Kitabı oku: «Thereby Hangs a Tale. Volume One», sayfa 5

“Our next meeting.”

Fin Rea stood gazing down for a few moments, and then said – “No, indeed, I can’t, Mr Mervyn. Pray go.”

“Oh, Mr Mervyn,” said Tiny, softly, “don’t tease her any more.”

“It is hard to refuse such a request,” said the newcomer; “but, as trespassers, you must leave me to administer punishment. And, besides, I owe Miss Fin here a grudge. She has been laughing at me, I hear.”

“I’ll never do so any more, Mr Mervyn – I won’t indeed,” cried Fin; “only let me off this time.”

“Jump, you little gipsy, jump,” cried Mr Mervyn.

“It’s too high – I daren’t,” cried Fin.

“I have seen you leap down from a place twice as high, my little fawn. Now, then, jump at once.”

Fin looked despairingly round for a few moments, then made a piteous grimace, and lastly sprang boldly down into the strong arms, which held her as if she had been a child.

“Now,” said Mr Mervyn, “about the mistletoe?”

“Mr Mervyn, pray. Oh, it’s too bad. I…”

“Don’t be frightened, little one,” he said, tenderly, as he retained her with one hand, to smooth her breeze-blown hair with the other. “There, come along; let me help you down.”

But Fin started from him, like the fawn he had called her, and sprang down the great bank.

“Mind my soup,” shouted Mr Mervyn; and only just in time, for it was nearly overset. Then he helped Tiny down, blushing and vexed; but no sooner were they in the lane, than Fin clapped her hands together, and exclaimed —

“Oh, Mr Mervyn, don’t go and tell everybody what a rude tomboy of a sister Tiny is blessed with. I am so ashamed.”

“Come along, little ones,” he said, laughing, as he stooped to pick up the tin, and at the same time handed Fin her basket.

“How nice the soup smells,” said Fin, mischievously.

“Yes; you promised to come and taste it some day,” said Mr Mervyn; “but you have never been. I’m very proud of my soup, young ladies, and have many a hard fight with Mrs Dykes about it.”

“Do you?” said Tiny, for he looked seriously at her as he spoke.

“What about?” said Fin, coming to her sister’s help.

“About the quantity of water,” said Mr Mervyn. “You know we’ve a big copper for the soup; and Mrs Dykes has an idea in her head that eight quarts of water go to the gallon, mine being that there are only four.”

“Why, of course,” laughed Fin.

“So,” said Mr Mervyn, “she says I have the soup too strong, while I say she wants to make it too weak.”

“And what does old Mrs Trelyan say?”

“Say?” laughed Mr Mervyn. “Oh, the poor old soul lets me take it to her as a favour, and says she eats it to oblige me.”

“It’s so funny with the poor people about,” said Fin; “they want things, but they won’t take them as if you were being charitable to them; they all try to make it seem like a favour they are doing you.”

“Well, I don’t know that I object to that much,” said Mr Mervyn.

“They’re all pleased enough to see us,” continued Fin; “but when Aunt Matty and papa go they preach at them, and the poor people don’t like it.”

“Fin!” said Tiny, in a warning voice.

“I don’t care,” said Fin; “it’s only Mr Mervyn, and we may speak to him. I say, Mr Mervyn, did you hear about old Mrs Poltrene and Aunt Matty?”

“Fin!” whispered Tiny, colouring.

“I will tell Mr Mervyn; it isn’t any harm,” cried downright Fin.

And her sister, seeing that she only made matters worse, remained silent.

“Mr Mervyn, you know old Mrs Poltrene, of course?”

“Oh yes, the old fisherman’s wife down by the cliff.”

“Yes; and Aunt Matty went to see her, and talked to her in her way, and it made the old lady so cross that – that – oh, I mustn’t tell you.”

“Nonsense, child, go on.”

“She – she told Aunt Matty to go along and get married,” tittered Fin, “and she could stay at home and mend her husband’s stockings, and leave people alone; and Aunt Matty thought it so horrible that she came home and went to bed.”

“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Mr Mervyn. “Mrs Poltrene has a temper; but here we are – you’ll come in?”

