Ovington's Bank. Weyman Stanley John

a man before? – "that you should think of such things as you do. Snowdrops, I mean. I thought you were a banker, Mr. Ovington."

      "A very bad banker," he replied ruefully. "To tell the truth, Miss Griffin, I hate banking. Pounds, shillings, and pence-and this!" He pointed to the country about them, the stream, the sylvan path they were treading, the wood beside them, with its depths gilded here and there by a ray of the sun. "A desk and a ledger-and this! Oh, I hate them! I would like to live out of doors. I want" – in a burst of candor-"to live my own life! To be able to follow my own bent and make the most of myself."

      "Perhaps," she said with naïveté, "you would like to be a country gentleman?" And indeed the lot of a country gentleman in that day was an enviable one.

      "Oh no," he said, his tone deprecating the idea. He did not aspire to that.

      "But what, then?" She did not understand. "Have you no ambition?"

      "I'd like to be-a farmer, if I had my way."

      That surprised as well as dashed her. She thought of her father's tenants and her face fell. "Oh, but," she said, "a farmer? Why?" He was not like any farmer she had ever seen.

      But he would not be dashed. "To make two blades of grass grow where one grew before," he answered stoutly, though he knew that he had sunk in her eyes. "Just that; but after all isn't that worth doing? Isn't that better than burying your head in a ledger and counting other folk's money while the sun shines out of doors, and the rain falls sweetly, and the earth smells fresh and pure? Besides, it is all I am good for, Miss Griffin. I do think I understand a bit about that. I've read books about it and I've kept my eyes open, and-and what one likes one does well, you know."

      "But farmers-"

      "Oh, I know," sorrowfully, "it must seem a very low thing to you."

      "Farmers don't look at snowdrops, Mr. Ovington," with a gleam of fun in her eyes.

      "Don't they? Then they ought to, and they'd learn a lot that they don't know now. I've met men, laboring men who can't read or write, and it's wonderful the things they know about the land and the way plants grow on it, and the live things that are only seen at night, or stealing to their homes at daybreak. And there's a new wheat, a wheat I was reading about yesterday, Cobbett's corn, it is called, that I am sure would do about here if anyone would try it. But there," remembering himself and to whom he was talking, "this can have no interest for you. Only wouldn't you rather plod home weary at night, feeling that you had done something, and with all this" – he waved his hand-"sinking to rest about you, and the horses going down to water, and the cattle lowing to be let into the byres, and-and all that," growing confused, as he felt her eyes upon him, "than get up from a set of ledgers with your head aching and your eyes muddled with figures?"

      "I'm afraid I have not tried either," she said. But she smiled. She found him new, his notions unlike those of the people about her, and certainly unlike those of a common farmer. She did not comprehend all his half-expressed thoughts, but not for that was she the less resolved to remember them, and to think of them at her leisure. For the present here was the mill, and they must part. At the mill the field-path which they were following fell into a lane, which on the right rose steeply to the road, on the left crossed a cart-bridge, shaken perpetually by the roar and wet with the spray of the great mill-wheel. Thence it wound upwards, rough and stony, to the back premises of Garth.

      He, too, knew that this division of the ways meant parting, and humility clothed him. "Heavens, what a fool I've been," he said, blushing, as he met her eyes. "What must you think of me, prating about myself when I ought to have been thinking only of you and asking your pardon."

      "For nearly shooting me?"

      "Yes-and thank God, thank God," with emotion, "that it was not worse."

      "I do."

      "I ought never to carry a gun again!"

      "I won't exact that penalty." She looked at him very kindly.

      "And you will forgive me? You will do your best to forgive me?"

      "I will do my best, if you will not carry off my basket," she replied, for he was turning away with the basket on his arm. "Thank you," as he restored it, and in his embarrassment nearly dropped his gun. "Good-bye."

      "You are sure that you will be safe now?"

      "If you have no fresh accident with your firearms," she laughed. "Please be careful."

      She nodded, and turned and tripped away. But she had hardly left him, she had not passed ten paces beyond the bridge, before her mood changed. The cloak of playfulness fell from her, reaction did its work. The color left her cheeks, her knees shook as she remembered. She felt again the hot blast on her cheek, lived through the flash, the shock, the onset of faintness. Again she clung to the stile, giddy, breathless, the landscape dancing about her. And through the haze she saw his face, white, drawn, terror-stricken-saw it and strove vainly to reassure him.

      And now-now he was soothing her. He was pouring out his penitence, he was upbraiding himself. Presently she was herself again; her spirits rising, she was playing with him, chiding him, exercising a new sense of power, becoming the recipient of a man's thoughts, a man's hopes and ambitions. The color was back in her cheeks now, her knees were steady, she could walk. She went on, but slowly and more slowly, full of thought, reviewing what had happened.

      Until, near the garden door, she was roughly brought to earth. Miss Peacock, visiting the yard on some domestic errand, had discerned her. "Josina!" she cried. "My certy, girl, but you have been quick! I wish the maids were half as quick when they go! A whole afternoon is not enough for them to walk a mile. But you've not brought the eggs?"

      "I didn't go," said Josina. "I was frightened by a gun."

      "A gun?"

      "And I felt a little faint."

      "Faint? Why, you've got the color of a rose, girl. Faint? Well, when I want galeny eggs again I shan't send you. Where was it?"

      "Under the Thirty Acres-by the stile. A gun went off, and-"

      "Sho!" Miss Peacock cried contemptuously. "A gun went off, indeed! At your age, Josina! I don't know what girls are coming to! If you don't take care you'll be all nerves and vapors like your aunt at the Cottage! Go and take a dose of gilly-flower-water this minute, and the less said to your father the better. Why, you'd never hear the end of it! Afraid because a gun went off!"

      Josina agreed that it was very silly, and went quickly up to her room. Yes, the less said about it the better!

      CHAPTER VII

      The terraced garden at Garth rested to the south and east on a sustaining wall so high that to build it to-day would tax the resources of three Squires. Unfortunately, either for defence or protection from the weather, the wall rose high on the inner side also, so that he who walked in the garden might enjoy the mellow tints of the old brickwork, but had no view of the country except through certain loop-holes, gable-shaped, which pierced the wall at intervals, like the port-holes of a battleship. If the lover of landscape wanted more, he must climb half a dozen steps to a raised walk which ran along the south side. Thence he could look, as from an eyrie, on the green meadows below him, or away to the line of hills to westward, or turning about he could overlook the operations of the gardener at his feet.

      More, if it rained or blew there was at the south-west corner, and entered from the raised walk, an ancient Dutch summer-house of brick, with a pyramidal roof. It had large windows and, with much at Garth that served for ornament rather than utility, it was decayed, time and damp having almost effaced its dim frescoes. But tradition hallowed it, for it was said that William of Orange, after dining in the hall at the oaken table which still bore the date 1691, had smoked his pipe and drunk his Schnapps in this summer-house; and thence had watched the roll of the bowls and the play of the bias on the turf below. For in those days the garden had been a bowling green.

      There on summer evenings the Squire would still drink his port, but in winter the place was little used, tools desecrated it, and tubers took refuge in it. So when Josina began about this time to frequent it, and, as winter yielded to the first breath of spring, began to carry her work thither of an afternoon, Miss Peacock should have