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“Ay,—what you an' all, Abel!” cried Palethorpe, somewhat paler in the cheeks than he was sixty seconds before. “Why, what willyoudo, lad?”
“What willIdo?” said Abel, “Why, if you don't set that lad loose, you cowardly brute, and sit down in quietness, I'll thump you into a jelly in three minutes!—Dang you! everybody hates you, and I 'll tell you so now; for you are the biggest nuisance that ever set foot on a farm. Talk of that old man being idle!—why, what do you call yourself, you skulking vagabond? You never touch plough nor bill-hook once a-week, nor anything else that's worth a man's putting his hand to. Your business is to abuse everybody under you, and sneak after your missis's tail like a licked spaniel.—I wish I was your mester, instead of your being mine, I'd tickle your ears with a two-inch ash plant every morning, but I 'd make you do more in a day than you ever did in a week yet!”
A blow from Palethorpe's fist drove all the powers of oratory out of Abel, and caused him to stagger so suddenly backwards, that he would have fallen, had he not caught hold of the back of one of his comrades' chairs. All were now upon their feet; while Miss Sowersoft, who hitherto had sat petrified at the monstrous discourse of Abel, screamed out that whoever struck Palethorpe again should go out of the house that night. But as no one interfered farther in the quarrel, on the supposition that he was already pretty well matched, the penalty she had proclaimed amounted to nothing, since it did not deter the only man who at that moment was likely to commit anything so atrocious. Abel had no sooner recovered his balance than he made a furious lunge at the head farming-man, which that hero attempted but failed to parry. His antagonist, who, though less in weight, was yet tall and active, followed up his advantage; and, by a judicious and rapid application of his fists, he so far made good his former threat, as to give Miss Sowersoft's favourite two tremendous black eyes, and to plump his nose up to nearly double its original bulk and lustre, within sixty tickings of the clock. Miss Maria had now summoned the maid to her assistance, and between them they succeeded in protecting him from further vengeance. Nor did they find much difficulty in persuading that courageous man to sit down in his chair, and submit to a grand mopping with vinegar and hot water, which commenced as soon as active hostilities ceased, and did not conclude until nearly two hours afterwards.
Long before that time was expired, as no more comfort could be expected by the fireside that night, the rustics had moved quietly off to rest, taking poor Colin along with them, and directing him to occupy one small bed which stood in a room containing two, and informing him at the same time, not much to his satisfaction, that Palethorpe always slept in the other. Old George shook hands with Colin at the door, bidding him good night, and God bless him; and telling him not to care for what had happened, as Heaven would reward his goodness of heart at a time when, perhaps, being old and feeble, he might most want a friend to help him. As the old man said this, his voice failed, and Colin felt a warm tear drop upon his hand as it remained clasped in that of the speaker.
Colin rushed into his room, and in great distress, resulting from the memory of all he had left behind, and the dread of all that might meet him here, he fell on his knees by the bed-side.
That night the voices of two lonely women, praying for the welfare of a still more lonely child, and of a child asking for help in his loneliness, ascended to heaven. Their hearts were comforted.
Briefly details a slight love-skirmish between Sammy and Miss Sowersoft, which took place before Colin, while that youth was supposed to be asleep, and also illustrates the manner in which old maids sometimes endeavour to procure themselves husbands.—Colin's employment at the lodge.—He becomes involved in a dilemma, which threatens unheard-of consequences.
AFTER Colin had spent some twenty minutes where we left him at the conclusion of the last chapter, he crept into bed. The room in which he lay being partly in the roof, admitted only of a very small window in the upright portion of the wall, and that was placed so close to the floor as to throw very little light into the apartment, except during a strong day or moon light.
The candle being extinguished, Colin could see nothing save a small square of dim light where the window was. Below stairs he could hear the muttering of voices, as Miss Sower-soft still endeavoured to restore the beauty of Mr. Palethorpe's countenance; and in the false floor over his head the sound of rats, who were at work in the roof, making noise sufficient over their labours to keep awake, during the whole night, any person less accustomed to that kind of nocturnal entertainment than the inhabitants of country-houses usually are. Colin could usually have slept soundly had all the rats in Christendom been let loose in a legion about him, but he could not sleep tonight. It was pitch-dark; he was in a strange place, with brutal employers, who disliked him only because he had offered to relieve a poor old man of some portion of his labours. Who knew—for such things had been heard of, and passionate men often take their revenge, regardless of consequences—who knew, as Mr. Palethorpe was to occupy the adjoining bed, that he might not take advantage of his sleep, and steal out in the night to murder him? He might do so, and then throw him down the brook, as he had threatened, or perhaps bury him deep in the garden, and say in the morning that he had run away.
With these, and similar imaginations, did Colin keep himself awake in a feverish state of terror during a space of time which to him seemed almost endless; for, however groundless and ridiculous such fears may be deemed by the stout-hearted reader who peruses this by broad daylight, he must be pleased to call to mind that poor Colin was neither of an age nor in a situation in which great account is commonly made of probabilities. The boy's fancies were at length interrupted by the appearance of something more real. A light shot through the chinks of the door, and run an ignisfatuus kind of chase round the walls and ceiling, as it advanced up stairs in the hands of the maid Sally. Shortly afterwards the door was gently pushed open; and while Colin's heart beat violently against the bars of its cage, and his breath came short and loud, like that of a sleeper in a troubled dream, he saw a huge warming-pan flaring through its twenty eyes with red-hot cinders, protruded through the opening, and at the other end of the handle Miss Sally herself. She placed her candle down in the passage, in order to avoid awakening Colin with its light, and then commenced warming Mr. Pale-thorpe's bed. By the time that operation was about finished, the feet of two other individuals creeping cautiously up were heard on the stairs. Then a voice whispered circumspectly, but earnestly, “Now, Sammy, make haste and get in while it is nice and hot, or else it will do you no good; and in a minute or two I 'll be up again with some warm posset, so that you can have it when you've lain down.”
Palethorpe and Miss Sowersoft then entered, the latter having come up stairs with no other intention, apparently, than that of frustrating by her presence any design which Palethorpe might else have had of rewarding Sally for her trouble with a gentle salute upon the cheek. Having seen the maid safe out of the chamber, Miss Maria returned down stairs.
