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"I'll not listen to reason," she said, now in full possession of her voice, which had been rather choked with sobbing. "Reason always means what someone else has got to say. Now I think what I've got to say is good enough reason; but reason or not, I'll say it, and I'll stick to it. I've money in the Savings Bank, and I've a good stock of clothes, and I'm not going to leave Miss Matty.
The next thing to do was to see Theodore and to hand him the money; and being in haste to do this before he should have time to give the dreaded information to the police, Tony went to the boarding-place which was his home at present, Matty waiting for her brother on the neighboring corner, and asked for Theodore.
"What pretty hair you have, Matty!" was Miss Craven's next advance; and, as she spoke, she lightly touched with her gloved finger the shining coil which many a society belle might have envied. A gleam lighted up the dull, heavy eyes, and Matty raised them to the dear old lady's face.
If my old man couldn't think of me for ten minutes without snivelling, I'd have a divorce." Matty Cann smiled wanly. He had no great cause to "buck up," his share of the boiled leg would be very small indeed and entirely knuckle, the Professor holding that the knuckle end was not fat-producing. "It's Jane's birthday this day week, an' little Mat'll be two year old the day after.
Thanks to Matty Cann, a change of raiment was made in the cell, and Nickie Crips appeared in court in his proper person, and was fined two pounds. Nicholas Crips paid his fine, collected his belongings from the Museum of Marvels, and went forth into the great world again, a man amongst men. His career as an artist was ended.
But, alas! silk could not be had for nothing. It would be an insult to offer Bell's old coat and the two pairs of trousers gone at the knees for this exquisite substance. "Sixteen yards," solemnly pronounced Mrs. Middlemass, when the silence had been sufficiently long. "Sixteen yards for three pound ten. There! it's a present I'm making to you, Miss Matty." "I like it very much," said Matty.
She would either marry Joe Butterfield in sheer desperation, and become a farmer's household drudge; settle down into a sour spinster, content to make butter, gossip, and lay up money all her days; or do what poor Matty Stone had done, try to crush and curb her needs and aspirations till the struggle grew too hard, and then in a fit of despair end her life, and leave a tragic story to haunt their quiet river.
I saw Miss Matty nerving herself up for a confession; and at last out it came. She owned that, ever since she had been a girl, she had dreaded being caught by her last leg, just as she was getting into bed, by some one concealed under it.
Johnny, it seemed, always exacted a certain amount of cleanliness and decency as the price of her admission into his shop; not, perhaps, that he had any inherent love for this virtue, as such, or that his own comfort and happiness depended upon them, but because he feared that his trade might be injured if his customers found there such a dirty, ragged little object as Matty had formerly been.
He kept brushing his hand before his eyes as I spoke and when I went back to Martha's offer the evening before, of receiving Miss Matty as a lodger, he fairly walked away from me to the window, and began drumming with his fingers upon it. Then he turned abruptly round, and said, "See, Mary, how a good, innocent life makes friends all around. Confound it!
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