Tiny was for drawing back, but her sister prevailed. They had been walking along the lane, and had now reached a long, low cottage, built after the fashion of the district, with massive blocks of granite, and roofed with slabs of the same. There was a strip of garden, though gardens were almost needless, banked up as the place was on all sides with the luxuriant wild growth of the valley. On one side, though, of the doorway was the simple old fuchsia of bygone days, with a stem here as thick as a man’s wrist – a perfect fuchsia tree, in fact; and on the other side, leafing and flowering right over the roof, a gigantic hydrangea, the flower we see in eastern England in pots, but here of a delicious blue.

“Any one at home,” said Mr Mervyn, walking straight in. “Here, Mrs Trelyan, I’ve brought you two visitors,” and a very old, white-haired woman, who was making a pilchard net, held her hand over her forehead.

“Sit down, girls – sit down,” she said, in the melodious sing-song voice of the Cornish people. “I know them – they come and see me sometimes. Eh? How am I? But middling – but middling. It’s been a bad season for me. Oh, soup? Ah, you’ve brought me some more soup; you may empty it into that basin. I didn’t want it; but you may leave it. They’ve brought me up some hake and a few herrings, so I could have got on without. That last soup was too salt, master.”

“Was it?” said Mr Mervyn, giving a merry glance at Fin. “Well, never mind, I’ll speak to Mrs Dykes about it.”

“Ay, she’s an east-country woman. Those folks don’t know much about cooking. Well, young ladies, I hear you have been to London.”

“Yes, Mrs Trelyan.”

“And you’re glad to come back?”

“Yes, that we are,” said Fin.

“Ay, I’ve heard it’s a poor, lost sort of place, London,” said the old lady. “I never went, and I never would. My son William wanted to take me once in his boot; but I wouldn’t go. Your father was a wise man to buy Tolcarne; but it’ll never be such a place as Penreife.”

“You know young Trevor’s coming back?” said Mr Mervyn.

“Ay, I know,” said the old lady. “Martha Lloyd came up to tell me, as proud as a peacock, about her young master, talking about his fine this and fine that, till she nearly made me sick. I should get rid of her and her man if I was him.”

“What, Lloyd, the butler?” said Mr Mervyn, smiling.

“Yes,” said the old lady, grimly, “they’re Welsh people; so’s that young farm-bailiff of his.”

“You know the whole family?” said Mr Mervyn.

“Why, I was born here!” said the old lady, “and I ought to. We’ve been here for generations. Ah! and so the young squire’s coming back. Time he did; going gadding off into foreign countries all this time. Why, he’s six or seven and twenty now. Ay, how time goes,” continued the old lady, who was off now on her hobby. “Why, it was like yesterday that the Lloyds got Mrs Trevor to send for their sister from some place with a dreadful name; and she did, and I believe it was her death, when she might have had a good Cornish nurse; and the next thing we heard was that there was a son, and the very next week there was a grand funeral, and the poor squire was never the same man again. Ah! it was an artful trick that – sending for the nurse because Mrs Lloyd wanted her too; and young Humphrey Lloyd was born the same week. Ay, they were strange times. It seemed directly after that we had the news about the squire, who got reckless-like, always out in his yacht, a poor matchwood sort of a thing, not like our boots, and it was blown on the Longships one night, and there wasn’t even a body came ashore.”

“Rather a sad family history,” said Mr Mervyn.

“Ay, sad enough,” said the woman; “and now the young squire’s coming home at last from sea, but he’ll never be such a man as his father.”

“Think not?” said Mr Mervyn, musing.

“Sure not,” said the old woman. “Why, he was petted and spoiled by those Lloyds while he was a boy, and a pretty limb he was. Him and that young Lloyd was always in some mischief. Pretty pranks they played me. I’ve been out with the stick to ’em scores of times; but he was generous – I will say that – and many’s the conger and bass he’s brought me here, proud of ’em as could be, because he caught them himself.”

“Well, Mrs Trelyan, we must say good morning,” said Tiny, rising and taking the old lady’s hand. “Is there anything you would like – anything we can bring you?”

“No, child, no,” said the old lady; “I don’t want anything. If you’d any good tea, I’d use a pinch; but I’m not asking for it, mind that.”

