A House to Let by Charles Dickens Page B

curiosity, except the faint scraping
sound, which was now beginning to get a little clearer—though still not
at all loud—as Trottle followed his leader up the stairs to the second
floor.
    Nothing on the second-floor landing, but cobwebs above and bits of broken
plaster below, cracked off from the ceiling. Benjamin's mother was not a
bit out of breath, and looked all ready to go to the top of the monument
if necessary. The faint scraping sound had got a little clearer still;
but Trottle was no nearer to guessing what it might be, than when he
first heard it in the parlour downstairs.
    On the third, and last, floor, there were two doors; one, which was shut,
leading into the front garret; and one, which was ajar, leading into the
back garret. There was a loft in the ceiling above the landing; but the
cobwebs all over it vouched sufficiently for its not having been opened
for some little time. The scraping noise, plainer than ever here,
sounded on the other side of the back garret door; and, to Trottle's
great relief, that was precisely the door which the cheerful old woman
now pushed open.
    Trottle followed her in; and, for once in his life, at any rate, was
struck dumb with amazement, at the sight which the inside of the room
revealed to him.
    The garret was absolutely empty of everything in the shape of furniture.
It must have been used at one time or other, by somebody engaged in a
profession or a trade which required for the practice of it a great deal
of light; for the one window in the room, which looked out on a wide open
space at the back of the house, was three or four times as large, every
way, as a garret-window usually is. Close under this window, kneeling on
the bare boards with his face to the door, there appeared, of all the
creatures in the world to see alone at such a place and at such a time, a
mere mite of a child—a little, lonely, wizen, strangely-clad boy, who
could not at the most, have been more than five years old. He had a
greasy old blue shawl crossed over his breast, and rolled up, to keep the
ends from the ground, into a great big lump on his back. A strip of
something which looked like the remains of a woman's flannel petticoat,
showed itself under the shawl, and, below that again, a pair of rusty
black stockings, worlds too large for him, covered his legs and his
shoeless feet. A pair of old clumsy muffetees, which had worked
themselves up on his little frail red arms to the elbows, and a big
cotton nightcap that had dropped down to his very eyebrows, finished off
the strange dress which the poor little man seemed not half big enough to
fill out, and not near strong enough to walk about in.
    But there was something to see even more extraordinary than the clothes
the child was swaddled up in, and that was the game which he was playing
at, all by himself; and which, moreover, explained in the most unexpected
manner the faint scraping noise that had found its way down-stairs,
through the half-opened door, in the silence of the empty house.
    It has been mentioned that the child was on his knees in the garret, when
Trottle first saw him. He was not saying his prayers, and not crouching
down in terror at being alone in the dark. He was, odd and unaccountable
as it may appear, doing nothing more or less than playing at a
charwoman's or housemaid's business of scouring the floor. Both his
little hands had tight hold of a mangy old blacking-brush, with hardly
any bristles left in it, which he was rubbing backwards and forwards on
the boards, as gravely and steadily as if he had been at scouring-work
for years, and had got a large family to keep by it. The coming-in of
Trottle and the old woman did not startle or disturb him in the least. He
just looked up for a minute at the candle, with a pair of very bright,
sharp eyes, and then went on with his work again, as if nothing had
happened. On one side of him was a battered pint saucepan without a
handle, which was his make-believe pail; and on the other a