Chapter II: Part 2

The ultimate result of these mutterings being that, in another week, Williams was discharged as convalescent, and by Christmas was well enough to dictate to his mistress as to what greenery she might cut for the decoration of the house.

"Ladies, they did cum," said he to his wife, "and did read in that there 'orspital, but they did spake so secret-like and quiet, I couldn't never yer what it were all about; and the doctor 'e cum, and passun 'e cum, but I didn't seem to take no sort of delight in none of 'em. Then Mazter Billy 'e cum, and did talk the most sensiblest of the lot.... And, in spite of that there influinzy, yer Oi be!"

*III*

*"ESPECIALLY THOSE"*

They did not know that Billy had so many friends until he lay a-dying. Then they knew.

It takes some of us more than four years to make one friend. Billy had only lived four years altogether, but every one he knew was his friend, and he knew every one in his little world.

"I want some ice for Master Billy's head!" said the parlour-maid. "He's that feverish, doctor says it's to be kept on all the time."

Mr. Stallon, the fishmonger, looked grave.

"I haven't a bit of ice on the premises. It's ordered, but it won't be here till to-morrow. Dear! dear! and to think as the little gentleman's so bad!"

Mr. Stallon was a stout, seafaring-looking man, with a short brown beard. He shook his head, and looked really sorry.

"Whatever shall we do?" cried the parlour-maid. "Whatever shall we do?"

"Do!" echoed Mr. Stallon. "Do! why, get some, to be sure. I'll go to Farenam for it myself. Tell your lady she shall have it in a' hour or so."

Mr. Stallon owned an inn as well as a fish-shop. He crossed the road to his inn yard; there he harnessed his horse to his spring cart, and he drove to Fareham for the ice. Billy's town is a very little one, but Fareham, six miles off, is big, and Mr. Stallon got the ice. I'm afraid that he drove furiously, and beat his horse. But he quite forgot to charge for the ice, and no one ever thanked him for getting it. He didn't mind, he was one of Billy's friends.

The Earl was another. The Earl is young, fresh-coloured, and chubby, and somewhat lacking in dignity. He is an M.F.H. for all that, and Billy was wont to go with him to the kennels, and knew all the old hounds by name.

The Earl and Billy held long conversations on the subject of poachers. Billy's sympathies were apt to go with the poachers; but that was the fault of the Radical curate.

As for the curate, he and Billy were dear friends. He would spend long sunny afternoons bowling slows, and twisters, and overhands to Billy, and he could sing such charming songs.

One of Billy's peculiarities was that he exacted songs from all his friends. Then he learnt them himself, and sang them in his turn. The curate's favourite song was "For it's My Delight, On a Shiny Night." It was this song that caused Billy's predilection for poachers.

The Earl could sing too. Of his repertoire the favourite was--

_"She went and got married, that 'ard-'earted girl,_
_And it was not to a Wicount, and it was not to a Hearl."_

Here Billy always interrupted, exclaiming delightedly, "That's _you_, you know!" and demanded the verse again.

There was one friend from whom Billy exacted no songs. This was old Williams, the gardener. He was a very good gardener, but deaf. Billy was the only person whom he could hear well. He really had no notion of singing, that gardener. So he told Billy tales in broad Gloucestershire instead, and Billy trotted after him, assisting in all his horticultural operations, and they loved each other.

But the fever had got a hold upon Billy, it was such a hot July.

At last a Sunday came, when those who loved him best feared that he could not last through the day. At morning service the curate gave it out that "the prayers of the congregation, are desired for William Wargrave Ainger"; then he paused, and with a ring of supplication in his voice, which startled the listening people, said, "little Billy Ainger, whom we love--who lies grievously sick."

"William Wargrave Ainger" had fallen on inattentive ears, but the familiar name struck home, and the congregation prayed.

In the pause which followed the words "especially those for whom our prayers are desired," the deaf gardener's voice was heard to say "Amen"; but no one smiled at him that Sunday.

The Earl had no surplice to take off, so he reached Billy's house first; but the curate caught him at the drive gate, for the curate ran.

There was no sound in the house but the voice of Billy's mother, singing to him, over and over again, the same old nursery rhyme. It ran:

"O do not come, but go away--
Away with your eyes that peep;
O do not come to Billy's house,
For Billy is going to sleep."

