“I’ll hamstring the beast the next time as he’s down here!” said Mally to old Glos, while the angry fire literally streamed from her eyes.
Farmer Gunliffe’s small homestead,—he held about fifty acres of land,—was close by the village of Tintagel, and not a mile from the cliff. The sea-wrack, as they call it, was pretty well the only manure within his reach, and no doubt he thought it hard that he should be kept from using it by Mally Trenglos and her obstinacy.
“There’s heaps of other coves, Barty,” said Mally to Barty Gunliffe, the farmer’s son.
“But none so nigh, Mally, nor yet none that fills ’emselves as this place.”
Then he explained to her that he would not take the weed that came up close to hand. He was bigger than she was, and stronger, and would get it from the outer rocks, with which she never meddled. Then, with scorn in her eye, she swore that she could get it where he durst not venture, and repeated her threat of hamstringing the pony. Barty laughed at her wrath, jeered her because of her wild hair, and called her a mermaid.
“I’ll mermaid you!” she cried. “Mermaid, indeed! I wouldn’t be a man to come and rob a poor girl and an old cripple. But you’re no man, Barty Gunliffe! You’re not half a man.”
Nevertheless, Bartholomew Gunliffe was a very fine young fellow as far as the eye went. He was about five feet eight inches high, with strong arms and legs, with light curly brown hair and blue eyes. His father was but in a small way as a farmer, but, nevertheless, Barty Gunliffe was well thought of among the girls around. Everybody liked Barty,—excepting only Mally Trenglos, and she hated him like poison.
Barty, when he was asked why so good natured a lad as he persecuted a poor girl and an old man, threw himself upon the justice of the thing. It wouldn’t do at all, according to his view, that any single person should take upon himself to own that which God Almighty sent as the common property of all. He would do Mally no harm, and so he had told her. But Mally was a vixen,—a wicked little vixen; and she must be taught to have a civil tongue in her head. When once Mally would speak him civil as he went for weed, he would get his father to pay the old man some sort of toll for the use of the path.
“Speak him civil?” said Mally. “Never; not while I have a tongue in my mouth!” And I fear old Glos encouraged her rather than otherwise in her view of the matter.
But her grandfather did not encourage her to hamstring the pony. Hamstringing a pony would be a serious thing, and old Glos thought it might be very awkward for both of them if Mally were put into prison. He suggested, therefore, that all manner of impediments should be put in the way of the pony’s feet, surmising that the well-trained donkey might be able to work in spite of them. And Barty Gunliffe, on his next descent, did find the passage very awkward when he came near to Malachi’s hut, but he made his way down, and poor Mally saw the lumps of rock at which she had laboured so hard pushed on one side or rolled out of the way with a steady persistency of injury towards herself that almost drove her frantic.
“Well, Barty, you’re a nice boy,” said old Glos, sitting in the doorway of the hut, as he watched the intruder.
“I aint a doing no harm to none as doesn’t harm me,” said Barty. “The sea’s free to all, Malachi.”
“And the sky’s free to all, but I mustn’t get up on the top of your big barn to look at it,” said Mally, who was standing among the rocks with a long hook in her hand. The long hook was the tool with which she worked in dragging the weed from the waves. “But you aint got no justice, nor yet no sperrit, or you wouldn’t come here to vex an old man like he.”
“I didn’t want to vex him, nor yet to vex you, Mally. You let me be for a while, and we’ll be friends yet.”
“Friends!” exclaimed Mally. “Who’d have the likes of you for a friend? What are you moving them stones for? Them stones belongs to grandfather.” And in her wrath she made a movement as though she were going to fly at him.
“Let him be, Mally,” said the old man; “let him be. He’ll get his punishment. He’ll come to be drowned some day if he comes down here when the wind is in shore.”
“That he may be drowned then!” said Mally, in her anger. “If he was in that big hole there among the rocks, and the sea running in at half tide, I wouldn’t lift a hand to help him out.”
“Yes you would, Mally; you’d fish me up with your hook like a big stick of seaweed.”
She turned from him with scorn as he said this, and went into the hut. It was time for her to get ready for her work, and one of the great injuries done her lay in this,—that such a one as Barty Gunliffe should come and look at her during her toil among the breakers.
It was an afternoon in April, and the hour was something after four o’clock. There had been a heavy wind from the north-west all the morning, with gusts of rain, and the sea-gulls had been in and out of the cove all the day, which was a sure sign to Mally that the incoming tide would cover the rocks with weed.
The quick waves were now returning with wonderful celerity over the low reefs, and the time had come at which the treasure must be seized, if it was to be garnered on that day. By seven o’clock it would be growing dark, at nine it would be high water, and before daylight the crop would be carried out again if not collected. All this Mally understood very well, and some of this Barty was beginning to understand also.
As Mally came down with her bare feet, bearing her long hook in her hand, she saw Barty’s pony standing patiently on the sand, and in her heart she longed to attack the brute. Barty at this moment, with a common three-pronged fork in his hand, was standing down on a large rock, gazing forth towards the waters. He had declared that he would gather the weed only at places which were inaccessible to Mally, and he was looking out that he might settle where he would begin.
“Let un be, let un be,” shouted the old man to Mally, as he saw her take a step towards the beast, which she hated almost as much as she hated the man.
Hearing her grandfather’s voice through the wind, she desisted from her purpose, if any purpose she had had, and went forth to her work. As she passed down the cove, and scrambled in among the rocks, she saw Barty still standing on his perch; out beyond, the white-curling waves were cresting and breaking themselves with violence, and the wind was howling among the caverns and abutments of the cliff.
Every now and then there came a squall of rain, and though there was sufficient light, the heavens were black with clouds. A scene more beautiful might hardly be found by those who love the glories of the coast. The light for such objects was perfect. Nothing could exceed the grandeur of the colours,—the blue of the open sea, the white of the breaking waves, the yellow sands, or the streaks of red and brown which gave such richness to the cliff.
But neither Mally nor Barty were thinking of such things as these. Indeed they were hardly thinking of their trade after its ordinary forms. Barty was meditating how he could best accomplish his purpose of working beyond the reach of Mally’s feminine powers, and Mally was resolving that wherever Barty went she would go farther.
