Wych Hazel Part 13

'They are not all troubled with whiskers, sir--my kind medical friend, for instance.'

'You think so! Pray, in your judgment, what is he, then?'

'Not a cat, sir, and yet no lion. Mr. Rollo calls him a "specimen." '

'Of what?' (dryly enough.)

'I rebuked him for the expression, sir, but did not inquire its meaning.'

'Do you suppose that the English traveller, Mr. Shenstone, will come to Chickaree this Summer for the purpose of inspecting the Morton manufactories?'

'Let us 'ope not, sir. Mr. Morton will, for his home is just there. He told me so.'

'And young Nightingale has it in his mind to spend a good deal of the Summer at his aunt's, Mrs. Lasalle's; for he told me so. I saw him in town.'

'Mr. Falkirk, you are not a bit like yourself to-day. Are all men cats, sir?' (very gravely.)

'My dear,' said Mr. Falkirk, 'most men are, when they see a Chickaree mouse in their path!'

'Poor little me!' said Wych Hazel, laughing. She was silent a minute, then went cheerfully on. 'I know, Mr. Falkirk, I shall depend upon you! We're in a fairy tale, you remember, sir, and you must be the three dogs.'

'Will you trust me, Wych, when I take such a shape to your eyes?'

'Do you remember?' said she, not heeding. 'The first one with eyes like saucers, looking--so! And the next with eyes like mill wheels--so! And the next, with eyes like the full moon!--'

At which point Miss Hazel's own eyes were worth looking at.

'You do not answer me, I observe. Never mind. A woman's understanding, I have frequently observed, develops like a prophecy.'

The night in the mill was better, on the whole, than it promised. No sound awoke Wych Hazel, till little messengers of light came stealing through every crack and knot hole of the mill, and a many-toed Dorking near by had six times proclaimed himself the first c.o.c.k in creation, let the other be who he would!

To open her eyes was to be awake, with Wych Hazel; and softly she stepped along the floor and out on the dewy path to the lake side; and there stood splashing her hands in the water and the water over her face, with intense satisfaction. The lake was perfectly still, disturbed only by the dip of a king- fisher or the spring of a trout. She stood there musing over the last day and the last week, starting various profound questions, but not stopping to run them down,--then went meandering back to the mill again. On her way she came to a spot in the gra.s.s where there was a sprinkling of robin's feathers. Wych Hazel stopped short looking at them, smiling to herself, then suddenly stopped and chose out three or four; and went back with quick steps to the mill.

Bread and tea were had in the open air, with the seasoning of the June morning. The stage coach rumbled off by the road it had come, bearing with it the two countrywomen, and leaving a pile of baggage for Chickaree. The miller came down and set his mill agoing, excusing himself to his guests by saying that there was a good lot of corn to be ground and the people would be along for it. So the mill became no longer a place of rest, and Miss Hazel and her guardian were driven out into the woods by the rumble and dust and jar of machinery. Do what they would, it was a long morning to twelve o'clock; when the mill ceased its rumble and the miller went home to his dinner, and the weary and warm loiterers came back to the shade of the mill floor. Then the sound of wheels was heard at last; the first that had broken the solitude that day; and presently at the mill door Rollo presented himself, looking as if sunshine agreed with him. He shook hands with Mr. Falkirk, but gave Wych Hazel his old stately salutation.

'I could not come sooner,' he said. 'I did my best; but it is thirty miles instead of twenty-five. How was the night?'

'Sadly oblivious and uneventful!'

'Mine wasn't! for I was getting dinner for you in my dreams all night long. Being dependent on other people's resources, you see--However, I had a good little friend to help me!'

'What carriage have you brought for us, Rollo?'

'Dr. Maryland's rockaway, sir; and the miller's wagon for the trunks. To get anything else would have made much more delay.

Is my friend Phoebe here?'

'She will be soon. It is dinner-time in the mill. What do you want, Mr. Rollo?'

'Three words and a little a.s.sistance.'

He went off, and in a little while was back again, accompanied by Phoebe and plates and gla.s.ses; and the two went on to set forth the dinner, which he drew from a great basket that had come in the rockaway. All this was done, and order given at the same time to other matters, with the light-handed prompt.i.tude and readiness of the bird-roasting of yesterday; Rollo a.s.suring Wych Hazel between whiles that travelling was a very good thing, if you took enough of it.

