 CHAPTER 1 UNCLE CORNEY My name is Christopher Orchardson, of Sunbury and Middlesex. I have passed through a bitter trouble, which I will try to describe somehow for my wife's sake and my own, as well as to set us straight again in the opinion of our neighbors, which I have always valued highly, though sometimes unable to show it. It has not been in my power always to do the thing that was wisest, and whenever this is brought up against me, I can make no answer, only to beg those who love blame to look at themselves, which will make their eyes grow kinder before they begin to be turned on me. For five and twenty years of life I went on very happily, being of an unambitious sort, and knowing neither plague nor pain, through the strength of my constitution and the easiness of my nature. Most of my neighbors seemed to live in perpetual lack of something, and if ever they got it they soon contrived to find something more to hanker for. There were times when I felt that I must be a fool, or to say the least a dullard, for slackness of perception, which kept me satisfied with the life I had to live. But two things may be pleaded well in my excuse on this account. In the first place all my time was spent among creatures of no ambition, trees and flowers and horses and the like, that have no worry, and what was even to the purpose more I had no money to enlarge its love. For my Uncle Cornelius, better known to all who had dealings with him as Corny, the topper, took care of me, and his main care was to make me useful, as an orphan should be. My father had been his elder brother, and had married rashly a lady of birth and education far above his own, but gifted with little else to help her, unless it were sweetness of disposition and warmth of heart and loveliness. These in a world like ours are not of much account for wearing, and she had no chance to wear them out. Being taken away quite suddenly, my life was given at the cost of hers, and my father, after lingering for a few months, took his departure to look for her. Old people say that my Uncle Cornelius had been very fond of my mother, looking up to her in his youthful days as a wonder of grace and goodness, and even now when he spoke about her, as I have known him to do after a tumbler of grog, his hard gray eyes would glisten softly, like the binary glass of an afternoon when a spring cloud passes over it, but none the more for that did he ever plant a shilling in my youthful hand. This proves his true estimate of money as a disadvantage to the young. My Uncle possessed an ancient garden, which had once belonged to a monastery, and the times being better than they are now, he was enabled to work it so that he made fair living out of it. We lived in an ancient cottage in the fine old village of Sunbury, or rather to the westward of that village, and higher up the river, our window looked down upon the Thames, with nothing more than the shepherd and road, and the slope of the bank to look over, but with waterworks, grand villas, the railway, and other changes, place is now so different that a native may scarcely know it, but all was thoroughly simple, quiet, and even dull to lazy folk in the days of which I am speaking. My parents had managed to leave me so, or had it so managed by a higher power, that for my very infancy I was thrown upon Uncle Corny. He was a masterful man indeed, being of a resolute disposition, strong body, and stout sentiments. There was no mistaking his meaning when he spoke, and he spoke no more than a man is bound to do, for his own uses. Those who did not understand his nature said a great deal against him, and he let them say it to the width of their mouths, for he felt that he was good inside and would be none the better for their meddling. He was now about three score years of age, and wished himself no younger, having seen enough of the world to know that to pass through it once was quite enough. Few things vexed him much, except to find his things sold below their value, and that far less for the love of money than from the sense of justice. But when he was wronged as all producers, being one to a thousand must-be, he was not the man to make a to-do, and write to the papers about it. All he did was to drive his stick into the floor, and look up at the ceiling, for his own part he was quite ready to be proved in the wrong, whenever he could see it, and whatever may be said I can answer for it. There were more men now than can be counted in a year who are under Uncle Corny's mark. While an hour would be apple for the names of those who would dare look over my uncle's head, when he comes to be judged finally, all this is too much of a preface for him, his manner was always to speak for himself, and he must become somebody else, ere ever he would let his young nephew do it for him. CHAPTER II The shape of a tree is not decided by the pruner only, when the leader is stopped with an eye towards the wind and the branches clip to a nicety of experience and a forethought, and the happy owner has said to it, Now I defy you to go amiss this season, before he is up in the morning perhaps his lecture is flown and his labor lost. My wise Uncle Corny had said to me more times than I can remember, Git, you are a very good boy, a very good boy, and likely to be useful in my business by and by, but of one thing beware, never say a word to women, they never know what they want themselves and they like to bring a man to the same condition, what wonderful things I have seen among the women, and the only way out of it is never get into it. In answer to this I never said a word being unable to contradict, though doubtful how far he was right, but it made me more shy than I was already, while at the same time it seemed to fill me with interest in the matter. But the only woman I had much to do with went a long way to confirm my Uncle's words, this was no other than Tabitha Tapscott, a widow from the west of England, who did all our cleaning and cooking for us, coming into the house at six o'clock in the summer and seven in the wintertime. A strange little creature she appeared to me, so different from us in all her ways, making mountains of things that we never noticed, and not at all given to silence. Once or twice my Uncle Corny, after a glass of hot rum and water, which he usually had on a Saturday night to restore him after paying wages, had spoken in a strange, mysterious style of having had his time, or as he sometimes put it, paid his footing. It was not easy to make out his drift, or the hint at the bottom of it, and if anyone tried to follow him alone, sometimes he would fly off into rudeness, or if in a better vein, convey that he held his tongue for the good of younger people. Such words used to stir me sadly, because I could get no more of them. However, I began to feel more and more as youth perhaps is sure to do when it listens to dark experience, as if I should like almost to go through some of it on my own behalf, not expecting at all to leave it as a lesson for those who come after me, but simply desiring to enter into some knowledge of the thing forbidden, for I knew not as yet that there is no pleasure rich enough to satisfy the interest of pain. It was on the first Sunday of September in the year 1860 that I first left all my peaceful ways, and fell into joy and misery, and strangely enough as some may think, it was in the quiet evening service that the sudden change befell me. The summer had been the wettest ever known, or at any rate for four and forty years, as the old men said, who recalled the time when the loaves served out to their fathers and mothers, stuck fast like clay upon the churchyard wall. Now the river was up to the mark of the road, and the meadows on the other side were lakes, and even a young man was well pleased to feel a flint under his foot as he walked. But the road was washed with torrents, and all the hedges reeking, and the solid trunks of ancient alms seemed to be channeled with perpetual drip. But the sun began to shine out of the clouds at his very last opportunity, and weak and watery though he looked, with a bank of haze beneath him, a soft relief of hope and comfort filled the flooded valley, and into our old western porch a pleasant light came quivering, and showed us who our neighbors were, and made us smile at one another. As it happened now my mind was full of a certain bed of onions which had grown so rank and sappy that we had not dared to harvest them, and instead of right thoughts upon entering church I was saying to myself, we shall have a dry week, I do believe, I will pull them to-morrow and chance it. This will show that what now befell me came without any fault of mine, for just as the last bell struck its stroke, and the ringer swang down from the heel of it, and the murmur went floating among the trees, I drew back a little to let the women pass, having sense of their feeling about their dresses, which is to be respected by every man, and in those days they wore lovely flounces, like a beehive trimmed with Venetian blinds, and they learned a fine manner of twitching up these whenever they came to steps and stairs, and while they were at it they always looked round, to make sure of no disarrangement. My respect for them made me gaze over their heads, as if without knowledge of their being there at all, yet they whispered freely to one another, desiring to know if their ribbons were right for the worship of the Almighty. Now as I gazed in a general style, being timid about looking especially, there came into my eyes without any sense of moment, but stealing unawares as in a vision, the fairest and purest and sweetest picture that ever went yet from the eyes to the heart. To those who have never known the like, it is hopeless to try to explain it, and even to myself I cannot render, by word or by thought, a mere jot of it, and many would say that to let things so happen, the wits for the time must be out of their duty. It may have been only a glance or a turn of the head, or a toss of a love-lock, whatever it was for me the world was a different place thereafter. It was a lovely and gentle face, making light in the gloom of the tower arch, and touched with no thought of its own appearance, as other pretty faces were. I had never dreamed that any maiden could have said so much to me, as now came to me without a word. Wondering only about her and feeling abashed in my own footsteps, I followed softly up the church, and scarcely knew the button of our own pew door, for Uncle Corny owned a pew and insisted upon having it, and would allow no one to sit there, without his own grace and written order. He never found it needful to go to church on his own account, being a most upright man. But if he ever heard of any other Christian being shown into his pew, he put on his best clothes the next Sunday morning, and repaired to the sacred building, with a black thorn staff which had a knob of obsidian. Such a thing would now be considered out of date, but the church was the church, in those more established times. Here I sat down in my usual manner to the best of my power, because I knew how my neighbors would be watching me, and saying my prayers into the bottom of my hat I resolved to remember where I was and nothing else. But this was much easier said than done. For the first face I met, upon looking round, was that of Sam Henderson, the racer, the owner of the paddocks at Allivord, a young man who thought a great deal of himself and tried to bring others to a like opinion. He was not altogether a favorite of mine, although I knew nothing against him. For he loved showy colors and indulged in large fancies, and all the young women were in love with him. Now he gave me a nod, although the clergyman was speaking, and following the turn of his eyes I was vexed yet