Johnny Ludlow, Sixth Series. Henry Wood

mother shook her head with a smile. “I found out, Joseph, that she is particularly skilful at mending old lace. I have some that needs repairing. She takes it home and does it at her leisure—and you cannot imagine how grateful she is.”

      “How old is she?”

      “Nineteen—close upon twenty, I think she said,” replied the mother. And there the conversation ended, for Mrs. Todhetley had to go to the kitchen to give the daily orders.

      The morning wore on. We went to Church Dykely and were back again by twelve o’clock. Tod had got Don on the lawn, making him jump for biscuit, when the dog rushed off, barking, and we heard a scream. A young lady in a straw hat and a half-mourning cotton dress was running away from him, she and Lena having come out of the house together.

      “Come here, Don,” said Tod in his voice of authority, which the good Newfoundland dog never disobeyed. “How dare you, sir? Johnny, lad, I suppose that’s Miss Barbary.”

      I had forgotten all about her. A charming girl, as the mother had said, slight and graceful, with a face like a peach blossom, dimpled cheeks, soft light-brown hair and dark-blue eyes. Not the hard, steel-blue eyes that her father had: sweet eyes, these, with a gentle, loving look in them.

      “You need not be afraid of the dog,” cried Tod, advancing to where she stood, behind the mulberry tree. “Miss Barbary, I believe?”—lifting his cap.

      “Yes,” she said in a frank tone, turning her frank face to him; “I am Katrine Barbary. It is a very large dog—and he barks at me.”

      Large he was, bigger than many a small donkey. A brave, faithful, good-tempered dog, he, and very handsome, his curly white coat marked out with black. Gentle to friends and respectable strangers, Don was at mortal enmity with tramps and beggars: we could not cure him of this, so he was chained up by day. At night he was unchained to roam the yard at will, but the gate was kept locked. Had he got out, he might have pinned the coat of any loose man he met, but I don’t believe he would have bitten him. A good fright Don would give, but not mortal injury. At least, we had never yet known him to do that.

      Lena ran up in her short pink frock, her light curls flying. “Miss Barbary is always afraid when she hears Don bark,” she said to us. “She will not go near the yard; she thinks he’ll bite her.”

      “I will teach you how to make friends with him,” said Tod: “though he would never hurt you, Miss Barbary. Come here and pat his head whilst I hold him; call him by his name gently. Once he knows you, he would protect you from harm with his life.”

      She complied with ready obedience, though the roses left her cheeks. “There,” said Tod, loosing the dog, and letting her pat him at leisure, “see how gentle he is; how affectionately he looks up at you!”

      “Please not to think me very silly!” she pleaded earnestly, as though beseeching pardon for a sin. “I have never been used to dogs. We do not keep dogs in France. At least very few people do. Oh dear!”

      Something that she carried in her left hand wrapped in paper had dropped on to the lawn. Don pounced upon it. “Oh, please take it from him! please, please!” she cried in terror. Tod laughed, and extricated the little parcel.

      “It has some valuable old lace in it of Mrs. Todhetley’s,” she explained as she thanked him. “I am taking it home to mend.”

      “You mend old lace famously, I hear,” said Tod, as we walked with her to the entrance gate.

      “Yes, I think I do it nearly as well as the nuns who taught me.”

      “Have you been in a convent?”

      “Only for my education. I was an externe—a daily pupil. My aunt lived next door to it. I went every morning at eight o’clock and returned home at six in the evening to supper.”

      “Did you get no dinner?” asked Tod.

      She took the question literally. “I had dinner and collation at school; breakfast and supper at home. That was the way in our town with the externes at the convent. We were Protestants, you see, so my aunt liked me to be at home on Sundays. Thank you for teaching Don to know me: and now I will say good morning to you.”

      I was holding the gate open for her to pass out, when Ben Gibbon went by, a gun carelessly held over his shoulder. He touched his hat to us, and we gave him a slight nod in reply. Miss Barbary said “Good day, Mr. Gibbon.”

      Tod drew down his displeased lips. He had already taken a liking to the girl—so had I, for that matter—she was a true lady, and Mr. Ben Gibbon, a brother to the gamekeeper at Chavasse Grange, could not boast of a particularly shining character.

      “Do you know him, Miss Barbary?” asked Tod. “Be quiet, Don!” he cried to the dog, which had begun to growl when he saw Gibbon.

      “He comes to our house sometimes to see papa. Please pardon me for keeping you waiting,” she added to me, as I still held back the gate. “That gun is pointed this way and it may go off.”

      Tod was amused. “You seem to dread guns as much as you dread dogs, Miss Barbary. I will walk home with you,” he said, as she at last came through, the gun having got to a safe distance.

      “Oh, but–” she was beginning, and then stopped in confusion, blushing hotly, and looking at both of us. “I should like it; but–would it be proper?”

      “Proper!” echoed Tod, staring, and then bursting into a fit of laughter long and loud. “Oh dear! why, Miss Barbary, you must be French all over! Johnny, you can come, too. Lena, run back again; you have not any hat on.”

      Crossing the road to take the near field way, we went along the path that led beside the hedge, and soon came in view of Caramel Cottage; it was only a stone’s throw, so to say, from our house. An uncommonly lonely look it had, buried there amidst many trees, with the denser trees of the Grove close beyond it. We asked her whether she did not find it dull here.

      “At first I did, very; I do still a little: it is so different from the lively town I have lived in, where we knew all the people, and they knew us. But we shall soon be more lively,” she resumed, after a pause. “A cousin is coming to stay with us.”

      “Indeed,” said Tod. “Is it a lady or a gentleman?”

      “Oh, it is a gentleman—Edgar Reste. He is not my cousin by kin; not really related to me; but papa says he will be as my cousin, as my brother even, and that he is very nice. Papa’s last wife was Miss Reste, and he is her nephew. He is a barrister in London, and he has been much overworked, and he is coming here to-morrow for rest and country air.”

      Within the low green gate of the little front garden of Caramel Cottage stood Mr. Barbary, in his brown velveteen shooting coat and breeches of the same, that became him and his straight lithe limbs so well. Every time I saw him the beauty of his face struck me afresh; but so did the shifty expression of his eyes.

      “There’s papa!” exclaimed the girl, her dimples lighting up. “And—why, there’s a gentleman with him—a stranger! I wonder who it is?”

      I saw him as he came from the porch down the narrow garden-path. A slight, slender young man of middle height and distinguished air, with a pale, worn, nice-looking face, and laughing, luminous dark brown eyes. Yes, I saw Edgar Reste for the first time at this his entrance at Caramel Cottage, and it was a thing to be thankful for that I could not then foresee the nameless horror his departure from it (I may as well say his disappearance) was to shadow forth.

      “How do you do?” said Mr. Barbary to us, courteously civil. “Katrine, here’s a surprise for you: your cousin is come. Edgar, this is my little girl.—Mr. Reste,” he added, by way of introduction generally.

      Mr. Reste lifted his hat, bowed slightly, and then turned to Katrine with outstretched hand. She met it with a hot blush, as if strange young men did not shake hands with her every day.

      “We did not expect you quite so soon,” she gently said, to atone for her first surprise.

      “True,” he answered. “But I felt unusually out of sorts