It has a quaint lilting tune, and Billy loved it, but he could not sleep.

His father came down to the Earl and the curate, and silently they followed him up into the darkened nursery. Billy smiled when he saw them. He could not speak, he was so tired.

His mother knelt at the head of his bed, singing tirelessly. His father knelt down at the other side, devouring the thin, flushed, little face with loving, sorrowful eyes. The curate knelt down at the foot of the bed, and the Earl, who made no attempt to wipe the tears from off his ruddy cheeks, knelt by a chair. By the darkened window sat the pretty hospital nurse, in her white cap and apron.

"O do not come to Billy's house," the mother's voice went on. Then she sang more softly, and suddenly there was silence:

Billy had gone to sleep.

The drive gate clicked, a quick step sounded on the gravel outside. It was the doctor. He came hastily into the room, and, stepping softly over to Billy's mother, lifted her up, and set her in a chair.

He took her place, laying his hand on the child's pulse, and on his forehead. Then he said in a whisper, "He'll do, he's gone to sleep."

The three men rose from their knees, as Billy's mother fell on hers, with the first tears she had shed, in all that weary week.

They followed the doctor out of the room, and crept downstairs into the hall. The doctor pushed Billy's father into the dining-room, saying, "You must give me some lunch. I want to see the little chap again, in twenty minutes or so--what the deuce was the matter with you all? Did you think he was dead?"

"_I_ did," said the Earl, in an awestruck whisper.

"Go away!" said the doctor testily; "go away, you long-faced lunatics, and leave us in peace!"

The two young men turned and went into the drive, where they found Williams, waiting for news. The Earl went up to the old man, and put his mouth to his ear, saying loudly, and with pauses between each word--"He--is better--he's asleep--the doctor--says--he'll do."

Williams blew his nose noisily, in a large red handkerchief; then said huskily, "The Lard be praised! your lardship, the Lard _be_ praised!"

Then the Earl and Williams shook hands; and the curate and Williams shook hands. The two young men shut the gate softly, and went down the road.

The curate went to lunch with the Earl. They had champagne, and the Earl grew frivolous, as his manner is; he has not much dignity, and he and the curate are old friends, for they were at Eton and "the House" together.

"I say, old chap!" said the Earl confidentially, "you were jolly careful that the Almighty should make no mistake, this morning."

The curate leaned back in his chair, and with more than a reminiscence of their college tutor in his manner, remarked, "In matters of importance, it is well to be strictly accurate."

*IV*

*AT BLUE HOUSE LOCK*

The life of Dorcas Heaven, who keeps the Blue House Lock, is somewhat lonely and monotonous. Her post is more or less of a sinecure, for but few barges pass along that bit of the canal. Indeed, the canal itself, though winding through the prettiest bit of country in the neighbourhood, is only navigable during a wet season. After a drought it grows so shallow that cows are wont to stand derisively in the very middle of it, cooling their legs.

Elijah, husband of Dorcas, is a labourer on a farm some two miles off.

As the path alongside the canal leads to nowhere in particular, there is not much traffic; but when a barge does come, Dorcas "bustles her about sharpish," and there is a great to-do. She looks upon herself as more or less the hostess of the occupants of the barge. "They change the weather and pass the time of day," their destination and their business are exhaustively discussed, and when at length stillness settles down over the Blue House, when there is no sound but the cry of a peewit or the rustle of a water-rat in the rushes, Dorcas fetches a chair into the doorway and sinks upon it, exclaiming, "'Law! what a paladum it have been, to be sure!"

On Sunday mornings Dorcas does not go to church, for "Elijah do like a bit o' meat of a Sunday," and Dorcas is a good wife first and a good churchwoman second. She therefore defers her attendance until evening, when Elijah accompanies her. While the bit o' meat is in course of preparation he strolls round for "a bit of a talk" with one "Ethni Harman, licensed to sell beer and tobacco," whose house of cheer lies on the outskirts of the town, and where the very latest electioneering news is to be had. Elijah has been heard to express an opinion to the effect that "there ain't no 'arm in going to church twice, for them as it suits, but once, along of my missus, be enough for I."