more with his behavior. He was gazing as though with a lofty approval and no sort of fear in his bright black eyes, at the face which had made me feel just now so lowly and worthless. In the manor pew which had been empty nearly all the summer, for the weather had driven our ladies abroad, there she sat, and it made me feel as if hope was almost gone for me, for I could not help knowing that Mrs. Shepard, who arranged all the worshipers according to their rank, would never have shown the young lady in there unless she had been of high standing. And almost before I was out of that thought my wits being quicker than usual, it became quite clear to me who she was, or at any rate, who was with her, from the corner of the pew there came and stood before her as if to make general attention of a highly esteemed and very well-dressed lady, Mrs. Jenny Marker. This was the lady housekeeper, as everybody was bound to call her who hoped to get orders, at Cold Pepper Hall, herself a very well-bred and most kind-hearted woman, to all who considered her dignity. Having always done this, I felt sure of her good word and hoping much too hastily that the young lady was her niece, I made it feel perhaps less presumptuous on my part to try to steal a glance at her, whenever luck afforded. Herein I found tumultuous bliss, until my heart fell heavily. I was heeding very scantily the reading of the minister, and voices of the clerk and faithful of the congregation, when suddenly there came the words, The Dignity of Princes, and then I knew without thinking twice that this young lady could never have won the dignity of the man or pew, unless she had been a great deal more than the niece of Jenny Marker. In a moment too my senses came to back up this perception, and I began to revile myself for thinking such a thought of her. Not that Mrs. Marker was of any low condition, for she wore two rings and a gold watch-chain, and was highly respected by everyone. But she cheapened all the goods she bought, even down to an old red herring, and she had been known to make people take garden stuff in exchange for goods, or else forego her custom. The memory of these things grieved me with my own imagination. I was very loath to go, as you will see was natural, without so much as one good look at the sweet face which had blessed me, but everything seemed to turn against me, and the light grew worse and worse. Moreover, Sam Henderson stared so boldly, having none of my diffidence, that Mrs. Marker came forward sharply and jerked the rings of the red blaze curtain, so that he could see only that. At this he turned red and pulled up his collar, and I felt within myself a glow of good will for the punching of his head, and perhaps he had the grounds for some warm feeling toward me, for the reason that I, being more to the left, could still get a glimpse round the corner of the curtain, which acted as a total drop of scenery for him. When the sermon had finished in its natural course the sky was getting very dark outside, and the young men and women were on best behavior to take no advantage of the gloom in going out, whereas yet we had no great gas works, such as impair in the present generation the romance and enlargement of an evening service, so that when we came forth we were in a frame of mind for thinking the best of one another, and of Chapter 2 Chapter 3 of Kit and Kitty by Richard Dodridge Blackmore This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 3 The Timberbridge By this time it had become clear to me that whatever my thoughts were and my longings, such as those who are free from them call romantic, there was nothing proper for me to do except to turn in at our own little gate, and be satisfied with my own duty inside. And this I was truly at the point of doing, although with very little satisfaction, when the glancing of the twilight down the road convinced me of a different duty. To the westward there happened just here to be a long stretch of lane without much turn in it, only guided and overhung partly with trees, and tufts of wild hops which were barren this year, and throughout this long course which was wavering with gloom a watery gleam from the west set in, partly perhaps from the flooded river and partly from the last glance of sunset. My hand was just laid upon our wicked latch, and my mind made up for no thinking when the figure of someone in the distance, like a callback signal, stopped me. I had not returned, you must understand, by the shortest possible way from church, which would have taken me to Uncle Corny's door opposite the river. But being a little disturbed perhaps and desiring to walk it off quietly, it turned up to the right, towards the Halliford lane, to escape any gossip and come back through our garden. And where I stood now, there was a view by daylight of nearly half a mile of lane, in a timber bridge across the brook. The lane was not quite straight, but still it bent in such an obliging manner, first to the left, then back to the right, that anything happening upon its course would be likely to come into view from our gate. And I saw as plainly as could be, although beyond shouting distance, a man with his arms spread forth, as if to stop or catch anybody going further, and nearer to me the forms of women desirous to go on, but frightened. It is not true that I stopped to think for one moment who these women were, but feeling that they must be in the right and the man in the wrong as usual, without two endeavors I was running at full speed, and in those days that was something, merely to help the right and stop the wrong, and in less time than it takes to yell it, I was one of the party. Then I saw that the ladies were Mrs. Marker and the lovely young maiden who had been with her in church. Oh, Master Orchardson, you will take our part. Mrs. Marker cried as she ran up to me. You will take our part as every good man must. That bad man says that we shall not cross the bridge without—without—it is too dreadful—without paying toll to me. This is kissing bridge, and the wood is now kissing the water. It is a dangerous job to take ladies across. Kit, you are come just in time to help. Let us have toll at the outset and double toll upon landing, my boy. You take my Lady Marker, Kit, because she is getting heavy, and I will take Miss Fairthorn. Sam Henderson spoke these words as if we had nothing to do but obey him. Perhaps as a man who was instructing horses he had imbibed too much of the upper part. At any rate I did not find at my duty to fall beneath his ordering, and as if to make me stand to my own thoughts. The sweetest and most pitiful glance that had ever come to meet me came straight to my heart from a shadowy nook where the beautiful maid was shrinking. Sam Henderson, none of this rubbish! I shouted for the roar of the water would have drowned soft words. It is a coward's job to frighten women. A man should see first what the danger is. Before he could come up to strike me, as his first intention seemed to be, I ran across the timbers, which were bowing and trembling with a strain upon the upright posts, as well as the wash upon their nether-sides, and I saw that the risk was increasing with each moment, for the dam at the bottom of Tim Osborn's meadow, not more than a gunshot above us, was beginning to yield, and the flood checked by it was trembling like a trodden hay-rick. Upon this I ran back and said, Now, ladies, if cross you must, you must do it at once. Ket, you are a fool, there is no danger! Sam Henderson shouted wrathfully. Who is the coward that frightens ladies now? But if you must poke in your oar without leave, you go first with Mother Marker, and I will come after you with the young lady. The maiden shrank back from his hand, and I saw the good Mrs. Marker was pained by his words. Mother Marker will go first, she said, but with no thanks to you, Mr. Henderson. Her spirit was up, but her hands were trembling, as I took her prayer-book from them. I may be a fool, but I am not a cub. I answered with a gaze that made Henderson scowl. I would rather frighten ladies than insult them. Now, Mrs. Marker, give me one of your nice little hands, and have no fear. The housekeeping lady put forth one hand, with a tender look at it because it had been praised, and then she put forth one brave foot, and I was only afraid of her going too fast. The water splashed up between the three-inch planks, for the lady was of some substance, but she landed very well, and back I ran to see about her young companion. I will not go with you, sir. I will go alone. You do not behave like a gentleman. She was crying in great distress as I came up, and Sam Henderson had hold of both her hands. This enraged me so that I forgot good manners, for I should not have done what I did before a lady. I struck Sam heavily between the eyes, and if I had not caught him by the collar, nothing could have saved him from falling through the bush into the deep eddy under the planks. As soon as I had done it I was angry with myself, for Sam was not a bad fellow at all, when in his best condition, but now there was no time to dwell upon that, for the flood was arising and rolling in loops, like the back of a cat who described a dog. No one ever miss, I cried. The dam is given, in a minute this bridge will be swept clean away. She showed such bright sense as I never saw before, and never can hope to see in anybody else, however they may laugh through want of it. Without a word or even a glance at me, she railed up her dress into a wondrous little circle, and gave me a hand which I had not the strength to think of, for fear of forgetting all the world outside, taking it gently in my coarse hard palm I said, Come, and she came like an angel. As I let her across all my gaze was upon her, and this was a good thing for both of us, for a scream from Mrs. Marker, and a dreadful shout from Sam who came staggering up to the brink and caught the handrail, just as we were shaking upon the middle dip, these, and a great roar coming down the meadows, would probably have taken all my wits away, if they had been within me, as said ordinary times, but heeding only that which I was holding, I went in a leisurely and steady manner, which often makes the best of danger, and set the maiden safe upon the high stone at the end, and turned round to see what was coming. Before I had time to do this it was upon me, whirling me back with a blow of heavy timber, and washing me with all my best clothes on into the hedge behind the lane, then a rush of brown water like a drove of wild cattle leaping on one another's backs, went by and the bridge was gone with it, like a straw hat in the wind, but the stone upon which the young lady stood was unmoved although surrounded, and I made signs to her, for to speak was useless, till a hold of a branch which hung over her head. As she did so she smiled at me, even in that terror, and I felt that I would go through a thousandfold the peril for the chance of being so rewarded. Suddenly, as suddenly as it had mounted, the bulk of the roaring flood fell again, and the wreck of the handrail and some lighter spars of the bridge hung dangling by their chains, and soon as the peril was past it was hard to believe that there had been much of it, but any one listening to Mrs. Marker, as she came down the hill when it was over, must have believed that I had done something very gallant and almost heroic, but I had done nothing more than I have told, and it is not very likely that I would make too little of it. "'Brave, young man!' cried Mrs. Marker, panting, and ready to embrace me if I had only been dry. You have saved our lives, and I would say it if it were my last moment. Miss Kitty, I never saw such valor. Did you ever in all your life, dear? Never, dear, never, though I had not the least