# Adventures of Susan Hopley/Volume 1/Chapter 11

CHAPTER XI.
SUSAN FINDS ANOTHER SITUATION—THE LOST LETTER.
It was with a sad heart that Susan knocked at her friend's door, and a humble doubting knock she gave; for bad as had been her situation when she wrote to Dobbs, it was now, from the loss of her clothes and little stock of money, much worse; and she felt mortified and ashamed at presenting herself before her in so destitute a condition.
Her first reception did not tend to encourage her; for the pert footboy that answered the summons, on seeing who had rang, banged the door in her face and told her to go down the hary. Susan, who was not accustomed to cockneyisms, or London areas, was looking about for the means of accomplishing his behest, ​when a well-known voice bidding a butcher's boy not to forget the beefsteaks, drew her eyes in the right direction, and in a minute more she had shaken hands with Dobbs, and was comfortably seated by the kitchen fire.
"As for losing your boxes," said Dobbs, "it's just my fault and nobody's else. I should have told you to let me know what coach you were coming by, and have sent somebody to meet you. How should you know the tricks of the Lununers? Bless you, it takes a life to learn 'em! However, when things come to the worst, they'll mend; and what's done can't be undone; and so there's no use fretting about it. Now, I've got a place in my eye for you, that I think will do very well for a beginning. By and by, when all this here business is blown over and forgotten, you can look for something better; and I'll lend you a trifle of money, just to set you up in a few necessaries for the present, which you can pay me when you get your wages."
Grateful indeed was Susan for this kindness; but she still expressed some apprehension that the family, when they had heard her name, might object to take her.
"No fear of that," answered Dobbs;," they'll ​be quite satisfied with my recommendation and ask no questions. Their name's Wetherall—he's a clerk, or something of that sort in the post-office; and she's sister to our baker's wife; I meet her sometimes when I go to the shop, and that's the way I know her. They've been living hitherto in lodgings, where the people of the house did for them; but he's just got a rise, and so they've taken a small house in Wood Street, and mean to keep a servant. She asked me the other day if. I knew one to suit her, and thinking how pat it would do for you I said I did. You'll have every thing to do, and the wages are low; but you musn't mind that for a beginning."
Susan was too glad to get into any decent service, and thereby break the spell that she feared fate had cast over her honest exertions, to make any objections; and therefore, in the evening, as soon as Dobbs was at leisure to escort and introduce her, they started at once in quest of the situation, lest some other candidate should forestall them.
As Dobbs had foreseen, no difficulties were raised on the part of the lady; and as Susan made none on hers, the treaty was soon happily concluded; and she engaged to enter on her ​service the next day, which she accordingly did, after spending the intervening time with her friend, who was no less anxious to hear and speculate on the state of affairs at Oakfield, more especially all that regarded Harry Leeson and his fortunes than she was to tell them.
It was impossible for any master or mistress to be more good-natured, and more disposed to be satisfied with her exertions to please them, than were Susan's. Mr. Wetherall was a little pursy man, with a very enjouée expression of countenance, although much marked with the small pox; he delighted in a laugh, and was extremely fond of a pun or a joke practical or otherwise; and was by no means sparing in the indulgence of his fancy. Mrs. Wetherall was a handsome young woman about eight and twenty years of age, rather disposed to be fat, of an excellent temper; and extremely fond of her husband. Though their means had hitherto been restricted, their contentment and good spirits had helped to feed and clothe them; but now that their circumstances were improved, they proposed to indulge in a few amusements and a little society, to which they had both a natural tendency, and therefore with a view both to profit and pleasure, they had arranged to take ​a boarder, a gentleman of the name of Lyon, who performed in the orchestra of one of the Theatres.
"I don't doubt," observed Mr. Wetherall to his wife, "that we shall find Lyon a very agreeable acquisition. People in his situation see so much of life, and have so many good stories to tell, that they are generally the pleasantest fellows in the world. Besides, I dare say, he'll be able to give you tickets for the theatre sometimes; and though I can never have much leisure, I shall have more than I had, and I hope we shall enjoy ourselves a good deal."
"We've always been very happy," replied his wife, "and have no right to complain; but I certainly should like to be a little more gay than we have been; and as we have no children to provide for, I don't see why we need be too saving."
"Certainly not," answered her husband, "it would be folly not to make hay while the sun shines. Besides, things will improve, I've no doubt. There's poor Davenport with just one foot in the grave already; it's impossible he can hold out long, and that'll give me a step; and then when Bingham's father dies—and he has had two seizures, I know—that will be another; ​for Tom will never stick to the office when he's got a thousand a year, and a nice house in the country. So I reckon our worst days are over, and that we shall get on now we're once set going."
"If we never see worse days than we have done," said his wife, smiling, "we shall have no reason to complain, either."
As Mr. Wetherall had foreseen, Mr. Lyon proved an extraordinary acquisition. He was not only a capital fellow himself, but he knew a number of other capital fellows who were all as willing to be introduced to Mr. Wetherall as he was to them, and who unanimously agreed that Mr. Wetherall himself was also a capital fellow. The consequence was, that there were dinner parties on a Sunday, and supper parties four or five times in a week, at which the only contention that arose was, who should be the merriest, and say or do the funniest things. The visitors were mostly actors of an inferior grade, who if they could make nobody laugh when they were on the stage, could keep Mr. Wetherall's table in a roar; and who if they could not act themselves, had a particular talent for imitating those who could. The host was little behind them—he could bray like an ​ass, and crow like a cock, and do a great many other humorous things; and as from the retirement in which he had lived, these talents had hitherto been much in abeyance, he was the more sensible to the honour and glory of exhibiting them now to actual professors in the art of being funny; more especially as the applause they drew was certain, loud, and long. It is so easy to please a set of capital fellows at your own table, when they have no other table to go to.