“Where’s your snuff-box, granny?” said Mr Mervyn, bringing out a small canister from his pocket.

“Oh, it’s here,” said the old lady, fishing out and opening her box to show it was quite empty. “I don’t know that I want any, though.”

“Try that,” said Mr Mervyn, filling it full; and the old lady took a pinch. “That’s not bad, is it?”

“N-n-no, it’s not bad,” said the old lady, “but I’ve had better.”

“No doubt,” said Mr Mervyn, smiling.

“By the way, Mrs Trelyan, how old are you?”

“Ninety next month,” said the old lady; “and – dear, dear, what a bother visitors are. Here’s somebody else coming.”

For at that moment there was a firm step heard without, and some one stooped and entered the doorway, hardly seeing the group on his left in the gloomy room.

“Is Mrs Trelyan at home?” he said; and Tiny Rea laid her hand upon her sisters arm.

“Yes, young man,” said the old lady, shading her eyes, and gazing at the strongly-built figure before her. “I’m Mrs Trelyan, and what may you want?”

“To see how you are, granny. I’m Richard Trevor.”

“And – and – ” cried the old woman, letting fall her net as she rose slowly and laid her hand upon his arm; “and only a minute ago I was talking about you, and declaring you’d never be such a man as your father. My dear boy, how you have grown.”

“One does grow in twelve years, granny,” said the young man. “Well, I’m glad to see you alive and hearty.”

“Thank you, my boy,” said the old lady; and then turning and pointing to the wall, “Look!” she said, “that’s the very stick that I took away from you one day for teasing my hens. You were a bad boy. You know you were.”

“I suppose I was,” said the young man, smiling. “But I beg pardon; you have company, granny.”

“Oh, that’s only Mr Mervyn, my dear, and he’s going; and those are only the two girls from Tolcarne. I let them come and see me sometimes, but they’re going now.”

“Mr Mervyn,” said the young man, holding out his hand, which was taken in a strong grip, “I am glad to meet so near a neighbour; perhaps you will introduce me to the ladies?”

“That I will,” said Mr Mervyn, heartily. “Mr Trevor!”

“It’s Squire Trevor now, Mr Mervyn,” said the old lady, with some show of impatience.

“I beg pardon,” said Mr Mervyn, smiling. “Squire Trevor, your very near neighbours, Miss Rea, Miss Finetta Rea, of Tolcarne.”

“Ladies whom I have had the pleasure of meeting before,” said Trevor, with a smile.

And then, in a confusion of bows, the two girls made their retreat, followed by Mr Mervyn.

“Oh, Fin, how strange!” exclaimed Tiny; “it’s the gentleman who struck that man at the race.”

“Yes,” exclaimed Fin; “and that horrid little creature’s sure to be close behind.”

Sam Jenkles Prepares for an Expedition

“There you are, Ratty,” said Sam Jenkles, sticking a small yellow sunflower in each of his horse’s blinkers, before mounting to his perch and driving out of the yard. “Now you look ’andsome. Only recklect ’andsome is as ’andsome does; so just putt your right leg fust for once in a way.”

He walked round the horse, giving it a smooth here and a smooth there with his worn-out glove, and patting its neck, before walking back, and beginning to button-up for the day.

“Blest if ever I see such a tail in my life as he’s got,” he muttered. “Wonder what a hartificial one ’ud cost. It aint no kind o’ use to comb it, ’thout you want to comb it all out and leave no tail at all I wouldn’t care if it warn’t so ragged.”

It certainly was a melancholy-looking tail, but only in keeping with the rest of the horse’s personal appearance, which was of the most dejected – dispirited. If it had only been black, the steed would have been the beau ideal beast for a workhouse hearse; as he was of a dingy brown, he was relegated to a cab.

“What’s the matter, Sam?” said a cleaner, coming up – a man with a stable pail of water in one hand, a spoke-brush in the other, and a general exemplification of how, by degrees, Nature will make square people fit into round holes, and the reverse; for, by the constant carriage of stable pails, the man’s knees had gone in, and out of the perpendicular, so as to allow for the vessels’ swing.

“What’s the matter, Buddy? Why, everythink. Look at that there ’oss – look at his tail.”