'Thirty miles this morning, and thirty last night; and how many yesterday morning?--A hundred, I should say, by my measurement.'

'Rollo!--What a dinner you have brought us!' said Mr. Falkirk, who maintained a quiet and pa.s.sive behaviour.

'You cannot set off for some hours yet, sir--the horses must have rest. I believe--but am not sure--that somebody got up very early this morning to make that pie. I told them I had left some friends in distress; and Primrose and I--did what we could. I realized this morning what must be the position of a Commissary General on a rapid march.'

The provision on the board called for no excuses. Rollo served everybody, even Mrs. Saddler, and afterwards dispensed strawberries of much larger growth than those of the day before. He was the impersonation of gay activity as long as there was anything to do; and then he subsided into ease- taking. The smoke of a cigar did not indeed offend Miss Kennedy's mill-door; but in a luxurious position under a tree at some distance the sometime smoker settled himself with his sketch-book, and seemed to be comfortably busy at play, till it was time for moving.

Wych Hazel had been in an altogether quiet mood since the arrival of the rockaway. In that mood she had watched the unpacking of the basket, in that mood she had eaten her dinner. It was strange, even to herself, the sort of quietus Mr. Rollo was to her. Not feeling free to play with him, by no means disposed to play before him, she had ventured to offer her services no further than by asking him what he wanted; then left him to himself; oddly conscious all the while, that if it had been any other one of her new feline friends, she would have put her little hand into the business and the basket with pleasant effect. So she sat still and watched him,--giving a bit of a smile now and then indeed to his direct remarks, but as often only a fuller look of the brown eyes.

Since the gentleman had been under the tree she had been idly busy with her own thoughts, having sketched herself tired in the morning. "Prim" she recognized at once--Dr. Maryland's sister,--she had heard him speak of her. Would she be a friend?

any one to whom these many thoughts might come out? So Wych Hazel sat, gazing out upon the lengthening shadows, leaning her head somewhat wearily in her hand, wishing the journey over and herself on her own vantage ground at Chickaree. It would be such a help to be mistress of the house!--for these last two days she had been nothing but a brown parcel, marked "fragile"--"with care."

CHAPTER X.

CHICKAREE.

Rollo had driven the rockaway down and was going to drive back. He put Wych Hazel into the carriage, recommending to her to lean back in the corner and go to sleep. Phoebe was given the place beside her; Mr. Falkirk mounted to the front seat; and off they drove.

It was about four o'clock of a fine June day, and the air was good to breathe; but the way was nothing extraordinary. A pleasant country, nothing more; easy roads for an hour, then heavier travelling.

The afternoon wore on; the miles were plodded over; as the sun was dipping towards the western horizon they came into scenery of a new quality. At once more wild and more dressed; the ground bolder and more rocky in parts, but between filled with gentler indications. The rockaway drew up. The driver looked back into the carriage, while the other gentleman got down.

'Miss Kennedy, if you will change places with Mr. Falkirk now you will be rewarded. I have something here a great deal better than that book.'

'I have not been reading--I have been watching for landmarks for some time,' she said, as she made the change; 'but I think I can never have gone to Chickaree by this road.'

The change was great. However fair it had looked from withinside, as soon as she got out on the front seat Wych Hazel found that a flood of bright, slant sunbeams were searching out all the beauty there was in the land, and winning it into view. It was one of those illuminated hours, that are to the common day as an old painted and jewelled missal to an ordinary black letter.

'Is it better than your book?' said the charioteer, whose reins were clearly only play to him, and who was much more occupied with his companion. She glanced round at him, with the very June evening in her eyes, dews and sunbeams and all.

'Better than most of the books that ever were written, I suppose. But the book was not bad, Mr. Rollo.'

'What book was it? to be mentioned in the connection.'

' "I Promessi Sposi." '

'Unknown to me. Give me an idea of it--while we are getting up this hill--there'll be something else to talk of afterwards.'

'Two people are betrothed, and proceed to get into all manner of difficulties. That is the princ.i.p.al idea so far. I haven't come to the turn of the story, which takes the thread out of its tangle.'

'A very stupid idea! Yet you said the book was not a bad book?' he said, looking gravely round upon her.

'No, indeed. And the idea is not stupid, in the book I mean, because the people could not help themselves, and so you get interested for them.'

'Do you get interested in people who cannot help themselves?'