第169章

MR. MOULD WAS SURROUNDED by his household gods. He was enjoying the sweets of domestic repose, and gazing on them with a calm delight. The day being sultry, and the window open, the legs of Mr. Mould were on the window-seat, and his back reclined against the shutter. Over his shining head a handkerchief was drawn, to guard his baldness from the flies. The room was fragrant with the smell of punch, a tumbler of which grateful compound stood upon a small round table, convenient to the hand of Mr. Mould; so deftly mixed that as his eye looked down into the cool transparent drink, another eye, peering brightly from behind the crisp lemon-peel, looked up at him, and twinkled like a star.

Deep in the City, and within the ward of Cheap, stood Mr. Mould's establishment.

His Harem, or, in other words, the common sitting room of Mrs. Mould and family, was at the back, over the little counting-house behind the shop: abutting on a churchyard small and shady. In this domestic chamber Mr. Mould now sat; gazing, a placid man, upon his punch and home. If, for a moment at a time, he sought a wider prospect, whence he might return with freshened zest to these enjoyments, his moist glance wandered like a sunbeam through a rural screen of scarlet runners, trained on strings before the window, and he looked down, with an artist's eye, upon the graves.

The partner of his life, and daughters twain, were Mr. Mould's companions.

Plump as any partridge was each Miss Mould, and Mrs. M. was plumper than the two together. So round and chubby were their fair proportions, that they might have been the bodies once belonging to the angels' faces in the shop below, grown up, with other heads attached to make them mortal.

Even their peachy cheeks were puffed out and distended, as though they ought of right to be performing on celestial trumpets. The bodiless cherubs in the shop, who were depicted as constantly blowing those instruments for ever and ever without any lungs, played, it is to be presumed, entirely by ear.

Mr. Mould looked lovingly at Mrs. Mould, who sat hard by, and was a helpmate to him in his punch as in all other things. Each seraph daughter, too, enjoyed her share of his regards, and smiled upon him in return. So bountiful were Mr. Mould's possessions, and so large his stock in trade, that even there, within his household sanctuary, stood a cumbrous press, whose mahogany maw was filled with shrouds, and winding-sheets, and other furniture of funerals. But, though the Misses Mould had been brought up, as one may say, beneath his eye, it had cast no shadow on their timid infancy or blooming youth. Sporting behind the scenes of death and burial from cradlehood, the Misses Mould knew better. Hatbands, to them, were but so many yards of silk or crape; the final robe but such a quantity of linen.

The Misses Mould could idealise a player's habit, or a court-lady's petticoat, or even an act of parliament. But they were not to be taken in by palls.

They made them sometimes.

The premises of Mr. Mould were hard of hearing to the boisterous noises in the great main streets, and nestled in a quiet corner, where the City strife became a drowsy hum, that sometimes rose and sometimes fell and sometimes altogether ceased: suggesting to a thoughtful mind a stoppage in Cheapside. The light came sparkling in among the scarlet runners, as if the churchyard winked at Mr. Mould, and said, `We understand each other;' and from the distant shop a pleasant sound arose of coffin-making with a low melodious hammer, rat, tat, tat, tat alike promoting slumber and digestion.

`Quite the buzz of insects,' said Mr. Mould, closing his eyes in a perfect luxury. `It puts one in mind of the sound of animated nature in the agricultural districts. It's exactly like the woodpecker tapping.'

`The woodpecker tapping the hollow elm tree,' observed Mrs. Mould, adapting the words of the popular melody to the description of wood commonly used in the trade.

`Ha, ha!' laughed Mr. Mould. `Not at all bad, my dear. We shall be glad to hear from you again, Mrs. M. Hollow elm tree, eh! Ha, ha! Very good indeed. I've seen worse than that in the Sunday papers, my love.'

Mrs. Mould, thus encouraged, took a little more of the punch, and handed it to her daughters, who dutifully followed the example of their mother.

`Hollow elm tree, eh?' said Mr. Mould, making a slight motion with his legs in his enjoyment of the joke. `It's beech in the song. Elm, eh? Yes, to be sure. Ha, ha, ha! Upon my soul, that's one of the best things I know?' He was so excessively tickled by the jest that he couldn't forget it, but repeated twenty times, `Elm, eh? Yes, to be sure. Elm, of course.

Ha, ha, ha! Upon my life, you know, that ought to be sent to somebody who could make use of it. It's one of the smartest things that ever was said.

Hollow elm tree, eh? of course. Very hollow. Ha, ha, ha!'

Here a knock was heard at the room door.

`That's Tacker, I know,' said Mrs. Mould, `by the wheezing he makes. Who that hears him now, would suppose he'd ever had wind enough to carry the feathers on his head! Come in, Tacker.'

`Beg your pardon, ma'am,' said Tacker, looking in a little way. `I thought our Governor was here.'

`Well! so he is,' cried Mould.

`Oh! I didn't see you, I'm sure,' said Tacker, looking in a little farther.

`You wouldn't be inclined to take a walking one of two with the plain wood and a tin plate, I suppose?'

`Certainly not,' replied Mr. Mould, `much too common. Nothing to say to it.'

`I told 'em it was precious low,' observed Mr. Tacker.

`Tell 'em to go somewhere else. We don't do that style of business here,' said Mr. Mould. `Like their impudence to propose it. Who is it?'

`Why,' returned Tacker, pausing, `that's where it is, you see. It's the beadle's son-in-law.'

`The beadle's son-in-law, eh?' said Mould. `Well! I'll do it if the beadle follows in his cocked hat; not else. We carry it off that way, by looking official, but it'll be low enough then. His cocked hat, mind!'