The Gift of the Sailor: The String of Pearls & Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street — page 397: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER CXXI. SHOWS HOW MRS. OAKLEY RECONCILED HERSELF TO EVERYBODY AT HOME. When Ben and Mrs. Oakley had thus disposed of Mr. Lupin, and left him to his solitary and not very pleasant reflections in a cell of the round-house, they found themselves together in the open street, and Ben, as he cast a woeful glance at her, said— “Well, how does yer feel now? Easy does it! Oh, you ain’t a-been and behaved yourself properly lately—you is like the old bear as we calls Nosey. He’s always a-doing what he shouldn’t, and always a-never doing what he should.” “Ben?” “Well, blaze away. What is yer going to say now?” “T feel, Ben, that I am a very different woman from what I was—very different.” “Then you must have gained by the exchange, for you was, I will say it, anything but a pleasant bit 0’ goods. There’s poor old Oakley a-making of spectacles all days, and a-wearing of his old eyes out—and there’s Miss Johanna, bless her heart! as wise a little bit o’ human nature as you’d wish to see, whether she’s in petticoats or the other things; and yet you neglects ’em both, all for to run arter a canting snivelling wagabone like this Lupin, that we wouldn’t have among the beasteses at the Tower, if so be he’d come and offer himself.” “T know it, Ben—I know it.” “You know it! Why didn’t you know it before?” “T don’t know, Ben; but my eyes are open now. I have had a lesson that to my dying day I shall never forget. I have found that piety may only be a cloak with which to cover up the most monstrous iniquity.” “Oh, you have made that discovery, have you?” “T have, indeed, Ben.” “Well, I knowed as much as that when I was a small baby. It only shows how backward some folks is in coming forward with their edication.” “Yes, Ben.” “Well, and what is you going to be arter now?” “T wish to go home, and I want you to come with me, and to say a kind word for me; I want you to tell them how I now see the error of my ways, and how I am an altered woman, and mean to be a very—very different person than I was.” Here Mrs. Oakley’s genuine feelings got the better of her, and she began to weep bitterly; and Ben, after looking at her for a few moments, cried out— “Why, it’s real, and not like our hyena that only does it to gammon us! Come, Mother Oakley, just pop your front paw under my arm, and I’!l go home with you; and if you don’t get a welcome there, I’m not a beef-eater. Why, the old man will fly right bang out of his wits for joy. You should only see what a house is when the mother and the wife don’t do as she ought. Mother O., you should see what a bit of fire there is in the grate, and what a hearth.” “T know it—I ought to know it.” “You ought to know it!” added Ben, putting himself into an oratorial attitude. “You should only see the old man when dinner time comes round. He goes into the parlour and he finds no fire; then he says—‘Dear me!’” “Yes—yes.” “Then he gives a boy a ha’penny to go and get him something that don’t do him no sort of good from the cook’s shop, and sometimes the boy nabs the ha’penny and the shilling both, and ain’t never heard of again by any means no more.” “No doubt, Ben.” “Then, when tea comes round, it don’t come round at all, and the old man has none; but he takes in a ha’porth® of milk in a jug without a spout, and he drinks that up, cold and miserable, with a penny-loaf, you see.” “Yes—yes.” “And then at night, when there ought to be a little sort of comfort round the fireside, there ain’t none.” “But Johanna, Ben—there is Johanna?” “Johanna?” “Yes. Is she not there to see to some of her father’s comforts? She loves him—I know she does, Ben!” Ben placed his finger by the side of his nose, and in an aside to himself, he said— “Now [Il touch her up a bit—now [’Il punish her for all she has done, and it will serve her right.” Then, elevating his voice, he added—“Did you mention Johanna?” “Yes, Ben, I did.” “Then I’m sorry you did. Perhaps you think she’s been seeing to the old man’s comforts a little—airing his night-cap, and so on— Eh? Is that the idea?” “Yes, I know that she would do anything gladly for her father. She was always most tenderly attached to him.” CORniclooo S CO)