And, in many respects, Mally had the advantage. She knew every rock in the spot, and was sure of those which gave a good foothold, and sure also of those which did not. And then her activity had been made perfect by practice for the purpose to which it was to be devoted. Barty, no doubt, was stronger than she, and quite as active. But Barty could not jump among the waves from one stone to another as she could do, nor was he as yet able to get aid in his work from the very force of the water as she could get it. She had been hunting seaweed in that cove since she had been an urchin of six years old, and she knew every hole and corner and every spot of vantage. The waves were her friends, and she could use them. She could measure their strength, and knew when and where it would cease.
Mally was great down in the salt pools of her own cove,—great, and very fearless. As she watched Barty make his way forward from rock to rock, she told herself, gleefully, that he was going astray. The curl of the wind as it blew into the cove would not carry the weed up to the northern buttresses of the cove; and then there was the great hole just there,—the great hole of which she had spoken when she wished him evil.
And now she went to work, hooking up the dishevelled hairs of the ocean, and landing many a cargo on the extreme margin of the sand, from whence she would be able in the evening to drag it back before the invading waters would return to reclaim the spoil.
And on his side also Barty made his heap up against the northern buttresses of which I have spoken. Barty’s heap became big and still bigger, so that he knew, let the pony work as he might, he could not take it all up that evening. But still it was not as large as Mally’s heap. Mally’s hook was better than his fork, and Mally’s skill was better than his strength. And when he failed in some haul Mally would jeer him with a wild, weird laughter, and shriek to him through the wind that he was not half a man. At first he answered her with laughing words, but before long, as she boasted of her success and pointed to his failure, he became angry, and then he answered her no more. He became angry with himself, in that he missed so much of the plunder before him.
The broken sea was full of the long straggling growth which the waves had torn up from the bottom of the ocean, but the masses were carried past him, away from him,—nay, once or twice over him; and then Mally’s weird voice would sound in his ear, jeering him. The gloom among the rocks was now becoming thicker and thicker, the tide was beating in with increased strength, and the gusts of wind came with quicker and greater violence. But still he worked on. While Mally worked he would work, and he would work for some time after she was driven in. He would not be beaten by a girl.
The great hole was now full of water, but of water which seemed to be boiling as though in a pot. And the pot was full of floating masses,—large treasures of seaweed which were thrown to and fro upon its surface, but lying there so thick that one would seem almost able to rest upon it without sinking.
Mally knew well how useless it was to attempt to rescue aught from the fury of that boiling caldron. The hole went in under the rocks, and the side of it towards the shore lay high, slippery, and steep. The hole, even at low water, was never empty; and Mally believed that there was no bottom to it. Fish thrown in there could escape out to the ocean, miles away,—so Mally in her softer moods would tell the visitors to the cove. She knew the hole well. Poulnadioul she was accustomed to call it; which was supposed, when translated, to mean that this was the hole of the Evil One. Never did Mally attempt to make her own of weed which had found its way into that pot.
But Barty Gunliffe knew no better, and she watched him as he endeavoured to steady himself on the treacherously slippery edge of the pool. He fixed himself there and made a haul, with some small success. How he managed it she hardly knew, but she stood still for a while watching him anxiously, and then she saw him slip. He slipped, and recovered himself;—slipped again, and again recovered himself.
“Barty, you fool!” she screamed, “if you get yourself pitched in there, you’ll never come out no more.”
Whether she simply wished to frighten him, or whether her heart relented and she had thought of his danger with dismay, who shall say? She could not have told herself. She hated him as much as ever,—but she could hardly have wished to see him drowned before her eyes.
“You go on, and don’t mind me,” said he, speaking in a hoarse angry tone.
“Mind you!—who minds you?” retorted the girl. And then she again prepared herself for her work.
But as she went down over the rocks with her long hook balanced in her hands, she suddenly heard a splash, and, turning quickly round, saw the body of her enemy tumbling amidst the eddying waves in the pool. The tide had now come up so far that every succeeding wave washed into it and over it from the side nearest to the sea, and then ran down again back from the rocks, as the rolling wave receded, with a noise like the fall of a cataract. And then, when the surplus water had retreated for a moment, the surface of the pool would be partly calm, though the fretting bubbles would still boil up and down, and there was ever a simmer on the surface, as though, in truth, the caldron were heated. But this time of comparative rest was but a moment, for the succeeding breaker would come up almost as soon as the foam of the preceding one had gone, and then again the waters would be dashed upon the rocks, and the sides would echo with the roar of the angry wave.
Instantly Mally hurried across to the edge of the pool, crouching down upon her hands and knees for security as she did so. As a wave receded, Barty’s head and face was carried round near to her, and she could see that his forehead was covered with blood. Whether he were alive or dead she did not know. She had seen nothing but his blood, and the light-coloured hair of his head lying amidst the foam. Then his body was drawn along by the suction of the retreating wave; but the mass of water that escaped was not on this occasion large enough to carry the man out with it.
Instantly Mally was at work with her hook, and getting it fixed into his coat, dragged him towards the spot on which she was kneeling. During the half minute of repose she got him so close that she could touch his shoulder. Straining herself down, laying herself over the long bending handle of the hook, she strove to grasp him with her right hand. But she could not do it; she could only touch him.
Then came the next breaker, forcing itself on with a roar, looking to Mally as though it must certainly knock her from her resting-place, and destroy them both. But she had nothing for it but to kneel, and hold by her hook.
What prayer passed through her mind at that moment for herself or for him, or for that old man who was sitting unconsciously up at the cabin, who can say? The great wave came and rushed over her as she lay almost prostrate, and when the water was gone from her eyes, and the tumult of the foam, and the violence of the roaring breaker had passed by her, she found herself at her length upon the rock, while his body had been lifted up, free from her hook, and was lying upon the slippery ledge, half in the water and half out of it. As she looked at him, in that instant, she could see that his eyes were open and that he was struggling with his hands.
“Hold by the hook, Barty,” she cried, pushing the stick of it before him, while she seized the collar of his coat in her hands.
Had he been her brother, her lover, her father, she could not have clung to him with more of the energy of despair. He did contrive to hold by the stick which she had given him, and when the succeeding wave had passed by, he was still on the ledge. In the next moment she was seated a yard or two above the hole, in comparative safety, while Barty lay upon the rocks with his still bleeding head resting upon her lap.
What could she do now? She could not carry him; and in fifteen minutes the sea would be up where she was sitting. He was quite insensible, and very pale, and the blood was coming slowly,—very slowly,—from the wound on his forehead. Ever so gently she put her hand upon his hair to move it back from his face; and then she bent over his mouth to see if he breathed, and as she looked at him she knew that he was beautiful.
