As she finished this sentence, the church clock proclaimed to the whole town the hour of one. Miss Wilhelmina sprang from her chair, exclaiming, "Holloa! that's my dinner-hour. It will take me ten minutes to get home, and the fish will be quite spoilt. Excuse me, Mrs. Lyndsay, and come and take tea with me, like a good soul, to-morrow evening. I never take tea later than six."

Miss Wilhelmina vanished. Flora laughed over the interview until her husband came home, and then they had a good laugh together.

CHAPTER IX.

FLORA GOES TO TEA WITH MISS CARR.

The following evening, at the primitive hour of half-past five, Flora took her work, and went across the green to take tea with Miss Carr.

She found that eccentric lady seated by the window, looking out for her, and m.u.f.f standing on her shoulder, catching flies off the panes of gla.s.s. The evening was cold and raw, though the month was August, and threatened rain. Such changes are common on the coast. The dreary aspect of things without was relieved by a small but very cheerful fire, which was burning away merrily in the grate. A large easy chair, covered with snow-white dimity, was placed near it, expressly for Flora's accommodation, into which she was duly inducted by Miss Carr, the moment she had relieved herself of her bonnet and shawl. Everything looked so comfortable and cosy, in the neat lodging-house, and the tame mad woman received Mrs. Lyndsay with such hospitable warmth of manner, that the former regretted that her husband was not allowed to share her visit.

"You are late," said Wilhelmina, drawing a small sofa up to the fire, and placing it opposite to Flora's easy chair, so that a pretty work-table stood conveniently between them; "I told you to come early, and I have been waiting for you this hour."

"I am sorry for that. I thought I had come unfashionably early."

"Fashion! What have you or I to do with anything so absurd as fashion?

You are too poor to attend to the whims and caprices which sway the mind of the mult.i.tude, from which I presume emanate the fashions of the world; and I am too independent to be swayed by any will but my own. We will therefore set the fashion for ourselves. This is liberty hall while I am mistress of it. I do as I please; I give you full permission to do the same. But what kept you so late?"

"A thousand little domestic duties, too numerous and too trifling to dwell upon," said Flora, drawing her work from her bag; "since you give me the privilege of doing as I please, I will resume my work, while I listen to your lively conversation."

"You will do no such thing," returned Wilhelmina, twitching a frill which Flora had commenced hemming, from her hand, "I will have no st.i.tching and sewing here, but as much conversation as you please." Then ringing the bell, she handed over the frill to Mrs. Turner, "Give that to your daughter, Mrs. T., to hem for me, and tell her to do it in her very best style."

"Why, la, ma'am, 'tis a very small affair," said Mrs. Turner, with a meaning smile.

"A nightcap frill for m.u.f.f," said Miss Carr. "The cold weather is coming. I mean m.u.f.f to wear caps in the winter."

"You are a droll lady," said Mrs. Turner retreating; "it's a pity you had not something better to make an idol of, than a dog."

While Miss Carr was speaking to Mrs. Turner, Flora glanced round the room, and was not a little surprised to find a pianoforte making part of the furniture, an open drawing-box, of a very expensive kind, with card-board and other drawing materials, occupied a side-table. These were articles of refinement she had not expected from a man-like woman of Miss Carr's character.

"Are you fond of drawing?" she asked, when they were once more alone.

"Pa.s.sionately, my dear: I am a self-taught genius. Other people drew, and I was determined that I would draw too. What should hinder me? I have eyes to see, and hands to copy what pleases me; and the school from which I derive instruction is the best in the world, and furnishes the most perfect models-that of Nature. I never bent my mind to anything that I wished to accomplish, and failed. But you shall judge for yourself."

Miss Wilhelmina sprang from her seat, and bouncing into a closet, soon returned with a large portfolio, which she placed on the table before Flora. "There are my treasures; you can examine them at your leisure."

Flora did not expect anything delicate or beautiful, but she was perfectly astonished, not at the skill and taste displayed in these drawings, but at the extraordinary want of it-nothing could be worse, or indeed so eccentrically bad. The first specimen of Miss Carr's talents as an artist which she drew from the splendid velvet-covered portfolio puzzled her not a little. What the picture was meant for, Flora, for the life of her, could not tell, until glancing down to the bottom of the sheet, she read with great difficulty the following explanation, written in a vile hand:-

"_Portrait of the Incomparable m.u.f.f, taken while picking her bone at breakfast._"

It was a good thing she had discovered a key to the hieroglyphic, for Miss Carr's keen eyes were fixed intently upon her, as if they were reading her inmost soul.

"Is it not beautiful?" she cried, antic.i.p.ating Flora's admiration.

"m.u.f.f is a very pretty animal," said Flora evasively.

"m.u.f.f pretty!" exclaimed Miss Carr indignantly, "who ever thought of insulting m.u.f.f by calling her _pretty_! She is exquisite-the perfection of her species. I have, in that spirited picture, hit her off to the life. Look at the action of that tail-the life-like grasp of those paws. You might almost fancy you heard her growl over the delicious broiled mutton-bone."

Flora thought the picture would have suited the _Ornithorhyncus paradoxus_ quite as well as the incomparable m.u.f.f. The drawing was too bad to praise; she could not flatter, and she abhorred quizzing.

Miss Carr waited for her answer. Flora was dumb-foundered; fortunately the offended vanity of the artist soon relieved her from the painful and embarra.s.sing silence.

"I perceive that you are no judge of good paintings, Mrs. Lyndsay, or you must see some merit in the one before you. I showed that sketch to an Italian artist of celebrity when I was at Rome; he said, 'That it was worthy of the original,' which I considered no mean praise."

