Chapter 37

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_ CHAPTER XXXVII

LADY BASSETT was paralyzed for a minute or two by this speech. At last she replied by asking a question--rather a curious one. "Who nursed you, Charles?"

"What, when I was a baby? How can I tell? Yes, by-the-by, it was my mother nursed me--so I was told."

"And your mother was a Le Compton. This poor boy was nursed by a servant. Oh, she has some good qualities, and is certainly devoted to us--to this day her face brightens at sight of me--but she is essentially vulgar; and do you remember, Charles, I wished to wean him early; but I was overruled, and the poor child drew his nature from that woman for nearly eighteen months; it is a thing unheard of nowadays."

"Well, but surely it is from our parents we draw our nature."

"No; I think it is from our nurses. If Compton or Alec ever turn out like Reginald, blame nobody but their nurse, and that is Me."

Sir Charles smiled faintly at this piece of feminine logic, and asked her what he should do.

She said she was quite unable to advise. Mr. Rolfe was coming to see them soon; perhaps he might be able to suggest something.

Sir Charles said he would consult him; but he was clear on one thing--the boy must be sent from Huntercombe, and so separated from all his present acquaintances.

Mr. Rolfe came, and the distressed father opened his heart to him in strict confidence respecting Reginald.

Rolfe listened and sympathized, and knit his brow, and asked time to consider what he had heard, and also to study the boy for himself.

He angled for him next day accordingly. A little table was taken out on the lawn, and presently Mr. Rolfe issued forth in a uniform suit of dark blue flannel and a sombrero hat, and set to work writing a novel in the sun.

Reginald in due course descried this figure, and it smacked so of that Bohemia to which his own soul belonged that he was attracted thereby, but made his approaches stealthily, like a little cat.

Presently a fiddle went off behind a tree, so close that the novelist leaped out of his seat with an eldrich screech; for he had long ago forgotten all about Mr. Reginald, and, when he got heated in this kind of composition, any sudden sound seemed to his tense nerves and boiling brain about ten times as loud as it really was.

Having relieved himself with a yell, he sat down with the mien of a martyr expecting tortures; but he was most agreeably disappointed; the little monster played an English melody, and played it in tune. This done, he whistled a quick tune, and played a slow second to it in perfect harmony; this done, he whistled the second part and played the quick treble--a very simple feat, but still ingenious for a boy, and new to his hearer.

"Bravo! bravo!" cried Rolfe, with all his heart,

Mr. Reginald emerged, radiant with vanity. "You are like me, Mr. Writer," said he; "you don't like to be cooped up in-doors."

"I wish I could play the fiddle like you, my fine fellow."

"Ah, you can't do that all in a minute; see the time I have been at it."

"Ah, to be sure, I forgot your antiquity."

"And it isn't the time only; it's giving your mind to it, old chap."

"What, you don't give your mind to your books, then, as you do to your fiddle, young gentleman?"

"Not such a flat. Why, lookee here, governor, if you go and give your mind to a thing you don't like, it's always time wasted, because some other chap, that does like it, will beat you, and what's the use working for to be beat?"

"'For' is redundant," objected Rolfe.

"But if you stick hard to the things you like, you do 'em downright well. But old people are such fools, they always drive you the wrong way. They make the gals play music six hours a day, and you might as well set the hen bullfinches to pipe. Look at the gals as come here, how they rattle up and down the piano, and can't make it sing a morsel. Why, they couldn't rattle like that, if they'd music in their skins, d--n 'em; and they drive me to those stupid books, because I'm all for music and moonshine. Can you keep a secret?"

"As the tomb."

"Well, then, I can do plenty of things well, besides fiddling; I can set a wire with any poacher in the parish. I have caught plenty of our old man's hares in my time; and it takes a workman to set a wire as it should be. Show me a wire, and I'll tell you whether it was Hudson, or Whitbeck, or Squinting Jack, or who it was that set it. I know all their work that walks by moonlight hereabouts."

"This is criticism; a science; I prefer art; play me another tune, my bold Bohemian."

