And as the Cricket showed him all these things -- he saw them plainly , though his eyes were fixed upon the fire -- the Carrier 's heart grew light and happy , and he thanked his Household Gods with all his might , and cared no more for Gruff and Tackleton than you do . * * * * * But what was that young figure of a man , which the same Fairy Cricket set so near Her stool , and which remained there , singly and alone ? Why did it linger still , so near her , with its arm upon the chimney-piece , ever repeating `` Married ! and not to me ! '' Oh , Dot ! Oh , failing Dot ! There is no place for it in all your husband 's visions . Why has its shadow fallen on his hearth ? CHIRP THE SECOND Caleb Plummer and his Blind Daughter lived all alone by themselves , as the Story Books say -- and my blessing , with yours , to back it I hope , on the Story Books , for saying anything in this work-a-day world ! -- Caleb Plummer and his Blind Daughter lived all alone by themselves , in a little cracked nutshell of a wooden house , which was , in truth , no better than a pimple on the prominent red-brick nose of Gruff and Tackleton . The premises of Gruff and Tackleton were the great feature of the street ; but you might have knocked down Caleb Plummer 's dwelling with a hammer or two , and carried off the pieces in a cart . If any one had done the dwelling-house of Caleb Plummer the honour to miss it after such an inroad , it would have been , no doubt , to commend its demolition as a vast improvement . It stuck to the premises of Gruff and Tackleton like a barnacle to a ship 's keel , or a snail to a door , or a little bunch of toadstools to the stem of a tree . But it was the germ from which the full-grown trunk of Gruff and Tackleton had sprung ; and , under its crazy roof , the Gruff before last had , in a small way , made toys for a generation of old boys and girls , who had played with them , and found them out , and broken them , and gone to sleep . I have said that Caleb and his poor Blind Daughter lived here . I should have said that Caleb lived here , and his poor Blind Daughter somewhere else -- in an enchanted home of Caleb 's furnishing , where scarcity and shabbiness were not , and trouble never entered . Caleb was no sorcerer ; but in the only magic art that still remains to us , the magic of devoted , deathless love , Nature had been the mistress of his study ; and , from her teaching , all the wonder came . The Blind Girl never knew that ceilings were discoloured , walls blotched and bare of plaster here and there , high crevices unstopped and widening every day , beams mouldering and tending downward . The Blind Girl never knew that iron was rusting , wood rotting , paper peeling off ; the size , and shape , and true proportion of the dwelling , withering away . The Blind Girl never knew that ugly shapes of delf and earthenware were on the board ; that sorrow and faint-heartedness were in the house ; that Caleb 's scanty hairs were turning greyer and more grey before her sightless face .
The Blind Girl never knew they had a master , cold , exacting , and uninterested -- never knew that Tackleton was Tackleton , in short ; but lived in the belief of an eccentric humorist , who loved to have his jest with them , and who , while he was the Guardian Angel XXXXX their lives , disdained to hear one word of thankfulness .
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