"Doubtless, he was right," said Flora. "His judgment must be more correct than mine. m.u.f.f is so unlike the generality of dogs, that it is difficult to recognise her as such."

"She's a fairy!" cried Wilhelmina, forgetting her anger, and hugging m.u.f.f to her breast.

"A Brownie," suggested Flora, delighted to find the conversation taking a turn.

"Brownies belong to an inferior order of immortals," quoth Wilhelmina, still caressing her dog. "My m.u.f.f is among the aristocrats of her species. But you have not seen the rest of my sketches. You will find a great many original pieces in the portfolio."

Flora wished them all behind the fire, and turning with a rueful seriousness to the sacred repository of _genius_, she drew forth several daubs that were meant for landscapes, the contemplation of which would have provoked the most indifferent person to mirth; but it was no laughing matter to examine them while a being so odd as Miss Carr was regarding you with a fixed gaze, hungry for applause and admiration.

Flora thought she had discovered the maddest point in Miss Carr's character. At length she stumbled upon a portrait. The figure was meant for that of a boy, but the head was as big as the head of a man, and covered with a forest of red curling hair, and he held in his hand a bunch of blue flowers as big as himself. "What an odd looking creature!"

burst involuntarily from her lips.

"Ah, my beautiful Adolphe!" cried Wilhelmina. "He was odd like myself-he stood alone in the world in my estimation. I must tell you the history of that child while you have his charming face before you."

Flora quietly slipped the portrait back into the portfolio. Her inclination to laugh became almost irrepressible. Miss Wilhelmina laid her right foot over her left knee, and, patting it almost as complacently as she would have done the silky brown back of her pet dog, gave Mrs Lyndsay the following pa.s.sage from her history:-

"That boy, with the education I meant to bestow upon him, would have become a great man-a second William Tell, or Andrew Hoffer-and I should have been the foster-mother of a man of genius. But it was not to be-there is a fate in these things."

"Did he die?" asked Flora.

"Die! that would have been nothing out of the common way; everybody must die, some time or other. Oh, no, he may be living yet for what I know-it was far worse than that."

Flora became interested.

"First-I like to begin at the beginning-I must tell you how I came by Adolphe. I pa.s.sed the summer of '28 in a small village among the Alps.

Every fine day I rambled among the mountains,-sometimes with a guide, sometimes alone. About half a mile from the village I daily encountered, upon the rocky road, a red-headed little boy of eight years of age, who never failed to present me with a bunch of the blue flowers which grow just below the regions of ice and snow. He presented his offering in such a pretty, simple manner, that I never accepted his flowers without giving him a kiss and a few small coins. We soon became great friends, and he often accompanied me on my exploring expeditions. Whether it was his red head-G.o.d bless the mark! or a likeness I fancied I saw between him and me, I cannot tell; but at last I grew so fond of the child that I determined to adopt him as my own. His father was one of the mountain guides, and resided in a small cabin among the hills. I followed Adolphe to his romantic home, and disclosed my wishes to his parents. They were very poor people, with a very large family, Adolphe being number twelve of the domestic group.

"For a long time they resisted all my entreaties to induce them to part with the child. The woman, like the mother of the Gracchi, thought fit to look upon her children as her jewels,-Adolphe, in particular, she considered the gem in the maternal crown. Her opposition only increased my desire to gain possession of the boy; indeed, I was so set upon having him that, had she remained obstinate, I determined to carry him off without asking her leave a second time. My gold, and the earnest request of the child himself, at last overcame her scruples; and after binding me by a solemn promise to let them see him at least once a-year, she gave him into my charge with many tears.

"Having accomplished this business, greatly to my own satisfaction, I set off with Adolphe, on a tour on foot through Germany. He was not only a great comfort to me, but useful withal. He was st.u.r.dy and strong, a real son of the hills, and he carried my small valise, and enlivened the length of the road with his agreeable prattle.

"When we put up for the night, the people always took him for my son; a fact I thought it useless to dispute in a foreign country. It would have had a more significant meaning in England. A red-headed, single lady could not have travelled alone, with a red-headed child, without disagreeable insinuations. Abroad I always pa.s.sed myself off as a widow, and Adolphe of course was my orphan son.

"Matters went off very pleasantly, until we arrived at Vienna, and I hired a neat lodging in a quiet part of the city, where I determined to spend the winter. The next morning I went out, accompanied by Adolphe, to examine the lions of the place. By accident we got entangled in a crowd, which had collected in one of the princ.i.p.al thoroughfares, to witness a fire. While striving to stem my way through the heaving ma.s.s of human forms that hedged us in on every side, I suddenly missed my child. To find him among such a mult.i.tude, was, indeed, to look for a needle in a waggon of hay; yet I commenced the search in utter desperation.

"I ran hither and thither, wherever I could find an opening, frantically calling upon Adolphe. I asked every person whom I met-'If they had seen my boy?' Some pitied-some laughed; but the greater number bade me stand out of their way. I was mad with fear and excitement, and returned to my lodgings late in the evening, starving with hunger, and worn out with fatigue of mind and body. I hoped that the child might have found his way home, and was waiting me there. Alas! Adolphe had not been seen, and I went to bed too much vexed to eat my supper.

"Early the next morning I resumed my search. I hired the public cryer to proclaim my loss; I borrowed a large bell from my landlady, and went through all the streets crying him myself, hoping that he would recognise my voice. Alas! alas! I never saw my child again!"

"Never?" said Flora. "Was he irrevocably lost?"