What would she not give that he might live? Nothing now was so precious to her as his life,—as this life which she had so far rescued from the waters. But what could she do? Her grandfather could scarcely get himself down over the rocks, if indeed he could succeed in doing so much as that. Could she drag the wounded man backwards, if it were only a few feet, so that he might lie above the reach of the waves till further assistance could be procured?
She set herself to work and she moved him, almost lifting him. As she did so she wondered at her own strength, but she was very strong at that moment. Slowly, tenderly, falling on the rocks herself so that he might fall on her, she got him back to the margin of the sand, to a spot which the waters would not reach for the next two hours.
Here her grandfather met them, having seen at last what had happened from the door.
“Dada,” she said, “he fell into the pool yonder, and was battered against the rocks. See there at his forehead.”
“Mally, I’m thinking that he’s dead already,” said old Glos, peering down over the body.
“No, dada; he is not dead; but mayhap he’s dying. But I’ll go at once up to the farm.”
“Mally,” said the old man, “look at his head. They’ll say we murdered him.”
“Who’ll say so? Who’ll lie like that? Didn’t I pull him out of the hole?”
“What matters that? His father’ll say we killed him.”
It was manifest to Mally that whatever any one might say hereafter, her present course was plain before her. She must run up the path to Gunliffe’s farm and get necessary assistance. If the world were as bad as her grandfather said, it would be so bad that she would not care to live longer in it. But be that as it might, there was no doubt as to what she must do now.
So away she went as fast as her naked feet could carry her up the cliff. When at the top she looked round to see if any person might be within ken, but she saw no one. So she ran with all her speed along the headland of the corn-field which led in the direction of old Gunliffe’s house, and as she drew near to the homestead she saw that Barty’s mother was leaning on the gate. As she approached she attempted to call, but her breath failed her for any purpose of loud speech, so she ran on till she was able to grasp Mrs. Gunliffe by the arm.
“Where’s himself?” she said, holding her hand upon her beating heart that she might husband her breath.
“Who is it you mean?” said Mrs. Gunliffe, who participated in the family feud against Trenglos and his granddaughter. “What does the girl clutch me for in that way?”
“He’s dying then, that’s all.”
“Who is dying? Is it old Malachi? If the old man’s bad, we’ll send some one down.”
“It aint dada; it’s Barty! Where’s himself? where’s the master?” But by this time Mrs. Gunliffe was in an agony of despair, and was calling out for assistance lustily. Happily Gunliffe, the father, was at hand, and with him a man from the neighbouring village.
“Will you not send for the doctor?” said Mally. “Oh, man, you should send for the doctor!”
Whether any orders were given for the doctor she did not know, but in a very few minutes she was hurrying across the field again towards the path to the cove, and Gunliffe with the other man and his wife were following her.
As Mally went along she recovered her voice, for their step was not so quick as hers, and that which to them was a hurried movement, allowed her to get her breath again. And as she went she tried to explain to the father what had happened, saying but little, however, of her own doings in the matter. The wife hung behind listening, exclaiming every now and again that her boy was killed, and then asking wild questions as to his being yet alive. The father, as he went, said little. He was known as a silent, sober man, well spoken of for diligence and general conduct, but supposed to be stern and very hard when angered.
As they drew near to the top of the path the other man whispered something to him, and then he turned round upon Mally and stopped her.
“If he has come by his death between you, your blood shall be taken for his,” said he.
Then the wife shrieked out that her child had been murdered, and Mally, looking round into the faces of the three, saw that her grandfather’s words had come true. They suspected her of having taken the life, in saving which she had nearly lost her own.
She looked round at them with awe in her face, and then, without saying a word, preceded them down the path. What had she to answer when such a charge as that was made against her? If they chose to say that she pushed him into the pool and hit him with her hook as he lay amidst the waters, how could she show that it was not so?
Poor Mally knew little of the law of evidence, and it seemed to her that she was in their hands. But as she went down the steep track with a hurried step,—a step so quick that they could not keep up with her,—her heart was very full,—very full and very high. She had striven for the man’s life as though he had been her brother. The blood was yet not dry on her own legs and arms, where she had torn them in his service. At one moment she had felt sure that she would die with him in that pool. And now they said that she had murdered him! It may be that he was not dead, and what would he say if ever he should speak again? Then she thought of that moment when his eyes had opened, and he had seemed to see her. She had no fear for herself, for her heart was very high. But it was full also,—full of scorn, disdain, and wrath.
When she had reached the bottom, she stood close to the door of the hut waiting for them, so that they might precede her to the other group, which was there in front of them, at a little distance on the sand.
“He is there, and dada is with him. Go and look at him,” said Mally.
The father and mother ran on stumbling over the stones, but Mally remained behind by the door of the hut.
Barty Gunliffe was lying on the sand where Mally had left him, and old Malachi Trenglos was standing over him, resting himself with difficulty upon a stick.
“Not a move he’s moved since she left him,” said he; “not a move. I put his head on the old rug as you see, and I tried ’un with a drop of gin, but he wouldn’t take it,—he wouldn’t take it.”
“Oh, my boy! my boy!” said the mother, throwing herself beside her son upon the sand.
“Haud your tongue, woman,” said the father, kneeling down slowly by the lad’s head, “whimpering that way will do ’un no good.”
Then having gazed for a minute or two upon the pale face beneath him, he looked up sternly into that of Malachi Trenglos.
The old man hardly knew how to bear this terrible inquisition.
“He would come,” said Malachi; “he brought it all upon hisself.”
“Who was it struck him?” said the father.
“Sure he struck hisself, as he fell among the breakers.”
“Liar!” said the father, looking up at the old man.
“They have murdered him!—they have murdered him!” shrieked the mother.
“Haud your peace, woman!” said the husband again. “They shall give us blood for blood.”
Mally, leaning against the corner of the hovel, heard it all, but did not stir. They might say what they liked. They might make it out to be murder. They might drag her and her grandfather to Camelford Gaol, and then to Bodmin, and the gallows; but they could not take from her the conscious feeling that was her own. She had done her best to save him,—her very best. And she had saved him!
She remembered her threat to him before they had gone down on the rocks together, and her evil wish. Those words had been very wicked; but since that she had risked her life to save his. They might say what they pleased of her, and do what they pleased. She knew what she knew.
Then the father raised his son’s head and shoulders in his arms, and called on the others to assist him in carrying Barty towards the path. They raised him between them carefully and tenderly, and lifted their burden on towards the spot at which Mally was standing. She never moved, but watched them at their work; and the old man followed them, hobbling after them with his crutch.