idea what this gentleman was doing till he had done it. Oh, he must be sadly knocked about. Let me come down and help him. He put you up there, and he shall fetch you down. Nobody else has the right to do it. Mr. Orchardson, don't be afraid, a sister. Now this shows how women have their wits about them, even at moments most critical. The housekeeper had fled with no small alacrity. When the flood came roaring, and now with equal promptitude, she had returned and discovered how best to reward me. I think you might give me a hand,' said the young lady, still mounted on the high stone with our parish mark, upon which by some instinct I had placed her. I cannot! I am trembling like an aspen leaf. Mrs. Marker replied, though she looked firm enough, but our gallant preserver is as strong as he is brave. Don't be afraid of his touching you, because he is a little damp, Miss Kitty. This was truly clever of her, and it stopped all reasoning. With a glance of reproach the maiden gathered her loosen cloak more tightly, and then gave me both her hands and sprang, and I managed it so that she slid down into my arms. This was not what she intended, but there was no help for it, the ground being very slippery after such a flood. She seemed lighter than a feather and more buoyant than a cork, though some of that conclusion perhaps was due to my impressions. Be that either way, I could never have believed that anything so lovely would be ever in my hold, and the power of it drove away my presence of mind so badly that I was very near for getting the proper time for letting go. And this was no wonder when I come to think of it. The only wonder was that I could show such self-command, for the breath of her lips was almost on mine, and her blushes so near that I seemed to feel their glow, and the deep, rich blue of her eyes so close, that they were like an opening into heaven. My entire gift of words was gone, and I knew not what I did or thought. But suddenly a shout, or a speech if one could take it so, a vulgar insolence and jealousy most contemptible broke on my lofty condition. Sam Henderson had been left in the Black Dungeon on the other side of the water, and the bridge being swept away he could not get at us. We had forgotten all about him, however he had managed to run away when the great billow came from the bursting of the sluice, and now he showed his manners and his thankfulness to God by coming to the bank and shouting, while he grinned and clapped his hands in mockery. Good and kitty, good and kitty, that's what I call coming in strong and upon a Sunday evening. Mother Marker, do you mean to put up with that? See if I don't tell your misses. Good and kitty, oh Lord, oh Lord, this is good as a play, and we don't get much of that sort of fun in Sunbury. Ah! What the deuce! His speech was ended, for I had caught up a big dollop of Claude from the relics of the flood, and delivered it into his throat so truly that his red satin fall and mock diamond pin, which were tenfold more sacred to him than the Sabbath, were mashed up into one big lump of mud, together with the beard he cherished, laboring to utter some foul words he shook his fist at me and departed. End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 of Kitt and Kitty by Richard Dodridge Blackmore. This LibriVox recording is in a public domain. Chapter 4 Peaches and Peaching There seem to be many ways of taking the very simplest fact we meet, and if any man was sure to take things by his own light, it was my good uncle. When a friend or even a useful neighbor offered a free opinion, my uncle Cornelius would look at him, say never a word, but be almost certain to go down right against that particular view. One of his favorite sayings was, Every man has a right to his own opinion, although he was a strict conservative, and of that right he was so jealous that he hated to have his opinion shared, and this was a very lucky thing for me as I cannot help seeing and saying. For the very next morning a neighbor came in, when I was gone prowling and he not say where, and having some business he told Tabby Tapscott to show him where her master was most likely to be found. This gentleman was Mr. Rasp, the baker, who kept two women, a man, and a boy, and did the finest trade in Sunbury, and what he wanted now was to accept my uncle's offer, at which he had hummed and hawed a week ago, of ten sacks of chat potatoes at fifteen pence a bushel, for the purpose of mixing with his best white bread. By the post of that morning Mr. Rasp had heard from the great flour mills at Uxbridge that good grindings were gone up six shillings a quarter, and sure to be quoted still higher next week, by reason of the cold wet harvest. But he did not intend to tell Uncle Corny this. That excellent gardener was under his big wall, which had formed part of the monastic enclosure, and was therefore the best piece of brickwork in the parish, as well as a warm home and sure fortress to the peach and nectarine. This wall had its aspect about south-southeast, the best that can be for fruit trees, and was flanked with return walls at either end, and the sunshine, whenever there seemed to be any, was dwelling and blushing in this kind embrace. The summers might be bitter, as they generally are, but if ever a peach down crimson velvet in the south of England out of doors, it was sure to be sitting upon this old red wall and looking out for Uncle Corny. Mr. Cornelius Orchardson, as most people called him when they tried to get his money, glanced over his shoulder when he heard the baker coming, and then began to drive a nail with more than usual care. Not that he ever drove any nail rashly, such an act was forbidden by his constitution, but that he now was in his deepest calm, as every man ought to be in the neighborhood of a bargain. His manner was always collected and dry, and his words quite as few as were needful, and he never showed any desire to get the better of anyone, only a sense of contentment, whenever he was not robbed. This is often the case with broad-shouldered people, if they only move quietly and are not flurried, and my good Uncle Corny possessed in his way every one of these elements of honesty. Good morning, Mr. Orchardson, said Rasp the baker. What a pleasure it is to see a glimpse of sun at last, and what a fine color these red bricks do give you. As good as the bakehouse, said my uncle shortly, but look out where you're treading, Rasp. I want every one of them strawberry runners. What brings you here? I am rather busy now. Well, I happened to see as your door was open, so I thought I'd just jog your memory, to have them potatoes put up in the dry while I've got my copper-lighted. Potatoes? Why, you will not have them, Rasp. You said fifteen pence a bushel was a deal too much, and potatoes were all water such a year as this, and now I've got a better customer. Well, it don't matter much either way, said the baker, but I always took you, Mr. Orchardson, to be a man of your words, sir, a man of your word. So I am, but I know what my words are, and we came to know agreement. Your very last words were a shilling and no more. Can you deny that, Rasp? Well, I didn't put it down, sir, and my memory plays tricks. But I told my wife that it was all settled, and she said, Oh, I do like to deal with Mr. Orchardson. He gives such good measure, so I brought round the money in this little bag, thirty-seven shillings and six pence. Never mind for every seat, sir, everybody knows what you are. Yes, they do, answered Uncle Corny. They'd rather believe me than you, Master Baker. Now, how much has flour gone up this morning and flowery potatoes to follow it? Never a chat goes out of my gate under one and six pence a bushel. Oh, this sort of thing is too much for me. There is something altogether wrong with the times. There is no living to be made out of them. Mr. Rasp shook his head at the peaches on the wall, as if they were dainties he must not dare to look at. Rasp, you shall have a preach, declared my Uncle Corny, for he was a man who had come to a good deal of wisdom. You shall have the best peach on the whole of this wall, and that means about the best in England. I will not be put out with you, Rasp, for making a fine effort to cheat me. You are a Baker and you cannot help it. If any other man in Sunbury was proud of his honesty, so was Rasp. And taking this speech as a compliment to it, he smiled and pulled a paper bag from his pocket to receive the best peach on the wall for his wife. What a difference one day's sun has made. At one time I doubted if they would color, for it is the worst summer I have known for many years, but they were already as a maiden as the blush when she expects her sweetheart's name. With all my experience I could scarcely have believed it. What a change since Saturday. Ah, live and learn as a gardener's rule. Glandy, the best speech of all, in my opinion, is not yet ripe. A gross mignon is, and though rather woolly in a year like fifty-seven, it is the first raid and cool season. Observe the red spots near the cold old cavity. My, bless my heart, Rasp, I meant that for your wife. My wife has a very sad toothache today, and she would never forgive me if I made it worse. But what wonderful things they are to run! This baker had a gentle streak of juice at an either-runnel of his chin, which was shaped like a well-fed flirtily, and he wiped it all dry with the face of the bag upon which his own name was printed. I know it's a good thing when I seize it, and that's more than a woman in a hundred does. Don't believe they can taste, or at least very few of them. Why, they'd sooner have tea than a glass of good beer. Howsoever, that's not to do with business. Mr. Orchardson, what's your lowest figure, with a wall of fruit coming on like them, six pence apiece, and some thousands of them? You mustn't be hard on a neighbor. My uncle sat down in his four-legged stool, which had bars across the feet for fear of sinking when the ground was spongy, and he pulled his bag of vamp leather to the middle of his waistcoat, and felt for a shred in a nail. He had learned that it never ends in satisfaction if a man grows excited in view of a bargain, or even shows any desire to deal. Then he put up his elbow and tapped the nail in, without hitting it hard, as the ignorant do. Come, I'll make a fair offer, the baker exclaimed, for he never let business do justice to itself. An offer you might call handsome. If you was looking at it in a large point of view, I'll take fifty bushels at fifteen pence, pick them over myself, for the pigs and the men, and if any crusty people turn up, why here I am. Rasp, you make a very great mistake, said my uncle, turning round upon his stool and confronting him with strong honesty. If you suppose that I have anything to do with the use you make of my potatoes, I sell you my goods for the utmost I can get, and you take good care that it is very little. What you do with them afterwards is no concern of mine. I owe you no thanks, and you know me not from Adam the moment you have paid me. This is the doctrine of free trade. You recognize everything except men. Tell you what it is, replied the baker. Sooner them vex you, Mr. Orchardson, I'll give sixteen pence all round, just as they come out of the row. Who could say fairer than that, now? Eighteen is the money, not a farthing under. From all that I hear it will be twenty pence tomorrow. Why, here's another fine peach fit to come. I shall send it to your wife and tell her you ate hers. The gardener merrily nailed away while the baker was working his hands for nothing. You would never do such a thing as that, he said. A single man have no call to understand a woman, but he knows what their nature is, or why did he avoid them? My wife is as good a woman as can be, but