I don’t think it’s for me.’

‘With Care,’ returned the Carrier, looking over his shoulder. ‘Where do you make out cash?^[17]’

‘Oh! To be sure!’ said Caleb. ‘It’s all right. With care! Yes, yes; that’s mine. It might have been with cash, indeed, if my dear Boy in the Golden South Americas had lived, John. You loved him like a son; didn’t you? You needn’t say you did. I know, of course. “Caleb Plummer. With care.” Yes, yes, it’s all right. It’s a box of dolls’ eyes for my daughter’s work. I wish it was her own sight in a box, John.’

‘I wish it was, or could be!’ cried the Carrier.

‘Thank’ee,’ said the little man. ‘You speak very hearty. To think that she should never see the Dolls – and them a-staring at her, so bold, all day long! That’s where it cuts. What’s the damage, John?’

‘I’ll damage you,’ said John, ‘if you inquire. Dot! Very near?’

‘Well! it’s like you to say so,’ observed the little man. ‘It’s your kind way. Let me see. I think that’s all.’

‘I think not,’ said the Carrier. ‘Try again.’

‘Something for our Governor, eh?’ said Caleb, after pondering a little while. ‘To be sure. That’s what I came for; but my head’s so running on them Arks and things! He hasn’t been here, has he?’

‘Not he,’ returned the Carrier. ‘He’s too busy, courting.’

‘He’s coming round though,’ said Caleb; ‘for he told me to keep on the near side of the road going home, and it was ten to one he’d take me up. I had better go, by the bye. – You couldn’t have the goodness to let me pinch Boxer’s tail, Mum, for half a moment, could you?’

‘Why, Caleb! what a question!’

‘Oh never mind^[18], Mum,’ said the little man. ‘He mightn’t like it perhaps. There’s a small order just come in, for barking dogs; and I should wish to go as close to Natur’ as I could, for sixpence. That’s all. Never mind, Mum.’

It happened opportunely, that Boxer, without receiving the proposed stimulus, began to bark with great zeal. But, as this implied the approach of some new visitor, Caleb, postponing his study from the life to a more convenient season, shouldered the round box, and took a hurried leave. He might have spared himself the trouble, for he met the visitor upon the threshold.

‘Oh! You are here, are you? Wait a bit. I’ll take you home. John Peerybingle, my service to you. More of my service to your pretty wife. Handsomer every day! Better too, if possible! And younger,’ mused the speaker, in a low voice; ‘that’s the Devil of it!’

‘I should be astonished at your paying compliments, Mr. Tackleton,’ said Dot, not with the best grace in the world; ‘but for your condition.’

‘You know all about it then?’

‘I have got myself to believe it, somehow,’ said Dot.

‘A ft er a hard struggle, I suppose?’

‘Very.’

Tackleton the Toy-merchant, pretty generally known as Gruff and Tackleton – for that was the firm, though Gruff had been bought out long ago; only leaving his name, and as some said his nature, according to its Dictionary meaning, in the business – Tackleton the Toy-merchant, was a man whose vocation had been quite misunderstood by his Parents and Guardians. If they had made him a Money Lender, or a sharp Attorney, or a Sheriff ’s Officer, or a Broker, he might have sown his discontented oats^[19] in his youth, and, after having had the full run of himself in ill-natured transactions, might have turned out amiable, at last, for the sake of a little freshness and novelty. But, cramped and chafing in the peaceable pursuit of toy-making, he was a domestic Ogre, who had been living on children all his life, and was their implacable enemy. He despised all toys; wouldn’t have bought one for the world; delighted, in his malice, to insinuate grim expressions into the faces of brown – paper farmers who drove pigs to market, bellmen who advertised lost lawyers’ consciences, movable old ladies who darned stockings or carved pies; and other like samples of his stock in trade^[20]. In appalling masks; hideous, hairy, red-eyed Jacks in Boxes; Vampire Kites; demoniacal Tumblers who wouldn’t lie down, and were perpetually flying forward, to stare infants out of countenance; his soul perfectly revelled. They were his only relief, and safety-valve. He was great in such inventions. Anything suggestive of a Pony-nightmare was delicious to him. He had even lost money (and he took to that toy very kindly) by getting up Goblin slides for magic-lanterns, whereon the Powers of Darkness were depicted as a sort of supernatural shell-fish, with human faces. In intensifying the portraiture of Giants, he had sunk quite a little capital; and, though no painter himself, he could indicate, for the instruction of his artists, with a piece of chalk, a certain furtive leer for the countenances of those monsters, which was safe to destroy the peace of mind of any young gentleman between the ages of six and eleven, for the whole Christmas or Midsummer Vacation.