When they had reached the end of the hut she looked upon Barty’s face, and saw that it was very pale. There was no longer blood upon the forehead, but the great gash was to be seen there plainly, with its jagged cut, and the skin livid and blue round the orifice. His light brown hair was hanging back, as she had made it to hang when she had gathered it with her hand after the big wave had passed over them. Ah, how beautiful he was in Mally’s eyes with that pale face, and the sad scar upon his brow! She turned her face away, that they might not see her tears; but she did not move, nor did she speak.
But now, when they had passed the end of the hut, shuffling along with their burden, she heard a sound which stirred her. She roused herself quickly from her leaning posture, and stretched forth her head as though to listen; then she moved to follow them. Yes, they had stopped at the bottom of the path, and had again laid the body on the rocks. She heard that sound again, as of a long, long sigh, and then, regardless of any of them, she ran to the wounded man’s head.
“He is not dead,” she said. “There; he is not dead.”
As she spoke Barty’s eyes opened, and he looked about him.
“Barty, my boy, speak to me,” said the mother.
Barty turned his face upon his mother, smiled, and then stared about him wildly.
“How is it with thee, lad?” said his father. Then Barty turned his face again to the latter voice, and as he did so his eyes fell upon Mally.
“Mally!” he said, “Mally!”
It could have wanted nothing further to any of those present to teach them that, according to Barty’s own view of the case, Mally had not been his enemy; and, in truth, Mally herself wanted no further triumph. That word had vindicated her, and she withdrew back to the hut.
“Dada,” she said, “Barty is not dead, and I’m thinking they won’t say anything more about our hurting him.”
Old Glos shook his head. He was glad the lad hadn’t met his death there; he didn’t want the young man’s blood, but he knew what folk would say. The poorer he was the more sure the world would be to trample on him. Mally said what she could to comfort him, being full of comfort herself.
She would have crept up to the farm if she dared, to ask how Barty was. But her courage failed her when she thought of that, so she went to work again, dragging back the weed she had saved to the spot at which on the morrow she would load the donkey. As she did this she saw Barty’s pony still standing patiently under the rock; so she got a lock of fodder and threw it down before the beast.
It had become dark down in the cove, but she was still dragging back the seaweed, when she saw the glimmer of a lantern coming down the pathway. It was a most unusual sight, for lanterns were not common down in Malachi’s Cove. Down came the lantern rather slowly,—much more slowly than she was in the habit of descending, and then through the gloom she saw the figure of a man standing at the bottom of the path. She went up to him, and saw that it was Mr. Gunliffe, the father.
“Is that Mally?” said Gunliffe.
“Yes, it is Mally; and how is Barty, Mr. Gunliffe?”
“You must come to ’un yourself, now at once,” said the farmer. “He won’t sleep a wink till he’s seed you. You must not say but you’ll come.”
“Sure I’ll come if I’m wanted,” said Mally.
Gunliffe waited a moment, thinking that Mally might have to prepare herself, but Mally needed no preparation. She was dripping with salt water from the weed which she had been dragging, and her elfin locks were streaming wildly from her head; but, such as she was, she was ready.
“Dada’s in bed,” she said, “and I can go now if you please.”
Then Gunliffe turned round and followed her up the path, wondering at the life which this girl led so far away from all her sex. It was now dark night, and he had found her working at the very edge of the rolling waves by herself, in the darkness, while the only human being who might seem to be her protector had already gone to his bed.
When they were at the top of the cliff Gunliffe took her by her hand, and led her along. She did not comprehend this, but she made no attempt to take her hand from his. Something he said about falling on the cliffs, but it was muttered so lowly that Mally hardly understood him. But in truth the man knew that she had saved his boy’s life, and that he had injured her instead of thanking her. He was now taking her to his heart, and as words were wanting to him, he was showing his love after this silent fashion. He held her by the hand as though she were a child, and Mally tripped along at his side asking him no questions.
When they were at the farm-yard gate he stopped there for a moment.
“Mally, my girl,” he said, “he’ll not be content till he sees thee, but thou must not stay long wi’ him, lass. Doctor says he’s weak like, and wants sleep badly.”
Mally merely nodded her head, and then they entered the house. Mally had never been within it before, and looked about with wondering eyes at the furniture of the big kitchen. Did any idea of her future destiny flash upon her then, I wonder? But she did not pause here a moment, but was led up to the bed-room above stairs, where Barty was lying on his mother’s bed.
“Is it Mally herself?” said the voice of the weak youth.
“It’s Mally herself,” said the mother, “so now you can say what you please.”
“Mally,” said he, “Mally, it’s along of you that I’m alive this moment.”
“I’ll not forget it on her,” said the father, with his eyes turned away from her. “I’ll never forget it on her.”
“We hadn’t a one but only him,” said the mother, with her apron up to her face.
“Mally, you’ll be friends with me now?” said Barty.
To have been made lady of the manor of the cove for ever, Mally couldn’t have spoken a word now. It was not only that the words and presence of the people there cowed her and made her speechless, but the big bed, and the looking-glass, and the unheard-of wonders of the chamber, made her feel her own insignificance. But she crept up to Barty’s side, and put her hand upon his.
“I’ll come and get the weed, Mally; but it shall all be for you,” said Barty.
“Indeed, you won’t then, Barty dear,” said the mother; “you’ll never go near the awsome place again. What would we do if you were took from us?”
“He mustn’t go near the hole if he does,” said Mally, speaking at last in a solemn voice, and imparting the knowledge which she had kept to herself while Barty was her enemy; “’specially not if the wind’s any way from the nor’rard.”
“She’d better go down now,” said the father.
Barty kissed the hand which he held, and Mally, looking at him as he did so, thought that he was like an angel.
“You’ll come and see us to-morrow, Mally?” said he.
To this she made no answer, but followed Mrs. Gunliffe out of the room. When they were down in the kitchen the mother had tea for her, and thick milk, and a hot cake,—all the delicacies which the farm could afford. I don’t know that Mally cared much for the eating and drinking that night, but she began to think that the Gunliffes were good people,—very good people. It was better thus, at any rate, than being accused of murder and carried off to Camelford prison.
“I’ll never forget it on her—never,” the father had said.
Those words stuck to her from that moment, and seemed to sound in her ears all the night. How glad she was that Barty had come down to the cove,—oh, yes, how glad! There was no question of his dying now, and as for the blow on his forehead, what harm was that to a lad like him?