Colin now began to tremble in earnest; for he indistinctly heard Palethorpe muttering words of violence against every one of them without exception, and threatening to kick the house upside down before another day was over his head. By and by the cautious approach of his footsteps towards Colin's bed caused the boy to peep out through the merest chink between his eyelids, when he beheld the hideous face of the farming-man almost close to his own, with its huge swollen and blackened features fixed in an expression of deep malice upon him, and a ponderous clenched fist held threateningly near his face, as the horrible gazer muttered between his forcibly closed teeth, “I 'll pay you your wages for this, young man! I 'll reckon with you in a new fashion before long! You shall repent this night to the last end of your life, that shall you! I could split your skull now, if you were not asleep. But you may rest this time!”
Saying which, he retired to bed. Immediately afterwards Miss Sowersoft glided noiselessly in, with a huge basin of treacle-posset in one hand, and one of her own linen nightcaps, which she had been heating by the fire, in the other. This last-named article she at once proceeded to place on Mr. Palthorpe's head, and tie under his chin; because the long tabs with which it was supplied would cover his bruised face much better than any cap of his own. As Colin glanced from under the clothes he could scarcely forbear laughing, in spite of his fears, at the odd combination which, his mistress's Cupid suggested,—of a copper-coloured, black-bearded face, with the primly-starched, snowy frillings of a woman's nightcap.
“Is he asleep, Sammy?” asked Miss Maria in a low whisper.
“A deal faster than he deserves to be,” replied that worthy.
“I will just step across, and see,” observed the lady; and accordingly she trod lightly over the floor, in order to assure herself of that fact. Colin's closed eyes, his silence, and his quick full breathing, confirmed her in the pleasing delusion; and she returned to Pale-thorpe's bedside, and deposited herself in a chair with the remark that, under those circumstances, she would sit with him a few minutes. As she gazed with admiration on the uncouth countenance of Palethorpe, set, like a picture, in the white frame of her own cap, and watched him deliberately transfer spoonful after spoonful of the posset from the basin into the ill-shaped hole in his own face, she heaved a profound sigh, which seemed one moment to inflate her bosom like a balloon, and the next to collapse it again as closely as poor Cocking's parachute. Palethorpe went on with his posset.
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“Ay, dear!” she sighed again.
“What 's amiss, meesis?” asked Mr. Palethorpe, as soon as the emptied basin left him at liberty to speak.
“Nothing, Sammy,—nothing. Ay, dear! I'm quite well, as far as that goes,” replied Miss Maria very despondingly.
“But you have summat not right, I'm sure,” persisted he.
“Oh, it is of no matter!” she sighed again.
“But, what is it?” he a third time asked.
“It does not signify much,” she again remarked; “it will be all the same a few years hence.”
“You've tired yourself to death with that mangle, I suppose?” said Palethorpe.
“Oh, no!” she exclaimed in a tone of voice which betrayed some slight offence at the vulgarity of his suggestion; “it is a very different sort of mangle to that. I am sure I am mangled enough by people's indifference.”
“Why, as for that,” replied Sammy, trying to exculpate himself from any charge of neglect, “you are meesis of the house, and don't want to be pressed to your meat and drink like a visiter.”
“Meat and drink!” she exclaimed, as though indignant that such animal ideas should degrade the present elevation of her soul, “I care nothing about meat and drink, not I. You seem as if you could see nothing, though people make the plainest allusions that female propriety allows any woman to make.”
Mr. Palethorpe looked astonished as he observed, “Well, I'm sure, meesis, you can't say that ever I made any allusions to female propriety.”
“No,—that's it! there it is!” sighed Miss Sowersoft: “though you get all the fat of the land, and are treated more like a gentleman in the house than like what you are, you never make the least allusions.”
Palethorpe protested that under those circumstances he ought to feel all the more ashamed of himself if he did make allusions, or else other people would think it very odd of him.
“Oh, then the truth's out at last, is it?” said Miss Sowersoft, “you have other people, have you? Ay, dear!” and she apparently fell a-crying. “It's impossible, then, for all the goodness in the world to make any impression. Oh!”
Saying which she rose up, with her handkerchief to her eyes, and walked towards the door, muttering as she went, that since he seemed so very fond of other people, other people might feed him, as that was the last posset he would ever have from her hands. Mr. Palethorpe endeavoured several times to recall her; but Miss Sowersoft's new jealousy of other people had rendered her inexorable; and, in the course of a few more seconds her own chamber-door was heard to be violently closed and to be most resolutely bolted and locked behind her. Our worthy uttered a discontented groan, and composed himself to sleep; an example which Colin was enabled to follow some long time after, though not before his weariness had completely overpowered his fears of danger from the savage sharer of his dormitory.
While yet in the middle of his slumber, and busy with a dream of home, which placed him again in the bright warm sunshine by the step of his mother's door, Colin was suddenly startled by the dragging of every inch of bed-covering from off him, and the not very sparing application of a hand-whip about his body, while the voice of Palethorpe summoned him, under the courteous title of a lazy heavyheaded young rascal, to turn out, and get off to work. It was nearly broad day-light; and Colin obeyed the summons with considerable alacrity, though not without informing his driver at the same time, that there was no occasion for a whip to him, because a word would have done quite as well, if not better.
“Then you shall have both, to make sure, and plenty of them too,” replied Mr. Palethorpe. “If long scores are ever to be cleared off, we should begin to pay 'em betimes; and I have a score chalked on for you that will want interest before it is discharged, I know. Mark, you will have this every morning regularly if you are not down stairs as the clock strikes six, neither sooner nor later. If you get up too soon, I shall lay on you just the same as if you got up too late,—for a right hour is a right hour, and six exactly is our time. I 'll make you feel where your mistake was, my boy, when you thought of coming mester here! There's last night's job I owe you for yet, and a good price you shall pay for it, or else I don't know how to reckon.”
A blow on the right ear, and another on the left, immediately after, in order to keep his head in the middle, fell to Colin's lot at the conclusion of this harangue; and a push at the back of the neck which followed directly, enabled him to get out of the room somewhat more speedily than he would have done without that assistance. But to all this—though taken much in dudgeon—being mildness itself as compared with what might have been expected, Colin submitted in a sturdy mood, and without saying anything; though he did not forget to promise himself at some future day to adjust the balances between them.
In consequence of the lack-a-daisical turn which Miss Sowersoft's interview with Mr. Palethorpe had taken on the preceding night, that lady denied to the household the pleasure of her company at breakfast, as she could not meet the ungrateful farm-servant before company again until an explanation in private had taken place. Poor old George, all benignity, and looking like an elder of some by-gone age, seemed more than usually anxious to promote good feeling amongst his fellows, and to restore the harmony which had been destroyed the evening before, on his account. But Palethorpe was unforgiving, and Abel unrepentant: so that, whatever might be the disposition of others, those two characters at least regarded each other over the table much in the same manner as, it might be supposed, two of Mr. Wombwell's beasts, placed on opposite sides of his menagerie, would do when they address each other before a meal-time in that language of the eyes of which poets speak, and seem to intimate a very unequivocal desire to dine upon one another.
