Wilfer could come out, there was a lady waiting who would be glad to speak with him. The delivery of these mysterious words from the mouth of a footman caused so great an excitement in the counting-house, that a youthful scout was instantly appointed to follow Rumty, observe the lady, and come in with his report. Nor was the agitation by any means diminished, when the scout rushed back with the intelligence that the lady was 'a slap-up gal in a bang-up chariot.'
Rumty himself, with his pen behind his ear under his rusty hat, arrived at the carriage-door in a breathless condition, and had been fairly lugged into the vehicle by his cravat and embraced almost unto choking, before he recognized his daughter. 'My dear child!' he then panted, incoherently. 'Good gracious me! What a lovely woman you are! I thought you had been unkind and forgotten your mother and sister.'
'I have just been to see them, Pa dear.'
'Oh! and how--how did you find your mother?' asked R. W., dubiously.
'Very disagreeable, Pa, and so was Lavvy.'
'They are sometimes a little liable to it,' observed the patient cherub; 'but I hope you made allowances, Bella, my dear?'
'No. I was disagreeable too, Pa; we were all of us disagreeable together. But I want you to come and dine with me somewhere, Pa.'
'Why, my dear, I have already partaken of a--if one might mention such an article in this superb chariot--of a--Saveloy,' replied R.
Wilfer, modestly dropping his voice on the word, as he eyed the canary-coloured fittings.
'Oh! That's nothing, Pa!'
'Truly, it ain't as much as one could sometimes wish it to be, my dear,' he admitted, drawing his hand across his mouth. 'Still, when circumstances over which you have no control, interpose obstacles between yourself and Small Germans, you can't do better than bring a contented mind to hear on'--again dropping his voice in deference to the chariot--'Saveloys!'
'You poor good Pa! Pa, do, I beg and pray, get leave for the rest of the day, and come and pass it with me!'
'Well, my dear, I'll cut back and ask for leave.'
'But before you cut back,' said Bella, who had already taken him by the chin, pulled his hat off, and begun to stick up his hair in her old way, 'do say that you are sure I am giddy and inconsiderate, but have never really slighted you, Pa.'
'My dear, I say it with all my heart. And might I likewise observe,' her father delicately hinted, with a glance out at window, 'that perhaps it might he calculated to attract attention, having one's hair publicly done by a lovely woman in an elegant turn-out in Fenchurch Street?'
Bella laughed and put on his hat again. But when his boyish figure bobbed away, its shabbiness and cheerful patience smote the tears out of her eyes. 'I hate that Secretary for thinking it of me,' she said to herself, 'and yet it seems half true!'
Back came her father, more like a boy than ever, in his release from school. 'All right, my dear. Leave given at once. Really very handsomely done!'
'Now where can we find some quiet place, Pa, in which I can wait for you while you go on an errand for me, if I send the carriage away?'
It demanded cogitation. 'You see, my dear,' he explained, 'you really have become such a very lovely woman, that it ought to he a very quiet place.' At length he suggested, 'Near the garden up by the Trinity House on Tower Hill.' So, they were driven there, and Bella dismissed the chariot; sending a pencilled note by it to Mrs Boffin, that she was with her father.
'Now, Pa, attend to what I am going to say, and promise and vow to be obedient.'
'I promise and vow, my dear.'
'You ask no questions. You take this purse; you go to the nearest place where they keep everything of the very very best, ready made; you buy and put on, the most beautiful suit of clothes, the most beautiful hat, and the most beautiful pair of bright boots (patent leather, Pa, mind!) that are to be got for money; and you come back to me.'
'But, my dear Bella--'
'Take care, Pa!' pointing her forefinger at him, merrily. 'You have promised and vowed. It's perjury, you know.'
There was water in the foolish little fellow's eyes, but she kissed them dry (though her own were wet), and he bobbed away again.
After half an hour, he came back, so brilliantly transformed, that Bella was obliged to walk round him in ecstatic admiration twenty times, before she could draw her arm through his, and delightedly squeeze it.
'Now, Pa,' said Bella, hugging him close, 'take this lovely woman out to dinner.'
'Where shall we go, my dear?'
'Greenwich!' said Bella, valiantly. 'And be sure you treat this lovely woman with everything of the best.'
While they were going along to take boat, 'Don't you wish, my dear,' said R. W., timidly, 'that your mother was here?'
'No, I don't, Pa, for I like to have you all to myself to-day. I was always your little favourite at home, and you were always mine.
We have run away together often, before now; haven't we, Pa?'
'Ah, to be sure we have! Many a Sunday when your mother was--was a little liable to it,' repeating his former delicate expression after pausing to cough.
'Yes, and I am afraid I was seldom or never as good as I ought to have been, Pa. I made you carry me, over and over again, when you should have made me walk; and I often drove you in harness, when you would much rather have sat down and read your news-paper: didn't I?'
'Sometimes, sometimes. But Lor, what a child you were! What a companion you were!'
'Companion? That's just what I want to be to-day, Pa.'
'You are safe to succeed, my love. Your brothers and sisters have all in their turns been companions to me, to a certain extent, but only to a certain extent. Your mother has, throughout life, been a companion that any man might--might look up to--and--and commit the sayings of, to memory--and--form himself upon--if he--'
'If he liked the model?' suggested Bella.
'We-ell, ye-es,' he returned, thinking about it, not quite satisfied with the phrase: 'or perhaps I might say, if it was in him.
