Christmas Penny Readings: Original Sketches for the Season

“Did you turn the little knob by the pipe?”

“No, sir, I didn’t, sir.”

“Tutt – tutt – tutt,” exclaimed Mr Dodd impatiently, as he went to the foot of the well staircase, opened the stove damper, and then stooped down to open the door and see whether a spark yet remained.

It was well for Mr Dodd that he stooped as he did, for with a fearful crash down came a coal-scuttle from the second floor, striking from side to side of the well staircase, and bestowing upon the stooping gentleman’s bald head a regular douche of knubbly coals, mingled with dust, while the copper scuttle itself fell upon the stove, and knocked off the pineapple knob which formed its apex.

“Lawk-a-mercy, sir, what a good job as it wasn’t the scuttle,” exclaimed Mary, as her master shook himself free from the cheerful coal, and gazed up at the skylight at the top of the staircase, to see whence came the fearful shower, but only to find his eyes resting upon the fat, round, inanimate countenance of the page staring over the bannisters, perfectly aghast at the mischief.

The explanation Mr Dodd sought was most simple. Mr Dodd had not yet fitted his house with a hydraulic lift, after the fashion of those used in our Brobdignagian hotels, but had contented himself with a crane and winch for drawing up coals and other loads. This machine, too, was a failure from the ignorance and apathy of the page, who was a regular grit in Mr Dodd’s cog-wheels, and who this very morning, from some mismanagement, had nearly offered up his master as a sacrifice upon the altar of science.

Under these untoward circumstances Mr Dodd went and acted in the most sensible of ways, that is to say, he went and washed himself; but it is not surprising that he should afterwards feel more gritty than ever when he sat down to partake of his matutinal coffee, made in a patent pot with an impossible name. He boiled his eggs, too, himself, by means of a small tin affair – patent, of course – in which a certain quantity of spirit of wine was burned, and when extinct the eggs were done.

Mr Dodd finished his breakfast in a very excitable and vicious manner. He felt sore, mentally and bodily sore, for his inventions and patents were his hobby, and they either would not work right, or people would not take the trouble to comprehend them. He suffered terribly; but for all that he persevered, and, being a bachelor, he did as he liked. And, being a bachelor, what wonder that he should have a sewing-machine, and amuse himself with his Wheeler and Lathe in stitching round the half-dozen new table-cloths? But the sewing-machine was useless for buttons, so Mr Dodd set to, to invent one that should meet that want, and so be a blessing for every single man. A week passed – two weeks – three weeks; and then, after no end of brain work and modelling for the new machine, to be called the patent button-fixer, invented by Mr Dagon Dodd, that gentleman didn’t do it, and gave up, if not in despair, at all events in despair’s first cousin.

But Boxing-day seemed to have set in badly; while Mr Dodd felt ill-disposed to suffer the stings and arrows. According to the old saying, “it never rains but it pours” – in this case coals – and while the hero of these troubles was sternly gazing upon his fire, with a foot planted against each bright cheek of the stove, Mary came to announce the arrival of a tradesman, now in attendance to take certain orders.

Mr Dodd tried to place himself in a less American position, but found that he was a fixture. It was a wet, slushy morning, and Mr D had determined to try the new patent compo-ment-elastical-everlasting-soled boots – a new patent, and one which should have been devoted to the practice of walking upon ceilings, for they were now tightly fixed to the sides of the fireplace, and Mr Dodd in them, to his unutterable discomfort and annoyance. At the first he imagined that it must be owing to the tar he burned upon his fire – a coke fire, whose combustion was aided by the drips from a small vessel behind the register, containing tar; but Mr D soon found that the material of his new impervious boot-soles was alone to blame; and consequently while the man waited he unlaced and set himself at liberty, a culmination at which he did not arrive without slipping off his chair once, and coming into sharp contact with the fender.

Mr Dodd determined in future to stick to his shoes, for it was evident that his boots meant to stick to something else, and they did too so tightly that they had to be flayed off with the carving-knife, and not easily either, for sometimes the knife became a fixture, and at others the sole became again attached, while the heel was set at liberty, and vice versâ. So Mr Dodd felt ill-tempered.

“Now, Mr Pouter,” said Mr Dodd at last to the tradesman, who had been for some time standing within the door, and smelling very strongly of glue; “now, Mr Pouter, I want the door-springs eased a little, and I want this fixed.”

