CHAPTER IV.

"THIS IS THE CAT THAT KILLED THE RAT."

GREAT excitement and consternation were prevailing in — Street the next morning.

John Drinkrow had been absent for a couple of nights—called away to the north of England to a dying relative—and during his absence a strange event had taken place.

We might say here that attention to his relations' wishes was not John's invariable habit, but this kinsman was a rich man, and John thought that his presence at the bedside might influence the conditions of the will, and the consequent division of the property. Hence his venturing on a journey which, even by third-class in a cheap train, must have wrung the miser's heart by its expense.

But be this as it may, on the second night of his absence "the house that Jack built" was broken into by a band of practised housebreakers, and, as if guided by instinct, they took their way straight to the miser's strong-room, where, having the proper instruments for the execution of their wicked designs, they had succeeded in forcing open one box and in carrying off a small bag of gold.

They would doubtless have done more mischief, but the noise that they unavoidably made, awoke the old housekeeper, Mrs. Curr, who in her turn roused Tom.

Tom armed himself with a life-preserver, and came down from his room; but the burglars had already caught the alarm, and two of them made off; the third, more venturesome or more greedy than the rest, stayed a moment longer in the miser's room, and was met at the head of the stairs by Tom. The black-masked figure tried to slip by him, but Tom made a rush, and as the burglar tried to gain the stairs, Tom struck at him with his heavy weapon. The blow fell full on the back, between the shoulders, and the robber, what with the pain and shock of the blow, what with the blind haste with which he was trying to escape, fell half way down stairs. To this fall, however, he mainly owed his escape, for Tom, of course, followed in a somewhat less headlong manner, and meanwhile the thief had time to pick himself up and make for the back door by which he had entered. A moment later and his dark form was lost in the shadows of the night.

It would not have been wise to apply to the police, and thus to make public the private affairs of the miser; so Tom and his father—for the latter reached home that day—bore their trouble as they best might, and tried to make their possessions more secure by the fixing of an alarum, and by the addition of several modern appliances for further safety. But the loss the two men had sustained only strengthened still more their passion for hoarding, until at last John Drinkrow grudged himself even the necessaries of life; and Tom, though he grumbled at his father's meanness in the things that touched his own comfort, was almost as penurious in his way.

Poor Mrs. Curr, the housekeeper, had hard work sometimes to provide food for the little household with the meagre allowance supplied her. Since Ratcliffe had gone, John Drinkrow had reduced by one-quarter the money for the expenses, and it was harder than ever to arrange and economise.

For Ratcliffe was gone—gone for good; his father's home would be his no more; and only one of the three people whom he had left behind him at "the house that Jack built" missed him or wanted him back, and this was good Mrs. Curr, the kindest-hearted, most motherly body in the world. She had held her situation in John Drinkrow's family for some years, and had become really attached to Ratcliffe, who, with all his faults, had a warm heart, and seemed to be the only on capable of receiving or giving affection.

Mrs. Curr was not a woman of much education, but she had strong good sense and high principle. And when she found, after the quarrel between father and son, that Ratcliffe returned no more, and that no wonder or anxiety was expressed either by John or Tom, Mrs. Curr became first distressed, then indignant; and she resolved to find out why her favourite had been banished from his home, and whether he were not to come back shortly.

Accordingly, one evening, when she had carried her week's accounts to her master to look over and correct, as was his wont, she did not move away with her usual "Good night, sir," but stood in the doorway, almost filling it up with her portly figure.

John looked up. "What are you waiting for, Mrs. Curr?" said he, sharply. "You've got your money for next week; why don't you go?"

Mrs. Curr cleared her throat. Hers was a throat that required a good deal of clearing at times, and just now the process had an ominous sound.

"Please, sir," said she, at last, "I was jist a-goin' to ask you about Master Ratcliffe, and when you'll be a-expectin' of him home, for his room ought to be cleaned, and I'd be glad to know when we're to hev the pleasure of him back. I wouldn't hev him find his room other than a welcome home, which clean blinds cost but little, and is worth their weight in anything reasonable for the genteel effect they perduces. Why, sir," and Mrs. Curr again cleared that much enduring throat, "in the last situation as I lived in, my missus (which never would I have left her if so be she hadn't died)—my missis, she said to me allers, 'Curr, clean blinds is a mark of "genteelity," and folks as doesn't look after their winder drapery doesn't know what genteelity is, and—'"

"There—there," growled the miser; "hold your noise, Mrs. Curr. Who cares to hear about your mistress's sayings, or your stupid white blinds? Save yourself the trouble and me the expense of having any got up for my son's room, as he's not coming back any more; and listen, Mrs. Curr, I forbid you to mention his name to me again."

[Illustration: "WHY DON'T YOU GO?"]

The old housekeeper drew herself up, while her cheeks turned the colour of her own cherry cap-ribbons. "Then, sir," she said, in a burst of honest indignation—"then, sir, you ought for to be ashamed of yourself; though, bein' as how I'm a sarvant, it's me that says it as shouldn't; but I can't see you turn agin' your own flesh and blood, and hold my tongue. God help us! Where should we be, I wonder, if our Father that's in heaven treated us as some fathers treat their children! Oh, master, master! I must have my say this once, and then you can send me away if you want to; but if poor Mr. Ratcliffe ain't jist the kind of lad as you wanted him to be, you oughtn't to forget he's been brought up without a mother; nor he wasn't never a child to be drove, but led, which you might have led him anywheres, if so be you'd have loved him. And though I know he's been and acted contrairy, and disobeyed God's command to obey his parents—which it's only one he's got, worse luck—there's a second command, which reads t'other way, 'Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.' And it's discouraged he's been, poor boy, as no one knows better than old Jemima Curr."

As the brave old woman uttered these last words, she cleared her throat once more, and braced herself to meet the thunderbolt of John Drinkrow's indignation, which she thought must fall at once now upon her devoted head. But, much to her amazement, it did not come. John had been astonished at his housekeeper's vehemence, and her fearless way of speaking fairly cowed him for the moment. Besides, he knew her worth from an economical point of view, and he could not afford to quarrel with her yet.

So while she waited, expecting her notice to leave, there was silence. Then the miser looked up, and said, quietly, "If that's all, I'll wish you good night, Mrs. Curr."

"Good night, sir," said the housekeeper, in a tone that showed her amazement, and then she trotted off to her own room, where, after thinking over what had passed, she made up her mind to take the first opportunity she could get of seeking out Ratcliffe, and of showing him by every means in her power that he was not forgotten by at least one of the inmates of "the house that Jack built."

[Illustration]