"Ah, I thought I should catch ye with my fiddle. You're not such a muff as the others, old 'un, not by a long chalk. Hang me if I won't give ye 'Ireland's music,' and I've sworn never to waste that on a fool."

He played the old Irish air so simply and tunably that Rolfe leaned back in his chair, with half closed eyes, in soft voluptuous ecstasy.

The youngster watched him with his coal-black eye.

"I like you," said he, "better than I thought I should, a precious sight."

"Highly flattered."

"Come with me, and hear my nurse sing it."

"What, and leave my novel?"

"Oh, bother your novel."

"And so I will. That will be tit for tat; it has bothered me. Lead on, Bohemian bold."

The boy took him, over hedge and ditch, the short-cut to Meyrick's farm; and caught Mrs. Meyrick, and said she must sing "Ireland's music" to Rolfe the writer.

Mrs. Meyrick apologized for her dress, and affected shyness about singing: Mr. Reginald stared at first, then let her know that, if she was going to be affected like the girls that came to the Hall, he should hate her, as he did them, and this he confirmed with a naughty word.

Thus threatened, she came to book, and sang Ireland's melody in a low, rich, sonorous voice; Reginald played a second; the harmony was so perfect and strong that certain glass candelabra on the mantel-piece rang loudly, and the drops vibrated. Then he made her sing the second, and he took the treble with his violin; and he wound up by throwing in a third part himself, a sort of countertenor, his own voice being much higher than the woman's.

The tears stood in Rolfe's eyes. "Well," said he, "you have got the soul of music, you two. I could listen to you 'From morn till noon, from noon till dewy eve.'"

As they returned to Huntercombe, this mercurial youth went off at a tangent, and Rolfe saw him no more.

He wrote in peace, and walked about between the heats.

Just before dinner-time the screams of women were heard hard by, and the writer hurried to the place in time to see Mr. Basset hanging by the shoulder from the branch of a tree, about twenty feet from the ground.

Rolfe hallooed, as he ran, to the women, to fetch blankets to catch him, and got under the tree, determined to try and catch him in his arms, if necessary; but he encouraged the boy to hold on.

"All right, governor," said the boy, in a quavering voice.

It was very near the kitchen; maids and men poured out with blankets; eight people held one, under Rolfe's direction, and down came Mr. Bassett in a semicircle, and bounded up again off the blanket, like an India-rubber ball.

His quick mind recovered courage the moment he touched wool.

"Crikey! that's jolly," said he; "give me another toss or two."

"Oh no! no!" said a good-natured maid. "Take an' put him to bed right off, poor dear."

"Hold your tongue, ye bitch," said young hopeful; "if ye don't toss me, I'll turn ye all off, as soon as ever the old un kicks the bucket."

Thus menaced, they thought it prudent to toss him; but, at the third toss, he yelled out, "Oh! oh! oh! I'm all wet; it's blood! I'm dead!"

Then they examined, and found his arm was severely lacerated by an old nail that had been driven into the tree, and it had torn the flesh in his fall: he was covered with blood, the sight of which quenched his manly spirit, and he began to howl.

"Old linen rag, warm water, and a bottle of champagne," shouted Rolfe: the servants flew.

Rolfe dressed and bandaged the wound for him, and then he felt faint: the champagne soon set that right; and then he wanted to get drunk, alleging, as a reason, that he had not been drunk for this two months.

Sir Charles was told of the accident, and was distressed by it, and also by the cause.

"Rolfe," said he, sorrowfully, "there is a ring-dove's nest on that tree: she and hers have built there in peace and safety for a hundred years, and cooed about the place. My unhappy boy was climbing the tree to take the young, after solemnly promising me he never would: that is the bitter truth. What shall I do with the young barbarian?"

He sighed, and Lady Bassett echoed the sigh.

Said Rolfe, "The young barbarian, as you call him, has disarmed me: he plays the fiddle like a civilized angel."

"Oh, Mr. Rolfe!"

"What, you his mother, and not found that out yet? Oh yes, he has a heaven-born genius for music."

Rolfe then related the musical feats of the urchin.

