Kit and Kitty: A Story of West Middlesex. Blackmore Richard Doddridge

have come up with the ladies, long ago.”

      “Here we are, looking from a distance at your peaches. Oh, Mr. Orchardson, how lovely they do seem!” Mrs. Marker lost her dignity by giving me a wink, believing as she did – and many others thought the same – that I was next to nobody in these gardens, and my Uncle a tiger over every fruit he grew.

      “We have had as many peaches as we can eat, sir,” I said, without any wish to contradict her, but simply to show the position I held.

      “Ladies will excuse my present plight;” he had no coat on, and his sleeves were tucked up, showing a pair of thick brown arms. “My peaches are very poor this year, and many have split their stones, and rot instead of ripening. We have not had such a season since 1852. I hope you will not judge us by the wretched things you see. But come on a little further, and try something else. All fruit is water, such a year as we have had. But possibly I may find a plum or two worth eating.”

      “Allow me the pleasure, sir,” said Mrs. Marker, who always insisted on proper forms, “of introducing you to Miss Fairthorn, the only daughter of Captain, or as he now is considered, Professor Fairthorn – a gentleman of the highest scientific tendencies.”

      “To be sure,” said Uncle Corny, as he took his hat off, and smiled with surprise at her beauty; “I knew Captain Fairthorn, years ago, and a very noble man he is. I have very good cause to remember him – but I will not trouble you with that now. Mrs. Marker, if you would just turn this corner – take care of your most becoming bonnet, young lady” – this pleased the good housekeeper more than twenty plums, – “our trees are not as sensitive as we are.”

      His urbanity amazed me, for I never could have thought a good man could be so inconsistent; and I said to myself that after all there is something irresistible in women. So I ventured to sidle up to Miss Fairthorn, as he led the way with his convoy, and asked her what she thought of him.

      “Oh, I think he is so nice,” she replied smiling at me, as if she was pleased with my question; “so upright, and manly, and such a fine countenance. No wonder, I’m sure, that his fruit is good.”

      “Did you notice how much he was surprised at you, at your very pretty dress, and exceedingly sweet smile, and most ladylike appearance, and silvery voice, and lovely – lovely way of holding your parasol?”

      “How can you talk such nonsense, Mr. Orchardson? And your Uncle appears such a sensible man! Dear me, we are losing all the wise things he can say. Let us hurry on – it was this way, I think.”

      “No, no! Don’t you hear their voices down this path? Not twenty yards off, if it were not for these trees. Oh, do let me carry your parasol. You will want both hands to get along. Before you know where we are, we shall be in the broad road. Oh, I am so sorry – it was all my fault. You must let me undo the mischief I have done. May I show you how well I understand all roses?”

      By good luck, combined with some little skill of mine, her simple yet wholly adorable frock was captured in three places by gooseberries whom I envied. I expected great delight from this. But she showed at once the sweetness of her temper, and her height above me. Instead of blushing stupidly, she smiled, and said – “Thank you, I will do it for myself. You can hardly be expected to understand such things.”

      CHAPTER VIII.

      BAD COUNSEL

      There are very few things that have the power to please us both in heart and mind, even when they have the will to do it, which is very seldom. Great events in our lives flash by without a word, and scarcely seem to give us time to chuckle, or to sob, till afterwards. But the little turns of time are more indulgent, and pass us with a sauntering foot, more often dull than lightsome.

      For the moment, I was glad to find that my Uncle Cornelius, in his plain way, had taken a liking to my love. But I gave him little credit for it, inasmuch as it seemed impossible to me that he could do otherwise. Such was my petty jealousy that I did not even want to hear him praise her, except in my own words. But he, in his solid way, would take his own view of her character – as if he knew anything about it!

      “I don’t care a farthing about all that,” I cried, when he had spoken of some things, which tell the longest.

      “I can see she is very quiet, and full of home affections,” he persisted, as if I were a boy at school, and he were holding the spelling book; “she is not extravagant, nor fond of waste; that I saw by the way she went through a ‘Huling’s Superb,’ with a hole in it. I could scarcely have done it any better myself. And she was really grieved, which the lady-housekeeper had not the sense to be, by the freedom – she called it recklessness – with which I picked those Jeffersons, to find one in tip-top condition. And then when I offered to make some tea, the housekeeper who had been stuffing for hours only asked if the water was boiling. But your sweetheart began to buckle up, and asked who could touch tea, after such delicious things.”

      “Buckle up, indeed! Uncle Corny, you are outrageous. She had got no such thing as a buckle near her. Her waist is done round with a narrow blue ribbon, the colour of the sky, as her eyes are. And I will thank you not to call her my sweetheart, if you please. I shall never have such luck. And it sounds so common. There ought to be a better expression for it. And such things are not made to be talked of.”

      “Very well! You won’t hear me say another word. It will all come to nothing; that’s one comfort. She goes back to London on Friday; and you will very soon console yourself with Rasp’s young woman. I am told that she has fine black eyes; and I am not sure that black don’t beat blue ones, after all.”

      This was so disgusting that I went away, and worked till dusk at a heavy piece of trenching; and when it was dusk I lay in wait for three felonious boys who came from Hampton, almost every evening, prowling for our apples. I caught all three, and trounced them well – which is the only proper plan – and the sound of their wailings, as they went home, restored my faith in justice. For I had given them their choice – “a licking or a summons” – and they said very justly, “Oh, a licking, if you please, sir.” The world has now come to such a pass, that a father would summon me for assault, if I so discharged his duty for him; but thirty years ago a bit of common sense survived.

      But in spite of that little satisfaction, I could not get much sleep that night, for rolling, and pondering, and twisting in and out, the tangle and the burden of a troubled mind. Turn it as I might, there was no opening through it for another view of that perfect creature, with whom my whole life seemed to flow. Terrible, terrible was the truth that she would leave us all on Friday, and be swallowed up and no more seen, in that great earthquake, London. A thousand wild ideas, and schemes, for stealing yet one more interview, and countless crazy hopes that she herself might try to compass it, all came thrilling through my restless brain, but not one would stop there. None had any shape or substance, such as could be worked upon, and brought to likelihood of success. This was Tuesday night; last Saturday night how different everything had been! Then I had only cared to know, that things in the ground were doing well, that all the fruit which required gathering got its due, and looked its best on its way to be devoured, that every man pocketed his wages in good time to spend them, and that there was a little hope of the weather taking up at last. Now there had been three days without rain, and with touch of autumnal sunshine; heaven began to look bright again, and the earth (which, like the dwellers therein, lives only aright in view of it) was beginning to lift her sodden crust, and fetch once more her storm-trampled breath and issue anew the genial green in the midrib of mouldy foliage. In a word, the summer which had failed the year, for want of a smile to lead it, was breaking out at this last moment, better late than never.

      Possessed as I was with my own troubles, and only a flickering sunshine, I could not resist the contagious lightness of cheerful faces all around. The workmen, who do (in spite of all British reserve, and manly selfishness) take a deep interest in their employer’s welfare, and stand up for him bravely, when any one abuses him, except themselves – every man of them laid heel to spade, or hoisted ladder on shoulder, with new briskness; because they could say to one another – “The old buffer, who carries on this place, has fought against long odds like a man; and now things look as if they was taking a little turn in his favour.”

      On