Had it been in Elijah's nature to be astonished at anything, he would have felt some surprise at the amiability with which Dorcas had lately speeded him on his way to "The Cat and Compasses" on Sunday mornings. She had at one time been rather given to inconvenient suggestions as that "them peas want sticking, and the salery be ready for banking," when Elijah would fain have been sunning himself upon the bench outside Ethni Harman's hospitable door, a mug of cider and like-minded friend beside him. He usually fell in with his wife's suggestions, for he was a man who loved a quiet life, and Dorcas--when annoyed on Sunday--was apt to carry on her domestic duties with unnecessary vigour far into the night on Monday.

The fact was that, of late, Sunday mornings had become for Dorcas the corner-stone of her week, and in this wise: it did not as a rule take long to get Elijah's dinner under way; this done, Dorcas would take her chair into the doorway, and read her Bible. She generally chose the Book of Revelation, carefully forming the words with her lips and following each with gnarled and work-worn forefinger. With Dorcas, as with many people whose lives are somewhat hard and monotonous, the prospect of a suite of rooms in one of the many mansions was extremely pleasant. Moreover, the Cotswold peasant dearly loves any form of spectacle, and although Dorcas could not pronounce, far less understand, many of the words she met with, there was a sense of pageant all around her as she read; while her appreciation of the city which has "no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine in it," was as purely sensuous as that of any disciple of Wagner himself.

"And now, a little wind and shy" scattered the apple-blossoms over the path, and the Sunday silence was broken by a clear child-voice. To Dorcas such sound was as the skirl of the pipes to a Highlander in a far country; her heart beat quick and her cheeks grew redder, and she rushed out to see who "was a-comin'"; for Dorcas had "put away four" in the "cemetrary" on the Fletborough road, and one had lived to be four years old. Besides, to let any one pass the Blue House without "givin' of 'em good-day!" was a thing she had never done--"not once in twenty year." So she laid her Bible on the chair, covering it with a clean white handkerchief, and crossed the few feet of garden which lay between her cottage and the towing-path.

A sturdy little boy, in reefer coat and muffin cap, with round, fresh little face, and cheeks pink as the petals of the apple-blossom nearest the calyx, danced with excitement on the bank as he watched his father gathering some yellow "flags" which grew at the water's edge. The attendant father--parents and such were always a secondary consideration with Dorcas--was not very successful, as the ground was soft and slippery.

"Is it wet down there, dad? Can I come? Oh, get that big one just over there! Won't muth be pleased? What dirty boots you'll have! Shall I hold your stick for you to cling on to?"

Then he noticed Dorcas. "Good-morning!" said he with gay courtesy. "Isn't it a fine May morning?"

"It be that surely, little master!" answered Dorcas in high delight. Then "the little gentleman's dada"--he never achieved a separate identity in the mind of Dorcas--scrambled up from the swamp in which he had been standing. He, too, proved most approachable, and she learned that the youthful potentate in the reefer jacket had never walked so far before, that the "scroped out old quarry" just beyond the Blue House was his destination, and that he would probably come again next Sunday.

He came every Sunday morning all through that summer, and always with his dad. Sometimes they went tapping for fossils in the disused quarry, sometimes they came with butterfly-nets and caught "Tortoiseshells" and "Wall-Browns," and upon one great occasion a "Fritillary." But whatever they sought or whatever they caught, Dorcas was always, as who should say, "in at the death," and shared the excitement and the triumph with them.

The little gentleman was very friendly--a child is quick to recognise an admirer as any pretty woman--and it is possible that the attendant father understood and indulged the childless woman's craving for a child's affection. Sometimes Dorcas felt a qualm of conscience, and wondered whether her adored young gentleman ought not rather to be in church these sunny Sunday mornings; though had he been in church he certainly could have been nowhere in the neighbourhood of the Blue House. But she was comforted when she heard that he went with his mother to a children's service in the afternoon. Henceforth she gave herself up to the study of natural history and the worship of her dear "little gentleman" with a light heart.

