"You sly little creature! Why, you are laughing at me all the time!"

"Oh! dear no; but who's the young lady, doctor? You have not told me her name yet, and I'm dying to know."

"You wicked little baggage! you know all the time."

"How can I? when you have not yet told me."

"By Gad! women are the most provoking creatures under the sun."

"Not _all_, doctor," she pleaded, demurely, tapping the carpet impatiently with her foot.

"Well, perhaps not all; but dooced near it. I am an old fool! Here am I bungling about and can't say what I mean!"

"Can I help you, doctor?"

"I wish you would, and tell me what to say to you, young baggage!"

"Do be calm, doctor. Suppose I'm the old lady now, and that you were talking to me--I am not so very young you know, either."

And she looked so demurely grave and elderly, that Aesculapius was charmed anew.

"Well, I must say it. It's better to have it out, like a bad tooth; there's no good in keeping it in my head. I'm an old fool I know, madam; but I am really in earnest now, and I want you to listen seriously to me for a moment. The fact is, madam, Miss Kingscott that is--how fearfully warm it is!"

At that moment, just when he was trembling on the verge of his disclosure, the shrill tones of Mrs Hartshorne's voice was heard without.

"George! George!" she cried to the faithful servitor (she p.r.o.nounced his name indeed _Jodge_! _Jodge_! speaking in her usual rapid manner, with quick utterance). "Who's that at the gate? Don't you let anybody in, man!"

And our friends inside could hear her feet scrunching the gravel as she walked towards the gate in order to see who it was; so they went to the window also to look on, and the interesting conversation I have just detailed, was abruptly broken off at the indefinite point it had reached.

"Plaise, marm," replied the rustic voice of George, "it's a leddy, marm, and she says as how she's coomed to say un."

"I don't know any ladies, and don't want to know any, either; I wonder who is the flaunting creature? Get back to your work, you grinning baboon! I'll speak to the woman myself."

At the gate, seated in her pony carriage, and accompanied by her two daughters, all dressed out and equipped in their state-costume for the payment of calls, was Lady Inskip. She looked astounded--for she had heard every word of the dialogue between the dowager and her henchman; and not only she had heard it, but her daughters also; and the grinning page, covered with sugar-loaf b.u.t.tons, who sat perched on a mushroom sort of seat that sprang out as a sort of excrescence from behind the equipage. The old campaigner was surprised and astounded: but she tried to appear cool and collected as befitted her dignity: the languid Laura was as apathetic as ever; and the fast Carry seemed inclined to follow the b.u.t.tons example and laugh aloud.

The dowager, in another moment, was on the scene of operations, and addressed the campaigner who sat in her pony carriage, with her forces drawn up in _echelon_ behind the gate.

"Who are you, woman; and what do you want?"

"My name is Lady Inskip," answered the veteran, with bridling dignity.

"I presume I have the honour of addressing Mistress Hartshorne?"

"I don't know you--that's my name; what do you want, woman? My time is valuable, and I can't stop cackling with you all day."

"You might be a little more polite, madam," said Lady Inskip, with freezing politeness and sarcasm. "I came with my daughters just to pay a customary call of civility, and I expected, at all events, to be treated like a lady, by a lady, whom I expected to meet here; but I now find out I am mistaken."

"Is that all? Then you and your daughters can just take yourselves off, with all your flauntings and finery! I don't want any grand people coming about me! _I_ never go to see anybody, and I don't want anybody to come and see me. Quite a pity, isn't it, after you had bedizened yourself so finely too?"

"Laura!" exclaimed Lady Inskip, ignoring the presence of the dowager, "I think we had better drive home, and leave this vulgar woman to herself.

Perhaps," she said, turning to the dowager as she whirled the ponies round, "you will have the civility to give that letter to your son, it contains an invitation to a pic-nic. I suppose we need not hope for the pleasure of your sweet company?"

"I don't want any of your pic-nics, or jakanapes, or your impudence!"

said the downright old woman, raising her shrill voice even more piercingly. "I will give the letter to my son. If he cares about running after you, _I_ don't. Go! You said you were going home, and the sooner you go the better, for you don't come in here, my lady!"

Then, considering the engagement terminated, she slammed-to the gate menacingly, and turned on her way back to the house, leaving the discomfitted campaigner to retreat at her leisure.

Our friends, the doctor and the governess, had heard the whole of the interview, and much amused they were over it, too, I promise you; but it stopped the coming proposal. Miss Kingscott was rather pleased at this, for she thought there was still some hope of gaining over Master Tom, the young squire, and she did not wish either to finally accept or reject the doctor until she knew which was the best card to play.

He, on his way home, was also pleased that he had not fully committed himself.

"It would never have done for Deb," he considered; "she would never have liked it. At all events, I was just stopped in time, though, and a miss is as good as a mile. But I am a d.a.m.ned old fool! That's a fact."