“But father shall go with you,” said Mrs. Gunliffe, when Mally prepared to start for the cove by herself. Mally, however, would not hear of this. She could find her way to the cove whether it was light or dark.
“Mally, thou art my child now, and I shall think of thee so,” said the mother, as the girl went off by herself.
Mally thought of this, too, as she walked home. How could she become Mrs. Gunliffe’s child; ah, how?
I need not, I think, tell the tale any further. That Mally did become Mrs. Gunliffe’s child, and how she became so the reader will understand; and in process of time the big kitchen and all the wonders of the farmhouse were her own. The people said that Barty Gunliffe had married a mermaid out of the sea; but when it was said in Mally’s hearing I doubt whether she liked it; and when Barty himself would call her a mermaid she would frown at him, and throw about her black hair, and pretend to cuff him with her little hand.
Old Glos was brought up to the top of the cliff, and lived his few remaining days under the roof of Mr. Gunliffe’s house; and as for the cove and the right of seaweed, from that time forth all that has been supposed to attach itself to Gunliffe’s farm, and I do not know that any of the neighbours are prepared to dispute the right.
THE WIDOW’S MITE.
THE WIDOW’S MITE.
UT I’m not a widow, and I haven’t got two mites.”
“My dear, you are a widow, and you have got two mites.”
“I’ll tell both of you something that will astonish you. I’ve made a calculation, and I find that if everybody in England would give up their Christmas dinner—that is, in Scotland, and Ireland too——”
“They never have any in Ireland, Bob.”
“Hold your tongue till I’ve done, Charley. They do have Christmas dinners in Ireland. It’s pretty nearly the only day that they do, and I don’t count much upon them either. But if everybody gave up his special Christmas dinner, and dined as he does on other days the saving would amount to two millions and a half.”
Charley whistled.
“Two millions and a half is a large sum of money,” said Mrs. Granger, the elder lady of the party.
“Those calculations never do any good,” said the younger lady, who had declared herself not to be a widow.
“Those calculations do a great deal of good,” continued Bob, carrying on his argument with continued warmth. “They show us what a great national effort would do.”
“A little national effort, I should call that,” said Mrs. Granger, “but I should doubt the two millions and a half.”
“Half-a-crown a-head on thirty million people would do it. You are to include all the beer, wine, and whisky. But suppose you take off one-fifth for the babies and young girls, who don’t drink.”
“Thank you, Bob,” said the younger lady—Nora Field by name.
“And two more fifths for the poor, who haven’t got the half-crown a-head,” said the elder lady.
“And you’d ruin the grocer and butcher,” said Charley.
“And never get your half-crown, after all,” said Nora.
It need hardly be said that the subject under discussion was the best mode of abstracting from the pockets of the non-suffering British public a sufficiency of money to sustain the suffering portion during the period of the cotton famine.
Mr. Granger was the rector of Plumstock, a parish in Cheshire, sufficiently near to the manufacturing districts to give to every incident of life at that time a colouring taken from the distress of the neighbourhood; which had not, however, itself ever depended on cotton,—for Plumstock boasted that it was purely agricultural. Mr. Granger was the chairman of a branch relief committee, which had its centre in Liverpool; and the subject of the destitution, with the different modes by which it might be, should be, or should not be relieved, were constantly under discussion in the rectory. Mr. Granger himself was a practical man, somewhat hard in his manners, but by no means hard in his heart, who had in these times taken upon himself the business of alms-begging on a large scale. He declined to look at the matter in a political, statistical, or economical point of view, and answered all questions as to rates, rates in aid, loans, and the Consolidated Fund, with a touch of sarcasm, which showed the bent of his own mind.
“I’ve no doubt you’ll have settled all that in the wisest possible way by the time that the war is over, and the river full of cotton again.”
“Father,” Bob replied, pointing across the Cheshire flats to the Mersey, “that river will never again be full of American cotton.”
“It will be all the same for the present purpose, if it comes from India,” said the rector, declining all present argument on the great American question.
To collect alms was his immediate work, and he would do nothing else. Five-pound notes, sovereigns, half-crowns, shillings, and pence! In search of these he was urgent, we may almost say day and night, begging with a pertinacity which was disagreeable, but irresistible. The man who gave him five sovereigns instantly became the mark for another petition.
“When you have got your dinner, you have not done with the butcher for ever,” he would say in answer to reproaches. “Of course, we must go on as long as this thing lasts.”
Then his friends and neighbours buttoned up their pockets; but Mr. Granger would extract coin from them even when buttoned.
The two young men who had taken part in the above argument were his sons. The elder, Charles, was at Oxford, but now in these Christmas days—for Christmas was close at hand—had come home. Bob, the second son, was in a merchant’s house in Liverpool, intending to become, in the fulness of time, a British merchant prince. It had been hinted to him, however, more than once, that if he would talk a little less and work a little harder, the path to his princedom would be quicker found than if his present habits were maintained. Nora Field was Mrs. Granger’s niece. She was Miss Field, and certainly not a widow in the literal sense of the word; but she was about to become a bride a few weeks after Christmas.
“It is spoil from the Amalekites,” Mr. Granger had said, when she had paid in some contribution from her slender private stores to his treasury:—“spoil from the Amalekites, and therefore the more precious.” He had called Nora Field’s two sovereigns spoil from the Amalekites, because she was about to marry an American.
Frederic Frew, or Frederic F. Frew, as he delighted to hear himself called, for he had been christened Franklin as well as Frederic,—and to an American it is always a point of honour that, at any rate, the initial of his second Christian name should be remembered by all men,—was a Pennsylvanian from Philadelphia; a strong Democrat, according to the politics of his own country, hating the Republicans, as the Tories used to hate the Whigs among us before political feeling had become extinct; speaking against Lincoln the president, and Seward his minister, and the Fremonts, and Sumners, and Philipses, and Beechers of the Republican party, fine hard racy words of powerful condemnation, such as used to be spoken against Earl Grey and his followers, but nevertheless as steady for the war as Lincoln, or Seward, or any Republican of them all;—as steady for the war, and as keen in his bitterness against England.