Sir Charles begged to observe that this talent would go a very little way toward fitting him to succeed his father and keep up the credit of an ancient family.

"Dear Charles, Mr. Rolfe knows that; but it is like him to make the best of things, to encourage us. But what do you think of him, on the whole, Mr. Rolfe? has Sir Charles more to hope or to fear?"

"Give me another day or two to study him," said Rolfe.

That night there was a loud alarm. Mr. Bassett was running about the veranda in his night-dress.

They caught him and got him to bed, and Rolfe said it was fever; and, with the assistance of Sir Charles and a footman, laid him between two towels steeped in tepid water, then drew blankets tight over him, and, in short, packed him.

"Ah!" said he, complacently; "I say, give me a drink of moonshine, old chap."

"I'll give you a bucketful," said Rolfe; then, with the servant's help, took his little bed and put it close to the window; the moonlight streamed in on the boy's face, his great black eyes glittered in it. He was diabolically beautiful. "Kiss me, moonshine," said he; "I like to wash in you."

Next day he was, apparently, quite well, and certainly ripe for fresh mischief. Rolfe studied him, and, the evening before he went, gave Sir Charles and Lady Bassett his opinion, but not with his usual alacrity; a weight seemed to hang on him, and, more than once, his voice trembled.

"I shall tell you," said he, "what I see--what I foresee--and then, with great diffidence, what I advise.

"I see--what naturalists call a reversion in race, a boy who resembles in color and features neither of his parents, and, indeed, bears little resemblance to any of the races that have inhabited England since history was written. He suggests rather some Oriental type."

Sir Charles turned round in his chair, with a sigh, and said, "We are to have a romance, it seems."

Lady Bassett stared with all her eyes, and began to change color.

The theorist continued, with perfect composure, "I don't undertake to account for it with any precision. How can I? Perhaps there is Moorish blood in your family, and here it has revived; you look incredulous, but there are plenty of examples, ay, and stronger than this: every child that is born resembles some progenitor; how then do you account for Julia Pastrana, a young lady who dined with me last week, and sang me 'Ah perdona,' rather feebly, in the evening? Bust and figure like any other lady, hand exquisite, arms neatly turned, but with long, silky hair from the elbow to the wrist. Face, ugh! forehead made of black leather, eyes all pupil, nose an excrescence, chin pure monkey, face all covered with hair; briefly, a type extinct ten thousand years before Adam, yet it could revive at this time of day. Compared with La Pastrana, and many much weaker examples of antiquity revived, that I have seen, your Mauritanian son is no great marvel, after all."

"This is a little too far-fetched," said Sir Charles, satirically; "Bella's father was a very dark man, and it is a tradition in our family that all the Bassetts were as black as ink till they married with you Rolfes, in the year 1684."

"Oho!" said Rolfe, "is it so? See how discussion brings out things."

"And then," said Lady Bassett, "Charles dear, tell Mr. Rolfe what I think."

"Ay, do," said Rolfe; "that will be a new form of circumlocution."

Sir Charles complied, with a smile. "Lady Bassett's theory is, that children derive their nature quite as much from their wet-nurses as from their parents, and she thinks the faults we deplore in Reginald are to be traced to his nurse; by-the-by, she is a dark woman too."

"Well," said Rolfe, "there's a good deal of truth in that, as far as regards the disposition. But I never heard color so accounted for; yet why not? It has been proved that the very bones of young animals can be colored pink, by feeding them on milk so colored."

"There!" said Lady Bassett.

"But no nurse could give your son a color which is not her own. I have seen the woman; she is only a dark Englishwoman. Her arms were embrowned by exposure, but her forehead was not brown. Mr. Reginald is quite another thing. The skin of his body, the white of his eye, the pupil, all look like a reversion to some Oriental type; and, mark the coincidence, he has mental peculiarities that point toward the East."

Sir Charles lost patience. "On the contrary," said he, "he talks and feels just like an English snob, and makes me miserable."

"Oh, as to that, he has picked up vulgar phrases at that farm, and in your stables; but he never picked up his musical genius in stables and farms, far less his poetry."