Even in winter he sometimes came "of a fine Sunday," and Dorcas would spend many hours of the following week vainly trying to determine whether she admired him most in a sailor suit, or in the breeches and gaiters of which he was so proud. One never-to-be-forgotten day the rain came down in torrents just as her sultan and his grand vizier reached the Blue House. They took shelter with Dorcas, and the sultan was graciously pleased to be lifted up that he might reach a certain mug from the top shelf of the dresser--a mug which had belonged to "'im as wer gone." Dorcas made gingerbread cats and ducks, and her artistic efforts went so far as to attempt a king "with a crown upon 'is 'ead." After regaling himself with these delicacies her sultan would hold up a rosy face, ornamented by sundry sticky streaks, to be kissed in farewell; and when she had watched him round the bend of the canal her eyes would grow dim, and she would go back to the Book of Revelation, murmuring another favourite quotation to herself, "The Lard gave and the Lard 'ave took away. Blessed be the name of the Lard."

Of course the many charms of the "little gentleman" were duly reported to Elijah, and the residence of Ethni Harman took on a reflected glory from the fact that it was but a stone's throw from that of her sultan.

It was a wet summer, and there came four wet Sundays one after the other. Vainly did Dorcas try to fix her mind on the streets of jasper, while all the time she was straining her ears for the sound of the little voice that never chimed into the stillness. She grew to hate the patter of the rain, on the path outside; even the fact that the canal, for once, was full, and three barges passed in one week, did not console her. The gingerbread animals grew stale and crumbly between two plates, and the gorgeous mug, "A Present from Fairford," was put back on the top shelf of the dresser again.

The weather changed, and there came a lovely Sunday. Elijah set off to the "Cat and Compasses" as usual; Dorcas bustled about with a pleasant sense of expectation and went and stood on the towing-path, her eyes fixed on the distant bridge. Some boys went by to bathe beyond the second bend, with laughter and shouting. Then the only sound was the hum of bees settled on the purple scabious growing a-top the crumbling Cotswold wall.

On Monday Dorcas could bear it no longer. "I be that tewey and narvous, I don't know what I be about," she remarked, as she locked the door of the Blue House and hid the key under the mat. Should a barge come--well, it must manage somehow! Barges were never in a hurry. She had come to a momentous decision. She was going to inquire after her "little gentleman." Whether he was ill or gone for a holiday, or was merely forgetful, she would find out and end this dreadful suspense. She was a very simple-minded woman, but in her heart of hearts she felt a little sore with the grand vizier, for she had a notion that he was by no means ignorant of what these Sunday visits meant to her.

"I believe 'e'd 'ave come afore this if 'e'd been let. 'A be that meek-'earted 'a wouldn't 'urt a vloi, let alone a 'oman," she said to herself with a half sob. She was convinced that her sultan could not forget so utterly the humblest of his slaves. So she put on her best clothes and tight elastic-sided boots, with lots of little white buttons adorning the fronts.

At the Blue House, Dorcas was never either self-conscious or shy; but when she reached her sultan's palace, having timidly pushed open the drive gate, she became aware that the new boots creaked horribly, and that perspiration was dropping from her eyebrows into her eyes. Having mopped her face, and generally pulled herself together, she managed to reach the front door, though her knees trembled, and her heart fluttered like a caged bird.

Never was such a noisy bell! It clanged and echoed in most alarming fashion; she wished that the stone steps would open and swallow her up. What would they think of her for daring to make such a clatter? Besides--and at the dreadful thought she nearly cried out--of course she ought to have gone to the back door.

For full five minutes she stood on the steps, listening for any sound inside the house, but all was perfectly quiet. She turned and went into the drive, meaning to go round to the back door, when it occurred to her to look back at the house; she had been far too nervous to do so as she came in. The lower windows were shuttered, and all the blinds were down.

They had gone then! and it was empty. "And they never didn't bring 'im for to say good-bye to me."