“Well, he aint ’andsome, suttunly,” said the helper.

“’Andsome!” exclaimed Sam; “no, nor he aint anythink else. He won’t go, nor he won’t stop. If you wants him to ’old ’is ’ead up, he ’angs it down; and if you wants him to ’old it down, he shoves it up in the air, and goes shambling along like a sick camel. He’s all rules of contrairy.”

“’Oppin’ about like a little canary,” chimed in the helper.

“’Oppin’ about!” said Sam, in a tone of disgust. “I should just like to see him, if on’y for once in a way. I tell yer what it is, Buddy, I believe sometimes all he does is to lift his legs up, one at a time, an’ lean up agin his collar. Natur’ does the rest.”

“Werry likely,” said Buddy; “but you can’t expect everything in a cab ’oss.”

“Heverythink?” said Sam. “I don’t expect everythink; I only want some-think; and all you’ve got there,” he continued, pointing with one thumb over his shoulder at the unfortunate Ratty, “is so much walking cats’-meat.”

“Yes, he aint ’andsome, suttunly,” said Buddy again, screwing up one side of his face. “But why don’t you smooth him over? Try kindness, and give the whip a ’ollerday.”

“Kindness – whip – ’ollerday! Why, I’m like a father to ’im. Look here.”

Sam went to the little boot at the back of his cab, and tugged out the horse’s nose-bag, which was lined at the bottom with tin, so that it would have held water.

“See that?” said Sam.

“Yes: what’s it for?” said Buddy.

“Beer,” said Sam, fiercely, “beer! Many’s the ’arfpint I’ve poured in there along of his chopped meat, jest to cheer him up a bit, and he aint got no missus to smell his breath. I thought that ’ud make ’im go if anythink would.”

“Well, didn’t it?” said Buddy, rubbing his ear with the spoke-brush.

“Didn’t it?” said Sam. “Lets out at me with his orf ’ind leg, and then comes clay mill, and goes round and round till he oughter ’ave been dizzy, but he worn’t. There never was sech a ungrateful beast.”

Buddy grinned as Sam stuffed back the nose-bag, the horse shaking his head the while.

“Try it on me, Sam,” said Buddy, as the driver prepared to mount. “I won’t let out with no orf ’ind legs.”

Sam winked, and climbed to his perch.

“What’s the flowers for, Sam?” said the helper.

“The missus. Goin’ to call for her, and drive her to Upper ’ollerway,” said Sam, “afore I goes on the rank.”

“Oh, will you tell her,” said Buddy, earnestly, “as Ginger’s ever so much better, and can a’most putt his little leg to the ground? He eats that stuff she brought him like fun.”

“What stuff was that?” said Sam, gathering up the reins.

“Sorter yaller jally,” said Buddy.

“What, as smells o’ lemons?” said Sam.

“Yes, that’s it,” said Buddy; “he just do like it.”

“How long’s he been bad now?”

“Twelve weeks,” said Buddy; “and he’s been ’most worn to skin and bone; but he’s pulling up now. Takes his corn.”

“Mornin’,” said Sam.

He tried to start; but Batty moved sidewise, laid a blinker against the whitewashed wall of the yard, and rubbed it up and down, so that it had to be wiped over with a wet leather by Buddy; and when that was done, he tried to back the cab into a narrow stable door. After that, though, he seemed better, and began to go in a straight line.

“Tried that there game at a plate-glass winder t’other day,” said Sam, shouting over his shoulder as he left the yard. “He’d ha’ done it, too, if it hadn’t been for a lamp-post.”

Sam and his steed went gently out of Grey’s Inn Lane towards Pentonville, where, in a little quiet street, Mrs Jenkles resided, and Sam began musing as he went along —

“I smelt that there stuff in the cupboard, and meant to ask her what it was, but I forgot. On’y to think of her making that up, and taking it to poor Buddy’s little bairn! Well, she’s a good sort, is the missus, on’y she will be so hard on me about a drop o’ beer. ’Old that there ’ead still, will yer? What are yer lookin’ arter, there? Oh! that cats-meat barrer. Ah! yer may well shy at that, Ratty; I don’t wonder at it. Now, then, get on, old boy, the missus ’ll be waiting.”