none of them has ever known to be quite perfect. If it must be eighteen it must, and I'll take fifty. Ah, couldn't I tell you a bit of news? Said the baker as he counted out the money. You are such a silent man, Mr. Orchardson, that a man of the world is afraid of you, and the young fellow, your own nevy. Well, he may take after you in speech, but not about the ladies. Ah, you never would believe it. Well, then keep it to yourself, that's all. I don't want to hear a word against young kit. And what's more, if I heard fifty, I wouldn't believe one of them. No more wouldn't I. He's as steady a young fellow as ever drove a tax cart, and so quiet in his manners. Why, you wouldn't think that butter? His mother was a lady of birth and breeding. That's where he gets his manners from, though there's plenty in our family for folk that deserve them. Out with your news, man, whatever it is. Well, I don't go again and much. The baker replied with some fear from my uncle's face with stern, and the wall-hammer swung in his brown right hand. And indeed you might take it the other way if he had done it all on his road home from church. You know the bridge over the Halliford Brook, or, or at least where it was, for it's all washed away, as you heard very likely this morning. What right had your nevy there, going on for dark? My uncle was a rather large-minded man, but without being loose or superior. Rasp if it comes to that, he said, what right have you and I to be anywhere? That's neither here nor there, answered the baker, having always been a man of business. But wherever I go I pay my way. However, your kit was down there, and no mistake, what do you think he done? He punched Sam Henderson's head to begin with, for fear of him giving any help. And then he jumped into the water that was coming like a house of fire from Tim Osborn's stamp, and out of it he pulled Mother Marker and the pretty young lady as had been in church. Kit can swim, said my uncle shortly. It is a very dangerous trick to learn being bound to jump in, whenever anyone is drowning. Did the women go in for him to pull them out? Ah, you never did think much of them, Mr. Corny, but you never had no in-skin experience. Take them all round, and they are pretty nigh as good as we are. But they never jumped in. No, you mustn't say that. They were bound to go home, and they were doing of it, till the flood took their legs from under them. Mrs. Marker have been this very morning conversing along with my good Mrs., and was likely to stop when I was forced to come away, and you should hear her go on about your kit, and nobody knows if she has any friends. I am told when her time comes to go to heaven, she will have the disposal of four hundred pounds. You'll be off to your wife, right, Uncle Corny? Mrs. Marker is quite a young woman yet, but old enough to have discovered what men are. Go to your work, rasp, my hate, all gossip. But I am glad the kit thrashed, Sam Henderson. End of Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Of Kit and Kitty by Richard Dodridge Blackmore This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 5 A Little Tiff Everybody knows, as he reads his newspaper, that nothing has ever yet happened in the world with enough of precision and accuracy to get itself described, by those who sought, in the same or even in a similar manner. No wonder, then, that my little adventure, if I have any right to call it mine, presented itself in many different lights, not only to the people among whom it spread, but even to the few who were present there and then. Mrs. Jenny Marker's account of what had happened was already very grand that Sunday eve, but as soon as she had slept and dreamed upon it, her great command of words proved unequal to the call made at the same moment by the mind and heart. Everybody listened, for her practice was to pay every little bill upon a Monday morning, and almost everybody was convinced that she was right. Miraculous is the only word I can think of, she said to Mrs. Cuttham, who sold tin tacks and cabbages, not a miracle only of the sandy desert but the places where the trees and waters grow. The Jordan perhaps you means, Mrs. Marker, ma'am, or did you please to have in your mind the red sea? They were both in my mind, and both come uppermost at the same moment, Mrs. Cuttham, but the best authorities inform us now that we must not look for more than we can understand, yet I cannot understand how Kit Orchardson contrived after pulling me out to pull out our Miss Kitty. But look, here he comes. Why is he everywhere almost? He seems to swing along so. His uncle ought to work him harder, not that he is impudent. No one can say that of him, too bashful for a man, in my opinion, but he seems to have taken such a liking to me, and I must be his senior by a considerable time. I will go into your parlor, my dear Mrs. Cuttham, and then I can look out for our poor Miss Kitty. Ha! She is so very young and no one to stand up for her. Excuse me, Miss Marker, if you please, said Mrs. Cuttham, but if I may make so bold to say, you are very young yourself, Miss, in years, though not in worship, and to be run away from school is a thing that may occur to any girl when beautiful, but concerning of Miss Kitty, bless her innocent young face, what you was pleased to say, ma'am, is most surprising. No, Mrs. Cuttham, very far from that, when you come to consider what human nature is. I never could do such things myself. I never could sleep easy in my bed if I thought that they ever could be imputed to me, but when we look at things it is our duty to remember that the world is made up of different people from what we are. What experience you have had, ma'am, and yet keeping your complexion so. Ah, if my poor Cuttham could have kept away from the imperial, but he said it were the duty of a Briton, and he done it. Sally, get away into the backyard with your dolly. I beg your pardon, ma'am, for interrupting you of your words, so. Well, one thing I make a point of his—Mrs. Marker continued with a gentle frown—never to enter into any domestic affairs, though without any bias of any sort out of doors. We all have enough, as you know, Mrs. Cuttham, and sometimes more than we can manage to regulate our own histories. Mrs. Cold Pepper is a remarkable lady, so very—so highly superior, but her niece, our Miss Kitty, does not seem as yet to take after her in that particular, and scarcely to be wondered at, when you remember that she is not her niece at all of rights, but this is not a question to interest you much nor anyone outside of what I might call the Cold Pepper domesticity. What superior words you always do have, as it were, in your muff, Mrs. Marker? But if you please demean, Miss, being still so young, I slips into it naturally. The Cold Pepper Manor, why, I was born upon it, and so was my parents before me, and that makes it natural, as you might say, improper for me to have a word to say about them. I remember all the Cold Pepper since I was that high, and it never shall go no further. There is nothing to conceal you must never fancy about them. The Cold Peppers always were a haughty race, and headstrong, but bold and outspoken, and defying of their neighbors. It was bad for any one who crossed them. You know that, if you remember old Squire Nicholas. But Miss Kitty Fairthorne is not a Cold Pepper. You see, you don't know everything about them, Mrs. Cuttham. The captain had been married before he ever saw Miss Monica. Oh, Miss Marker, you quite take my breath away. And yet I might have known it. I was bound almost to know it, the moment one comes to reflection. Kitty's not a name at all becoming to the rank of the Manor of Cold Pepper. I've been wondering about it many's the time. Arabella and Monica sound something like, but Kitty isn't fit, except for women that has to get their own livelihood. Well, the D's is my mind that she is not a Cold Pepper. No, Mrs. Cuttham, but she is a Fairthorne. And from all I hear, the Fairthorne's are much better known in the great world of London than our Cold Peppers. Captain Fairthorne is a man who has discovered more than the whole world knew in our Father's Days. He can make a bell ring in John O'Groats' house. He can blow up a cliff at the land's end from London. He knows every wrinkle at the bottom of the sea. He can make a ghost stand at eight corners of the room. Can he save his own soul, ma'am? The greengrocer asked in a solemn voice, being a strict Wesleyan, them vanities falsely called science nowadays is the depth of the snare of the evil one. A learned man knows all the bottom of the sea and leaves his own child to be drowned in a brook. Without it was for young kid Orchardson, can he save his own soul, Miss Marker, ma'am? Well, if I was to go by guesswork, I should say that he has not got very much of that to call his own. You know what Miss Monica was, although she has been such a time away from Sunbury. She took her first husband in spite of her father, and the second without a word to anybody. She had a son and two daughters by the honourable Tom Bullrag, and within a year after them she carried off poor Captain, who is now called Professor Fairthorne. But there I am told, though I never said eyes on him, being made up of telegraphs and batteries and magnesia, and a thing they called hydrography, he is hardly ever at home for a week together and knows more about the ocean's bed than his own, and a lucky thing for him, for wouldn't she be a nagger if ever she could get the opportunity? It seems to be most unnatural and against the will of the Almighty. Miss has cut them replied after serious thought, that a lady should wish to reprove her husband, and yet find no ear to put it into. With all his inventions for doing away distance he ought to be able to manage it. He would make no difference if he did, and could she expect him to pay for it? His mind is so taken up when he is at home that she might as well go on at the bed post, and if he was to open up his wires it would be at his discretion to receive it all. This makes her rather harsh, as you can understand with any one that has no help for it, and our poor kitty being always in the way, an arrival as it were to her own children. Oh, she does know what pepper is hot and cold in every color. Poor Lamb, and she do look so innocent and sweet and so deserving of a real mother, no father to look after her by your own account, ma'am, and a stepmother doing it according to her liking. Why don't she run away such a booty as she is? She's too sweet-tempered and well principled for that, and she thinks all the world of her father, all the more, no doubt, because he cannot attend to her. His time is too precious for him to mind his daughter, not that he is money-making, far the other way. Those great discoverers, I have heard to say, are the last to discover the holes in their pockets. Money, Mrs. Cuttham, has been too long discovered for him to take any heed of it, and that makes another source of trouble in the household. To think of ours sending the big carriage and two footmen to find a young lady in a third class at Felton, I took care to keep it from Miss Cold Pepper. Oh, that would have been shocking, cried the widow with her hands up. Why, the third class ain't good enough for a dead pig to drain in, anyways, in the southwestern line. Well, ma'am, and how did Miss Cold Pepper take it? Of things I never speak out of the house. We are liable to air the very best of us, I believe, and I know it from my own feelings. Those last twenty boxes of star matches we had from you, Miss Cuttham, were stars and make no mistake, shooting stars they should be labeled. They go off like a canon. I've had to pay for three new aprons, and it was a mercy they didn't set the house afire. Oh, they hussies, they never know how