Life's little tragedies generally happen to the lonely. What in a full and happy life ranks but as an episode, becomes an epoch in the sad-coloured days of lean monotony. Dorcas wiped her eyes more than once, on her way home, and went heavily for many days. Elijah saw that she was fretting, and tried to distract her by news from the town, and occasional suggestions that she should go over "and see sister-law" in an adjacent village; but beyond her necessary journeys to the town to buy such stores as she could afford, Dorcas never left home. She scrubbed the kitchen table till she grudged to sully its whiteness by so much as a yellow bowl, and she made herself a warm new winter dress, but, for all her industry, the time hung heavy on her hands, and she never forgot her "little gentleman." The wet season was followed by an Indian summer of exceptional beauty. "The spirit of October, mild and boon," was in the air; the tottering Cotswold wall, which laid its wayward length on the far side of the footway, was covered by sprays of crimson blackberry, mingled with the fluffy greyness of "old man's beard." Dorcas no longer stared hungrily down the towing-path on Sunday morning, but she did not forget; and, in token of her remembrance, the twenty-first chapter of the Book of Revelation was marked in her Bible by a little woollen glove with a large hole in the thumb. Her sultan had dropped it during his last visit.

The birds sang as though it were spring, and Dorcas began to read aloud to herself to keep her thoughts from wandering. "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes," whispered the kind Gloucestershire voice, when suddenly, above the triumphant voices of the birds, above the soft wash of the water among the yellowing reeds, rang that clear sound for which the soul of Dorcas had hungered so cruelly.

"I wonder if the lady at the Blue House will know me again, Dad!"

* * * * *

It seemed as though the grand vizier had not been so greatly to blame after all. He had been suddenly called away to the north of Scotland; and although he had left directions that before the sultan and the household followed him that potentate was to be taken to say good-bye "to the lady at the Blue House," although the sultan himself had repeatedly suggested the propriety of such a pilgrimage, his nurse had always considered the road too muddy.

"I thought, sir, as you was all gone fur good and all," said Dorcas, with a catch in her voice; "and I were that taken to I never made no inquiries."

On his way home the grand vizier was rather silent. Once or twice he made a queer little face, and seemed to swallow something in his throat. At last he quoted, but not to the sultan, "By heavens, it is pitiful, the bootless love of women for children in Vanity Fair." The rosy-faced child, who had been wondering why the usual Sunday service of gingerbread had been omitted, was rather surprised, but nevertheless asked curiously, "Are you thinking of the Blue House lady, Dad?"

His father stooped down hastily and kissed him.

*V*

*KETURAH*

On Mondays the doctor stayed at the surgery to see patients from two till seven. He did not live at the surgery, oh, dear no! but had a fine house, with a carriage drive and a conservatory, right at the other end of the town. The waiting-room was very full on Mondays, people came from all parts to see the doctor; moreover, it was market-day, and the pursuit of health could be combined with that of business.

It was getting late, and only two people were left in the waiting-room--a shabby, nervous-looking woman and a handsome lad of sixteen, who had come to consult the doctor about a sprained thumb. "One of the gentry," thought the woman to herself, as she noted the trim riding-breeches and the leather on his shoulders.

From time to time she looked anxiously at the clock, clasping and unclasping her thin, work-worn hands.

A door banged outside, the consulting-room bell pealed, signifying that an interview was over. It was the lad's turn next. He stretched his long legs preparatory to obeying the expected summons, when the woman rose hastily and came and stood in front of him, saying eagerly, "Sir, will you let me go in out of my turn? I won't keep the doctor a minute; it's to ask him to come to my child who is very ill. I've been away far too long as it is, but I'd no one as I could send."

"Of course, of course!" exclaimed the lad, who had risen to his feet when she first spoke, looking very shy and embarrassed, "and I am awfully sorry, you know, but the doctor will be sure to do it good. He's 'A one,' you know----"

At this moment the door opened and a voice cried, "Next, please!" and the little woman, casting a grateful look behind her, hurried into the presence of the doctor. He looked up surprised as she entered--poor people generally came on Thursdays.

"Well?" he demanded. With rich and poor alike the doctor's manners were always somewhat abrupt. He was saving of speech, though it is true that he expanded under the smiles of youth and beauty.

"Please, sir, could you come and see my little girl? She's bin ill now these three weeks; she don't get no better, and she does nothing but cough, and seems that hot and restless, and is that weak----"

"What have you done?" interrupted the doctor.

"I've kep' 'er in bed and giv' 'er 'Dinver's Lung Tonic.' My 'usband, 'e don't 'old with doctors--'e's a Plymouth Brother, and don't seek advice----"

The doctor growled out something about "nonsense," prefaced by a somewhat forcible adjective, then "All right! I'll come. Where do you live?"

