MR SMITH: A PART OF HIS LIFE. CHAPTER I, MR SMITH. A SHORT, Stout, grey man. Mr Smith. The butcher was disappointed that he wasn't a family. He had been led to expect that he was a family. All the time that house was building he had made up his mind that it was for a family. There was rooms in it as ought to have been family rooms. There was rooms as meant roast-beef, and there was rooms as meant saddles of mutton and sweetbreads. In his mind's eye he had already provided the servants' hall with rounds, both fresh and salt; and treated the housekeeper to private and confidential kidneys. He had seen sick children ordered tender knuckles of veal, and growing ones strong soup. He had seen his own car at the back-door every morning of the week. After all, it was too provoking to come down to—Mr Smith. The butcher set the example, and the grocer and the baker were both ready enough to follow. Some They were sure they thought there was a family. body had told them so. They couldn't rightly remember who, but they were sure it was somebody. It might have been Mr Harrop, or it might have been Mr Jessamy. A Harrop was the innkeeper, and, with an innkeeper's independence, denied the imputation flat. He had never said a word of the sort. He had never mentioned such a thing as a family. Leastwise it would be very queer if he had, seeing as how he had never thought it. He always knew Mr Smith was Mr Smith, a single gentleman with no encumbrances; but he must confess that, as to the gentleman himself, he had been led to expect that he was somehow or other different. Some one had told him—he couldn't rightly remember who at that moment—that he was a young, dashing spark, who took a deal of wine, and kept a many horses. Likewise, his informant had stated, he had a valet. J. Jessamy, hairdresser and perfumer, 39 High Street, corroborated the last statement. He didn't know about his being young, but he understood that he had been one as cared about his appearance. At the very first sight of Mr Smith, with his thick iron-grey whiskers and cleanshaved lip, Jessamy threw down the box of sponges he was arranging, and exclaimed aloud, "A man can't make his bread off whiskers!" Mrs Hunt, the doctor's wife, from her window over the way, saw the sponges fall, and caught sight of Mr Smith. In her private mind she was very much of the innkeeper's opinion. The doctor might wish for a family, but her desires took a different form. A Mr Smith satisfied them very well, but he should have been another sort of Mr Smith. A Mr Smith of twenty or thirty, amiable, handsome, unmarried, was the Mr Smith she had fondly hoped to welcome. But this old gentleman? No. Neither Maria nor Clare would ever look at him, she was sure of that; girls were so foolish. Those silly Tolletons would laugh at him as they did at everybody, and Maria and Clare would join in with them. Her face grew gloomy at the prospect, as she looked after Mr Smith walking down the street. Many pairs of eyes followed Mr Smith walking down the street that day. He had arrived the previous night, and had not been seen before. The disappointment was universal. This Smith was not the man for them. That was the conclusion each one arrived at for the present. The future must take care of itself. The short, stout, grey man entered the post-office, and inquired if there were any letters for him. "What name, sir?" "Mr Smith." Mr Smith got his letters, and then the postmaster came out to a lady who was sitting in her pony-carriage at the door. "Beg pardon for keeping you, my lady; but had to get such a number for Mr Smith." "So that is Mr Smith," thought she, taking her letters. "And very like a Mr Smith, too." It was but a glance; but the glance which enabled her to ascertain so much, caused her to let slip a letter from the budget, and it fell on the pavement. Mr Smith, coming out at the moment, saw it fall. Slowly and somewhat stiffly, but still before the nimble groom could anticipate him, he stooped and picked it up; then slightly raising his hat, presented it, seal uppermost, to the lady in the carriage. Lady Sauffrenden felt a faint sensation of surprise. There was nothing in the action, of course, but there was something in the manner of performing it, which was not that of a vulgar man; and a vulgar man she had predetermined the new proprietor to be. She had to pass the house on the Hill every time she drove into the village, and when she heard that it was being built by a Mr Smith, and that Mr Smith himself was coming to live in it, she thought she knew exactly the sort of person he would be. A short, stout, grey man, and vulgar. Then she saw him face to face, and he answered to the portrait precisely, except-no, not vulgar, odd. After the affair of the letter, she never called him vulgar. Others saw the incident, but it caused no change in their opinions. It by no means altered Mrs Hunt's, for instance. Mr Smith looked none the younger when he stooped down, and his age was her only objection to him. The butcher recommenced his grumbling. What was a Mr Smith to him? He didn't want no Mr Smiths. Mr Smith, indeed! Why, the very name Smith had a regular family sound. A Mrs Smith, a young Smith, the Miss Smiths, Bobby Smith, Jack Smith, Joe Smith, the Smith's baby, and the Smith's governess, seemed to him only the proper Smith connection. Then the grocer and the baker recurred afresh to their ideal, a Mr Smith of servants. Children they set little store by, except as they gave rise to servants. Harrop lamented anew the Mr Smith of his imagination, a mixture of the stable and the cellar; and Jessamy took up his sponges with a sigh, and strove to efface from his memory the lost anticipations of waxed mustachios and scented pocket-handkerchiefs. Dr Hunt met Mr Smith, and but that his house of cards had long before this tumbled in the dust, it would have done so on the spot. Here was a man whom he had been looking to as the embodiment of human ailments! The Mr Smith of measles, whooping-cough, and chicken-pox; winter sore throats, and summer chills; a Mr Smith of accidents it might be ; best of all, an increasing Mr Smith. The family so ardently desired by the villagers he would have been proud to present to them. There was the man, and where was such a prospect? Tough as leather, and as unimpressible. He would neither prove a patient himself, nor take to him one who would. A place like that, too! Why, the practice of that house on the Hill ought to have been a cool hundred a-year in his pocket. Pish! There Mr Smith was, however, be he what he might, or who he might, living in Mr Smith's house, and receiving Mr Smith's letters. There was no doubt that it was himself. If there had been the faintest shadow of a doubt, not one, but one and all, would have been glad to raise it. There he was, think what they all might, say what they all could. They did not want him there, but they could not turn him out. He had built his house, and he meant to come and live in it. Why he had built the house they could all understand. Was it not their own neighbourhood, and had |