to strike them, and you're Miss Cold Pepper, she does change so often, never so much as a month, ma'am, without some of them giving warning. That is no concern of yours, Mrs. Cuttham. If you speak in this low style of Cold Pepper manner, you will have to withdraw its custom, ma'am, from your little establishment. Mrs. Jenny Marker, as she spoke, gathered in her jacket which is plated with blue velvet, because she was proud of her figure, or at least so some people said, who could not well get at her pockets. And although she meant no more by this than to assert her own dignity, Mrs. Cuttham, with all the fine feelings of a widow, was naturally hurt and showed it, and strange enough to say, though it seems a trifle, what ensued made a very great difference to me. I am truly grieved, madam, she said with a curtsy, that my little house, which is the best I can afford, and my little shop, which was set up for me by my very kind neighbors as own no manners, when it pleased the Almighty to afflict me low, and deprive me of a good man who could always pay his sent, and never would allow me to be put upon a model husband, no doubt Mrs. Cuttham, except as I fancy you observe just now, for his devotion to the imperial pint, or perhaps I should say gallant, may you never have a worse if you ever catches any, and high time in life, ma'am, for you, Miss Jenny Marker, or Mrs. whichever you may be, and nobody in Sunbury knows the bottom of it to be thinking a little now of your soul, ma'am, and less of your body, and the other things that perish. You draw in your cloak, ma'am, or isn't it a cloak, nothing so suitable and sensible as that, just as if my poor goods wasn't good enough to touch it. Perhaps that's the reason why you beat them down, so I beg you to remember, Jenny Marker, that I consider myself as good as you are, madam, though I am not tricked out with goo-gauze and foul-owls, and what I eat, I earn, ma'am, and not the bread of servitude. That will do, my good woman, I never lose my temper, though I have never been insulted before like this, even by the lowest people. Send in your little bill this very afternoon, if one of your wonderful neighbors will be good enough to make it out for you, as you have never been taught to write, poor thing, but whoever does it must not forget to deduct the price of three rotten French eggs. CHAPTER VI. THE BEAUTIES OF NATURE While the bitter war was raging, I enjoyed a peaceful and gentle season. It happened that I had come up our village, on a matter of strict business at a time of day not at all unlikely to be the very time of day mentioned overnight, as the one that would suit Mrs. Marker and Miss Fairthorne for doing a little business in our village. This might be explained without any imputation on any one I have the pleasure of knowing, for all of them will admit at once that it needs no explanation. It is enough to say that when I had the honor of seeing two ladies safe home last night, after pulling them out of the flood, as they both maintained, though never in it, no little gratitude had been expressed, and much goodwill had been felt all round, and it would have been hard upon that state of things, if any good-bye had been said for ever. For my part, although I had no great fear of being knocked on the head by Sam Henderson, it might have seemed haughty and even unfeeling, if I insisted too strongly upon my ability to take care of myself, therefore I allowed them to consider me in peril, and to this I was partly indebted, perhaps, for the opportunity of meeting them on Monday. It is true that I had not learned half as much about matters of the deepest interest to me, as Mrs. Cuttham, without any claim to such knowledge, was now possessed of, but this might fairly be expected. For women have always been convinced that men have no right to know half as much as themselves. Let him find it out, I am not going to tell him, is there too frequent attitude, while they feel it a duty to their own sex to pour out almost everything. However, I have no desire to complain, and perhaps it is better thus, for if we knew all of their affairs, we might think less about them, and I was in a very deep condition of interest and wonder, not only from the hints I had received, but also from the manifold additions of my fancy. In fact, it was far more than I could do to confine my heart to its proper work when I saw those two ladies come to do a little shopping. At that time there were only about a dozen of the houses in the narrow street that runs along the river, which allowed the importance of selling to compete with the necessity of dwelling, and the few that did appear inclined to do a little trade, if coaxed into it, were half ashamed of their late concession to the spirit of the age. No man had yet appeared who shatters the ancestral sense of congruity, who routs up the natives as a terrier bully's mastiffs, and scarcely even leaves them their own bones, and it may be maintained that people got things better, and found them last longer than they ever do now, and this was only natural because it always took a much longer time to buy them. This enabled me to take my time about my own business, without any risk of being left behind by the Lady Housekeeper and her fair companion. From time to time I assured myself by a glance between flower pots, or among drapery, that my quest was not gone astray, that as yet I had not lost all that I cared to see, and that I could keep my own background while thinking of things far beyond me. It had never been my manner yet to be much afraid of anything, not that I stood at all upon my valor, but simply because, to the best of my knowledge, I had no enemy anywhere, yet now, very much to my own surprise, instead of proper courage, I was full of little doubts, and more misgivings than I can at all describe, and even a tendency to run away, and try to forget the very thing I was longing for, and I knew for a certainty that if the matter came to the very best opportunity, I was quite sure to do my very worst, and cut a despicable figure to my own undoing. I tried to recover myself by doing a few strokes of business on my own account, going into the butchers, and complaining sadly that he now weighed the foot in with the leg of mutton, a privilege only to be claimed by the lamb, but he said that it now was ordained by nature, and asked how I expected a boar sheep to walk. I knew that his logic would not go upon all fours, but my wits were so loose that I let it pass, and at that very moment I discovered betwixt the hearts of two bullocks, something very near my own. Miss Kitty Fairthorne had been set free by Mrs. Jenny Marker, while the housekeeper was driving a bargain in soft goods, unfit for young comprehension. After that she was to go on for a walk with widow cut them, and meanwhile the young lady might look at the river, which was now rolling grandly in turbulent flood. It was rather a shy and delicate thing for me to go also in that direction, and the butcher, who never confined his attention to his own mutton, was sure as could be to come out of his door, and look all up the lane. For sunburry people, as long as I have known them, take a deep interest in one another's doings, and all the more so when they happen to perceive that their sympathy is not requested. Therefore I hurried back to ask another question, as if there were nothing in my mind but meat, and then turned up an alley which would lead me round the back of some houses to the Halliford Road further on. There were many things now that I might have done, more sensible happily than what I did, I might have gone home, and had bread and cheese, and a glass of mild ale with Uncle Corny. Or if that had seemed a little too ignoble, why not wander along the upper road and then survey as from a terrace, which used to be the origin of the word contemplate, the many distant mazes of the flooded river, the trees along the margin bowing over their foundations, the weak smile of autumnal sunshine over the wrongs of its own neglect, and perhaps in the foreground, a slender figure, standing as if it were nothing in the mass. However, what I did was to go straight on towards the one in the world who was all the world to me. By what process of reason or unreason or pure stupid heart I was come in such haste to this state of mind, it is more than I can explain to any, and I did not even try to explain it to myself. There was my condition right or wrong, and those who cannot understand it may be proud of their cool wisdom, and without harm I may be sorry for them. She wore a gray cloak, looking wonderfully simple, yet gathered in small at her beautiful waist, and trimmed at the skirts, and over two little pockets, and with a soft blue fur called vicuna, and she carried a little muff of the same material in the strings of her hat, which was like a seashell, or also of a blue tint, very sweetly matching, but the blue that was sweetest and richest of all, was that of her large, soft, loving eyes, than which it is impossible for any poet to imagine anything in heaven more lovely. However, I shall not go on any more about her, though things may slip out unawares, and without being rude I may say plainly that I have a right to keep such matters to myself. For a short time I was at a loss for the commonest presence of mind, and stood wondering, hoping that she would turn round, and yet fearing that she might think I had no business there. Her whole attention was taken up, as I knew by her attitude, for already I had seemed to have a gift of understanding her, not with any thought of people near her, but with a grandeur of the rolling flood, and the breadth of quiet lake beyond it. She was saying to herself so far as I could tell, what is the use of such a little dot as I am, and what is the value of my little troubles, when the mighty whirl goes on like this, and all I can do would not make a wrinkle and scarcely a flutter on the vast expanse, than suddenly as if in dread of her own thoughts, she turned round, and saw me, within a lanyard of her, as if she had been taken in a rosy fog, for we are all ashamed of large thoughts when caught in them. She colored to the tint of one of Uncle Corny's speeches, though without any of the spots he was so proud of, and then she drew one hand from her blue muff, and I found it so soft and warm and precious that I almost forgot to let it go again. Oh, how I am surprised to see you here, she said, as if my general place of residence was the moon, and probably I looked as if it should be so. And I am even more amazed to see you here, I answered without any of my wits to help me, but I came to do a little bit of business with the butcher. He has been doing things he had no right to do. I have often been told that they are inclined to take advantage, she replied with a look which convinced me at once that she would make a first-rate housekeeper for what butcher could resist it. My dear father would have much trouble with them if—if—I mean, if he were at all allowed to have it—but he is always so full of great things. Oh, what a happy man he must be! I have heard that he is the most clever and learned and one of the most celebrated men in London. I may not have heard all that, but still I was perfectly justified in saying it, for it made her talk, and every time she spoke her voice sounded sweeter than it did the time before. You have been told the truth, it is acknowledged universally. She went on as if there were no fame to equal his, and with a sparkle in her blue eyes as if a star had flashed in heaven. There seems to be nothing that he does not know, and nothing that he does not improve by his knowledge, and make useful for—I mean, for the world at large—how can I be his child and yet so stupid and slow-witted is a thing that amazes me, and