But, unfortunately, these delights, like most others, have their sting. It is impossible to entertain a set of capital fellows four or five days in a week without cost; and, however unaristocratic the nature of the potations, it is equally impossible to consume a great deal of liquor without liquidating a great deal of cash. After these things had been going their train for some months, the butcher and the baker began to be extremely importunate; and Mr. and Mrs. Wetherall took a particular dislike to single knocks at the door, and hated the sight of little bits of dirtyish-white paper that Susan was ever and anon forced to present to their notice. At the same time, the man that kept the public-house at the corner, discontinued ​Page:Adventures of Susan Hopley (Volume 1).pdf/193 ​Page:Adventures of Susan Hopley (Volume 1).pdf/194 ​his morning salutation to Mr. Wetherall as he passed, and his evening commentaries on the state of politics and the weather; and it was not long before the clerk, who missed these civilities, turned to the left instead of the right when he quitted his house for his office, and preferred going farther about to meeting the cold eye of the once obsequious publican. When matters get to this pass without a very vigorous effort, they rapidly get worse; and as neither Mr. nor Mrs. Wetherall had the resolution to shut their door against their pleasant friends, nor to retrench the flood of their hospitality, their difficulties daily increased, and ruin stared them in the face.
It was in this crisis of affairs, that Susan, one morning when she was cleaning the parlour grate, found amongst the ashes some remnants of a letter, which appeared to have been torn up and thrown on the fire, but which the flames had only partly consumed before it had fallen beneath. She was about to thrust them in with her coals and wood to facilitate the operation of ignition, when the words "Harry Leeson," caught her eye, and induced her to examine further. But except the first syllable of the word "Oakfield," and part of the address, ​which appeared to have been to Parliament Street, there was nothing more remaining that could throw any light either on the writer of the letter or its subject: but the writing of the few words she had found was a scrawl so remark able, that Susan fancied she could hardly be mistaken in attributing the epistle to Mr. Jeremy.
But how could a letter from the worthy butler, addressed to Dobbs, have found its way under Mr. Wetherall's parlour grate, without her knowledge or intervention? It was not easy to imagine, unless Dobbs had sent it or left it at the house some day when she had been out, and that it had got amongst Mrs. Wetherall's papers,and been torn up by mistake. She finally decided that this must have been the case: and regretting that she had thus lost the opportunity of learning something about her much loved Harry, she resolved to go to Parliament Street the first day she could get out and inquire the particulars of Dobbs.
However, the distance being considerable, and her moments of leisure rare, some weeks elapsed without her being able to accomplish the enterprise; and at length one Sunday evening it was rendered unnecessary by the arrival of Dobbs herself.
​"Here's a kettle of fish," said she, seating herself in Susan's kitchen. "You haven't heard from Jeremy, have you?"
"No," replied Susan, "that's just what I wanted to speak to you about."
"About what?" asked Dobbs.
"About the letter from Jeremy," answered Susan. "Did you leave it here yourself, or did you send it?"
"Oh, then, you have had it?" said Dobbs.
"Not I," returned Susan; "I never got it at all; and I want to know who you gave it to."
"I don't know what you mean," said Dobbs, looking bewildered. "If you never got it, how do you know there was any letter at all?"
"Just because I found some bits of it torn up, and half burnt, lying under the parlour grate," answered Susan—"Here they are;" and she handed Dobbs the remnants she had found.
"Well, that's the funniest thing!" said Dobbs, "that's Jeremy's hand sure enough; but how in the world did it come here?"
"Did you send it?" said Susan.
"Not I," replied Dobbs. "I never had it, I tell you. I never so much as knew there had been a letter sent, till a few days ago when a ​young man called and left a few lines from Jeremy, asking if I had received his letter; and expressing much surprise at your not having written immediately to acknowledge Miss Wentworth's kindness."
"Well, that's the strangest thing," said Susan, "I ever heard."
"The fact is," said Dobbs, "he must have directed the letter to you instead of to me by mistake."
"But still, as 'Parliament Street' is on it," said Susan, "it would have gone to your house, not here; and then you must have heard of it. No; I think it more likely that he sent it up by a private hand, somebody that knew I lived here, and who found it less inconvenient to leave it in Wood Street, than at the other end of the town; and thought it would do quite as well."
"That's not unlikely," replied Dobbs, "but how in the world it got under your grate, I can't conceive, without your ever seeing it."
"It must have been left here some time when I was out of the way, and got mixed up with some of my master's or mistress's papers," said Susan, "and been overlooked. But it's very provoking to have lost it."
​"Jeremy'll write again, no doubt," replied Dobbs. "I sent him a line by the young man, who called for my answer next day, to say that I had received no letter, and to beg he'd write immediately and tell me how he sent it, and what it was about. But at all events we had better ask Mrs. Wetherall if she knows any thing about its coming here."
"She's not at home now," replied Susan, "but I'll take an opportunity of mentioning it to her to-morrow;" and after a little more chat, Dobbs said "Good night," and departed.