His father had been a partner in a house of business, of which the chief station had been in Liverpool. That house had now closed its transactions, and young Frew was living and intended to live an easy idle life on the moderate fortune which had been left to him; but the circumstances of his family affairs had made it necessary for him to pass many months in Liverpool, and during that sojourn he had become engaged to Nora Field. He had travelled much, going everywhere with his eyes open, as Americans do. He knew many things, had read many books, and was decided in his opinion on most subjects. He was good-looking too, and well-mannered; was kindly-hearted, and capable of much generosity. But he was hard, keen in his intelligence, but not broad in genius, thin and meagre in his aspirations,—not looking to or even desirous of anything great, but indulging a profound contempt for all that is very small. He was a well-instructed, but by no means learned man, who greatly despised those who were ignorant. I fear that he hated England in his heart; but he did not hate Nora Field, and was about to make her his wife in three or four weeks from the present time.
When Nora declared to her aunt that she was not a widow, and that she possessed no two mites, and when her aunt flatly contradicted her, stating that she was a widow, and did possess two mites, they had not intended to be understood by each other literally. It was an old dispute between them.
“What the widow gave,” said Nora, “she gave off her own poor back, and therefore was very cold. She gave it out of her own poor mouth, and was very hungry afterwards in consequence. I have given my two pounds, but I shall not be cold or hungry. I wish I was a widow with two mites! only, the question is whether I should not keep them for my own back after all, and thus gain nothing by the move.”
“As to that,” replied her aunt, “I cannot speak. But the widowhood and the two mites are there for us all, if we choose to make use of them.”
“In these days,” said Bob, “the widows with two mites should not be troubled at all. We can do it all without them, if we go to work properly.”
“If you had read your Bible properly, Sir,” said Mrs. Granger, “you would understand that the widows would not thank you for the exemption.”
“I don’t want the widows to thank me. I only want to live, and allow others to live according to the existing circumstances of the world.” It was manifest from Bob’s tone that he regarded his mother as little better than an old fogey.
In January, Nora was to become Mrs. Frederic F. Frew, and be at once taken away to new worlds, new politics, and new loves and hatreds. Like a true, honest-hearted girl as she was, she had already become half an American in spirit. She was an old Union American, and as such was strong against the South; and in return for her fervour in that matter, her future husband consented to abstain from any present loud abuse of things English, and generously allowed her to defend her own country when it was abused. This was much as coming from an American. Let us hope that the same privilege may be accorded to her in her future home in Philadelphia. But in the meantime, during these last weeks of her girlhood, these cold, cruel weeks of desperate want, she strove vigorously to do what little might be in her power for the poor of the country she was leaving. All this want had been occasioned by the wretched rebels of the South.
This was her theory. And she was right in much of this. Whether the Americans of the South are wretched or are rebels we will not say here; but of this there can be no doubt, that they created all the misery which we then endured.
“But I have no way of making myself a widow,” she said again. “Uncle Robert would not let me give away the cloak he gave me the other day.”
“He would have to give you another,” said Mrs. Granger.
“Exactly. It is not so easy, after all, to be a widow with two mites!”
Nora Field had no fortune of her own, nor was her uncle in a position to give her any. He was not a poor man; but like many men who are not poor, he had hardly a pound of his own in the shape of ready money.
To Nora and to her cousins, and to certain other first cousins of the same family, had been left, some eighteen months since, by a grand-aunt, a hundred pounds a-piece, and with this hundred pounds Nora was providing for herself her wedding trousseau.
A hundred pounds do not go far in such provision, as some young married women who may read this will perhaps acknowledge; but Mr. Frederic F. Frew had been told all about it, and he was contented. Miss Field was fond of nice clothes, and had been tempted more than once to wish that her great-aunt had left them all two hundred pounds a-piece instead of one.
“If I were to cast in my wedding veil?” said Nora.
“That will be your husband’s property,” said her aunt.
“Ah, but before I’m married.”
“Then why have it at all?”
“It is ordered, you know.”
“Couldn’t you bedizen yourself with one made of false lace” said her uncle. “Frew would never find it out, and that would be a most satisfactory spoiling of the Amalekite.”
“He isn’t an Amalekite, uncle Robert. Or if he is, I’m another.”
“Just so; and therefore false lace will be quite good enough for you. Molly,”—Mrs. Granger’s name was Molly,—“I’ve promised to let them have the use of the great boiler in the back kitchen once a-week, and you are to furnish them with fuel.”
“Oh, dear!” said Mrs. Granger, upon whose active charity this loan of her own kitchen boiler made a strain that was almost too severe. But she recovered herself in half a minute. “Very well, my dear; but you won’t expect any dinner on that day.”
“No; I shall expect no dinner; only some food in the rough. You may boil that in the copper too if you like it.”
“You know, my dear, you don’t like anything boiled.”
“As for that, Molly, I don’t suppose any of them like it. They’d all prefer roast mutton.”
“The copper will be your two mites,” whispered the niece.
“Only I have not thrown them in of my own accord,” said Mrs. Granger.
Mr. Frew, who was living in Liverpool, always came over to Plumstock on Friday evening, and spent Saturday and Sunday with the rector and his family. For him those Saturdays were happy days, for Frederick F. Frew was a good lover. He liked to be with Nora, to walk with her, and to talk with her; he liked to show her that he loved her, and to make himself gracious and pleasant. I am not so sure that his coming was equally agreeable to Mr. Granger. Mr. Frew would talk about American politics, praising the feeling and spirit of his countrymen in the North; whereas Mr. Granger, when driven into the subject, was constrained to make a battle for the South. All his prejudices, and what he would have called his judgment, went with the South, and he was not ashamed of his opinion; but he disliked arguing with Frederic F. Frew. I fear it must be confessed that Frederic F. Frew was too strong for him in such arguments. Why it should be so I cannot say; but an American argues more closely on politics than does an Englishman. His convictions are not the truer on that account; very often the less true, as are the conclusions of a logician, because he trusts to syllogisms which are often false, instead of to the experience of his life and daily workings of his mind. But though not more true in his political convictions than an Englishman, he is more unanswerable, and therefore Mr. Granger did not care to discuss the subject of the American war with Frederic F. Frew.
“It riles me,” Frew said, as he sat after dinner in the Plumstock drawing-room on the Friday evening before Christmas Day, “to hear your folks talking of our elections. They think the war will come to an end, and the rebels of the South have their own way, because the Democrats have carried their ticket.”
“It will have that tendency,” said the parson.
“Not an inch; any more than your carrying the Reform Bill or repealing the Corn Laws had a tendency to put down the throne. It’s the same sort of argument. Your two parties were at daggers drawn about the Reform Bill; but that did not cause you to split on all other matters.”
“But the throne wasn’t in question,” said the parson.
“Nor is the war in question; not in that way. The most popular Democrat in the States at this moment is M‘Clellan.”
