Sally, whose hands were wet from the tub, whipped her hand under the corner of her checkered ap.r.o.n, and so took the note with a finger and thumb operating through the linen. By this means she avoided two evils--her fingers did not wet the letter, and the letter did not dirty her fingers.

She took it into the kitchen to her mistress, whose arms were deep in a wash-tub.

Mrs. Meyrick had played the fine lady at first starting, and for six months would not put her hand to anything. But those twin cajolers of the female heart, Dignity and Laziness, made her so utterly wretched, that she returned to her old habits of work, only she combined with it the sweets of domination.

Sally came in and said, "It's an old gypsy, which he have brought you this."

Mrs. Meyrick instantly wiped the soapsuds from her brown but shapely arms, and, whipping a wet hand under her ap.r.o.n, took the note just as Sally had. It contained these words only:

"NURSE--The old Romance will tell you all about me.

"REGINALD."

She had no sooner read it than she took her sleeves down, and whipped her shawl off a peg and put it on, and took off her ap.r.o.n--and all for an old gypsy. No stranger must take her for anything but a lady.

Thus embellished in a turn of the hand, she went hastily to the door.

She and the gypsy both started at sight of each other, and Mrs. Meyrick screamed.

"Why, what brings you here, old man?" said she, panting. The gypsy answered with oily sweetness, "The little gentleman sent me, my dear.

Why, you look like a queen."

"Hush!" said Mrs. Meyrick.--"Come in here."

She made the old gypsy sit down, and she sat close to him.

"Speak low, daddy," said she, "and tell me all about my boy, my beautiful boy."

The old gypsy told Mrs. Meyrick the wrongs of Reginald that had driven him to this; and she fell to crying and lamenting, and inveighing against all concerned--schoolmaster, Sir Charles, Lady Ba.s.sett, and the gypsies. Them the old man defended, and a.s.sured her the young gentleman was in good hands, and would be made a little king of, all the more that Keturah had told them there was gypsy blood in him.

Mrs. Meyrick resented this loudly, and then returned to her grief.

When she had indulged that grief for a long time, she felt a natural desire to quarrel with somebody, and she actually put on her bonnet, and was going to the Hall to give Lady Ba.s.sett a bit of her mind, for she said that lady had never shown the feelings of a woman for the lamb.

But she thought better of it, and postponed the visit. "I shall be sure to say something I shall be sorry for after," said she; so she sat down again, and returned to her grief.

Nor could she ever shake it off as thoroughly as she had done any other trouble in her life.

Months after this, she said to Sally, with a burst of tears, "I never nursed but one, and I shall never nurse another; and now he is across the seas."

She kept the old gypsy at the farm; or, to speak more correctly, she made the farm his headquarters. She a.s.signed him the only bedroom he would accept, viz., a cattle-shed, open on one side. She used often to have him into her room when she was alone; she gave him some of her husband's clothes, and made him wear a decent hat; by these means she effaced, in some degree, his nationality, and then she compelled her servants to call him "the foreign gent."

The foreign gent was very apt to disappear in fine weather, but rain soon drove him back to her fireside, and hunger to her flesh-pots.

On the very day the foreign gent came to Meyrick's farm Lady Ba.s.sett had a letter by post from Reginald.

"DEAR MAMMA--I am gone with the gypsies across the water. I am sorry to leave you. You are the right sort: but they tormented me so with their books and their dark rooms. It is very unfortunate to be a boy. When I am a man, I shall be too old to be tormented, and then I will come back.

"Your dutiful son,

"REGINALD."

Lady Ba.s.sett telegraphed Sir Charles, and he returned to Huntercombe, looking old, sad, and worn.

Lady Ba.s.sett set herself to comfort and cheer him, and this was her gentle office for many a long month.

She was the more fit for it, that her own health and spirits revived the moment Reginald left the country with his friends the gypsies; the color crept back to her cheek, her spirits revived, and she looked as handsome, and almost as young, as when she married. She tasted tranquillity. Year after year went by without any news of Reginald, and the hope grew that he would never cross her threshold again, and Compton be Sir Charles's heir without any more trouble.

CHAPTER XLI.

OUR story now makes a bold skip. Compton Ba.s.sett was fourteen years old, a youth highly cultivated in mind and trained in body, but not very tall, and rather effeminate looking, because he was so fair and his skin so white.

For all that, he was one of the bowlers in the Wolcombe Eleven, whose cricket-ground was the very meadow in which he had erst gathered cowslips with Ruperta Ba.s.sett; and he had a canoe, which he carried to adjacent streams, however narrow, and paddled it with singular skill and vigor. A neighboring miller, suffering under drought, was heard to say, "There ain't water enough to float a duck; nought can swim but the dab-chicks and Muster Ba.s.sett."

He was also a pedestrian, and got his father to take long walks with him, and leave the horses to eat their oats in peace.

In these walks young master botanized and geologized his own father, and Sir Charles gave him a little politics, history, and English poetry, in return. He had a tutor fresh from Oxford for the cla.s.sics.

One day, returning with his father from a walk, they met a young lady walking toward them from the village; she was tall, and a superb brunette.

Now it was rather a rare thing to see a lady walking through that village, so both Sir Charles and his son looked keenly at her as she came toward them.

Compton turned crimson, and raised his hat to her rather awkwardly.

Sir Charles, who did not know the lady from Eve, saluted her, nevertheless, and with infinite grace; for Sir Charles, in his youth, had lived with some of the elite of French society, and those gentlemen bow to the person whom their companion bows to. Sir Charles had imported this excellent trait of politeness, and always practiced it, though not the custom in England, the more the pity.

As soon as the young lady had pa.s.sed and was out of hearing, Sir Charles said to Compton, "Who is that lovely girl? Why, how the boy is blushing!"

"Oh, papa!"

"Well, what is the matter?"

"Don't you see? It is herself come back from school."

"I have no doubt it is herself, and not her sister, but who is herself?"