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Updated: May 10, 2025
The house, or rather cabin, consisted only of two rooms, both on the ground, and both without flooring or ceiling; the black rafters on which the thatch was lying was above, and the uneven soil below; still this place of entertainment was not like the cabins of the very poor: the rooms were both long, and as they ran lengthways down the street, each was the full breadth of the house: in the first sat the widow Mulready, a strong, red-faced, indomitable-looking woman about fifty.
Unceremoniously he grasped her bare arm with his fat hand. "Tell me who it was," he demanded in an ugly tone. She freed herself with a twist, and stepped back, a higher color in her cheeks, a flash of anger in her eyes. "Mr. Mulready," she retorted defiantly. "What of that?" "I wish I was sure," declared the fat adventurer, exasperated.
Mulready, believing that he was about to spring upon him, drew back hastily half a step and threw up his hands to defend himself. Mrs. Mulready threw herself in Ned's way; the boy made no effort to put her aside, but kept his eyes fixed over her shoulder at his stepfather. "Take care!" he said hoarsely, "it will be my turn next time, and when it comes I will kill you, you brute."
Charlie had run at once from the room to fetch his mother, and it was scarcely a minute after the commencement of the outbreak that she rushed into the room, and with a scream threw her arms round her husband. "The young scoundrel!" Mr. Mulready exclaimed, panting, as he released his hold of Ned; "he has been wanting a lesson for a long time, and I have given him one at last.
It seems to me he wasn't fond of mother, and yet she does nothing but cry; I can't make that out, can you?" Ned did not answer; his mother's infatuation for Mr. Mulready had always been a puzzle to him, and he could at present think of no reply which would be satisfactory to Lucy. A constable now came in and said that there were other visitors waiting to see Ned.
"Naturally you wouldn't," chuckled Calendar. "Few people besides the two of us understand the depth of affection existing between Dick, here, and me. We just can't bear to get out of sight of each other. We're sure inseparable since night before last. Odd, isn't it?" "You drop it!" snarled Mulready, in accents so ugly that the listener was startled. "Enough's enough and " "There, there, Dick!
I don't know any one of whom John thinks so highly." Mrs. Mulready turned very pale, and then in a constrained voice said: "Mr. Porson has always been very kind to my sons." Then she sighed deeply and changed the subject of conversation. "Your wife is doing my patient a great deal more good than I have ever been able to do," Dr. Green said one day to the schoolmaster.
Now, having her husband by her side, it was a subject to which she frequently reverted. "Why can't you leave me alone, mother?" Ned burst out one day when Mr. Mulready had left the room. "Can't you leave me in quiet as to my friends, when in two or three months I shall be going away? Bill Swinton is going to enlist in the same regiment in which I am, so as to follow me all over the world.
It seems that Mulready was extremely cross and disagreeable at tea time; nothing, however, took place at the table; but after the meal was over, and the two boys were alone together in that little study of theirs, Ned made some disparaging remarks about Mulready. The door, it seems, was open.
I had hoped that some day circumstances might throw me in contact with him, but it was not for me, a humble manufacturer, to force my acquaintance upon one socially my superior; but, my dear madam, when I heard of that terrible accident, of that noble self devotion, I said to myself, 'William Mulready, when a proper and decent time elapses you must call upon the relict of your late noble and distinguished townsman, and assure her of your sympathy and admiration, even if she spurns you from the door."
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