After giving her address, the woman held out to him a little screw of paper. He waved it aside impatiently, saying, "Haven't seen her yet," held the door open, and the woman hurried out.

"I'll come directly," he shouted after her. His heart was much softer than his manners.

"These Plimmy brothers are the biggest lunatics going," he said to himself, "with their faith-healing and their providence-mongering. I'd like to dose the lot of them."

The doctor was not accurate in his diagnosis of the sect in question, but in his own mind lumped together every sort of religious enthusiasm.

* * * * *

Matthew Moulder, baker, was an upright, God-fearing man, foreman to the baker--our little town boasts but one. He turned out excellent bread; moreover, he was a good husband, a conscientious if not affectionate father, and a diligent worshipper in that upper room, wherein assembled a handful of people of similar religious views. He indulged himself in few pleasures, and rather wondered at the frivolity of his neighbours, who took life with that cheerful philosophy still to be found in portions of England which yet remain to justify the description "merrie."

His wife was meek-hearted, and easily ruled; she never questioned his authority, but having early laid to heart the maxim that "what a man doesn't know can't vex him," she was careful to vex Matthew as seldom as possible.

How, then, did these two sedate and respectable persons come by such a child as their daughter Keturah?

Keturah of the elf-locks and great wine-coloured eyes. Keturah, who danced and sang and giggled the live-long day; who yawned in sermons and played "handy-pandy" with herself, while her father uplifted his voice in prayer. Who turned up in the hunting-field when she ought to have been safe in school, ever ready to open gates for the "gentry," with dazzling smiles, showing the whitest of white teeth, and with curtsies that suggested drawing-rooms rather than the village lane.

At the little school, which she attended with a fitfulness perplexing in the extreme to the worthy mistress, she did her lessons far better and more quickly than anybody else. There was no doubt about it, Keturah was a "character."

While there were but few people outside the row of cottages where they lived who even knew Matthew and his wife by sight, everybody knew Keturah. Always in mischief, always _en evidence_, always doing the unexpected, undaunted by misfortunes and punishments which would have struck terror into the heart of any well-regulated little girl; she had, during her six months' residence in our midst, attained to a notoriety which was apparently as much a matter of indifference to her as it was painful to her parents. Her father looked upon her as a cross to be borne with Christian fortitude. He wrestled in prayer on her behalf, and on occasion with Keturah herself, accentuating his remarks by means of a stick. But, as Thomas Beames, her slave and shadow, remarked on one occasion, when they played truant to attend a meet some seven miles off, "They'll beat we when us do get 'ome; but us'll 'ave our fun fust."

Thomas was a round-faced, in no way extraordinarily small boy, who was dominated by Keturah's stronger character; he loved her, why, he himself could not have told. Perhaps because he admired the way she always made sure of her "fun" regardless of consequences--a disregard the stranger in Keturah's case, for Nemesis was by no means leaden-footed. As a rule, the punishment was in very truth the other half of the crime.

She loved her mother, and regarded her father much in the same light that he regarded her, with this difference that she looked for no change in him, but with a philosophy as pagan as the rest of her conduct accepted his existence as a necessary evil. Indeed, had Matthew but known it, she extracted considerable "fun" out of circumventing him.

But Keturah had fallen on evil days. A fishing expedition, during which she tumbled into the canal, and after which she walked about till she was, as she put it, "moderate dry"--"at least not to notice"--had ended in the mysterious illness to which the doctor had just been called.

Matthew Moulder had gone that evening to a prayer-meeting in a neighbouring village, where he would stay the night with a hospitable brother; this fact, taken together with the fact that Keturah seemed most alarmingly ill, had given her mother the courage to call in the doctor.

He had seen Keturah, had expressed himself with his customary vigour as to the imbecility of people who could treat a case of acute pneumonia with "Dinver's Lung Tonic" for sole remedy, and now he had returned to the little bedroom to have a final look at the child.

She was too weak to raise herself on her elbow, but she turned her head on the doctor's entrance. "Shall I go to hell?" she asked, devouring his face with her great fever-bright eyes.

The doctor started. She had not volunteered any remark before.

"God bless my soul, no!" he exclaimed. "You'll go to Weston-super-Mare when you're well enough."