On reaching Spring Place, where Sam dwelt, the horse objected. He was sawing along in a straightforward way, when Sam drew one rein, with the consequence that the horse’s head came round, his long neck bending till the animal’s face was gazing at him in a dejected, lachrymose fashion: Ratty seeming to say, as plainly as looks would express it, “What are you doing?” while all the time the legs went straight forward up Pentonville Hill.

They had got twenty yards past Spring Place before Sam could pull the horse up; and then he had to get down to take it by the head and turn it in a very ignominious fashion.

“Jest opposite a public, too,” said Sam. “I never did see such a haggravating beast as you are, Ratty. Here, come along. It aint no wonder as fellows drinks, with a place offering ’em the stuff every five minutes of their lives, and when they’ve got a Ratty to lead ’em right up to it. Come on, will yer?”

Mrs Jenkles was standing at the door ready, in a blue bonnet and red Paisley shawl – for she was a woman of her word. She had said that she would go up and see those people, and Sam had promised to drive her.

Going the Rounds

Fin was quite right. They had not gone above a couple of hundred yards down the lane, with Mr Mervyn between them, swinging his empty soup tin, when they became aware of a loud whistling, as of some one practising a polka. Then it would cease for a few moments, and directly after begin again.

“There’s somebody,” said Fin; and then, turning a sharp corner, they came suddenly on Mr Frank Pratt, perched in a sitting posture on the top of a huge, round lith of granite, with his back to them, and his little legs stretching out almost at right angles. He was in his threatened tweeds, a natty little deerstalker’s hat was cocked on one side of his head; in one hand he held a stick, and in the other a large pipe, from which he drew refreshment between the strains of the polka he tried to whistle.

Mr Frank Pratt was evidently enjoying the beauty of the place after his own particular fashion; for, being a short man, he had a natural love for elevated places. As a boy, he had delighted in climbing trees, and sitting in the highest fork that would bear him, eating cakes or munching apples; as a man, cakes and apples had given way to extremely black pipes, in company with which he alternately visited the top of the Monument, the Duke of York’s column, and the golden gallery of Saint Paul’s, where he regretted that the cost was eighteen-pence to go any higher. In these places, where it was strictly forbidden, he indulged in surreptitious smokes, from which his friends deduced the proposition that if not the cakes, probably the apples had been stolen.

The tail stone then being handy, Mr Pratt was enjoying himself, when he suddenly became aware of steps behind, and hopped down in a most ungraceful fashion to stare with astonishment so blank, that by the time he had raised his hat Fin had gone by with her chin raised in the air, and a very disdainful look upon her countenance, and her sister, with a slightly heightened colour, had plunged into conversation with Mr Mervyn.

Pratt stood half paralysed for a few moments, watching the party, until a turn in the lane hid them from sight, and then he refilled and lit his pipe, from which the burning weed had fallen.

“It’s a mistake,” he said at last, between tremendous puffs at his pipe. “It’s impossible. I don’t believe it. One might call it a hallucination, only that the beardless female face is so similar in one woman to another that a man easily makes a mistake. Those cannot be the same girls that we saw at the steeplechase – it isn’t possible; but there is a resemblance, certainly; and, treating the thing philosophically, I should say here we have the real explanation of what is looked upon as infidelity in the male being.”

A few puffs from the pipe, and then Mr Pratt reclimbed to his perch upon the stone.

“I’ll carry that out, and then write it down as a position worthy of argument. Yes, to be sure. Here it is. A man falls in love – say, for the sake of argument, at first sight, with a pretty girl, quite unknown to him before, upon a racecourse. Symptoms: a feeling of sympathetic attraction; a throbbing of the pulses; and the heart beating bob and go one. Say he gets to know the girl; is engaged to her; and is then separated by three or four hundred miles.”

A few more puffs, and sundry nods of the head, and then Mr Pratt went on.

“He there encounters another girl, whose face and general appearance are so much like the face and general appearance of girl number one, that his secondary influences – to wit, heart, pulses, and sympathies generally – immediately give signals; love ensues, and he declares and is accepted by girl number two, while girl number one says he is unfaithful. The man is not unfaithful; it is simply an arrangement of Nature, and he can’t help himself. Infidelity, then, is the same thing in a state of change. Moral: Nature has no business to make women so much alike.”