That day Master Colin took his first lesson in field-craft, by being set to gather stones from off the wheat-sown lands, before the blade was more than an inch or two out of the ground. His out-door labours were concluded at six in the evening; after which time, as the horses remained to be put up, he was drilled in the art of cleaning, bedding, harnessing, and managing those animals; and, after that was done, he was allowed, by way of amusement, to spend the remaining few hours before bed-time in setting rat-traps, or accompanying some one or other of the men in weasel-shooting along the banksides and hedges.
Some few days elapsed without a reconcilement having taken place between Palethorpe and his mistress; during which time our hero fared considerably better than otherwise he might have done; partly because Miss Sowersoft's attention was not now so completely engrossed as it had hitherto been by her favourite; and partly because that very pleasant personage himself, while unsupported by the smiles and attentions of his mistress, was by no means so formidable in his display of courage as otherwise he would have been. The prospect which had broken on Colin's mind on his first introduction to Snitterton began accordingly to brighten considerably. He liked his employment in the fields, as well as all that followed it, so well, that when on the ensuing Sunday he asked for leave to walk over to Bramleigh for the purpose of seeing his mother and Fanny, and was at once peremptorily denied, he felt that denial as no very great hardship; but soon made up his mind to spend the day as pleasantly as he could, and to write a letter to Fanny, detailing his thoughts and opinions, his likings and dis-likings, instead.
These resolves he eventually put into execution: and everything very probably might have gone on smoothly enough, had not a circumstance utterly unforeseen occurred, whereby he himself was brought into a second dilemma with his mistress and Palethorpe, still worse than the previous one; and whereby, also, the plain-spoken epistle which he had secretly indited for the private and especial perusal of his mother and Fanny, was in an evil hour thrown into the hands of the identical parties about whom, in its honest simplicity, it told so many truthful libels. But the shame of Miss Sowersoft was so deep, and the rage of Palethorpe so high, and the consequences of both to Colin so important, that I verily believe it will occupy nearly the whole of the next chapter to describe them.
Demonstrates, in the case of Miss Sowersoft and Mr. Samuel Palethorpe, the folly of people being too curious about the truth, in matters better left in the dark. Colin is subjected to a strict examination, in which the judge, instead of the culprit, is convicted. Colin's punishment.
THAT period of the year having now arrived when the days were materially lengthened, as well as increased in warmth, Colin selected an hour or two one evening after his day's labour was over, for the purpose of writing that letter to his mother and Fanny which he had projected some short time before. In order to do this, both by a good light and away from the probability of intrusion, he selected a little spot of ground, formed by an obtuse angle of the brook, at the bottom of the garden; though divided from it by a thick clump of holly, intermingled with hawthorn and wild brier. On this grassy knoll he sat down to his task; making a higher portion of its slope serve as a natural table to hold his ink and paper.
Those vespers which Nature herself offers up to her Creator amidst the magnificent cathedral columns of her own tall trees, the loud songs of the blackbird and the thrush, and the occasional shrill cry of the discontented pewet as it swept in tempestuous circles over the distant arable land, were loudly heard around him; while, some two or three yards below the spot where he sat, a ridge of large stones, placed across the rivulet for the greater convenience of crossing, partially held up the water, and caused an eternal poppling murmur, as that portion which forced its escape between them, rushed with mimic velocity into the tiny gulf that lay some ten or twelve inches below. Colin felt elevated and happy. He could scarcely write many complainings there; although he had been so disappointed and ill-used on his arrival. At the same time he felt bound to tell the truth as far as it went, though not to represent himself as materially unhappy in consequence of the behaviour which had been adopted towards him. In this task, then, he proceeded, until the hundreds of bright twinkling leaves which at first glittered around him in the stray beams of sunlight, had all resolved themselves into one mass of broad shade; to this succeeded a red horizontal light upon the upper portions of the trees to the eastward, as though their tops were tipped with fire; which also rapidly faded, and left him, by the time he had about concluded his letter, scarcely able any longer to follow with his sight the course of his pen upon the paper.
Having wrapped his epistle awkwardly up, he placed it in his pocket, and was about to emerge from his rural study, when the leisurely tread of feet approaching down the garden-path, and the subdued sound of tongues which he too well knew, caused him to step back, and closer to the clumps of holly, in the hope of getting away unobserved when the individuals whom he wished to avoid had passed. They still continued to converse; and the first distinct words Colin heard were these:—
“I am sure, out of the many, very many excellent offers, I have had made me,—excellent offers they were,—I might have done so over and over again; but I never intended to be married. I always liked to be my own mistress and my own master. Besides that, it does entail so much trouble on people in one way or another. Really, when I look on that great family of my brother Ted, I am fit to fancy it is pulling him down to the ground; and I positively believe it would, if he did not take advantage of his situation in trade, and rap and wring every farthing out of everybody in any way that he possibly can, without being at all particular;—though they are sweet children, they are! Ay, but something must be risked, and something must be sacrificed in this world. I mean to say, that when people do get married, they must make up their minds to strike the best balance between them mutually that they are able. That is my candid opinion of things; and, when I look upon them in that light—when I think about them in that manner, and say to myself, there is this on this side, and nothing on that side, which should I take? I lose my resolution,—I don't know; I feel that, by a person to whom I had no objection in any other shape, I might perhaps be superinduced to do as others have done, and to make a sacrifice, for the sake of spending our lives in that kind of domestic combination which binds people together more than anything else ever can. I am weak on that point, I know; but then, the home affections, as Mr. Longstaff says, constitute a very worthy and amiable weakness.”
Miss Sowersoft uttered this last sentence in such a peculiar tone of self-satisfied depreciation, as evidently proved that she considered herself a much more eligible subject, on account of that identical weakness which she had verbally condemned, than she would have been if wholly free from it.