“And they say no one is so anxious to see the war ended.”
“Whoever says so slanders him. If you don’t trust his deeds, look at his words.”
“I believe in neither,” said the parson.
“Then put him aside as a nobody. But you can’t do that, for he is the man whom the largest party in the Northern States trusts most implicitly. The fact is, Sir,” and Frederic F. Frew gave the proper twang to the last letter of the last word, “you, none of you here, understand our politics. You can’t realise the blessing of a——”
“Molly, give me some tea,” said the rector in a loud voice. When matters went as far as this he did not care by what means he stopped the voice of his future relative.
“All I say is this,” continued Frew, “you will find out your mistake if you trust to the Democratic elections to put an end to the war, and bring cotton back to Liverpool.”
“And what is to put an end to the war?” asked Nora.
“Victory and union,” said Frederic F. Frew.
“Exhaustion,” said Charley, from Oxford.
“Compromise,” said Bobby, from Liverpool.
“The Lord Almighty, when He shall have done His work,” said the parson. “And, in the meantime, Molly, do you keep plenty of fire under the kitchen boiler.”
That was clearly the business of the present hour, for all in Mr. Granger’s part of the country;—we may say, indeed, for all on Mr. Granger’s side of the water. It mattered little, then, in Lancashire, whether New York might have a Democratic or a Republican governor. The old cotton had been burned; the present crop could not be garnered; the future crop—the crop which never would be future, could not get itself sown.
Mr. Granger might be a slow politician, but he was a practical man, understanding the things immediately around him; and they all were aware, Frederic F. Frew with the rest of them, that he was right when he bade his wife keep the fire well hot beneath the kitchen boiler.
“Isn’t it almost wicked to be married in such a time as this?” It was much later in the evening when Nora, still troubled in her mind about her widow’s mite, whispered these words into her lover’s ears. If she were to give up her lover for twelve months, would not that be a throwing in of something to the treasury from off her own back and out of her own mouth? But then this matter of her marriage had been so fully settled that she feared to think of disturbing it. He would never consent to such a postponement. And then the offering, to be of avail for her, must be taken from her own back, not from his; and Nora had an idea that in the making of such an offering as that suggested, Mr. Frederic F. Frew would conceive that he had contributed by far the greater part. Her uncle called him an Amalekite, and she doubted whether it would be just to spoil an Amalekite after such a fashion as that. Nevertheless, into his ears she whispered her little proposition.
“Wicked to get married!” said Frederic; “not according to my idea of the Christian religion.”
“Oh! but you know what I mean,” and she gave his arm a slight caressing pinch.
At this time her uncle had gone to his own room; her cousins had gone to their studies, by which I believe they intended to signify the proper smoking of a pipe of tobacco in the rectory kitchen; and Mrs. Granger, seated in her easy chair, had gone to her slumbers, dreaming of the amount of fuel with which that kitchen boiler must be supplied.
“I shall bring a breach of promise against you,” said Frederic, “if you don’t appear in church with bridal array on Monday, the 12th of January, and pay the penalty into the war-treasury. That would be a spoiling of the Amalekite.”
Then he got hold of the fingers which had pinched him.
“Of course I sha’n’t put it off, unless you agree.”
“Of course you won’t.”
“But, dear Fred, don’t you think we ought?”
“No; certainly not. If I thought you were in earnest I would scold you.”
“I am in earnest, quite. You need not look in that way, for you know very well how truly I love you. You know I want to be your wife above all things.”
“Do you?”
And then he began to insinuate his arm round her waist; but she got up and moved away, not as in anger at his caress, but as showing that the present moment was unfit for it.
“I do,” she said, “above all things. I love you so well that I could hardly bear to see you go away again without taking me with you. I could hardly bear it—but I could bear it.”
“Could you? Then I couldn’t. I’m a weaker vessel than you, and your strength must give way to my weakness.”
“I know I’ve no right to tax you, if you really care about it.”
Frederic F. Frew made no answer to this in words, but pursued her in her retreat from the sofa on which they had sat.
“Don’t, Fred. I am so much in earnest! I wish I knew what I ought to do to throw in my two mites.”
“Not throw me over, certainly, and break all the promises you have made for the last twelve months. You can’t be in earnest. It’s out of the question, you know.”
“Oh! I am in earnest.”
“I never heard of such a thing in my life. What good would it do? It wouldn’t bring the cotton in. It wouldn’t feed the poor. It wouldn’t keep your aunt’s boiler hot.”
“No; that it wouldn’t,” said Mrs. Granger, starting up; “and coals are such a terrible price.”
Then she went to sleep again and ordered in large supplies in her dreams.
“But I should have done as much as the widow did. Indeed I should, Fred. Oh, dear! to have to give you up! But I only meant for a year.”
“As you are so very fond of me——”
“Of course I’m fond of you. Should I let you do like that if I was not?”
At the moment of her speaking he had again got his arm round her waist.
“Then I’m too charitable to allow you to postpone your happiness for a day. We’ll look at it in that way.”
“You won’t understand me, or rather you do understand me, and pretend that you don’t, which is very wrong.”
“I always was very wicked.”
“Then why don’t you make yourself better? Do not you too wish to be a widow? You ought to wish it.”
“I should like to have an opportunity of trying married life first.”
“I won’t stay any longer with you, Sir, because you are scoffing. Aunt, I’m going to bed.” Then she returned again across the room, and whispered to her lover, “I’ll tell you what, Sir, I’ll marry you on Monday, the 12th of January, if you’ll take me just as I am now; with a bonnet on, and a shawl over my dress, exactly as I walked out with you before dinner. When I made the promise, I never said anything about fine clothes.”
“You may come in an old red cloak, if you like it.”
“Very well; now mind I’ve got your consent. Good-night, Sir. After all it will only be half a mite.”
She had turned towards the door, and had her hand upon the lock, but she came back into the room, close up to him.
“It will not be a quarter of a mite,” she said. “How can it be anything if I get you!” Then she kissed him, and hurried away out of the room, before he could again speak to her.
“What, what, what!” said Mrs. Granger, waking up. “So Nora has gone, has she?”
“Gone; yes, just this minute,” said Frew, who had turned his face to the fire, so that the tear in his eyes might not be seen. As he took himself off to his bed, he swore to himself that Nora Field was a trump, and that he had done well in securing for himself such a wife; but it never occurred to him that she was in any way in earnest about her wedding dress. She was a trump because she was so expressive in her love to himself, and because her eyes shone so brightly when she spoke eagerly on any matter; but as to her appearing at the altar in a red cloak, or, as was more probable, in her own customary thick woollen shawl, he never thought about it. Of course she would be married as other girls are married.