What he was in toys, he was (as most men are) in other things. You may easily suppose, therefore, that within the great green cape, which reached down to the calves of his legs, there was buttoned up to the chin an uncommonly pleasant fellow; and that he was about as choice a spirit, and as agreeable a companion, as ever stood in a pair of bull-headedlooking boots with mahogany-coloured tops.

Still, Tackleton, the Toy-merchant, was going to be married. In spite of all this, he was going to be married. And to a young wife too, a beautiful young wife.

He didn’t look much like a bridegroom, as he stood in the Carrier’s kitchen, with a twist in his dry face, and a screw in his body, and his hat jerked over the bridge of his nose, and his hands tucked down into the bottoms of his pockets, and his whole sarcastic ill-conditioned self peering out of one little corner of one little eye, like the concentrated essence of any number of ravens. But, a Bridegroom he designed to be.

‘In three days’ time. Next Thursday. The last day of the first month in the year. That’s my wedding-day,’ said Tackleton.

Did I mention that he had always one eye wide open, and one eye nearly shut; and that the one eye nearly shut, was always the expressive eye? I don’t think I did.

‘That’s my wedding-day!’ said Tackleton, rattling his money.

‘Why, it’s our wedding-day too,’ exclaimed the Carrier.

‘Ha ha!’ laughed Tackleton. ‘Odd! You’re just such another couple. Just!’

The indignation of Dot at this presumptuous assertion is not to be described. What next? His imagination would compass the possibility of just such another Baby, perhaps. The man was mad.

‘I say! A word with you,’ murmured Tackleton, nudging the Carrier with his elbow, and taking him a little apart. ‘You’ll come to the wedding? We’re in the same boat^[21], you know.’

‘How in the same boat?’ inquired the Carrier.

‘A little disparity, you know,’ said Tackleton, with another nudge. ‘Come and spend an evening with us, beforehand.’

‘Why?’ demanded John, astonished at this pressing hospitality.

‘Why?’ returned the other. ‘That’s a new way of receiving an invitation. Why, for pleasure – sociability, you know, and all that!’

‘I thought you were never sociable,’ said John, in his plain way.

‘Tchah! It’s of no use to be anything but free with you, I see,’ said Tackleton. ‘Why, then, the truth is you have a – what tea-drinking people call a sort of a comfortable appearance together, you and your wife. We know better, you know, but —’

‘No, we don’t know better,’ interposed John. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Well! We don’t know better, then,’ said Tackleton. ‘We’ll agree that we don’t. As you like; what does it matter? I was going to say, as you have that sort of appearance, your company will produce a favourable effect on Mrs. Tackleton that will be. And, though I don’t think your good lady’s very friendly to me, in this matter, still she can’t help herself from falling into my views, for there’s a compactness and cosiness of appearance about her that always tells, even in an indifferent case. You’ll say you’ll come?’

‘We have arranged to keep our Wedding-Day (as far as that goes) at home,’ said John. ‘We have made the promise to ourselves these six months. We think, you see, that home —’

‘Bah! what’s home?’ cried Tackleton. ‘Four walls and a ceiling! (why don’t you kill that Cricket? I would! I always do. I hate their noise.) There are four walls and a ceiling at my house. Come to me!’