Mr Pratt got down once more from his perch, and began to stroll up the lane, to encounter Trevor at the end of a few minutes.

“Did you meet any one?” was the inquiry.

“Yes,” said Pratt, “a gentleman and two ladies.”

“Well?”

“Well?”

“Did you not know them?”

“Ah!” said Pratt, “then you, too, noticed the similarity of feature, did you?”

“Similarity?”

“Yes; wonderfully like the ladies we met at the steeplechase, were they not?”

Richard Trevor looked hard in his friend’s face for a moment, and then they walked on side by side; for at a turn of the lane they met the young keeper, who had so suddenly changed the aspect of the encounter on the course.

“Ah, Humphrey!” said Trevor, “I’m glad I’ve met you. I’ll have a walk round the preserves.”

The young keeper touched his hat, changed the double gun from one shoulder of his well-worn velveteen coat to the other, whistled to a setter, and led the way to a stone stile.

“Another curious case of similarity of feature,” said Trevor, laughing.

“Well, no – I’ll give in now,” said Pratt; “but I say, Dick, old fellow, ought coincidences like this to occur out of novels?”

“Never mind that,” said Trevor, “the keeper here, who used to be my playmate as a boy, was as much astonished as I was – weren’t you, Humphrey?”

“Well, sir,” said the young man, “when I see you th’ other morning, I couldn’t believe my eyes like, that the gentleman who’d pummelled that fellow was the one I’d come up to London to meet. I saw you, too, sir,” he said, touching his hat to Pratt.

“Yes, my man,” said Pratt, “and felt my toe. I’m sorry to find you did, for you’ve blown up one of the most beautiful propositions I ever made in my life.”

“Well, now then,” said Trevor, “I’ll see about matters with you, Lloyd; but, by the way, you had better be Humphrey, on account of your father.”

“Yes, sir; Humphrey, please, sir,” said the young man.

“Well, now then, as we go on,” said Trevor, “if it don’t bore you, Pratt, we’ll have a talk about farm matters.”

“Won’t bore me,” said Pratt; “I’m going in for the country gentleman while I stay.”

“Well, then, Humphrey, how are the crops!”

“Well, sir,” said Humphrey. “Ah, Juno! what are you sniffing after there?” This to the young dog, which seemed to have been born with a mission to push its head up rabbit burrows too small for the passage. “Well, sir, begging your pardon, but that dog’s took more looking after than e’er a one I ever had.”

“All right, go on,” said Trevor, following the man across a broad, rock-sided ditch, with a little brook at the bottom.

“Well, sir,” said the keeper, “the corn is – ”

“Here, I say, hold hard a minute! This isn’t Pall Mall, Trevor,” shouted Pratt. “How the deuce am I to get over that place?”

“Jump, man,” cried Trevor, laughing and looking back. “That’s nothing to some of our ditches.”

Pratt looked at the ditch, then down at his little legs, and then blew out his cheeks.

“Risk it,” he said, laconically; and, stepping back a few yards, he took a run, jumped, came short, and had to scramble up the bank, a little disarranged, but smiling and triumphant. “All right,” he said, “go on.”

“Corn is, on the whole, a fair crop, sir,” said Humphrey.

“And barley?”

“Plenty of that too, sir. But I’ve a deal of trouble with trespassers, sir.”

“How’s that?” said Trevor, looking round at the bright, rugged hill and dale, with trees all aglow with the touch of autumn’s hand.

“You see, sir, it’s the new people,” said the keeper.

“What new people?”

“The old gentleman as bought Tolcarne, sir.”

“Well, what of him?” said Trevor, rather anxiously.

“Well, sir, he’s a magistrate and a Sir, and a great City of London man, and he wants to be quite the squire. The very first thing he does is to get two men to work on the estate, and who does he get but that Dick Darley and Sam Kelynack; and a nice pair they are, as you may know, sir.”

“Seeing that I’ve been away for years, Humphrey, I don’t know,” said Trevor.