"What poetry?"

"What poetry? Why, did not you hear him? Was it not poetical of a wounded, fevered boy to beg to be laid by the window, and to say 'Let me drink the moonshine?' Take down your Homer, and read a thousand lines haphazard, and see whether you stumble over a thought more poetical than that. But criticism does not exist: whatever the dead said was good; whatever the living say is little; as if the dead were a race apart, and had never been the living, and the living would never be the dead."

Heaven knows where he was running to now, but Sir Charles stopped him by conceding that point. "Well you are right: poor child, it was poetical," and the father's pride predominated, for a moment, over every other sentiment.

"Yes; but where did it come from? That looks to me a typical idea; I mean an idea derived, not from his luxurious parents, dwellers in curtained mansions, but from some out-door and remote ancestor; perhaps from the Oriental tribe that first colonized Britain; they worshiped the sun and the moon, no doubt; or perhaps, after all, it only came from some wandering tribe that passed their lives between the two lights of heaven, and never set foot in a human dwelling."

"This," said Sir Charles, "is a flattering speculation, but so wild and romantic that I fear it will lead us to no practical result. I thought you undertook to advise me. What advice can you build on these cobwebs of your busy brain?"

"Excuse me, my practical friend," said Rolfe. "I opened my discourse in three heads. What I see--what I foresee--and what, with diffidence, I advise. Pray don't disturb my methods, or I am done for; never disturb an artist's form. I have told you what I see. What I foresee is this: you will have to cut off the entail with Reginald's consent, when he is of age, and make the Saxon boy Compton your successor. Cutting off entails runs in families, like everything else; your grandfather did it, and so will you. You should put by a few thousands every year, that you may be able to do this without injustice either to your Oriental or your Saxon son."

"Never!" shouted Sir Charles: then, in a broken voice, "He is my first-born, and my idol; his coming into the world rescued me out of a morbid condition: he healed my one great grief. Bar the entail, and put his younger brother in his place--never!"

Mr. Rolfe bowed his head politely, and left the subject, which, indeed, could be carried no farther without serious offense.

"And now for my advice. The question is, how to educate this strange boy. One thing is clear; it is no use trying the humdrum plan any longer; it has been tried, and failed. I should adapt his education to his nature. Education is made as stiff and unyielding as a board; but it need not be. I should abolish that spectacled tutor of yours at once, and get a tutor, young, enterprising, manly, and supple, who would obey orders; and the order should be to observe the boy's nature, and teach accordingly. Why need men teach in a chair, and boys learn in a chair? The Athenians studied not in chairs. The Peripatetics, as their name imports, hunted knowledge afoot; those who sought truth in the groves of Academus were not seated at that work. Then let the tutor walk with him, and talk with him by sunlight and moonlight, relating old history, and commenting on each new thing that is done, or word spoken, and improve every occasion. Why, I myself would give a guinea a day to walk with William White about the kindly aspects and wooded slopes of Selborne, or with Karr about his garden. Cut Latin and Greek clean out of the scheme. They are mere cancers to those who can never excel in them. Teach him not dead languages, but living facts. Have him in your justice-room for half an hour a day, and give him your own comments on what he has heard there. Let his tutor take him to all Quarter Sessions and Assizes, and stick to him like diaculum, especially out-of-doors; order him never to be admitted to the stable-yard; dismiss every biped there that lets him come. Don't let him visit his nurse so often, and never without his tutor; it was she who taught him to look forward to your decease; that is just like these common women. Such a tutor as I have described will deserve 500 pounds a year. Give it him; and dismiss him if he plays humdrum and doesn't earn it. Dismiss half a dozen, if necessary, till you get a fellow with a grain or two of genius for tuition. When the boy is seventeen, what with his Oriental precocity, and this system of education, he will know the world as well as a Saxon boy of twenty-one, and that is not saying much. Then, if his nature is still as wild, get him a large tract in Australia; cattle to breed, kangaroos to shoot, swift horses to thread the bush and gallop mighty tracts; he will not shirk business, if it avoids the repulsive form of sitting down in-doors, and offers itself in combination with riding, hunting, galloping, cracking of rifles, and of colonial whips as loud as rifles, and drinking sunshine and moonshine in that mellow clime, beneath the Southern Cross and the spangled firmament of stars unknown to us."