Keturah shook her head. "But if I don't get well? Shall I go to hell?"

Theology is not one of the doctor's strong points. Being as a rule much concerned with the treatment of the body, he expresses himself with diffidence regarding the ultimate fate of the soul. But on this occasion he shook his head vigorously, holding the hot thin little hand in a firm comforting clasp. "You must ask a parson about these things, my dear, but I am quite sure that no little girls go----but you are going to get well--cheer up! Eh?"

"Could I ast the young gentleman parson wot plays cricket?" Keturah's voice was hoarse and eager.

"The very man--couldn't do better. I'll send him round as I go home," and the doctor turned to go. He hurried down the narrow stairs, but stopped at the front door to call back into the house, "She's to live in poultices, mind! _Live_ in 'em."

He stopped at the curate's lodgings as he drove home, and went right in, to find the cleric in question resting his slippered feet upon the chimney-piece, while he smoked and read the evening paper.

"There's a kid down with pneumonia in the Waterlow Cottages, and she fancies she's going to hell. She'd like to see you, so I said I'd send you. Her people are Plymouth Rocks, or some such thing. She's a queer little soul--dying, I fear."

"It can't be Keturah?" exclaimed the curate, swinging his feet off the mantelpiece and standing up on his long legs.

"I believe that is the creature's name."

"Oh, you mustn't let Keturah die! She's a genius!"

"She may be a genius," said the doctor grimly, "but her people are the balliest lunatics in creation, and I rather fancy that geniuses are just as likely to die of neglect as other folk----" But the curate had not waited for the rest of the sentence. He seized his hat and ran into the street, his slippers (down at the heel) going flip, flop, on the wet pavement as he ran.

"He's a good chap," murmured the doctor as he climbed into his dog-cart. "He's a devilish good chap."

He went to see Keturah again that night, and found that his instructions had been carried out to the letter. He also found the curate there, in his shirt-sleeves, assisting Mrs. Moulder to make poultices. He often does such things. His people look upon it as an amiable eccentricity. "'E's a curus gent," they say. "'E'll turn 'is 'and to hany think."

He turned his hand to the nursing of Keturah with such success that two days later the doctor said, "She is better, but weak as a kitten. She must have brandy. You must watch for the grey look and give it her then."

"Oh, sir!" exclaimed poor Mrs. Moulder, who, since the invasion of the curate, could not call her soul her own, "Oh, sir, I daren't. My 'usband wouldn't 'ave it in the 'ouse. 'E's tee-total, 'e is----"

"Tell him it is medicine," said the doctor shortly. "She must have it, and here it is. Give it her in milk like this!" and suiting the action to the word, he measured out something into a tea-cup. Something that had a most unmistakable smell.

Keturah drank it, and her ashy cheeks grew a shade less grey. Then she turned to the doctor, with one of her dazzling smiles. "I don't think much on the taste of it, but"--with immense conviction--"it do make you feel so cheerful-like, about the knees."

Her mother wrung her hands, but the doctor chuckled, and, placing on the table the innocent-looking medicine bottle he had produced from his pocket, nodded at it, remarking, "Every time she looks so grey, mind!"

Mrs. Moulder burnt brown paper in the bedroom, for Matthew came home at five. She dared not pour the accursed stuff away, for the doctor and the curate between them had frightened her out of her wits, by threatening legal proceedings if Keturah were in any way neglected. She had been obliged to confess to the visits of the doctor, who might fly in at any moment when Matthew was at home. But she had not felt in any way called upon to tell her husband that the curate had sat up with Keturah the whole night that he was away, helping her poultice, and allaying the child's fears as to eternal punishment so successfully that she fell asleep. It was therefore a shock to Matthew, on his return to tea that afternoon, to hear an undoubtedly clerical voice, apparently reading to Keturah.

The house was perfectly quiet, though there were movements in the back kitchen, showing the whereabouts of Mrs. Moulder. He stood at the foot of the little narrow staircase and listened, fully prepared to find some taint of ritualism in the curate's ministrations. He had come to make a convert of Keturah, of that he was sure; was there not an office--Matthew almost licked his lips over the word "office"--in the Book of Common Prayer especially adapted to the visiting of the sick? All the Protestant in him rose in rebellion. He would be calm, but he would convict this meddling priest out of his own mouth. Then with the dignified strength born of a just indignation bid him begone!