“Well, meesis,” replied Mr. Palethorpe, with considerate deliberation, “I should have no objection to our union, if it so happened that we were not doing very well as we are at present; and, while we are making a little money to put by every week, I think it is as well just now to let good alone. I should like—”
“Oh, you misunderstand me!” exclaimed Miss Sowersoft; “I did not make any allusions to you in particular. Oh, no! I have had very many most excellent offers, and could have them now for that matter; but then, you see, I was only just saying, as the thought came across my mind, that there is something to be said against being married, and something against keeping single. I remember the time when I could not bear the very thoughts of a man about me; but, somehow, as one gets older we see so much more of the world, and one's ideas change almost as much as one's bodies; really, I am as different as another woman to what I once was. Somehow, I don't know how, but so it happens—Ah!” shrieked Miss Sowersoft, interrupting herself in the demonstration of this very metaphysical and abstruse point in her discourse, “take hold of me, dear,—take hold of me! I've trod on a toad, I believe!”
At the same time she threw her arms up to Mr. Palethorpe for protection; and, very accidentally, of course, they chanced to alight round that worthy's neck. A round dozen of rough-bearded kisses, which even he, stoic as he was, could not refrain from bestowing upon her, in order to revive and restore her spirits, smacked loudly on the dusky air, and set poor little Colin a-laughing in spite of himself.
“Who the deuce is that!” earnestly whispered the farming-man. “There's somebody under the brook bank!” and, as he instantly disengaged Miss Sowersoft from his arms, he rushed round the holly-bushes, and caught fast hold of Colin, just as that unlucky lad was making a speedy retreat across the rivulet into the opposite orchard. “What! it is you, you young divel, is it?” exclaimed he in a fury, as he dragged the boy up the sloping bank, and bestowed upon him sundry kicks, scarcely inferior to those of a vicious horse, with his heavy, clench-nailed, quarter-boots. “You 're listening after your meesis, now, are you? Dang your meddling carcass! I 'll stop your ears for you!”
And bang went his ponderous fist on Colin's organs of Secretiveness and Acquisitiveness, until his head sung again throughout, like a seething caldron.
“That's right!” cried Miss Sowersoft; “make him feel; drag him up; my face burns with shame at him; I'm as hot as a scarlet-fever, I am—a young scoundrel!”
And Colin was pulled up on to the level of the garden, more like a half-killed rat than a half-grown human being.
“We'll know how this is, meesis,” said Mr. Palethorpe, when he had fairly landed his cargo. “I 'll see to the bottom of it before he goes into th' house. He sha'n't have a chance of being backed up in his impudence as he was t'other night.”
“Take him into the thrashing-barn,” advised Miss Sowersoft, “and we can have him there in private.”
Colin now found breath to put in a protest against the bill of indictment which they were preferring against him.
“I was not listening,” said he; “I was only writing a letter to my mother, I 'm sure!”
“What! at dark hour?” ejaculated Palethorpe with a laugh. “Come along, you young liar! you shan't escape that way.” Accordingly he dragged the lad up the garden, and behind the house, into the spacious barn, of which Miss Sowersoft had spoken: and, while that innocent lady went to procure a lantern, her favourite held him tightly by the collar; save when, occasionally, to beguile the time until her return, he regaled him with a severe shake, and an additional curse or two upon his vagabond and mischievous carcass.
“Do you think he knows anything about it?” asked Miss Sowersoft aside to Palethorpe, as she entered the barn, and the dim light of her horn-lantern summoned to view the spectral appearances—rather than the distinct objects themselves—of various implements of husbandry, and of heaps of thrashed wheat and straw scattered around.
“Well, I don't know; but I should think not much,” said he.
“I hope not,” rejoined his mistress, “or it will get into everybody's mouth. But we will question him very closely; we 'll have it out of him by hook or by crook.”
She then held a broken side of the lantern a little above Colin's face, in order to cast the better light upon it; and proceeded to question the culprit.
“Now, before I ask you a single question, promise to tell me the truth, and nothing but the truth. Now, mark; I shall know whether you speak the truth or not, so it will be of no use to try to deceive me. Tell me whether you heard me and Mr. Palethorpe talking in the garden; and whether you saw him pick me up so very kindly when I slipped down; and then tell me for what purpose you were standing behind those trees? No falsehoods, now. The truth, nothing else. Take care; because if you say anything untrue I shall know it directly; and then woe be to you for your trouble?”
“I always do tell truth,” replied Colin, crying, “without being frightened into it that way. I'm sure I had only been writing a letter to my mother and Fanny; and I stood there because I did not want anybody to catch me.”
“And why did not you want anybody to catch you?”
“Why, because I didn't,” answered Colin.
“Because you didn't!” exclaimed Mr. Palethorpe, as he emerged from out the shadow of Miss Sowersoft's figure; “what answer is that, you sulky ill-looking whelp? Give meesis a proper answer, or I 'll send my fist in your face in a minnit!”
Miss Sowersoft put her hand on Palethorpe's arm to keep him back,—not so much to prevent him carrying his threat into execution, as because his interference seemed to imply a doubt of her own abilities in worming all she wanted to know out of the boy before her.
“Butwhydidn't you?” she asked again, more emphatically.
“Because they might want to read my letter.”
“Oh,—there's something in it not to be seen, is there?” continued the inquisitor, as her cheeks reddened with fears of she knew not what.
“It is all truth, every word of it!” contended Colin.
“Ay, ay, my lad, we must see about that. I cannot let you send a whole pack of falsehoods over to Bramleigh, and make as much mischief in my family as your mother made in Mr. Longstaff's. It is needful to look after your doings. Is the letter in your pocket?”
Having received an answer in the affirmative, she directed Palethorpe to search him for it; an operation which that amiable individual very soon concluded by drawing the desired document from his trowsers.
“Oh, this is it, is it?” said Miss Sowersoft, as she partly opened it to assure herself. “Well, well,” folding it up again: “we'll read this by and by. Now, what did you hear us talking about? If you say anything shameful, now, and we shall know whether it is true or not directly that we hear it,—if you do not say something—a—. You know what Scripture tells you, always to speak well of your mistress and master. Be careful, now. What did we say?”
“Please, 'um,” replied Colin, “you said, that when people get married they strike a balance between them; and that if one thing was on one side, and nothing on the other, you should lose your resolution, and make a sacrifice of the little you possess, whatever it is.”
“Oh, you little wretch!” ejaculated Maria. “Go on with your lies, go on! and youshallhave it on your shoulders when you have done. What else, you vile toad?”
Colin stood mute.
“What next, I say!” stormed the lady, with a furious stamp of the right foot.
“Why, then, mum,” added Colin, “I heard Palethorpe kiss you.”
“Kiss me!—kiss me, you young rascal!” and the face of Miss Sowersoft became as red as the gills of one of her own turkey-cocks at the discovery. “If you dare to say such a thing as that again, I 'll strip the very skin off your back,—I will, you caitiff! Kissme, indeed! A pretty tale to tell as ever I heard!”