I am trying always not to think of it. I am sure you are not stupid. I am sure you are very quick-witted. I never saw anyone half so clever and accomplished, and ladylike and gentle and lovely was the word I was about to use, but she stopped me, with a smile that would have stopped a rushing bull. I am showing my quick wits now, she said, presenting the charm of her hand again. I never even thanking you for all you did last evening. I was thinking before you appeared, that but for you I should probably be tossing in these wild waters now, or probably carry down as far as London Bridge, without a chance of even being buried, and it made me so sad when I remembered that it would make no difference to anyone. How can you say such a dreadful thing? I exclaimed with great indignation, for her eyes that had been so full of light were darkened with sadness, and turned away. It is not true that I saved you in the least, though I wished that I had. I should deserve to live forever, but you speak as if no one in the world had any love for the sweetest and best and most lovely creature in it. This was going rather far, I must confess, not that any word of it was at all exaggerated or even approached the proper mark, but that it might seem a little early on the part of one who had never had the pleasure of beholding the lady till the previous afternoon. The remembrance of this was very awkward to me, and I was wild with myself but could not stop the mischief now. Will you oblige me, Mr. Orchardson? she asked, as gently as if I had shown no folly. By just looking down or up the village to see if Mrs. Marker is coming, she was to have been here ten minutes ago, and we have to make a long round now, since the bridge and the lower road is washed away. I ought not to trouble you, but I never know exactly where I am in country places, although I love the country so. This was more than I deserved, for a good box on the ears was the proper reward for my forwardness, and I should have been lest abashed by it. I am a bigger cat than Sam Henderson himself, I whispered with a timid glance at her, but she seemed at a loss to know what my meaning was, and so with a deep, a very clumsy bow I departed to do her bidding. Before I had taken many steps there appeared the lady housekeeper in the distance, walking with great dignity, perhaps to console herself for the insolence of that widow cut them. Of this I knew nothing as yet, though it was plain that something unrighteous had disturbed her, and this made my humble demeanor more soothing and persuasive to her upright mind. After shaking her hand very warmly and paying a well-deserved compliment to her fine collar, I ventured to implore a little favor, which the side of our garden wall sparkling in the sunshine, for it was newly topped with broken glass, suggested by some good luck to me. Oh, if you would only come, I said, and see my uncle's trees to-morrow, they are at their very best this week, before we begin to gather largely. The pears are hanging down so that we have had to prop the branches, and the plums are as thick as eggs together when the hen is sitting, only instead of being pale some are of the richest gold and some of a deep purple, like that magnificent amethyst you wear. And the peaches on the wall, you might almost compare these to a lady's cheeks when a gentleman tells her of her beauty. Really, Mr. Orchidson, you are quite a poet! And when you get tired of looking at them and tasting the ripest, all you have to do is come into the winery and sit beneath the leaves and look all along it, wherever the clusters leave any room to look, until you don't know which you like the best, the appearance of the black or the white ones, because so much depends upon the light, and then Uncle Corny comes with a pair of scissors and says, ma'am, that is not the way to look at it, the proof of the pudding is any-eating! And he hands you in a vine-leaf, being careful where he cuts it, a jet-black shoulder of black amber and an amber-coloured triplet of white muscat. Mr. Orchidson, you are making my mouth water, if a vulgar expression may be allowed to one who eats the bread of servitude. I wondered to hear her speak thus, though I saw that she had been aggrieved by somebody. And if you will be at home tomorrow afternoon, perhaps I might obtain permission to leave my mistress for an hour or two. I might walk down about four o'clock, when I have finished all the blacking of the boots. Something with a spiteful tang to it was rankling in her mind, as I perceived, but having no right to ask I just lifted my hat and gazed at her gold chain and brooch, and a tear or two started by her own words came forth, and she looked at me softly. You would add to the favour of your invitation, she said with a smile which made me look at something else. If you would include in it Miss Kitty Fairthorne, poor thing, she has put upon very sadly, and it would be such a treat for her. They see so little of the beauties of nature in London. I am sure my uncle will be most happy, I answered as if I were not sure about myself. Now my uncle Cornelius Orchardson, a stout and calm fruit grower called in contumely, corny the topper, by strangers who wanted his growth for nothing, professed and even practised a large contempt for gossip. Nevertheless it was plain enough that his feelings were hurt, if a thing went on, which he was bound in politeness to know, and yet was not offered any tidings of it, with such people it is always wiser if you have done anything against their wishes, to let them know all the particulars at once, and so to have it out and be done with it. And I was beginning to love him now, which as a boy I had done but little, in as much as he never gave way to me, obstinate as he was and sometimes hot, if one tried to play tricks with him, I was not much afraid of Uncle Cornelius, although so dependent upon him, for I knew him to be a just man in the main, and one who kept no magnet of his own to fetch down the balance to his own desires. Yay, rather he would set the beam against himself, when it trembled in doubt of its duty. With the hasty conclusions of youth I believe that because he was now an old bachelor, though able to afford a wife many years ago, he had taken and held to an adverse view of the fairer and better half of the human race, and his frequent counsels to me to keep out of their way confirmed my conviction. The course of time proved that I was wrong in this, as in many other matters of my judgment, and my rule, if I had to begin with, would be to think the best of every man, till he compels me otherwise. But the worst of Uncle Cornelius was that he never cared to vindicate himself, his countenance also was in keeping with this manner, and the build of his body in the habit of his gate, his figure was tall yet wide and thick, and his face very solid and ample. He had never been comely by line and rule, yet always very pleasant for an honest man to look at, and likely to win the good word of a woman, because there was strength and decision in his face, and a power of giving full meaning to his words, which were generally short and to the purpose, and especially he was gifted with a very solid nose, not of any Roman or Grecian caste, but broadly English and expansive, and expressive, and sometimes even waggish when he told an ancient tale, knowing that he would be quite sure to hear of my adventures soon, even if he had not heard already, for Sunbury is a fine place for talk, entrusting to his better feelings which were always uppermost after a solid supper when he stirred his glass of hot Roman water, and had his long pipe lit for him. I began upon him that very night with what my mind was full of, for Tabby Tapscott was now gone home, after looking at me rather queerly. What a knowledge of the world you have, Uncle Corny! I exclaimed at the end of his favorite tale concerning Covent Garden, your advice must be worth more than the counsel of the cleverest lawyer in London. Or honest at least, and no fee to pay, he answered rather testily, for he hated all humbug and compliments. What have you been at, young man? Is it my advice or my aid you want? A little of both, or a lot of one and a little of the other. I have made the acquaintance of a sweet young lady, the gentlest and loveliest and most graceful and modest, and elegant and accomplished and lofty-minded and noble-hearted and—and—angelic. Angelic is the word, kit, don't begrudge it, it saves such a lot of the others. Yes, Angelic. I replied with firmness. And even that is not half good enough. You know nothing of such matters, Uncle Corny, then what is the use of my advice? You'd better go to Tabby Tapscott. This threw me out a little, but I would not be brow-beaten. If you have no wish to hear any more about her and compare her to an old creature like Tabby, all I can say is that I'm sorry for your taste. Very sorry for your taste, Uncle Corny. Well, well, go on, kit. Let us have it all while we are about it. Rasp the baker told me something. He has brought down a girl from London who can make shortbread in maids of honour. No wonder you fell in love with her. You may try to provoke me, but you shall not succeed, because you know no better. What will you say when I tell you the young lady is the niece of Miss Cold Pepper of Cold Pepper Manor? I looked at Uncle Corny with a glance of triumph, and then stood up to breathe again after my own audacity, but instead of being terrified he took it very coolly. Well, a cat may look at a king, pursuing his pipe with his usual discretion, and I suppose you have only looked at her, though somebody said you pulled her out of our water-crossed brook. Sir, I have had two delightful talks with her, and I mean to have another to-morrow. Not that I have any hope, of course, I am well aware, that you are unworthy to worship her shoestring and lie down for her peg heels to tread on. If she likes you, I don't see why you shouldn't have her. I am by, I mean, when you get a little wiser. But has the girl got any money? I hope not. I hope not, from the bottom of my heart. It would be yet another obstacle. She is as high above me as the heaven is above the earth, without, without even a penny in her pockets. Flies all the higher because her pockets are so light. He spoke with a jocosity which appeared to me most vulgar. Don't look as if you longed to knock me over, kit. By the way, I heard that you had floored, Sam Henderson. If so, you deserve the best maid that ever looked into a looking-glass. What do you want me to do, my lad? I know a little of those people. I wondered what people he meant, but feared to ask him for the moment, lest I might lose the chance of getting the favor I had set my heart on. It is a very simple thing, I said, and need not take your time up. Mrs. Marker is longing to see your garden, and if she may come tomorrow afternoon she will bring the young lady, and I can show them round. You need not stir a step or even turn your head. It is quite enough to have one head turned. They may come if they choose, but they must not bother me. Am I the jar of tobacco, kit, and be off to the books, instead of spooning? My uncle might easily have taken a more ample and cordial view of the question. Still I was pleased not to find him worse, and ordered our crock-boy on the Tuesday morning to fetch a little round while he ate his breakfast, and leave a note for Mrs. Marker at the lodge of the cold-pepper grounds, near the dairy, which the housekeeper visited early, and then I went to gather in basket a quarter of Kesswick codlin and quarantines. This occupied all the forenoon, and what with seeing that they were picked to right and sorted in the first and seconds, and fairly packed with no rubbish at the bottom into bushel baskets, and yet presented