Wych Hazel Part 31

'What people?' said Mr. Falkirk, hastily.

'What people? Oh, I forgot--you were not at Mme. Lasalle's to- day. But I thought you knew everybody here before we came.'

'I shall not be with you everywhere,' Mr. Falkirk went on; 'that would suit neither me nor you. The safe plan, Miss Hazel, would be, when you think anybody is seeking your good graces, to ask me whether he has gained mine. I will conclude nothing of _your_ views in the matter from any such confidence.

But I will ask you to trust me thus far,--and afterwards.'

'You mean, sir, whether--he has gained mine or not?'

Mr. Falkirk answered this with one of his rare smiles, shrewd and sweet, benignant, and yet with a play of something like mirth in the dark, overhung eyes. It was a look which recognized all the difficulty of the situation and the subject, for both parties.

'I am afraid the thing is unmanageable, my dear,' he said at last. 'You will rush up the hill without stopping your ears, after some fancied "golden water" at the top; and I shall come after and find you turned into some stone or other. And then you will object very much to being picked up and put in my pocket. I see it all before me.'

She laughed a little, but shyly; not quite at ease upon the subject even with him. Then rose up, gathering on her arm the light wraps she had thrown down when she came in.

'I must have been always a great deal of trouble!' she said.

'But I do not want to give you more. Mr. Falkirk, wont you kiss me and say good night to me, as you used to do in old times? That is better than any number of fastenings to your pocket, to keep me from jumping out.'

Once it had been his habit, as she said; now long disused. He did not at once answer; he, too, was gathering up a paper or two and a book from the table. But then he came where she stood, and taking her hand stooped and kissed her forehead. He did not then say good night; he kissed her and went. And the barring and bolting and locking up for the night were done with a more hurried step than usual.

CHAPTER XVIII.

COURT IN THE WOODS.

'Miss Wych--my dear--all in brown?' said Mrs. Byw.a.n.k doubtfully, as her young charge was arraying herself one morning for the woodcraft. Some rain and some matters of business had delayed the occasion, and it was a good week since the fishing party.

'Harmonious, isn't it?' said Hazel.

'But, my dear--it looks--so sombre!' said Mrs. Byw.a.n.k.

'Sombre?' said the girl, facing round upon her with such tinges of cheek and sparkles of eye that Mrs. Byw.a.n.k laughed, too, and gave in.

'If it puts Mr. Falkirk to sleep, I can wake him up,' said Wych Hazel, busy with her loopings. 'And as for Mr. Rollo'--

'Mr. Rollo!--is he to be of the party?' said the housekeeper.

'I suppose,--really,--he is _the_ party,' said Wych Hazel. 'Mr.

Falkirk and I scarcely deserve so festive a name by ourselves.'

'And what were you going to say to Mr. Rollo?'

'O nothing much. He may go to sleep if he chooses--and can,'

added Miss Wych, for the moment looking her name. But the old housekeeper looked troubled.

'My dear,' she began--'I wouldn't play off any of my pranks upon Mr. Rollo, if I were you.'

'What is the matter with Mr. Rollo, that his life must be insured?' said Wych, gravely confronting her old friend with such a face that Mrs. Byw.a.n.k was again betrayed into an unwilling laugh. But she returned to the charge.

'I wouldn't, Miss Wych! Gentlemen don't understand such things.'

'I do not think Mr. Rollo seems dull,' said the girl, with a face of grave reflection. 'Now, Byo--what are you afraid I shall do?' she went on, suddenly changing her tone, and laying both hands on her old friend's shoulders.

'Why, nothing, Miss Wych, dear!--I mean,'--Mrs. Byw.a.n.k hesitated.

'You mean a great deal, I see,' said Wych Hazel. 'But do not you see, Byo, I cannot hang out false colours? There is no sort of use in my pretending not to be wild, because I _am_.'

Mrs. Byw.a.n.k looked up in the young face,--loving and anxious.

'Miss Wych,' she said, 'what men of sense disapprove, young ladies in general had better not do.'

'O, I cannot follow you there,' said Wych Hazel. 'Suppose, for instance, Mr. Rollo (I presume you mean him by "men of sense") took a kink against my brown dress?'

Not very likely, Mrs. Byw.a.n.k thought, as she looked at the figure before her. If Hazel had been a wood nymph a week ago she was surely the loveliest of brown fairies to-day. But still the old housekeeper sighed.

'My dear, I know the world,' she began.

'And I don't,' said Hazel. 'I am so glad! Never fear, Byo, for to-day at least I have got Mr. Falkirk between me and mischief. And there he is this minute, wanting his breakfast.'

But to judge by the housekeeper's face as she looked after her young mistress down the stairs, that barrier was not quite all that could be wished. However, if impenetrability were enough for a barrier, Mr. Falkirk could have met any inquisitions that morning.

He came to breakfast as usual; but this morning breakfast simply meant business. He ate his toast and read his newspaper. With the ending of breakfast came Rollo. And the party presently issued forth into the woods which were to be the scene of the day's work.

The woods of Chickaree were old and fine. For many years undressed and neglected, they had come at last to a rather rampant state of anarchy and misrule. Feebler, though perhaps not less promising members were oppressed by the overtopping growth of the stronger; there was an upstart crowd of young wood; and the best intentioned trees were hurting each other's efforts, because of want of room. It was a lovely wilderness into which the party plunged, and the June morning sat in the tops of the trees and laughed down at them. Human nature could hardly help laughing back in return, so utterly joyous were sun and sky, birds and insects and trees altogether. They went first to the wilderness through which Rollo and Wych Hazel had made their way on foot one morning; lying near to the house and in the immediate region of its owner's going and coming.

Herein were great white oaks lifting their heads into greater silver pines. Here were superb hemlocks threatened by a usurping growth of young deciduous trees. There were dogwoods throwing themselves across everything; and groups of maples and beeches struggling with each other. As yet the wild growth was in many instances beautiful; the damage it was doing was beyond the reach of any but an experienced eye. Here and there a cross in white chalk upon the trunk of a tree was to be seen.

The three walked slowly down through this leafy wild till they were lost in it.

'Now,' said Rollo to the little lady in brown, 'what do you think ought to be done here?'

'I should like to make ways through al this, if I could. True wildwood ways, I mean,--that one must look for and hardly find; with here and there a great clearance that should seem to have made itself. What sort of a track would a hurricane make here, for instance?'

'A hurricane!' said Mr. Falkirk, facing round upon his ward.

'Rather indiscriminate in its action,' observed Rollo.

'The clearance a hurricane makes in a forest,' Mr. Falkirk went on, 'is generally in the tree tops. The ground is left a wreck.'

'Any system of clearing that I know, brings the trees to the ground,' said Wych Hazel. 'But I mean--I like the woods dearly as they are, Mr. Falkirk; but _if_ I meddled with them, then I would have something to shew for it. I would have thoughts instead of the trees, and vistas full of visions. If anything is cut here, it ought to be in a broad hurricane track right down to the West, where

"The wind shall seek them vainly, and the sun Gaze on the vacant s.p.a.ce for centuries."

I do not like fussing with such woods.'

'What thought is expressed by a wide system of devastation?'

asked Rollo, facing her.