with me about something fresh—how to ask me
what she wanted explained—and then she was
(or I thought she was; what does it signify?) so
like my child with those years added to her, that
I half believed it was herself, trying to tell me
where she had been to up in the skies, and what
she had seen since that unhappy night when she
flied away. She had a pretty face, and now that
there was no one to drag at her bright dark hair
and it was all in order, there was a something
touching in her looks that made the cart most
peaceful and most quiet, though not at all
melancolly. [N.B. In the Cheap Jack patter,
we generally sound it, lemonjolly, and it gets a
laugh.]

The way she learnt to understand any look of
mine was truly surprising. When I sold of a
night, she would sit in the cart unseen by them
outside, and would give a eager look into my
eyes when I looked in, and would hand me
straight the precise article or articles I wanted.
And then she would clap her hands and laugh for
joy. And as for me, seeing her so bright, and
remembering what she was when I first lighted
on her, starved and beaten and ragged, leaning
asleep against the muddy cart-wheel, it give
me such heart that I gained a greater heighth of
reputation than ever, and I put Pickleson down
(by the name of Mim's Travelling Giant otherwise
Pickleson) for a fypunnote in my will.

This happiness went on in the cart till she
was sixteen year old. By which time I began to
feel not satisfied that I had done my whole duty
by her, and to consider that she ought to have
better teaching than I could give her. It drew
a many tears on both sides when I commenced
explaining my views to her, but what's right is
right and you can't neither by tears nor laughter
do away with its character.

So I took her hand in mine, and I went with
her one day to the Deaf and Dumb Establishment
in London, and when the gentleman come
to speak to us, I says to him: "Now I'll tell
you what I'll do with you sir. I am nothing
but a Cheap Jack, but of late years I have laid
by for a rainy day notwithstanding. This is my
only daughter (adopted) and you can't produce
a deafer nor a dumber. Teach her the most
that can be taught her, in the shortest separation
that can be named—state the figure for it—and
I am game to put the money down. I won't
bate you a single farthing sir but I'll put down
the money here and now, and I'll thankfully
throw you in a pound to take it. There!" The
gentleman smiled, and then, "Well, well," says
he, "I must first know what she has learnt
already. How do you communicate with her?"
Then I showed him, and she wrote in printed
writing many names of things and so forth, and
we held some sprightly conversation, Sophy and
me, about a little story in a book which the
gentleman showed her and which she was able to
read. "This is most extraordinary," says the
gentleman; "is it possible that you have been her
only teacher?" "I have been her only teacher,
sir," I says, "besides herself." "Then," says
the gentleman, and more acceptable words was
never spoke to me, "you're a clever fellow, and
a good fellow." This he makes known to Sophy,
who kisses his hands, claps her own, and laughs
and cries upon it.

We saw the gentleman four times in all, and
when he took down my name and asked how in
the world it ever chanced to be Doctor, it come
out that he was own nephew by the sister's
side, if you'll believe me, to the very Doctor
that I was called after. This made our footing
still easier, and he says to me:

"Now Marigold, tell me what more do you
want your adopted daughter to know?"

"I want her sir to be cut off from the world as
little as can be, considering her deprivations, and
therefore to be able to read whatever is wrote,
with perfect ease and pleasure."

"My good fellow," urges the gentleman,
opening his eyes wide, "why I can't do that
myself!"

I took his joke and give him a laugh (knowing
by experience how flat you fall without it)
and I mended my words accordingly.

"What do you mean to do with her afterwards?"
asks the gentleman, with a sort of a
doubtful eye. "To take her about the country?"

"In the cart sir, but only in the cart. She
will live a private life, you understand, in the
cart. I should never think of bringing her
infirmities before the public. I wouldn't make a
show of her, for any money."

The gentleman nodded and seemed to approve.

"Well," says he, "can you part with her for
two years?"

"To do her that good—yes, sir."

"There's another question," says the gentleman,
looking towards her: "Can she part with
you for two years?"

I don't know that it was a harder matter of
itself (for the other was hard enough to me),
but it was harder to get over. However, she
was pacified to it at last, and the separation
betwixt us was settled. How it cut up both of us
when it took place, and when I left her at the
door in the dark of an evening, I don't tell. But
I know this:—remembering that night, I shall
never pass that same establishment without a
heart-ache and a swelling in the throat, and I
couldn't put you up the best of lots in sight of
it with my usual spirit—no, not even the gun,
nor the pair of spectacles—for five hundred
pound reward from the Secretary of State for
the Home Department, and throw in the honour
of putting my legs under his mahogany arterwards.

Still, the loneliness that followed in the cart
was not the old loneliness, because there was a
term put to it however long to look forward to,
and because I could think, when I was anyways
down, that she belonged to me and I
belonged to her. Always planning for her coming
back, I bought in a few months' time another
cart, and what do you think I planned to do
with it? I'll tell you. I planned to fit it up
with shelves, and books for her reading, and to
have a seat in it where I could sit and see her
read, and think that I had been her first teacher.