His own eyes sparkled like hot coals at this Bohemian picture.

Then he sighed and returned to civilization. "But," said he, "be ready with eighty thousand pounds for him, that he may enjoy his own way and join you in barring the entail. I forgot, I must say no more on that subject; I see it is as offensive--as it is inevitable. Cassandra has spoken wisely, and, I see, in vain. God bless you both--good-night."

And he rolled out of the room with a certain clumsy importance.

Sir Charles treated all this advice with a polite forbearance while he was in the room, but on his departure delivered a sage reflection.

"Strange," said he, "that a man so valuable in any great emergency should be so extravagant and eccentric in the ordinary affairs of life. I might as well drive to Bellevue House and consult the first gentleman I met there."

Lady Bassett did not reply immediately, and Sir Charles observed that her face was very red and her hands trembled.

"Why, Bella," said he, "has all that rhodomontade upset you?"

Lady Bassett looked frightened at his noticing her agitation, and said that Mr. Rolfe always overpowered her. "He is so large, and so confident, and throws such new light on things."

"New light! Wild eccentricity always does that; but it is the light of Jack-o'-lantern. On a great question, so near my heart as this, give me the steady light of common sense, not the wayward coruscations of a fiery imagination. Bella dear, I shall send the boy to a good school, and so cut off at one blow all the low associations that have caused the mischief."

"You know what is best, dear," said Lady Bassett; "you are wiser than any of us."

In the morning she got hold of Mr. Rolfe, and asked him if he could put her in the way of getting more than three per cent for her money without risk.

"Only one," said.Rolfe. "London freeholds in rising situations let to substantial tenants. I can get you five per cent that way, if you are always ready to buy. The thing does not offer every day."

"I have twenty thousand pounds to dispose of so," said Lady Bassett.

"Very well," said Rolfe. "I'll look out for you, but Oldfield must examine titles and do the actual business. The best of that investment is, it is always improving; no ups and downs. Come," thought he, "Cassandra has not spoken quite in vain."

Sir Charles acted on his judgment, and in due course sent Mr. Bassett to a school at some distance, kept by a clergyman, who had the credit in that county of exercising sharp supervision and strict discipline.

Sir Charles made no secret of the boy's eccentricities. Mr. Beecher said he had one or two steady boys who assisted him in such cases.

Sir Charles thought that a very good idea; it was like putting a wild colt into the break with a steady horse.

He missed the boy sadly at first, but comforted himself with the conviction that he had parted with him for his good: that consoled him somewhat.

The younger children of Sir Charles and Lady Bassett were educated entirely by their mother, and taught as none but a loving lady can teach.

Compton, with whom we have to do, never knew the thorns with which the path of letters is apt to be strewn. A mistress of the great art of pleasing made knowledge from the first a primrose path to him. Sparkling all over with intelligence, she impregnated her boy with it. She made herself his favorite companion; she would not keep her distance. She stole and coaxed knowledge and goodness into his heart and mind with rare and loving cunning.

She taught him English and French and Latin on the Hamiltonian plan, and stored his young mind with history and biography, and read to him, and conversed with him on everything as they read it.

She taught him to speak the truth, and to be honorable and just.

She taught him to be polite, and even formal, rather than free-and-easy and rude. She taught him to be a man. He must not be what brave boys called a molly-coddle: like most womanly women, she had a veneration for man, and she gave him her own high idea of the manly character.

Natural ability, and habitual contact with a mind so attractive and so rich, gave this intelligent boy many good ideas beyond his age.

When he was six years old, Lady Bassett made him pass his word of honor that he would never go into the stable-yard; and even then he was far enough advanced to keep his word religiously.

In return for this she let him taste some sweets of liberty, and was not always after him. She was profound enough to see that without liberty a noble character cannot be formed; and she husbanded the curb.