Nor had Nora thought of it till that moment in which she made the proposition to her lover. As she had said before, her veil was ordered, and so was her white silk dress. Her bonnet also had been ordered, with its bridal wreath, and the other things assorting therewith. A vast hole was to be made in her grand-aunt’s legacy for the payment of all this finery; but, as Mrs. Granger had said to her, in so spending it, she would best please her future husband. He had enough of his own, and would not care that she should provide herself with articles which he could afterwards give her, at the expense of that little smartness at his wedding which an American likes, at any rate, as well as an Englishman. Nora, with an honesty which some ladies may not admire, had asked her lover the question in the plainest language.
“You will have to buy my things so much the sooner,” she had said.
“I’d buy them all to-morrow, only you’ll not let me.”
“I should rather think not, Master Fred.”
Then she had gone off with her aunt, and ordered her wedding-clothes. But now as she prepared for bed, after the conversation which has just been recorded, she began to think in earnest whether it would not be well to dispense with white silk and orange-wreaths while so many were dispensing with—were forced to dispense with—bread and fuel. Could she bedizen herself with finery from Liverpool, while her uncle was, as she well knew, refusing himself a set of new shirts which he wanted sorely, in order that he might send to the fund at Liverpool the money which they would cost him. He was throwing in his two mites daily, as was her aunt, who toiled unceasingly at woollen shawls and woollen stockings, so that she went on knitting even in her sleep. But she, Nora, since the earnestness of these bad days began, had done little or nothing. Her needle, indeed, had been very busy, but it had been busy in preparation for Mr. Frederic F. Frew’s nuptials. Even Bob and Charley worked for the Relief Committee; but she had done nothing—nothing but given her two pounds. She had offered four, but her uncle, with a self-restraint never before or afterwards practised by him, had chucked her back two, saying that he would not be too hard even upon an Amalekite. As she thought of the word, she asked herself whether it was not more incumbent on her, than on any one else, to do something in the way of self-sacrifice. She was now a Briton, but would shortly be an American. Should it be said of her that the distress of her own countrywomen—the countrywomen whom she was leaving—did not wring her heart? It was not without a pang that she prepared to give up that nationality, which all its owners rank as the first in the world, and most of those who do not own it, rank, if not as the first, then as the second. Now it seemed to her as though she were deserting her own family in its distress, deserting her own ship in the time of its storm, and she was going over to those from whom this distress and this storm had come! Was it not needful that she should do something—that she should satisfy herself that she had been willing to suffer in the cause?
She would throw in her two mites if she did but know where to find them.
“I could only do it, in truth,” she said to herself, as she rose from her prayers, “by throwing in him. I have got one very great treasure, but I have not got anything else that I care about. After all, it isn’t so easy to be a widow with two mites.”
Then she sat down and thought about it. As to postponing her marriage, that she knew to be in truth quite out of the question. Even if she could bring herself to do it, everybody about her would say that she was mad, and Mr. Frederic F. Frew might not impossibly destroy himself with one of those pretty revolvers which he sometimes brought out from Liverpool for her to play with. But was it not practicable for her to give up her wedding-clothes? There would be considerable difficulty even in this. As to their having been ordered, that might be overcome by the sacrifice of some portion of the price. But then her aunt, and even her uncle, would oppose her; her cousins would cover her with ridicule; in the latter she might, however, achieve something of her widowhood;—and, after all, the loss would fall more upon F. F. Frew than upon herself. She really did not care for herself, in what clothes she was married, so that she was made his wife. But as regarded him, might it not be disagreeable to him to stand before the altar with a dowdy creature in an old gown? And then there was one other consideration. Would it not seem that she was throwing in her two mites publicly, before the eyes of all men, as a Pharisee might do it? Would there not be an ostentation in her widowhood? But as she continued to reflect, she cast this last thought behind her. It might be so said of her, but if such saying were untrue, if the offering were made in a widow’s spirit, and not in the spirit of a Pharisee, would it not be cowardly to regard what men might say? Such false accusation would make some part of the two mites.
“I’ll go into Liverpool about it on Monday,” she said to herself as she finally tucked the clothes around her.
Early in the following morning she was up and out of her room, with a view of seeing her aunt before she came down to breakfast; but the first person she met was her uncle. He accosted her in one of the passages.
“What, Nora, this is early for you! Are you going to have a morning lovers’ walk with Frederic Franklin?”
“Frederic Franklin, as you choose to call him, uncle,” said Nora, “never comes out of his room much before breakfast time. And it’s raining hard.”
“Such a lover as he is ought not to mind rain.”
“But I should mind it, very much. But, uncle, I want to speak to you, very seriously. I have been making up my mind about something.”
“There’s nothing wrong; is there, my dear?”
“No; there’s nothing very wrong. It is not exactly about anything being wrong. I hardly know how to tell you what it is.”
And then she paused, and he could see by the light of the candle in his hand that she blushed.
“Hadn’t you better speak to your aunt?” said Mr. Granger.
“That’s what I meant to do when I got up,” said Nora; “but as I have met you, if you don’t mind——”
He assured her that he did not mind, and putting his hand upon her shoulder caressingly, promised her any assistance in his power.
“I’m not afraid that you will ask anything I ought not to do for you.”
Then she revealed to him her scheme, turning her face away from him as she spoke. “It will be so horrid,” she said, “to have a great box of finery coming home when you are all giving up everything for the poor people. And if you don’t think it would be wrong——”
“It can’t be wrong,” said her uncle. “It may be a question whether it would be wise.”
“I mean wrong to him. If it was to be any other clergyman, I should be ashamed of it. But as you are to marry us——”
“I don’t think you need mind about the clergyman.”
“And of course I should tell the Foster girls.”
“The Foster girls?”
“Yes; they are to be my bridesmaids, and I am nearly sure they have not bought anything new yet. Of course they would think it all very dowdy, but I don’t care a bit about that. I should just tell them that we had all made up our minds that we couldn’t afford wedding-clothes. That would be true; wouldn’t it?”
“But the question is about that wild American?”
“He isn’t a wild American.”
“Well, then, about that tamed American. What will he say?”
“He said I might come in an old cloak.”
“You have told him, then?”
“But I am afraid he thought I was only joking. But uncle, if you’ll help me, I think I can bring him round.”