“I'm sure it's true,” blubbered the boy; “for I heard it ever so many times.”
“Oh!” exclaimed the virtuous Miss Sowersoft, “so we have got it out of you at last. What!—your mother has set you to watch your mistress, has she? That's all her schooling, is it? But Mr. Palethorpe shall learn you to spy about this house,—He shall, you dog!”
That worthy was now about to pounce upon his victim, but was again arrested by his mistress.
“Stop! stop!—we have not done yet,” pulling the letter before mentioned from her bosom; “there is a pretty budget here, I 'll be bound to say. After such as this, we may expect anything. There is nothing too bad for him.”
While Palethorpe held the culprit fast by one hand, and the lantern in the other, he and Miss Sowersoft enjoyed the high gratification of perusing together the said letter which follows:—
“Dear Mother and Fanny,
“As I promised to write if they would not let me come on Sunday, which they did not do, I take this opportunity after tea to tell you all about it. I like this house very well, and have caught fourteen rats with traps of my own setting, besides helping Abel to shoot forwards, which he fired at, and I looked on while. I can harness a horse and curry him down already. But when I first got here I did not think I should like it at all, as Palethorpe flew at me like a yard-dog because I spoke to him, and Miss Sowersoft was mangling, and as cross as patch. I did think of coming home again; but then I said to myself, 'Well, I'll lay a penny if I do, mother will send me back; so it will be of no use, and I shall have my walk for nothing.' I do not like mistress a bit. When she was at our house, she told you a pack of the biggest fibs in the world. I never beard of a bigger fibber than she is in my life; for all the good victuals she made such a bother about are made up for Palethorpe. He is like a master-pig in a sty, because he crunches up the best of everything. Mistress seems very fond of him, though; for after we had had a shindy the first night, and Palethorpe made my nose bleed, I went to bed, and saw her tie her nightcap on his head, and feed him with a posset. I could not help laughing, he looked such a fool. Then I heard her courting him as plain as sunshine; for she tries as hard as she can to get him to marry her; but I would not have her, if I were him, she is so very mean and pretending. But then he is a savage idle fellow himself: and as Abel said to him, said he, 'You never touch plough nor bill-hook once a-week,'—no more he does. Our mistress backs him up in it, and that is the reason. I shall come over as soon as I can, as I want to see you and Fanny very much indeed.
“Yours affectionately,
“Colin Clink.”
At all events the murder was now out, and no mistake. The letter dropped from Miss Sowersoft's hand, and she almost fainted in Mr. Palethorpe's arms, as she faintly sighed, “Oh!—he 'll be the death of me!”
When Miss Sowersoft was somewhat recovered, Palethorpe turned in great wrath towards Colin, uttering a more fearful asseveration than I can repeat, that if he could make no better use than that of his eyes when he went to bed, he would knock them out of his head for him. Seizing the boy ferociously by the nape of the neck with one hand, and a portion of his clothes with the other, he lifted him from the ground, like a dog by head and tail, and carried him straight into the yard, dashing him violently into the horse-trough, very much to the satisfaction of the indignant Miss Sower-soft, who had suddenly recovered on beholding this spectacle, and followed her favourite with the lantern. While Palethorpe held him down in the trough, Miss Sowersoft proceeded with great alacrity to pump upon him very vigorously until her arms were tired.
The boy's cries soon brought several of the domestics of the establishment together. Sally rushed out of her kitchen inquiring what Colin had done to be ducked.
“Spying after the secrets of other people!” exclaimed the wrathful Mr. Palethorpe.
“Spying!” echoed the maid.
“Yes, spying!” added Miss Sowersoft, in corroboration of Palethorpe's statement. “We have caught him out, according to his own confession, in spying after the secrets of everybody about the premises, and sending it all in writing to his mother!”
“Ay! I'd souse him well!” observed Sally, who began to fear that some of her own secret interviews with Abel had very probably been registered in black and white, for the edification of the good people of Bramleigh.
“What has he been a-gate of?” asked Abel, who had come up just in time to catch the end of the above conversation.
“Oh, he's been watching you come into the dairy when I was there!” added Sally, accompanying her remark with a broad simper, and a sly blushing glance at Abel, which caused Abel to shuffle on his feet, and dangle his legs about, as though at a loss what to do with them.
“Then a sheep-washing will do him no harm for sheep's eyes,” rejoined Abel, rounding off his sharp-pointed wit with a broad laugh.
When the ducking was concluded, they drove him, bruised, drenched, and weeping, into the kitchen. Old George, who had been a distant and silent spectator of the scene, stood at the door as he entered.
“Ay, poor boy!” said he, pityingly, as the child passed by him, “they'd more need to nurse him by the fireside than half drown him this way. It's sad wages—sad wages, indeed, for a nest-babe like him! But they don't heed what I say. I'm an old man, and have no right to speak.”
Miss Sowersoft seized the earliest opportunity she could to place Colin's letter upon the fire, which she did with a spoonful of salt upon it, in order that its flames should be of the same colour as its contents.
In the mean time Colin had shuffled off his mortal coil of wet clothes, and in a moist skin gone silently off to bed. At supper-time old George carried him up the pint of warm ale which had been served out for himself. Colin accepted it, less because he relished it, than because he knew not how at that moment to refuse the hand by which it was offered; and within ten minutes afterwards, notwithstanding all his troubles, he fell into a sound state of repose.
The benefits of being soused in a horse-trough.—Some farther specimens of Miss Sowersoft's moral excellence.—An unlooked-for discovery is partially made, which materially concerns Miss Fanny Woodruff and Dr. Rowel.
ON the following morning Palethorpe arose, and finding Colin still asleep, was proceeding, whip in hand, to help him up according to custom, when, as he turned down the clothes that almost enveloped the child's head, the unusual appearance of his countenance arrested the man's attention as well as his hand. His veins were swollen with rapid bounding blood, and his heart thumped audibly in its place, and with doubly accelerated motion, as though eagerly hastening to beat out its appointed number of pulsations, and leave the little harassed life it contained again free from the pains and vexations of this lower world.
Something like remorse passed for a moment over the man's dark countenance as he gazed. What had they done to him?—what was amiss? He covered the boy carefully up again, and hastened down stairs to communicate the news to Miss Sowersoft.
“Oh,—it's all nonsense!” she exclaimed, on hearing all that Mr. Palethorpe had to say about it. “The lad's got a bit of a cold,—that's all. I 'll make him a basin of milk, with a little of that nice feverfew out of the garden boiled in it, and then if you wake him up, and let him take that, it will stick to his ribs, and do him an amazing deal of good.”