One day he represented to her that, in the meadow next their lawn, were great stripes of yellow, which were possibly cowslips; of course they might be only buttercups, but he hoped better things of them; he further reported that there was an iron gate between him and this paradise: he could get over it if not objectionable; but he thought it safest to ask her what she thought of the matter; was that iron gate intended to keep little boys from the cowslips, because, if so, it was a misfortune to which he must resign himself. Still, it was a misfortune. All this, of course, in the simple language of boyhood.

Then Lady Bassett smiled, and said, "Suppose I were to lend you a key of that iron gate?"

"Oh, mamma!"

"I have a great mind to."

"Then you will, you will."

"Does that follow?"

"Yes: whenever you say you think you'll do something kind, or you have a great mind to do it, you know you always do it; and that is one thing I do like you for, mamma--you are better than your word."

"Better than my word? Where does the child learn these things?"

"La, mamma, papa says that often."

"Oh, that accounts for it. I like the phrase very much. I wish I could think I deserved it. At any rate, I will be as good as my word for once; you shall have a key of the gate."

The boy clapped his hands with delight. The key was sent for, and, meantime, she told him one reason why she had trusted him with it was because he had been as good as his word about the stable.

The key was brought, and she held it up half playfully, and said, "There, sir, I deliver you this upon conditions: you must only use it when the weather is quite dry, because the grass in the meadow is longer, and will be wet. Do you promise?"

"Yes, mamma."

"And you must always lock the gate when you come back, and bring the key to one place--let me see--the drawer in the hall table, the one with marble on it; for you know a place for every thing is our rule. On these conditions, I hereby deliver you this magic key, with the right of egress and ingress."

"Egress and ingress?"

"Egress and ingress."

"Is that foreign for cowslips, mamma--and oxlips?"

"Ha! ha! the child's head is full of cowslips. There is the dictionary; look out Egress, and afterward look out Ingress."

When he had added these two words to his little vocabulary, his mother asked him if he would be good enough to tell her why he did not care much about all the beautiful flowers in the garden, and was so excited about cowslips, which appeared to her a flower of no great beauty, and the smell rather sickly, begging his pardon.

This question posed him dreadfully: he looked at her in a sort of comic distress, and then sat gravely down all in a heap, about a yard off, to think.

Finally he turned to her with a wry face, and said, "Why do I, mamma?"

She smiled deliciously. "No, no, sir," said she. "How can I get inside your little head and tell what is there? There must be a reason, I suppose; and you know you and I are never satisfied till we get at the reason of a thing. But there is no hurry, dear. I give you a week to find it out. Now, run and open the gate--stay, are there any cows in that field?"

"Sometimes, mamma; but they have no horns, you know."

"Upon your word?"

"Upon my honor. I am not fond of them with horns, myself."

"Then run away, darling. But you must come and hunt me up, and tell me how you enjoyed yourself, because that makes me happy, you know."

This is mawkish; but it will serve to show on what terms the woman and boy were.

On second thoughts, I recall that apology, and defy creation. "THE MAWKISH" is a branch of literature, a great and popular one, and I have neglected it savagely.

Master Compton opened the iron gate, and the world was all before him where to choose.

He chose one of those yellow stripes that had so attracted him. Horror! it was all buttercups and deil a cowslip.

Nevertheless, pursuing his researches, he found plenty of that delightful flower scattered about the meadow in thinner patches; and he gathered a double handful and dirtied his knees.

Returning, thus laden, from his first excursion, he was accosted by a fluty voice.

"Little boy!"

He looked up, and saw a girl standing on the lower bar of a little wooden gate painted white, looking over.

"Please bring me my ball," said she, pathetically.

Compton looked about; and saw a soft ball of many colors lying near.

He put down his cowslips gravely, and, brought her the ball. He gave it her with a blush, because she was a strange girl; and she blushed a little, because he did.

He returned to his cowslips.

"Little boy!" said the voice, "please bring me my ball again."

He brought it her, with undisturbed politeness. She was giggling; he laughed too, at that.

"You did it on purpose that time," said he, solemnly.

