The Tenants of Malory Volume I Part 13

A short sentence in Welsh, prettiest of all pretty tongues, with its pleasant accent, was the reply.

"Then all my fine sentences have been thrown away, and not one word has he understood!"

Looking at his impenetrable face, and thus speaking, she smiled; and in that sudden and beautiful radiance he smiled merrily also.

All this happened under the trees close by the old Refectory wall, at the angle of which is a small door admitting into the stable-yard.

Opening this she called "Thomas Jones!" and the Cardyllian "helper," so called, answered the invocation quickly.

"Make out from that little boy, what he is willing to take for one of his squirrels," said she, and listened in suspense while the brief dialogue in Welsh proceeded.

"He says, my lady, he does not know, but will go home and ask; and if you give him a s.h.i.+lling for earnest, he'll leave the cage here. So you may look at them for some time, my lady--yes, sure, and see which you would find the best of the two."

"Oh, that's charming!" said she, nodding and smiling her thanks to the urchin, who received the s.h.i.+lling and surrendered the cage, which she set down upon the gra.s.s in triumph; and seating herself upon the turf before them, began to talk to the imprisoned squirrels with the irrepressible delight with which any companionable creature is welcomed by the young in the monotony and sadness of solitude.

The sun went down, and the moon rose over Malory, but the little brown boy returned not. Perhaps his home was distant. But the next morning did not bring him back, nor the day, nor the evening; and, in fact, she saw his face no more.

"Poor little deserted squirrels!--two little foundlings!--what am I to think? Tell me, cousin Anne, was that little boy what he seemed, or an imp that haunts these woods, and wants to entangle me by a bargain uncompleted; or a compa.s.sionate spirit that came thus disguised to supply the loss of poor little Whisk; and how and when do you think he will appear again?"

She was lighting her bed-room candle in the faded old drawing-room of Malory, as, being about to part for the night, she thus addressed her gray cousin Anne. That old spinster yawned at her leisure, and then said--

"He'll _never_ appear again, dear."

"I should really say, to judge by that speech, that you knew something about him," said Margaret Fanshawe, replacing her candle on the table as she looked curiously in her face.

The old lady smiled mysteriously.

"What is it?" said the girl; "you must tell me--you _shall_ tell me.

Come, cousin Anne, I don't go to bed to-night till you tell me all you know."

The young lady had a will of her own, and sat down, it might be for the night, in her chair again.

"As to knowing, my dear, I really _know nothing_; but I have my _suspicions_."

"H-m!" said Margaret, for a moment dropping her eyes to the table, so that only their long silken fringes were visible. Then she raised them once more gravely to her kinswoman's face. "Yes, I _will_ know _what_ you suspect."

"Well, I think that handsome young man, Mr. Cleve Verney, is at the bottom of the mystery," said Miss Sheckleton, with the same smile.

Again the young lady dropped her eyes, and was for a moment silent. "Was she pleased or _dis_-pleased? Proud and sad her face looked.

"There's no one here to tell him that I lost my poor little squirrel.

It's quite impossible--the most unlikely idea imaginable."

"_I_ told him on Sunday," said Miss Sheckleton, smiling.

"He had no business to talk about me."

"Why, dear, unless he was a positive brute, he could not avoid asking for you; so I told him you were _dsol_ about your bereavement--your poor little Whisk, and he seemed so sorry and kind; and I'm perfectly certain he got these little animals to supply its place."

"And so has led me into taking a present?" said the young lady, a little fiercely--"he would not have taken that liberty----"

"_Liberty_, my dear?"

"Yes, _liberty_; if he did not think that we were fallen, ruined people----"

"Now, my dear child, your father's _not_ ruined, I maintain it; there will be more left, I'm very certain, than he supposes; and I could have almost beaten you the other day for using that expression in speaking to Mr. Verney; but you _are_ so _impetuous_--and then, could any one have done a more thoughtful or a kinder thing, and in a more perfectly delicate way? He _has_n't made you a present; he has only contrived that a purchase should be thrown in your way, which of all others was exactly what you most wished; he has not appeared, and never _will_ appear in it; and I know, for my part, I'm very much obliged to him--_if_ he has done it--and I think he admires you too much to run a risk of offending you."

"What?"

"I do--I think he admires you."

The girl stood up again, and glanced at the mirror, I think, pleased, for a moment--and then took her candle, but paused by the table, looking thoughtfully. Was she paler than usual? or was it only that the light of the candle in her hand was thrown upward on her features? Then she said in a spoken meditation--

"There are dreams that have in them, I think, the germs of insanity; and the sooner we dissipate them, don't you think, the better and the wiser?"

She smiled, nodded, and went away.

Whose dreams did she mean? Cleve Verney's, Miss Sheckleton's, or--could it be, her own?

CHAPTER XIV.

NEWS ABOUT THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAINS.

NEXT morning Margaret Fanshawe was unusually silent at breakfast, except to her new friends the squirrels, whose cage she placed on a little table close by, and who had already begun to attach themselves to her.

To them she talked, as she gave them their nuts, a great deal of that silvery nonsense which is pleasant to hear as any other pleasant sound in nature. But good old Miss Sheckleton thought her out of spirits.

"She's vexing herself about my conjectures," thought the old lady. "I'm sorry I said a word about it. I believe _I_ was a fool, but _she's_ a greater one. She's young, however, and has that excuse."

"_How_ old are you, Margaret?" said she abruptly, after a long silence.

"Twenty-two, my last birth-day," answered the young lady, and looked, as if expecting a reason for the question.

"Yes; so I thought," said Miss Sheckleton. "The twenty-third of June--a midsummer birth-day--your poor mamma used to say--the glow and flowers of summer--a brilliant augury."

"Brilliantly accomplished," added the girl; "don't you think so, Frisk, and you, little Comet? Are you not tired of Malory already, my friends?

_My_ cage is bigger, but so am I, don't you see; you'd be happier climbing and hopping among the boughs. What am _I_ to you, compared with liberty? I did not _ask_ for you, little fools, did I? You came to me; and I will open the door of your cage some day, and give you back to the unknown--to chance--from which you came."

"You're sad to-day, my child," said Miss Sheckleton, laying her hand gently on her shoulder. "Are you vexed at what I said to you last night?"

"What did you say?"

"About these little things--the squirrels."

"No, darling, I don't care. Why should I? They come from Fortune, and that little brown boy. They came no more to _me_ than to _you_," said the girl carelessly. "Yes, another nut; you shall, you little wonders!"

"Now, that's just what I was going to say. _I_ might just as well have bought them as _you_; and I must confess I coloured my guess a little, for I only mentioned poor Whisk in pa.s.sing, and I really don't know that he heard me; and I think if he had thought of getting a squirrel for us, he'd have asked leave to send it to _me_. I could not have objected to that, you know; and that little boy may be ill, you know; or something may have happened to delay him, and he'll turn up; and you'll have to make a bargain, and pay a fair price for them yet."