Eli's Children Part 34

"Thoroughness! why that's what his sisters are always talking about. I think it thorough nonsense. Oh, I shall be so glad when they're gone."

"Yes, it will be nicer," said Julia, thoughtfully; "but papa seems to like them very much."

"Yes, isn't it extraordinary?" cried Cynthia. "He wants papa to take a house in town, and to furnish it upon plans designed by him. I heard them talking about it, and papa seems to be guided by him in everything.

And what do you think?"

"I don't know, dear."

"I'm as good as certain that that wicked Cyril has been borrowing money of Perry-Morton."

"Why do you think that?" said Julia, quickly.

"Because Cyril does not make fun of him a bit, but both he and Frank are wonderfully civil."

Julia sighed.

"Hadn't we better turn back now, dear?"

"Oh, no! let's go as far as old Mrs Meadows's, poor old lady; she'll think we are never coming again."

They walked a few hundred yards farther on, and sat for a quarter of an hour to learn how the poor old lady's jyntes was uncommon painful just now, thanky, and that she hadn't seen them since before Christmas, and that it had been the mildest Christmas she had knowed this sixty year; and then the old lady sent her visitors on their return walk, with the cheerful announcement that a green Christmas "allers made a full churchyard, my dears," which well she knowed it to be true.

"Oh, what a dreadful old woman, Julie," cried Cynthia, merrily.

"Poor old thing! but how well she is for eighty."

"No troubles but her jyntes to hara.s.s her," laughed Cynthia.

"How long will it be before we meet anybody?"

A much shorter time than they either of them antic.i.p.ated, for as they turned a bend in the road, two rough-looking men who had been leaning against a gate came towards them, making no movement to let them pa.s.s, but staring offensively.

"Don't be frightened, Julie," whispered Cynthia, with spirit, "I'm not afraid."

She walked on boldly, and darted such an imperious look at the lesser of the two men, that he slunk aside to let her pa.s.s, but the other, Jock Morrison, stood his ground. He stared in a peculiar, half-smiling way at Julia, making her shrink aside, and following her up, as, turning pale, her lips parting, and with dilated eyes, she felt as it were fascinated by his gaze, shuddering the next moment as he exclaimed with a coa.r.s.e laugh--

"Bob, old matey, I mean to have this girl."

PART ONE, CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

AT KILBY FARM.

"Well--well--well--well," said Mrs Portlock, folding her ap.r.o.n full of pleats, as Luke Ross sat talking to her for a while, and ended by telling her his intentions for the future. "Barrister, eh? Well, of all the trades I ever heard tell of--but can barristers make a living?"

"Yes, and a good one, too," said Luke, laughing.

"Then you are not going to take to the school after all?"

"No, I have quite altered my plans, and I hope all will turn out for the best."

"Ah, I hope so, I'm sure," said Mrs Portlock, smoothing down her black silk dress, and then arranging a necklace of oblong amber beads, which she wore on market-days, one which bore a striking resemblance to a string of bilious beetles. "But what does your father say?"

"I have not told him my plans yet, for they have only been made since the governor's meeting."

"Well, Luke Ross," said Mrs Portlock, in a resigned fas.h.i.+on, "I'm sure I don't wish you any harm."

"I'm sure you do not," he said, laughing.

"Indeed I do not," she continued: "but, for my part, I think you had a great deal better have kept to your father's trade. Such a business as that is not to be picked up every day. But there, I suppose you know best."

"Of course he does," said the Churchwarden, who heard the latter part of her sentence. "You let Luke Ross alone for that. His head's screwed on the right way."

"Don't be so foolish, Joseph," cried Mrs Portlock. "Do talk sense.

Has Mr Cyril Mallow gone?"

"Yes, he's gone back home," said the farmer.

"Why didn't you ask him to stay and have a bit of dinner with us?"

"Because I didn't want him, mother. He only walked home with me to ask about a bit o' rabbit shooting."

"But still, it would have been civil to ask him to stop. It's market-day, and there's the hare you shot on Friday, and a bit o'

sirloin."

"Tchah! he wouldn't have cared to stay. He dines late and fas.h.i.+onable-like at home."

"I'll be bound to say he'd have been very glad to stop," said Mrs Portlock, bridling. "Fas.h.i.+onable, indeed! He got no fas.h.i.+onable dinners when he was working his way home at sea, nor yet when he was out in the bush."

"Where he had much better have stayed--eh, Luke?" said the farmer. "He does no good but idle about here."

"Idle, indeed!" cried Mrs Portlock, taking up the cudgels, rather indignantly, on the young man's behalf. "It might be idling if it was Luke Ross here, but Mr Cyril Mallow's a gentleman and a gentleman's son, and he has a right to work when he likes and leave off when he likes."

"Oh! has he?" said the Churchwarden, smiling at their visitor, as much as to say, 'Now, just you listen.' "Well, I'm not a learned man, like Luke Ross here, who has got his Bible at his tongue's end."

"As every man who calls himself a good man ought to," said Mrs Portlock, tartly. "Sage!"

"Yes, aunt," came from the next room, where the speaker could hear every word.

"Tell them to take the dinner in directly. And, for my part, Joseph, I think if you'd read your Bible a little more o' Sundays you'd be a better man."

"You wouldn't like me so well if I was a better man, old lady," he laughed; "but, as I was going to say, when I used to read of such things I got it into my head that the first specimen of a man as was made was a working man, to till the ground, and not idle and loaf about, and eat the fruit and shoot the rabbits in the Garden of Eden."

"For shame, father, to talk in that way!" cried the lady. "And I wonder that you speak so disrespectfully of Mr Cyril Mallow. For my part, I think he's a very nice, gentlemanly young fellow, and it's too bad for people to be always sneering about him as they are."

"And, for my part," said the Churchwarden, good-humouredly, "I'm a bit of a Radical, and don't believe in taking off your hat to a man because he happens to have a few thousand pounds more than one's got oneself.

If he's a wonderful clever chap, with more brains than I've got, why, I do look up to him; but I'm not going down on my knees to a set of folks who yawn through their lives, doing nothing, except telling you by word and look that they are a better cla.s.s of people than you are; and as for Master Cyril Mallow, he's a well-built, strapping young fellow, who can talk well, and shoot well, but if he had happened to be my sod, instead of old Mallow's, I'd have licked him into a different shape to what he's in now, ay, and his brother too, or I'd have known the reason why.