before the case could be floated, it stuck on the rollers, it would not move, and when finally it was run down and launched, it stuck in the mud, and had to wait a suitable, but tardy tide to lift it, and get it under way, and when really afloat, showed a want of balance and a tendency to keel over, and was considered by lawyers one of the most curious, confused, but profitable cases with which they had had the good fortune to be engaged.
At the back of the Crescent were gardens divided from each other by brick walls: each house in the Crescent had its garden. They were not very extensive, but they served as places where the inmates of the houses could amuse themselves with little fads, such as keeping poultry, or growing flowers, or where, if there were children, the little ones could romp with impunity.
As Penelope Lætitia grew older she was allowed to play unrestrainedly in the garden of No. 1. Sometimes she had little friends to play with her, and the small garden resounded with the sparkling, happy voices of children. On such occasions, occasionally, a face was seen rising above the wall that divided No. 1. from No. 2. The face was that of uncle Philip, it was stern.
He called out, “Hush! what a noise you children are making. Which of you is Penelope Lætitia? Oh—you. You step forward. You are making more noise than the rest. It is intolerable that out of work time I cannot stroll in my garden without being disturbed. Lætitia, I am angry. I will complain to the police.”
Then the head disappeared again.
In fact Philip Heckmondwyke had ascended a ladder that he might be able to look over the wall and rebuke his niece.
When Hezekiah heard this, he also got a ladder set it against the wall, ran up it, and shouted, “Complain to the police if you like. My child shall shout and laugh as she chooses, in total disregard of her sour, crabbed and avaricious uncle Philip.”
V.
Philip Heckmondwyke was fond of his little bit of garden. He had a small conservatory in it, which was heated by a pipe that passed from the kitchen boiler. In this conservatory he kept such flowers as were half hardy, primulas, azaleas, cinerarias, and he was able to force on a few bulbs a month in advance of those out-of-doors. He did not concern himself greatly about his plants, but he liked to potter about in his glass-house at moments of leisure, and to smoke his cigars there under the cinerarias and calceolarias to disestablish the green fly.
The great treasure of the conservatory was a Maréchal Niel rose, which bore in one summer as many as one hundred and seventeen blooms.
At the end of the garden Philip had a summerhouse, and there he was fond of sitting of a warm evening with a bottle of claret, reading his paper and smoking.
During the summer that followed the quarrel with his brother, he could hear, as he thus sat, the voice of the child in the adjoining garden come to him over the wall, the laugh so full of merriment, so prolonged that presently Philip’s muscles relaxed and a smile came upon his grim face.
What was making the little creature laugh so? a deaf person is distressed when he sees a company explode with mirth, and he does not rest till the joke has been spouted into his ear-trumpet. Philip felt like a deaf man on such an occasion. Fun was going on and provoking laughter, but what the fun was he could not guess.
It was no ordinary joke, for the child continued to laugh for long, in shrill, convulsive peals.
It lasted so long, died away only for a minute, and then broke out with such renewed energy, that Philip’s smile died away, and was replaced by an expression of concern. He recalled the story of a man who had five wives in succession and the secret of the death of his wives was that he tickled them to death. Those who passed his house at night heard laughter, and thought that the married life within was a happy one. Actually the poor woman was strapped down to a bed, and the husband played with a feather on the soles of her feet. In the morning she was dead, and not a token of violence was on her, not a trace of poison found in her, at a post-mortem examination.
Was it possible that some nurse was barbarously tickling Penelope Lætitia? Perhaps only inconsiderately, but likely, unless stopped, to lead to serious if not fatal results.
Philip Heckmondwyke felt as though cold water were being poured down his back, when this thought came over him. He rose from his table in the arbour, ran for a ladder, set it against the wall