But as there was no hurry about such a matter, Miss Sowersoft very leisurely took her own breakfast before she set about carrying her very charitable project into execution. When the milk, with some sprigs of feverfew boiled in it, was ready, Sally was sent up stairs with it. She found Colin awake, but weak and ill; and, much to her surprise, on presenting him with a lump of bread and the basin of milk, which more closely resembled a light green wash for stencilling walls, than any true Christian dish, he could neither touch nor bear the sight of either.
“La!” cried Sally, “why, I never heard anything like it, as neither to eat nor drink! Come, cram a bit down your throat with your finger, and see if it will not get you an appetite. Why,Ican eat and drink very well, and why shouldn't you? Come, come, don't be soft, and refuse what Gor-amighty sends you, while it lies in your power to get it. I'm sure this milk is very nice, indeed.”
In corroboration of her statement she took a sip. But Colin shook his head feebly and heavily, and declared it would do him no good. He could take nothing,—he wanted nothing, but to be left alone, that he might think and wish, and weep as he thought and wished that he were but once more at home, or that his mother or Fanny were but with him.
Shortly after Sally had returned below stairs, and communicated the astounding intelligence that Colin would take neither bit nor sup, Miss Sowersoft herself crept up stairs. She assured him he had plenty of colour in his face; that there could not be anything particularly amiss with him; advised him against putting on pretences of sickness, lest he should be struck with sickness in reality as a judgment on him, like the children that mocked the prophet Elijah, and were eaten up by bears; and concluded by insinuating, that if he were tickled with a whip-thong, he would in all probability be a great deal better directly.
“Send me home!” bitterly ejaculated Colin, bursting into tears. “Put me in a cart, and send me home!—I want to go home!—I must go home!—Mother'!—Fanny!—Oh, come to me!—I shall die—I shall die!”
Miss Sowersoft felt rather alarmed; but reflecting that there was nothing like showing a little spirit and resolution when young folks took such whims as those into their heads, she severely taunted him with being home-sick and mother-sick; told him that neither she nor Fanny, if they were present, could do more for him than she could; and threatened that, if he did not leave off that hideous noise, which was disgraceful to a great lad of his age, she would tie a stocking round his mouth, and stop him that way. There being no great consolation in all this, it is not surprising that our hero made such slight application of it, that, for the matter of any difference it made in him, Miss Sowersoft might just as well have tied her stocking across her own mouth, or stuffed it in, which ever she might prefer, as have given utterance to it. She was therefore constrained to submit to the lad's own way, and to confess in her own mind that there really was something more amiss with him than at first she had believed.
By mid-day he had become a great deal worse; and in the afternoon, as his disorder still rapidly increased, Mr. Palethorpe was despatched on horseback to Bramleigh, for the purpose of consulting Dr. Rowel.
About six o'clock in the evening he returned home, bringing with him a packet of white powders in little blue papers, tied together much in the fashion of that little pyrotechnic engine of mischief usually denominated a cracker.
Certain fears which had by this time crept over the mind of Miss Sowersoft caused her to be more than usually charitable and eager in her inquiries after the doctor's opinion about Colin: but the answers she received were neither very conclusive nor very satisfactory. She was, in fact, obliged to seek for consolation, for the present, in the belief, which she struggled hard to impress firmly upon herself, that the boy's illness had arisen wholly in consequence of his sitting on the ground so late in the evening to write his letter; and that his subsequent sousing in the horse-trough had no connexion whatever with it; as he might very easily have fallen accidentally into a river instead, and received no more harm from it than he had from the aforesaid pumping.
Daring several subsequent days the boy continued in such a state as filled his mistress with continual apprehensions lest her house should eventually be troubled with his corpse. About his death, considering that event solely by itself, she cared very little; he might live or die, just as his constitution inclined him, for aught she would choose between the two; only, in case he should not survive, it would annoy her very much indeed to have all the trouble of getting another body's corpse prepared for the ground, without in all likelihood ever receiving from Mrs. Clink a single halfpenny in return for it. She mentioned her apprehensions to Mr. Palethorpe, who replied that it was all silly childishness to allow herself to be imposed on by her own good feelings, and that to talk about humanity would never do for folks so far north as they were. On this unquestioned authority Miss Sowersoft would inevitably have acted that very day, and removed our hero, at any risk, to Bramleigh, in order to give him a chance of dying comfortably at home, had not fortune so ordered it, that, while preparations were being made for taking him from a bed of fever into an open cart which stood ready in the yard, Dr. Rowel chanced to ride up, and at once put his veto upon their proceedings. Not that the doctor would by any means have purposely ridden half the distance for the sake of such a patient; but as chance not unfrequently favours those whom their own species despise, it happened that his professional assistance had that afternoon been required in the case of a wealthy old lady in the neighbourhood; and, as the doctor's humanity was not, at all events, so very short-legged as not to be able to carry him one quarter of a mile when it lay in his way, he took Snitterton Lodge in his circuit, for the sake of seeing Master Colin.
It will readily be supposed that during these few days, (as the boy had not made his appearance at home on the previous Sunday, according to conditional promise,) both his mother and Fanny had almost hourly been expecting to hear from him. Nor had various discussions on the cause of his silence been by any means omitted. Mrs. Clink attributed it to the fact of his having found everything so very pleasant at Snitterton Lodge, that he really had had neither time nor inclination to wean himself for a few short hours from the delights with which he was surrounded; but Fanny, whose mind had been dwelling ever since his departure upon the dismal forebodings with which Miss Sowersoft's appearance had filled it, expressed to Mrs. Clink her full belief that something had happened to Colin, or he would never have neglected either to come himself, or to write, as he had promised.
“I am sure,” she continued, very pensively, “it has made me so uneasy all this last week, that I have dreamed about him almost every night. Something has happened to him, I am as certain as if I had seen it; for I can trust to Colin's word just as well as though he had taken his oath about it. However, I will walk over this afternoon and see; for I shall never rest until I know for a certainty.”
“Walk, fiddlesticks!” exclaimed Mrs. Clink. “If you go over there in that suspicious manner, as though you fancied they had murdered him, it is a hundred to one but you will affront Miss Sowersoft, and get Colin turned out of a situation that may be the making of him. Stay where you are—do; and if you cannot make anything, do not mar it by interfering in a matter that you know nothing about. I have had trouble enough with him one way or another, without his being brought back on my hands, when he is as comfortable, I dare say, as he possibly can be.”