‘You kill your Crickets, eh?’ said John.

‘Scrunch ’em, sir,’ returned the other, setting his heel heavily on the floor. ‘You’ll say you’ll come? It’s as much your interest as mine, you know, that the women should persuade each other that they’re quiet and contented, and couldn’t be better off^[22]. I know their way. Whatever one woman says, another woman is determined to clinch, always. There’s that spirit of emulation among ’em, sir, that if your wife says to my wife, “I’m the happiest woman in the world, and mine’s the best husband in the world, and I dote on him,” my wife will say the same to yours, or more, and half believe it.’

‘Do you mean to say she don’t, then?’ asked the Carrier.

‘Don’t!’ cried Tackleton, with a short, sharp laugh. ‘Don’t what?’

The Carrier had some faint idea of adding, ‘dote upon you.’ But, happening to meet the half-closed eye, as it twinkled upon him over the turned-up collar of the cape, which was within an ace of poking it out, he felt it such an unlikely part and parcel of anything to be doted on, that he substituted, ‘that she don’t believe it?’

‘Ah, you dog! You’re joking,’ said Tackleton.

But the Carrier, though slow to understand the full drift of his meaning, eyed him in such a serious manner, that he was obliged to be a little more explanatory.

‘I have the humour,’ said Tackleton: holding up the fingers of his left hand, and tapping the forefinger, to imply ‘there I am, Tackleton to wit:’ ‘I have the humour, sir, to marry a young wife, and a pretty wife:’ here he rapped his little finger, to express the Bride; not sparingly, but sharply; with a sense of power. ‘I’m able to gratify that humour and I do. It’s my whim. But – now look there!’

He pointed to where Dot was sitting, thoughtfully, before the fire; leaning her dimpled chin upon her hand, and watching the bright blaze. The Carrier looked at her, and then at him, and then at her, and then at him again.

‘She honours and obeys, no doubt, you know,’ said Tackleton; ‘and that, as I am not a man of sentiment, is quite enough for me. But do you think there’s anything more in it?’

‘I think,’ observed the Carrier, ‘that I should chuck any man out of window, who said there wasn’t.’

‘Exactly so,’ returned the other with an unusual alacrity of assent. ‘To be sure! Doubtless you would. Of course. I’m certain of it. Good night. Pleasant dreams!’

The Carrier was puzzled, and made uncomfortable and uncertain, in spite of himself. He couldn’t help showing it, in his manner.

‘Good night, my dear friend!’ said Tackleton, compassionately. ‘I’m off. We’re exactly alike, in reality, I see. You won’t give us to-morrow evening? Well! Next day you go out visiting, I know. I’ll meet you there, and bring my wife that is to be^[23]. It’ll do her good. You’re agreeable? Thank’ee. What’s that!’

It was a loud cry from the Carrier’s wife: a loud, sharp, sudden cry, that made the room ring, like a glass vessel. She had risen from her seat, and stood like one transfixed by terror and surprise. The Stranger had advanced towards the fire to warm himself, and stood within a short stride of her chair. But quite still.

‘Dot!’ cried the Carrier. ‘Mary! Darling! What’s the matter?’

They were all about her in a moment. Caleb, who had been dozing on the cake-box, in the first imperfect recovery of his suspended presence of mind, seized Miss Slowboy by the hair of her head, but immediately apologised.

‘Mary!’ exclaimed the Carrier, supporting her in his arms. ‘Are you ill! What is it? Tell me, dear!’

She only answered by beating her hands together, and falling into a wild fit of laughter. Then, sinking from his grasp upon the ground, she covered her face with her apron, and wept bitterly. And then she laughed again, and then she cried again, and then she said how cold it was, and suffered him to lead her to the fire, where she sat down as before. The old man standing, as before, quite still.

‘I’m better, John,’ she said. ‘I’m quite well now – I —’

‘John!’ But John was on the other side of her. Why turn her face towards the strange old gentleman, as if addressing him! Was her brain wandering?