smiling with their eyes upward to meet the gaze of the purchaser, the day went so fast that it was dinnertime before I could sit down and dwell upon my heart. Then, at a reproachful glance from Celci Bill, our orchard foreman, who had heard the church clock strike one, and felt it to the depths of his capable stomach, I set three fingers to my teeth, and blew the signal, which is so welcome to the man who have lived upon nothing but hope, ever since half past eight o'clock. It is not to be denied, however, that I had taken pretty sharp advantage of being well mounted from time to time on the upper rungs of a ladder, which gave me command of the Halliford Road, the higher road, I mean, for the lower now was stopped and except to carts and carriages, in such a manner that none could come from that part of the world without my knowledge, seeing only a bedler and some few women highly interesting to themselves, no doubt, but not concerning my state of mind. I went in to dine with Uncle Corny, and took care to eat none of his onions. What cheeks you have got, Kit! he cried with a laugh, and is not from eating too much dinner. You have stolen the color of my quarantines. Eat, boy, eat, or how will you pull through it? No more visits from young ladies if you were to go off your head like this. You have to put the new mustard spoon into the salt, a pretty muddle, I'm afraid, among my apples. Being always very dutiful, I let him have his grumble and presently he lit his pipe, and made off for the packing shed, though the load was not going till tomorrow night, and I put myself into a little better trim, feeling that the best I did could never make me fit to look round the corner of a wall at somebody, although I was considered in our village a smart and tidy and well-built young fellow, and one of the girls at the linen drapers had sent me a valentine last spring, said to be of her own composition, beginning, thou noble and majestic youth, thy girls and thy ruddy cheeks proclaim the truth, that whenever I think of thee, I have a sigh, and if thou provist false, I shall jump into the Thames and die. But it was in vain for me to think of this at present, it gave me no support at all worth having, and even a book of poetry, which I put into my pocket might just as well have been the list of pots and pans from Turnham Green. Before I could get into any real courage there came a gentle double knock, as if from the handle of a parasol, at the green door near the corner of the wall, and then a little laugh, and then a sweet voice said, Oh, Jenny, don't you think we had better go back? Are you sure that Auntie said that I might come? In dread of further doubts I ran up promptly and opened the door, and brought them in, and locked it. This young lady, began Mrs. Marker, as if they were come for her sake only, has never seen any fruit garden, fruit orchard, fruit establishment, or whatever the proper name is, and I thought perhaps, before she goes back to London, this would enlarge her store of knowledge, and her father, who is a very learned man, might like to hear her account of it. Now, keep your eyes open, Miss Kitty, and see all. You would fancy that she noticed nothing, Mr. Orchardson, by the way she goes on, in her quietness, and yet when you come to talk afterwards it turns out that nothing has escaped her blue eyes, and she can tell ten times as much as I can, and I am considered pretty accurate too, but we must pay our respects to your uncle, Mr. Cornelius Orchardson. I always like to do the proper thing, business first, and pleasure afterwards. He will smile when he hears how you have put it. He is very busy now at the packing shed, but he told me to take you wherever you liked, and he will come down when he has made out his list. On the left you have the peach-wall, and on the right the plums, and the figs are getting very ripe down this alley. We very seldom eat much fruit ourselves, because we have such a lot of it, but we always long to get ladies' opinions because of the delicacy of their taste. It is a perfect shame, submisses Marker while making up her mind what to begin with, that in such a paradise there should be no lady to give you the knowledge of good and evil. I brought a silver knife with me in case of being tempted, not that I mean to taste anything, of course, unless my opinion should be absolutely required. My constitution is not strong, Mr. Kitt, and I am compelled to be very careful. I knew it was meant by that, having heard it often. You shall have nothing, madam, but the very best. I answered, for we never throw away an opportunity like this. What shall we offer first for your judgment? Kitty, what do you say? She turned as if in doubt. You know, my dear, how careful we must be. This young lady, Mr. Kitt, allows me to call her Kitty in our private moments. Kitt and Kitty, what a very strange coincidence! I could not help looking at the beautiful Miss Fairthorne, and to my eyes she became more beautiful than ever, for a deep lush spread upon her lovely cheeks, and she turned away, and said, I leave it quite to you. If Mrs. Marker had been planning all the morning how to get the best of the tasting to herself, and to render her judgment supreme, she could hardly have hit upon a better device than this, for her young companion became so nervous, and so much confused, and I myself so diffident and deeply occupied, that our only object was to fill the Lady Housekeeper's mouth, and keep it running over with nothing worse than fruit. Now and then I ventured to Stila Glance at the one with whom my heart was filled, as if to ask whether she would ever forgive me for my sad name Kitt, but her eyes were afraid to encounter mine, or if by any chance they did so the light that was in them wavered like a timid gleam pursued by cloud. To relieve this trouble I began to chatter vague nonsense to the other visitor, who was falling too in earnest. Everything is out of time this year, and nothing up to character. There has been no sunshine on this wall until you ladies shone upon it, and what amazes me most is to find that anything is any color at all. Here is a gross mignon, now, a week ago as green as a leak, and covered now with downy crimson, except just where a leaf has made a pale curve across it, like the pressure of a finger on your cheek. Taste it, Mrs. Marker, you are not getting on at all. Let me see, that makes seven, I think. I shall have lost my taste before we get among the gauges. Thank you, I am sure. Oh, how lovely and delicious! Luscious, perhaps, is the better expression. There goes ever so much more juice on my dress. I ought to have brought a bib, Mr. Kit, and I will, if ever I come again. But would you not say it was just the least thought wooly? She had never heard of such a thing before, but I had taught her, and she was growing critical. Kitty, dear, you are tasting nothing, don't you consider that just an atom wooly? Very likely it is, I don't know enough to say, but I never remember tasting wool with so fine a flavor in it. Perhaps I was not in a proper mood to judge, but verily this appeared to me to show an inborn aptitude for taking the management of the fruit and the government of the grower. To exaggerate is altogether out of my nature, and I find it a great mistake to be ecstatic, but in spite of all that I would have given every six pence allowed me by my Uncle Corny, who was always afraid of allowing me too much, if only I could have conveyed to this exquisite judge my opinion of her sentence but that blessed discovery of Mrs. Markers about the everlasting fitness of our names, upon which I had been dwelling in my heart long before her stupid slowness blurted it. This, I say, had acted in a very awkward manner upon a mind infinitely higher than hers, and yet I hoped humbly that it might suggest something which might be for the best if left alone. Things being so, it was not at all a mist that a loud voice reached us from the clipped U-Hedge, which was set across to break the north winds here. Good! Where the deuce are you gone mooning? I thought you would have come up with the ladies long ago. We are here, looking from a distance at your peaches. Oh, Mr. Orchison, how lovely they do seem! Mrs. Marker lost her dignity by giving me a wink, believing as she did, and many others thought the same, that I was next to nobody in these gardens and that my uncle a tiger over every fruit he grew. We have had as many peaches as we can eat, sir! I said, without any wish to contradict her but simply to show the position I held. Ladies will excuse my present plight. He had no coat on and his sleeves were tucked up showing a pair of thick brown arms. My peaches are very poor this year and many have split their stones and wrought instead of ripening. We have not had such a season since 1852. I hope that you will not judge us by the wretched things you see, but come on a little further and try something else. All fruit is water such a year as we have had, but possibly I may find a plum or two worth eating. Allow me the pleasure, sir. Sir Mrs. Marker, who always insisted on proper forms, of introducing you to Miss Fairthorne, the only daughter of the Captain, or as he now is considered Professor Fairthorne, a gentleman of the highest scientific tendencies, to be sure, Sir Uncle Corny, as he took his hat off and smiled a surprise at her beauty. I knew Captain Fairthorne years ago, and a very noble man he is. I have very good cause to remember him, but I will not trouble you with that now. Mrs. Marker, if you would just turn this corner. Take care of your most becoming bonnet, young lady. This pleased a good housekeeper more than twenty plums. Our trees are not as sensitive as we are. His urbanity amazed me, for I never could have thought a good man could be so inconsistent, and I said to myself that after all there is something irresistible in women, so I ventured to settle up to Miss Fairthorne as he led the way with his convoy and asked her what she thought of him. Oh, I think he's so nice! she replied, smiling at me as if she was pleased with my question. So upright and manly, and such a fine countenance! No wonder I am sure that his fruit is good. Did you notice how much he was surprised at you, at your very pretty dress, an exceedingly sweet smile, and most ladylike appearance, and silvery voice, and lovely, lovely way of holding your parasol? How can you talk such nonsense, Mr. Orchardson? And your uncle appears such a sensible man. Dear me, we are losing all the wise things he can say. Let us hurry on. It was this way, I think. No, no, don't you hear their voices down this path. Not twenty yards off, if it were not for these trees. Oh, do let me carry your parasol. You will want both hands to get along. Before you know where we are we shall be in the broad road. Oh, I'm so sorry! It was all my fault. You must let me undo the mischief I have done. May I show you how well I understand all roses? By good luck, combined with some little skill of mine, her simple yet wholly adorable frock was captured in three places by gooseberries whom I envied. I expected great delight from this, but she showed at once the sweetness of her temper, and her height above me, instead of blushing stupidly, she smiled and said, Thank you, I will do it for myself. You can hardly be expected to understand such things. CHAPTER VIII. There are very few things that have the power to please us both in heart and mind, even when they have the will to do it, which is very seldom. Great events in our lives flash by without a word, and scarcely seem to give us time to chuckle, or to sob, till afterwards, but the little turns of time are more indulgent and pass us with a sauntering foot, more often dull than lightsome. For the moment I was glad to find that my Uncle Cornelius, in his plain