Though the latter remark was evidently intended to apply to Fanny's supposed injudicious solicitude for Colin's welfare, the girl passed it by without observation. She hurried her day's work forwards, in order to gain the necessary time for making her projected visit; and at about the middle of the afternoon suddenly disappeared from the eyes of Mrs. Clink, without informing her previously touching her place of destination.
While Dr. Rowel was yet in attendance on Colin, Fanny arrived and introduced herself to Miss Sowersoft, as she was employing herself in picking the pips off a handful of cowslips which lay in her lap. On seeing Fanny thus unexpectedly, and under circumstances which she felt would require some very ingenious explanation or evasion, her countenance seemed to darken as though a positive shadow had been cast upon it. A struggle between her real feelings and her consciousness of the necessity to disguise them ensued; and in the course of a few brief seconds the darkness of her countenance passed away, and she affected to salute her unwelcome visitor with much cordiality.
In reply to Fanny's inquiry respecting Colin, Miss Sowersoft stated that he was improving very nicely under Mr. Palethorpe's tuition, although they had had some trouble to make him do as he was bid; that he had enjoyed the most extraordinary good health until a few days ago, when he took a little cold, which had made him rather poorly.
“There!—I was sure of it!” cried Fanny, interrupting her; “I said so to his mother before I came away. I knew there was something amiss, or he would have written to us before now. And how did he take such a cold, Miss Sowersoft?”
“Take cold!—why, you know there are a hundred different ways of taking cold, and it is impossible sometimes for even a person himself to say how he took it. I am sure Palethorpe gets tremendous colds sometimes, and how he gets them is a perfect miracle. But, on my word, cold is so insinuating, that really, as I say sometimes, there is not a part but it will find its way to at one time or another.”
“Yes—but where is Colin now?—because I shall want to see him before I go back.”
“Oh, he is somewhere about the house,” replied Miss Sowersoft, with an unprecedented degree of effrontery; “but your seeing him is not of the least consequence. It cannot cure his cold; and as for anything else, it would very likely make him all the more discontented when you were gone again. If you take my advice, you would not see him, especially when I can tell you everything just the same as though you saw it yourself.”
At this moment the foot of the doctor, as he groped his way down stairs, was overheard by the speaker. She started up instantly, and endeavoured to hurry Fanny out of the room before that professional gentleman should enter it; but her manoeuvre failed, and before Miss Sowersoft could caution him to be silent the doctor remarked, in a sufficiently loud tone to be heard distinctly by both, that unless the boy was taken great care of, there was little chance left of his recovery.
“What boy?” exclaimed Fanny, rushing forward. “Whatishe so ill as that? For God's sake let me see him!”
Concluding from the direction in which the doctor had come that Colin was somewhere in the regions above, she flew rather than walked up stairs, without waiting for an invitation or a conductor, and soon threw her arms in an ecstasy of grief upon his neck.
“Oh, Colin! God has sent me on purpose to save you!Dobe better, and you shall go home again very soon.”
But Colin could only put up his pallid arms in an imploring action, and cry for very joy, as he gazed in the face of one of those only two who had occupied his das and night thoughts, and been the unconscious subjects of his unceasing and most anxious wishes.
The trouble of this first meeting being over, some more quiet conversation ensued; and, although almost too ill and weak to be allowed to talk, Colin persisted in stating briefly to the horror-stricken Fanny the kind of reception he had met with on his arrival, his treatment afterwards, the taking of his letter from him, and the brutal conduct which had caused his present illness. The girl stood silent, merely because she knew not what to think, what to believe, what to doubt; and was besides utterly lost for words to express properly her strangely mingled thoughts. It was almost impossible—incredible! Why could they do it? There was no cause for it—therecouldbe no cause for it. Human nature, and especially human nature in the shape of woman, was incapable of anything so infamous. Yet Colin was sensible—he had told an intelligible tale; and, most true of all, there he lay, a mere vision of what he was so brief a time ago,—a warranty plain and palpable that grievous wrong had been endured. Her brain was absolutely bewildered—she looked like one hovering on the doubtful boundary between sense and insanity. She cast her eyes around for surety—on the bed—athim, A burst of tears, as of a spring that for the first time breaks its bounds, succeeded,—and then another and another, as she fell on her knees and buried her face in the clothes that covered him.
By and by, the doctor and Miss Sowersoft were present in the room with her. Fanny raised her head and beheld Colin's mistress attempting, in the presence of the doctor, to do the attentive, by adjusting the sheet about the boy's neck to keep off the external air.
“Do not touch him!” exclaimed Fanny, springing to her feet; “he shall have nothing from your hands!”
“Ay!” cried the doctor: “young woman, what now, what now?”
“What now? Sir, you may well saywhat now!I have heard all about it—Colin has told me all. Miss Sowersoft has nearly killed him, and now wants to show, becauseyouare here, how kind and good she is!”
So saying, Fanny resolutely set about making the arrangement which Miss Sowersoft had contemplated with her own hands.
“Why—what—who is this young woman?” asked the doctor, somewhat astonished at the unexpected scene which had just passed before him.
“Nobody!” replied Miss Sowersoft; “she is only Mrs. Clink's servant, and a pert impudent hussy, too, as you have heard.”
At the same time she looked in the doctor's face, and endeavoured to smile contemptuously, though it “came off” in such a manner as would inevitably have frightened anybody less accustomed than was Dr. Rowel to witness the agonies of the human countenance.
“Yes, sir,” added Fanny, “I am only a servant; but I am awoman, whether servant or mistress. I nursed this lad when I was but six years old myself, and have taken care of him ever since. She shall not drown him, though she thinks she will!”
“Medrown him!” exclaimed Miss Sowersoft in feigned amazement.
“Yes,” replied Fanny, “youdrown him. If you had not half murdered him in that trough, he would never have been here now.”
“Dolet us go down stairs, doctor,” observed Miss Sowersoft; “such rubbish as this is not worth hearing.” And she made her way towards the door.
“Where is that letter?” cried Fanny eagerly, fearful lest the lady to whom she addressed herself should escape.
“Pshaw! nonsense! don't catechise me!” replied Miss Sowersoft, as she tripped down stairs; while the doctor, half in soliloquy and half addressing Miss Sowersoft, remarked, in allusion to Fanny, “She's a damsel of some spirit too!” Then addressing the girl herself, “Are you the little girl I saw at Mrs. Clink's when this boy was born?”
“Yes, sir, I am,” answered Fanny, as her passion sunk almost to nothing, and she blushed to be so questioned.