“Well, sir, they was both turned out of their last places – one for a bit o’ poaching, and the other for being always on the drink. They know I don’t like ’em – both of ’em,” said Humphrey, with the veins swelling in his white forehead; “and no sooner do they get took on, than they begin to worry me.”

“How?” said Trevor, smiling.

“Trespassing on my land, sir – I mean yours, sir, begging your pardon, sir. They will do it, too, sir. You see, there’s a bit of land at the corner where Penreife runs right into the Tolcarne estate – sort of tongue o’ land, sir – and to save going round, they make a path right across there, sir, over our bit of pasture.”

“Put up a fence, Humphrey,” said Trevor.

“I do, sir, and bush it, and set up rails; but they knocks ’em down, and tramples all over the place. Sir Hampton’s got an idea that he’s a right to that bit, as his land comes nigh surrounding it, and that makes ’em so sarcy.”

“Well, we must see to it,” said Trevor. “I want to be good friends with all my neighbours.”

“Then you’ve cut out your work,” said Pratt, drily.

“You won’t be with Sir Hampton, sir, you may reckon on that,” said Humphrey. “Lady Rea is a kind, pleasant lady enough, and the young ladies is very nice, sir, and he’s been civil enough to me; but he upsets everybody nearly – him and his sister.”

“Never mind about that,” said Trevor, checking him. “I wish to be on good terms with my neighbours, and if there be any trespass – any annoyance from Sir Hampton’s people – tell me quietly, and I will lay the matter before their master.”

“Or we might get up a good action for trespass,” said Pratt. “But, by the way,” he said, stopping short, and sticking one finger on his forehead, “is this Sir Hampton the chuffy old gentleman we saw at the steeplechase?”

“Yes, sir; and as told me I might get up on the box-seat. That was him, you know, as that blackguard prodded with his stick.”

“Phew!” whistled Pratt. “I say, Dick,” he whispered, “the old chap did not see us under the best of auspices.”

“No; it’s rather vexing,” was the reply.

They walked on from dense copse to meadow, through goodly fields of grain, and down in deep little vales, with steep sides covered with fern, bramble, and stunted pollard oaks.

“Poor youth!” said Pratt, and stopped to mop his forehead. “How low-spirited you must feel to be the owner of such a place. It’s lovely. Nature’s made it very beautiful; but no wonder – see what practice she has had.”

Trevor laughed, and Humphrey smiled, saying —

“If you come a bit farther this way, sir, there’s a capital view of the house.”

Pratt followed the man; and there, at about half a mile distance, on the slope of a steep hill, was the rugged, granite-built seat – Penreife – half ancient, half modern; full of buttresses, gables, awkward chimney-stacks, and windows of all shapes, with the ivy clustering over it greenly, and a general look of picturesque comfort that no trimly-built piece of architecture could display. The house stood at the end of one of the steep valleys running up from the sea, which shone in the autumn sun about another half-mile farther, with grey cottages clustering on the cliff, and a little granite-built harbour, sheltering some half a dozen duck-shaped luggers and a couple of yachts.

“Ah,” said Pratt, “that’s pretty! Beats Ludgate Hill and Fleet Street all to fits. Is that your master’s yacht?”

“The big ’un is, sir – the Sea Launce,” said Humphrey; “the little ’un’s Mr Mervyn’s – the Swallow.”

“By the way, who is this Mr Mervyn?” said Trevor, who had sauntered up.

“Well, sir,” said Humphrey, taking off his hat and rubbing his brown curls, “I don’t kinder know what he is. He’s been in the navy, I think, for he’s a capital sailor; but he’s quite the gentleman, and wonderful kind to the poor people, and he lives in that little white house the other side of the cliff.”

“I can’t see any white house,” said Pratt.

“No, sir, you can’t see it, ’cause it’s the other side of the cliff; but that’s his flagstaff rigged up, as you can see, with the weathercock on it, and – Here, hi! you, sir, come out of that! Here, Juno, lass, come along.”

“Has he gone mad?” cried Pratt.

For Humphrey had suddenly set off down a steep slope towards a meadow, and went on shouting with all his might.

“No,” said Trevor, shading his eyes, “there’s a man – two men with billhooks there – labourers, I should think. Come along, or perhaps there’ll be a quarrel; and I can’t have that.”