“Certainly, sir,” said Mr Pouter, smiling at the recollection of his old friends the spring-doors, which had been quite a little fortune to him, and bade fair to remain so, seeing that they required his ministering hands about once a week. We already know how that they would occasionally bang too hard, but they would also bang too softly; when the application of a hand was necessary to make them close, and they might just as well have been common doors. So Mr Pouter smiled.

“What are you laughing at, sir?” exclaimed Mr Dodd, angrily. “I tell you what it is, sir,” he continued, rubbing his sore head, for he could not touch his sore temper, “I’ll tell you what it is, if you can – not attend to my orders without grinning like a gorilla, I’ll – I’ll – I’ll – employ some one else. Such impudence!”

This was an awful threat for Mr Pouter. It was like saying, “I’ll take fifty pounds away from you;” and therefore Mr Pouter, who hated losing a customer, and was much given to cuddling his jobs – that is to say, holding one very tightly till another came in – Mr Pouter looked exceedingly dove-like and mild, ceased smiling, and said appealingly —

“Plee, sir, I didn’t laugh.”

“Hold your tongue, sir,” exclaimed Mr Dodd, “I say you did laugh.”

“But plee, sir, I really didn’t, sir, and I didn’t mean nothin’ at all, sir,” expostulated Mr Pouter, in a most ill-used tone.

“You laughed at me very rudely, sir,” said Mr Dodd, with dignity, “and I now beg that the subject may be dropped. Have you brought your tools?”

“Yes, sir; yes, sir!” exclaimed Mr Pouter, glad enough to have the subject changed, and now looking as solemn and stiff in his features as if his skin were composed of his own shavings.

“Then turn up that carpet, remove the loose boards, and ease the door-spring – not too much, mind; but, there, let that girl pass with the tray.”

“That girl” was Mr Dodd’s housemaid, Mary, who gave her head a dignified toss; but her step was arrested by the sound of a heavy body falling, followed by an exclamation of pain.

“Dear me, sir – very sorry, sir – wouldn’t have had it happen on any account,” said Mr Pouter, stooping to pick up the mallet he had dropped upon Mr Dodd’s particular corn.

But Mr Dodd did not reply, he only limped about the room with anguish depicted upon every feature, while Mr Pouter tremblingly went on with his work.

“There!” exclaimed Mary, upon reaching the kitchen, “I declare if I’ll stop. There’s nothing but messing going on from morning till night. It’s too bad! for there’s that Pouter again, chipping and hammering, and sending the dust a-flying all over the room worse than ever.”

“What was all that noise?” croaked Cook, a very red-faced and red-armed lady.

“Carpenter dropped one of his tools on master’s toe, and sent him a-hopping about the room like a singed monkey,” exclaimed Mary, in a tone of the deepest disgust. And it must be said that this was a very disrespectful and doubtful simile, for the odds were strongly against Mary Housemaid having seen a monkey suffering from the effects of fire.

“What’s the carpenter a-doing of?” said Cook, who was busy making paste, and now paused to have her question answered, and to rub her itching nose with the rolling-pin.

“Why,” exclaimed Cook’s mortal enemy, the Buttons, “master said as old Pouter was to come and fix a jam – something or other.”

“There, now, you be off into the hairy and finish them shoes,” exclaimed Mrs Cook, fiercely. “Nobody arst your opinion; so come, now, be off!”

Buttons did “be off,” for under the circumstances it would have been rash to have stayed, since Mrs Cook was going at him, rolling-pin in hand, with the very evident intention of using it in the same way as her friend Q1866 did his truncheon. But Buttons was not going to be bundled out of the kitchen that way “he knowed,” so he took his revenge by flattening his nose against the kitchen-window, just where he would be most in his culinary tyrant’s light; and then in pantomimic show he began to deride Mrs Cook’s actions, till that lady rushed out at him, when he retreated to his den beneath the pavement, and went on with his work for quite five minutes, then, with a shoe covering one hand and a brush in the other, he made his appearance at the kitchen-door, to deliver the following mystic announcement: —

“It worn’t a jam, it were a preserver,” but he retreated again with great rapidity to avoid the paste pin launched at his head by the irate cook, but the utensil only struck the closed door, when Master Buttons again inserted his head to howl out a derisive “Boo-o-o,” and then disappeared till dinner time.