“Ah, indeed!” cried Doctor Rowel. “Well, I should not have thought it. Why, you are quite a fine young woman now. Dear-a-me! I had quite lost sight of you. I could not have believed it. Humph!” And the doctor surveyed her fair proportions with something of astonishment, and a great deal of satisfaction. To think that from such a little pale, half-fed, unhappy thing of work and thought beyond her years as she then was, there should have sprung up the full-sized, the pretty featured, and naturally genteel-looking girl now before him! But then, he had not that benefit which the reader enjoys, of reflecting how worldly circumstances, how poverty and plenty, sway the tempers of mankind; and that, as Mistress Clink's circumstances improved, so had Fanny improved likewise; and from seven or eight years old upwards, Fanny had enjoyed a much more comfortable home than, on his first introduction to her, might reasonably have been expected.
Doctor Rowel resumed his conversation.
“And how came you to be put to service so very early? for you had not, if I remember rightly, either health or strength to recommend you.”
Colin's eyes as he lay were fixed, as it might have been the eyes of a picture, on the doctor's countenance.
“I don't know, I'm sure, sir,” replied Fanny: but after a few moments' hesitation, added, “I suppose it was because I had no friends.”
“No friends!” the doctor repeated,—“why, where's your father and mother?”
“I never knew them, sir.”
“Indeed! never knew them!”
“No, sir!” and Fanny sobbed at the very recollection of her childhood's helplessness.
“Humph!” ejaculated the doctor; “you scarcely seem to have been born for a servant. Where did Mrs. Clink find you?”
“I do not know, sir. She never told me.”
“Ah!—oh! oh!—well! It's odd she never told you. So you do not know either who your father, or your mother, or your friends were?”
“No, sir,—I do not. But I remember———”
“Well,—go on,—you remember,—what do you remember? where did you come from? Do you know that?”
“I think, from Leeds, sir.”
“Leeds!” exclaimed the doctor; “and what else do you remember?”
“I can remember, sir,—though I can but just remember it,—that my father was taken away from me once, and I never saw him again.”
“And, what's your name?” continued the doctor in evident excitement.
“Fanny Woodruff,” she replied.
The doctor's features became pale and rigid, and his eyes were fixed upon her almost immoveably.
“God bless my soul!” he slowly ejaculated, as he rose to leave the room; “she should have been lost, or dead!”
But he turned again when at the head of the stairs.
“Now, young woman,—if you can keep a secret,—tell nobody, not even your mistress, what has passed. Take no notice; and perhaps I may do something for you. But I thought we had seen the last of your face seventeen years ago!”
Fanny and Colin were left alone.
“He knows something about me!” was the first thought that arose in Fanny's mind. But she did not utter it, and only asked very softly, if Colin had heard what the doctor said.
“Yes,” he replied, “and I shall never forget it.”
“But, say nothing,” added the girl: “he promised to do something for me. I wonder what it is!”
“So do I,” added Colin; “something worth having, I dare say.”
Thus they talked till evening. Colin said how much better he felt since she had been with him; and Fanny declared she would not leave him again for another day, until he was well; and, when he was well, then she would get him away from such unfeeling people, even though she had to go down on her knees to beg another situation for him elsewhere.
When, some little time afterwards, Fanny went down stairs, and informed the mistress of the house of her resolution to stay and attend on Colin until he was better, that amiable creature replied, “I think you won't then. We have not any room to spare. As if I was going to keep beds at liberty, to accommodate any trunnion that may think fit to cram herself into my house! We've plenty of work on our hands without having to wait on other people's servants. What do you say, Palethorpe?”
“Well, I don't know, meesis,” replied Mr. Palethorpe; “it seems as if Mr. Rowel was understood to say he was very bad, and must be waited on pretty constantly.”
“I'm sureIsha'n't wait on him neither constantly nor inconstantly!” very pertly exclaimed Miss Sowersoft; and certainly giving a very ingenious turn to her own views, as soon as she found which way her lover's needle pointed; “I'm not going to trot up and down stairs a thousand times a day for the sake of such a thing as a plough-lad. Them may wait on him that likes him, if he is to be waited on; but I'm positiveIshan't, nor anybody else that belongs to me!”
This conclusion left, without another word, the field wholly open to Fanny; and as Miss Sowersoft, on concluding her speech, bounced off into the dairy, not another word was needed.
Whatever might be the views entertained by the lady of the house touching the treatment most proper for Colin, there still were individuals amongst that rude community whose feelings were of a somewhat more catholic kind than those of their mistress; so that Fanny found no difficulty in procuring a volunteer, in the person of Abel, to go over to Bramleigh for the purpose of informing Mistress Clink how affairs stood, and of bringing back such few needful articles as Fanny might require during her stay at the farm.
All that night she passed a sleepless watch by the side of Colin's bed, beguiling the hours not devoted to immediate attendance on him, partly by looking over the little books which had come from home in his box, but more by employing her mind in the creation of every possible description of fanciful supposition touching her own origin, her history, her parents, and the knowledge which the doctor appeared to have of her earliest life. What was it?—what could it be? and, what could he mean by enjoining her to mention nothing of all this to any second person? In her he had unexpectedly found one whom he had known a baby, and had believed to be dead, or lost in the vast crowds of poverty long ago. Had she been born to better things than surrounded her now? Had she been defrauded of her rights? And, did the doctor bid her be silent because he might have to employ stratagem in order to recover them again? Perhaps she was born—nay! she knew not what she was born; nor dare she trust herself to think, scarcely; though, certain it is that a visionary world of ladies and gentlemen, and fine things, and wealth to set Colin up in the world and to make his mother comfortable, and to exalt herself over all the petty enemies by whom they were now surrounded, passed in pleasant state before her prolific imagination: while, it is equally certain, that—blushing, though unseen and in secret, at the very consciousness—a prouder feeling sprung up in her bosom, and she began to feel as though she must be more genteel, and more particular, and less like a common servant, than she had hitherto been.
Such were the golden fancies, and the pretty resolves that crowded round her brain that night. Neither, as a honest chronicler of human nature, would I take upon me to assert that she did not once or twice during these reveries rise to contemplate her features in the glass, and to adjust her hair more fancifully, and wonder—if it should be so—what kind of looking lady she should make. Truly, it was a pretty face that met her eyes in the mirror. As Colin woke up from a partial slumber, and raised his head slightly from the pillow, to ascertain what had become of his guardian, the reflection of her countenance as she was “looking the lady,” chanced to catch his eye: and, though he smiled as he gently sunk down again, he thought that that face would never again pass from before him.