He kept to his promise with Pythias, did Damon, and drank a bottle of port to himself that day after dinner, shaking his head as he muttered to himself every now and then, while, with half-c.o.c.ked eye, he held up his gla.s.s to the light--

"It's a lucky escape; but I'm a confounded old fool!"

Twice he bethought him of telling Deborah all about it; but she looked so comfortable and composed, as she sat there darning his socks, that he thought it would be a pity to disturb and agitate her. So his dreams, when he retired to rest, were very wild indeed, and he pa.s.sed altogether a sleepless night.--So much for the doctor's love-making.

Volume 1, Chapter XI.

DES BEAUX YEUX.

No words can paint the mingled rage and mortification that filled the heart of Lady Inskip as she drove away from The Poplars, after her interview with the dowager.

"The Jezabel!" she said, in a voice of anger, "I've never been so scandalously treated in my life. You need not laugh, miss!" she fired out on Carry, who was exploding in fits of laughter at the humorous nature of the rencontre. "You need not laugh, miss; it is no laughing matter to see your mother insulted! But what can you expect from a vulgar boor but abuse? I ought to have known that before I laid myself open to such treatment. I don't think I can ask that young Hartshorne to my house again after this."

"Good gracious! ma," said Carry; "why what has he got to do with it?

I'm sure he's a very nice fellow, and he is not accountable for his mother's actions."

"Well," said the old campaigner, mollifying somewhat, as she got further from the scene of her defeat, and allowed her better judgment to prevail; "perhaps he's not to blame, and I am sure I never said so. He can come of course to the pic-nic, now he is invited; but I am sorry I left the note with that old cat, after all. Never mind, it's done now, and there's no use in regretting it. He is a good match; and if you listen to my words, Carry," she leaned over and said confidentially to her daughter, so that b.u.t.tons might not overhear, "instead of giggling so foolishly, and play you cards well, you will secure him in spite of that Jezabel, his mother. Not that I am afraid of her, or twenty like her," Lady Inskip said to herself consolingly, now that a distance of road lay between them.

But where was Master Tom all this while?

Well, you must understand that Mr Thomas Hartshorne, of Her Majesty's Plungers, was, and had been all the morning, learning the craft of fly-fishing on the banks of the little stream that ran by the bottom of the parsonage, under the apt tuition of the inc.u.mbent's sister. The young reverend himself had long since gone out for his parochial duties, such as enquiring after farmer Giles' rheumatism, and the widow Blake's asthma, intending also to do himself the honour of calling on Lady Inskip on his way home, for Pringle had been much struck by the charming Laura the more he saw of her, and wanted to see more still.

It was most surprising what a violent and indefatigable interest that previously indolent young man Tom had taken in the piscatorial art.

He who had before declared Isaac Walton an old humbug, and who had professed his agreement with the dogmatic old doctor Johnson's a.s.sertion, that fishing consisted of "a worm at one end of a rod and a fool at the other," now used to sally out every morning nearly from The Poplars, with his fishing-tackle on his shoulder down to the parsonage, telling Markworth, whom he used to faintly persuade to accompany him, that it was "the best sport in the world, old fellow."

He went to the inc.u.mbent's grounds because it was the "finest spot in the county for perch," and Pringle was "a brother angler, and such a jolly good fellow, you know." Those were his only reasons, of course!

Hartwood parsonage was the beau ideal of a snug little country lodge; a long, straggling, one-storied cottage form of house, all ingles and corners and slanting roofs, and covered with roses, jessamine, and clematis.

It had low, diamond-paned French windows, opening down to the ground; so that one could walk out into the trim-inclined but wild planted flower garden--Lizzie's especial pride--and on to the smooth velvetty lawn beyond, that sloped down to the water's edge, bordered with hanging branches of weeping willows, and sappy, luscious, green osiers, that sprang like ostrich plumes from the quiet pools and crinks into which the stream widened here and there.

The parsonage had a "fine walled-in kitchen garden," as house agents advertise, devoted to spruce rows of cabbages and arrogant cauliflowers, each of which weighed more than a good-sized Christmas turkey; and fruit-cl.u.s.tered pear and apple and peach trees, all nailed up and trained along the walls, like a giant's palms spread out with the fingers extended. Beyond the kitchen garden the walls were overhung with rich green ivy, which took off the stuck-up appearance it might have had like most enclosures, and gave the place a much, more picturesque aspect. But it was in the flowery plaisance, marked out on each side by a thick laurel shrubbery, that Lizzie's handiwork shone out.

This commenced just under the windows of the house, round which it extended, and spread out to where it joined the lawn, from which it was separated by a sort of strawberry island, and a hedge-row of box, tall, up-grown, and cut in queer, fantastic shapes.