Johnny Ludlow Sixth Series Part 10

"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 pa.s.s 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 Chava.s.se Grange, could not boast of a particularly s.h.i.+ning 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, blus.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+fty 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 yesterday, and thought it would make no difference to Mr. Barbary whether I came to-day or to-morrow."

His voice had a musical ring; his manner was open and honest. He might be Pointz Barbary's nephew by marriage, but I am sure he was not by nature.

"They'll fall in love with one another, those two; you'll see," said Tod to me as we went home. "Did you mark his pleased face when he spoke to her, Johnny--and how she blushed?"

"Oh, come, Tod! they tell me I am fanciful. What are you?"

"Not fanciful with your fancies, lad. As to you, Mr. Don"--turning to the dog, which had done nothing but growl while we stood before Barbary's gate, "unless you mend your manners, you shall not come out again. What ails you, sir, to-day?"

II

If love springs out of companions.h.i.+p, why then, little wonder that it found its way into Caramel Cottage. They were with each other pretty nearly all day and every day, that young man and that young woman; and so--what else was to be expected?

"We must try and get you strong again," said Mr. Barbary to his guest, who at first, amidst other adverse symptoms, could eat nothing. No matter what dainty little dish old Joan prepared, Mr. Reste turned from it.

Mr. Barbary had taken to old Joan with the house. A little, dark, active woman, she, with bright eyes and a mob-cap of muslin. She was sixty years old; quick, capable, simple and kindly. We don't get many such servants now-a-days. One defect Joan had--deafness. When a voice was close to her, it was all right; at a distance she could not hear it at all.

"How long is it that you have been ailing, Cousin Edgar?" asked Miss Barbary, one day when they were sitting together.

"Oh, some few weeks, Cousin Katrine," he answered in a tone to imitate hers--and then laughed. "Look here, child, don't call me 'Cousin Edgar!'

For pity's sake, don't!"

"I know you are not my true cousin," she said, blus.h.i.+ng furiously.

"It's not that. If we were the nearest cousins that can be, it would still be silly." Objectionable, was the word he had all but used. "It is bad taste; has not a nice sound to cultivated ears--as I take it. I am Edgar, if you please; and you are Katrine."

"In France we say 'mon cousin,' or 'ma cousine,' when speaking to one,"

returned Katrine.

"But we are not French; we are English."

"Well," she resumed, as her face cooled down--"why did you not take rest before? and what is it that has made you ill?"

He shook his head thoughtfully. The parlour window, looking to the front, was thrown up before them. A light breeze tempered the summer heat, wafting in sweetness from the homely flowers and scented shrubs.

The little garden was crowded with them, as all homely gardens were then. Roses, lilies, columbines, stocks, gillyflowers, sweet peas, sweet Williams, pinks white and red, tulips, pansies (or as they were then generally called, garden-gates), mignonette, bachelor's b.u.t.tons, and lots of others, sweet or not sweet, that I can't stay to recall: and cl.u.s.ters of marjoram and lavender and "old-man" and sweet-briar, and jessamines white and yellow, and woodbine, and sweet syringa; and the tall hollyhock, and ever true but gaudy sunflower--each and all flourished there in their respective seasons. Amidst the grand "horticulture," as it is phrased, of these modern days, it is a pleasure to lose one's self in the memories of these dear old simple gardens.

Sometimes I get wondering if we shall ever meet them again--say in Heaven.

They sat there at the open window enjoying the fragrance. Katrine had made a paper fan, and was gently fluttering it to and fro before her flushed young face.

"I have burnt the candle at both ends," continued Mr. Reste. "That is what's the matter with me."