way, had taken a liking to my love, but I gave him little credit for it, in as much as it seemed impossible to me that he could do otherwise. Such was my petty jealousy that I did not even want to hear him praise her, except in my own words. But he, in his solid way, would take his own view of her character, as if he knew anything about it. I don't care a farthing about all that. I cried when he had spoken of some things which tell the longest. I can see she is very quiet and full of home affections, he persisted, as if I were a boy at school and he were holding the spelling-book. She is not extravagant nor fond of waste. That I saw by the way she went through a hulling superb with a hole in it. I could scarcely have done it any better myself, and she was really grieved which the Lady Housekeeper had not the sense to be, by the freedom, she called it recklessness, with which I picked those Jefferson's, to find one in tip-top condition. And then, when I offered to make some tea, the Housekeeper, who had been stuffing for hours, only asked if the water was boiling. But her sweetheart began to buckle up, and she asked who could touch tea, after such delicious things. Buckle up indeed! Uncle Corny, you are outrageous! She had got no such thing as a buckle near her. Her waist is done round with a narrow blue ribbon, the color of the sky as her eyes are. And I will thank you not to call her my sweetheart, if you please. I shall never have such luck, and it sounds so common. There ought to be a better expression for it, and such things are not made to be talked of. Very well! You won't hear me say another word. It will all come to nothing, that's one comfort. She goes back to London on Friday, and you will very soon console yourself with rasps, young woman. I am told that she has fine black eyes, and I am not sure that black don't beat blue ones, after all. This was so disgusting that I went away, and worked till dusk at a heavy piece of trenching, and when it was dusk I lay in wait for three felonious boys who came from Hampton, almost every evening prowling for our apples. I called all three and trounced them all, which is the only proper plan, and the sound of their wailings as they went home restored my faith and justice, for I had given them their choice, a licking or a summons, and they said very justly, oh a licking, if you please, sir. The world has now come to such a past that a father would summon me for assault if I so discharged his duty for him, but thirty years ago a bit of common sense survived, but in spite of that little satisfaction I could not get much sleep that night for rolling and pondering and twisting in and out, the tangle and the burden of a troubled mind. Turn as I might there is no opening through it for another view of that perfect creature with whom my whole life seemed to flow. Terrible, terrible was the truth that she would leave us all on Friday and be swallowed up and no more seen in that great earthquake London. A thousand wild ideas and schemes for stealing yet one more interview, and countless crazy hopes that she herself might try to compass it all came thrilling through my restless brain, but not one would stop there, none had any shape or substance such as could be worked upon, and brought to likelihood of success. This was Tuesday night, last Saturday night, how different everything had been, then I had only cared to know that things in the ground were doing well, that all the fruit which required gathering got its due, and looked its best on its way to be devoured, that every man pocketed his wages in good time to spend them, and that there was a little hope of the weather taking up at last. Now there had been three days without rain, and, with touch of autumnal sunshine, heaven began to look bright again, and the earth, which, like the dwellers therein, lives only a right in view of it, was beginning to lift her sodden crust, and fetch once more her storm trampled breath, and issue anew the genial green in the mid-rib of moldy foliage, in a word the summer which had failed the year, for want of a smile to lead it, was breaking out at this last moment, better late than never. Possessed as I was with my own troubles, and only a flickering sunshine I could not resist a contagious lightness of cheerful faces all around, the workmen who do, in spite of all British reserve and manly selfishness, take a deep interest in their employer's welfare, and stand up for him bravely when any one abuses him, except themselves. Every man of them laid heel to spade or hoisted ladder on shoulder with new briskness, because they could say to one another, the old buffer who carries on this place has fought against long odds like a man, and now things look as if they was taking a little turn in his favour. On the Wednesday morning Glum, however, was my mind, and grim my face, and Uncle Corny made some jokes, which may have seemed very good to him. Our breakfast things were said as usual, and our breakfast cooked and served by Mrs. Tabby Tapscott, that sage widow from the village, whom we were often pleased to laugh at for her Devonshire dialect, also for her firm conviction that nothing in these outlandish parts and none of our biggest men were fit to compare with the products of the West. There was one point, however, on which we gladly confessed a truth that was in her. She could fry potatoes, not leathery chips, nor the cake of pulpy fatness, but the crisp yet melting pattern of brown gold, so as none of the East may fry them. She turned them out of the frying pan upon a willow pattern plate, and the man deserved to wear the willow, who could think of weeping near them. Now this good woman, who was a cure, as the slang boys of our village said, took, though I knew it not as yet, a tender interest in my affairs. For the last day or two I had observed that she glanced at me rather strangely, and once or twice behind my uncle's back she had put her finger on her lips, and then jerked her thumb over her shoulder as if to say, come and have a quiet word with me. But my frame of mind had appeared to me too noble and exalted to be shared with her, until it was come to such a pitch that any aid would be welcome. This morning as half of her fine work remained on my plate neglected, she could no longer contain herself but pinched my sleeve and whispered, while my uncle was going to the window, come out in the garden, I want this spake, idiot. Speak away, I answered. There is nothing to stop you, Mrs. Tapscott, but she looked at me and muttered that I was just a fool, and she had a mind to have not to do with me. For the common law of nature this made me long to hear what on earth she could have to say, and I gave her the chance while she washed up the things to see where I was, and come out if she pleased. She might do exactly as she pleased, for I did not intend to courage her. She came out and began without asking me. I can't abide to see ye look so cruel waste than Peaky. The torn of your nose ain't the same as her was, and you don't zim then home with your vitals, Master Kit. Lord bless ye, I've been drew the same my zen, and I knows all about them. At first I was inclined to walk away, but it would have been shabby to be rude to her, and a look of goodwill and kindly pity was on her hard-worn face and eyes. What can you have to say to me? I asked. You be young, and I be old. She took my coat to stop me. You be pert and nimble, and I be almost crippled with romatics and romego, but the Lord hath made us all alike, though he hath given us different. I knows as well what ails he now, as if it all combed through my own heart, and what you be zayin' yourself is. How be I go on with it? This was a wonderfully accurate description of my present state of mind. I looked at Mrs. Tapscott, with the admiration she deserved, and said, Well then, how be I to go on with it? I have a thoughtin' out. She made answer bravely. What you be bound to do, Mr. Kitt, is never let she go back to London without Zettelins on it. Here was the whole of it in a nutshell, but how was I to settle anything? Oh, Tabby, dear Tabby, I cried with some loss of dignity but much gain of truth. How can I even get the chance of saying a word to her again? This is Wednesday, and she goes back on Friday, and perhaps she never comes again, and there are millions of people between us. Everybody knows what Miss Cold Pepper is, as proud as punchin' as stiff as starch. If I even dare to go near the house, she'd just tell the gamekeeper to shoot me. Whoa! A young man as a fallen in love must take his chance of shotguns. But if so be you, let's her go away. Without so much as another word, you deserves to have no tongue in the head of you. How easy it is to talk! I replied, making ready to leave her and think by myself. But how hard and impossible, Tabby, to find any chance of doing anything. I must make up my mind not to see her any more, but to think of her always as long as I live. Puddle Dicks! cried Mrs. Tapscott, her favorite interjection of contempt. What it meant we knew not, and probably not she. Puddle Dicks! Where be the brains of them in? I could tell ye what to do and have a second lad. The vets old Cold Pepper, and the young lady too, and every mortal woman of the thick arouse. To harm her to the same as if they sighted a burnin' in the muck bit, with there's only vainery under the arm. I looked at Tabby Tapscott with some surprise. She was giving greater force to her description by using leg and arm as if she bore a share in all of it, and the vigor of her countenance made me smile. But the old woman laughed with the superior air. Take it a bit of time for folks with slow brains to follow my mind up, don't her now. Go up to thou's, young man, and stale old raglass. Steal old regulus? I cried in amazement. I what good on earth would that do me? And if it would do any good, how am I to manage it? I have not been brought up to that profession. I zee demand a barren bore, vave, and forty year agon, the most wonderful cleaver chap I ever see. Ecomacorten of me, the tame as I were rockin' the purest made in all the parish of Westtown. But I wouldn't have none of them, because they were so tricksy. How, some ever, I didn't say no once, for I were the most wonderful chap I ever see. Although it had been and given me a very sort of counsel, I could churn the house out of any field of ligny, I could make a the coo's urn to one. When the calves was suckin', I could vetch a dog and took a fancy to adwine his owner's legs or from own supper, and it showed me a trick or two I hadn't forgotten yet. I could tell he birdy smart how to fetch old raglass and caban so long as you was minded. Now I might have paid little attention to this, indeed had begun to reject the suggestion of a stratagem far below the dignity of love, till suddenly a queer dream came to my remembrance, a dream of last Saturday night, the very night after the little adventure at the timber bridge. In that enchanting vision I had seen Miss Fairthorne smiling as she came to me through a lovely meadow enameled with primrose and cow's lip and bluebell, herself, of course, the fairest of all the flowers, and when I approached her, behold, she was led by this same dog, old raglass, who conducted her gracefully to my longing arms by means of the long gold chain which had reposed on the stately bosom of Mrs. Jenny Marker. I am not superstitious, as everybody vows when recounting his dreams, but still, it did seem strange. Leave it out to me! Mrs. Tapscott went on as she saw my hesitation, nor it for ye to do but give me a shillen for to buy this stuff, and nobody no wiser, than go of oars on rise and fetch old raglass, put them in a bargain, keep them snug and thick there is old Brutals. My stars and garters, what a bit of one will be! And of Chapter 8