"La! you don't think I'd be so wicked," said she.

Compton shook his head doubtfully, and, considering the interview at an end turned to go, when instantly the ball knocked his hat off, and nothing of the malefactress was visible but a black eye sparkling with fun and mischief, and a bit of forehead wedged against the angle of the wall.

This being a challenge, Compton said, "Now you come out after that, and stand a shot, like a man."

The invitation to be masculine did not tempt her a bit; the only thing she put out was her hand, and that she drew in, with a laugh, the moment he threw at it.

At this juncture a voice cried, "Ruperta! what are you doing there?"

Ruperta made a rapid signal with her hand to Compton, implying that he was to run away; and she herself walked demurely toward the person who had called her.

It was three days before Compton saw her again, and then she beckoned him royally to her.

"Little boy," said she, "talk to me."

Compton looked at her a little confounded, and did not reply.

"Stand on this gate, like me, and talk," said she.

He obeyed the first part of this mandate, and stood on the lower bar of the little gate; so their two figures made a V, when they hung back, and a tenpenny nail when they came forward and met, and this motion they continued through the dialogue; and it was a pity the little wretches could not keep still, and send for my friend the English Titian: for, when their heads were in position, it was indeed a pretty picture of childish and flower-like beauty and contrast; the boy fair, blue-eyed, and with exquisite golden hair; the girl black-eyed, black-browed, and with eyelashes of incredible length and beauty, and a cheek brownish, but tinted, and so glowing with health and vigor that, pricked with a needle, it seemed ready to squirt carnation right into your eye.

She dazzled Master Compton so that he could do nothing but look at her.

"Well?" said she, smiling.

"Well," replied he, pretending her "well" was not an interrogatory, but a concise statement, and that he had discharged the whole duty of man by according a prompt and cheerful consent.

"You begin," said the lady.

"No, you."

"What for?"

"Because--I think--you are the cleverest."

"Good little boy! Well, then, I will. Who are you?"

"I am Compton. Who are you, please?"

"I am Ruperta."

"I never heard that name before."

"No more did I. I think they measured me for it: you live in the great house there, don't you?"

"Yes, Ruperta."

"Well, then, I live in the little house. It is not very little either. It's Highmore. I saw you in church one day; is that lady with the hair your mamma?"

"Yes, Ruperta."

"She is beautiful."

"Isn't she?"

"But mine is so good."

"Mine is very good, too, Ruperta. Wonderfully good."

"I like you, Compton--a little."

"I like you a good deal, Ruperta."

"La, do you? I wonder at that: you are like a cherub, and I am such a black thing."

"But that is why I like you. Reginald is darker than you, and oh, so beautiful!"

"Hum!--he is a very bad boy."

"No, he is not."

"Don't tell stories, child; he is. I know all about him. A wicked, vulgar, bad boy."

"He is not," cried Compton, almost sniveling; but he altered his mind, and fired up. "You are a naughty, story-telling girl, to say that."

"Bless me!" said Ruperta, coloring high, and tossing her head haughtily.

"I don't like you now, Ruperta," said Compton, with all the decent calmness of a settled conviction.

"You don't!" screamed Ruperta. "Then go about your business directly, and don't never come here again! Scolding me! How dare you?--oh! oh! oh!" and the little lady went off slowly, with her finger in her eye; and Master Compton looked rather rueful, as we all do when this charming sex has recourse to what may be called "liquid reasoning." I have known the most solid reasons unable to resist it.

However, "mens conscia recti," and, above all, the cowslips, enabled Compton to resist, and he troubled his head no more about her that day.

But he looked out for her the next day, and she did not come; and that rather disappointed him.

The next day was wet, and he did not go into the meadow, being on honor not to do so.

The fourth day was lovely, and he spent a long time in the meadow, in hopes: he saw her for a moment at the gate; but she speedily retired.

He was disappointed.

However, he collected a good store of cowslips, and then came home.

As he passed the door out popped Ruperta from some secret ambush, and said, "Well?" _

Read next: Chapter 38

Read previous: Chapter 36

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