But matters progressed so satisfactorily up stairs, that by five o’clock Mr Pouter departed, basket on back, with half a yard of saw sticking out, to tickle and scratch those whom he met, to whom on the pavement he was just such an agreeable obstacle to encounter as a British war chariot, with its scythed axletrees, must have been to all concerned. But Mr Dodd was placid, the door worked beautifully, and he determined to have every other door in the house seen to and re-adjusted. So Mr Dodd dined, and at last retired to bed, serene and happy in his expression.

That very night something happened.

It was midnight, and, save when the noise of some cab, conveying the Christmas folk home, could be heard, all was still. But there were voices to be heard in the attic of Number Nine. There was a candle on a chair beside the bed, and Cook and Mary were sitting up, the one listening, while the other slowly waded through the thrilling plot of the “to be continued” tale in the Penny Mystifier.

The night was cold, and shawls thrown over shoulders was the mode, while slowly see-sawing her body backwards and forwards in bed, Mary, after once reading, went back and epitomised the tale for Cook’s benefit, that lady not having been very clear upon two or three points.

“Then,” said Mary, “when she finds as her par won’t let her marry De Belleville, she sits by the open winder, with the snow rivalling her arm’s whiteness, and a lamenting of her hard fate, and it’s quite dark, and her lover comes and begs of her to fly with him.”

“Go in a fly,” said Cook, approvingly.

“No! no! go off with him,” said Mary.

“Ah! I see,” said Cook, “go on.”

“And, after being begged and prayed a deal, she says as she will, and he fetches the ladder; and, just as she’s done falling on his neck and weeping, a mysterious voice says – ”

“Oh!” cried the domestics in horrified tones as they clung together, for in the stillness of the night there was a fearful cry from below stairs, followed by the noise of something heavy falling.

“It’s the biler busted, Mary!” shivered and sobbed the cook.

“Oh no, it’s master being murdered,” gasped Mary; “I know it is. Ennery! Ennery! Ennery!” she cried, banging at the frail partition wall to arouse Buttons, who at last condescended to wake up and knock in answer.

“Oh! do get up and go down; there’s something the matter!” cried Mary and Cook together.

“Oh, ah! you go,” came back in muffled tones from the sweet youth.

“Oh, do go, there’s a good boy!” said Cook sweetly; “do go down and see.”

“Ah! I dessay,” said Buttons, recalling the morning’s treatment.

A compromise was at length effected, and the three domestics stood upon the top of the staircase gazing down, while the moon looked sideways at them through the skylight.

“Ah! I see you!” cried Cook to an imaginary burglar. “You’d better go: here’s the perlice a-coming,” which was a great fib of Mrs Cook’s, for there was not a policeman near; though, from the lady’s tones and confident way of speaking, it might have been imagined that there was a police barracks on the roof, just within call.

“Cook!” cried a faint voice.

“There. I know’d it was!” cried Mary. “It’s master, half killed.”

“Here, help! come down!” came up again faintly.

“Oh! we dussen’t, sir!” chorused Mr Dodd’s servants.

But at length Buttons was pushed forward, and, a landing at a time, the timid trio slowly descended to the assistance of poor Mr Dodd, whom they found half-stunned and bleeding upon the dining-room door mat; but warm water, diachylon, and half a glass of brandy revived Mr Dodd so that he was able to re-send his servants to bed, and then retire himself, and ponder upon the advisability of having mechanical life-preservers attached to the lower room doors, since the experimental affair fixed that day by Mr Pouter had proved so awkward, when its owner had hurriedly gone down to fetch the letters left upon the dining-room chimney-piece; though if Mr Dodd had been a burglar, the effect would have been most effectual as well as striking.

“No,” said Mr Dodd, as he turned his aching head to find an easier spot upon the pillow. “No, I think bells are the best after all.”

Next morning Mr Dodd was too ill to rise, and many of his Christmas-boxing friends who had omitted to call the previous day, went away empty. Mr Pouter’s bill has decreased yearly, for Mr Dodd’s faith has been shaken in patents; while as to spring-guns in grounds, and preservers set with springs on doors, surely it is better to suffer imaginary dangers than to run real risk, for really it cannot be pleasant to be caught in your own trap.