The bedroom door stood open, and he heard Keturah's weak little voice saying, "Tell it again! I like it."

Matthew braced himself to listen, and this was what he heard:--

"We built a ship upon the stairs,
All made of the back bedroom chairs,
And filled it full of sofa pillows,
To go a-sailing on the billows.

"We took a saw and several nails,
And water in the nursery pails;
And Tom said, 'Let us also take
An apple and a slice of cake;'--
Which was enough for Tom and me
To go a-sailing on, till tea.

"We sailed along for days and days,
And had the very best of plays;
But Tom fell out and hurt his knee,
So there was no one left but me."

"So there was no one left but me," repeated the weak child-voice. Matthew rose from the third stair from the bottom, where he had been sitting, and stumbled somewhat blindly into the parlour, where he sat down on the slippery horse-hair sofa. He cleared his throat and blew his nose, and there was an expression on his face which was seldom seen there.

"And ther' was no one left but me." The forlorn weak voice repeating that, moved him strangely. Keturah was the last of the children. There had been six babies before Keturah, and none had lived beyond babyhood. At that moment he forgot how naughty she was, how unregenerate! He only remembered that she used to lay her baby face against his, and that she said "dada" the very first word she spoke.

A hundred pretty scenes of her first years flashed into his recollection. His suspicions of the curate were forgotten, and in their place came cold-handed fear to fill his heart with the dread that Keturah might not get well.

* * * * *

After all, one honest man can recognise another, whether he wear an M.B. waistcoat or a baker's apron. Anyhow, the curate so far won upon Matthew Moulder that he persuaded him to allow the district nurse to be sent to sit up with Keturah till she was "round the corner," and that the nurse might keep a sharp look out for the recurrence of "the grey look."

As Keturah grew better, Matthew made, with his own hands, and at the instigation of the curate, a whole series of fantastic little loaves that she might the better "fancy her tea."

"My Dada don't say much, but I knows now that 'e _do_ like me," said Keturah, in a burst of confidence to Thomas Beames, and Thomas, with that caution for which the Cotswold folk are justly famed, replied--

"Mebbe 'e do. But folks when they be growed up be oncommon akard 'times."

* * * * *

"As for that there doctor," said Mrs. Moulder to a bosom friend, "'e's the most commandingest gent I ever see. But 'e _do_ get 'is own way. 'E and that curie between them come over Matthew something wonderful; they flaunted their brandy in 'is very face, and 'e never said nothink. They giv' 'er champang one night, as she was so low, an' 'e hopened the bottle 'imself. But I will say this for 'em, they always says to Keturah, when they giv' 'er them liquors, 'Now, remember, you're never to tech this when you be got well. You're to be a tea-totaller like your dada.' An' Matthew, 'e took 'er to Weston 'is own self. 'E do seem more set up about Keturah than 'e was. But, mark my words, if you wants to call your 'ouse your own, don't you let that there doctor inside of it, that's all."

Curiously enough, it was Matthew Moulder who was grateful to the doctor.

*VI*

*MRS. CUSHION'S CHILDREN*

She was rather like her name, for she seemed specially created to make life easier for other people.

A short, comfortably stout, elderly woman, with a round, rosy face and kind blue eyes beaming behind steel-rimmed spectacles. On Sundays the spectacles had gold rims and were never seen on any other day.

To be taken as a lodger by Mrs. Cushion implied introductions and references--from the lodger--and Mrs. Cushion was by no means too easily pleased. If neither the vicar, the doctor, nor the squire could guarantee your integrity and personal pleasantness, there was no hope of obtaining Mrs. Cushion's rooms. Moreover, she preferred gentlemen. She was frankly emphatic about that.

To be sure, in wet weather "they did make a goodish mess," what with tackle and muddy boots and the many garments that got soaking wet and had to be dried. But then, they _did_ go out for most of the day, and that gave a body time to clear up after them. And when they'd had their dinners they put their feet on the mantelpiece--"I always clears all my own things off of it except the clock"--and they smoked peaceably till they went to bed. "Now, ladies"--it was clear that Mrs. Cushion was not partial to ladies--"they did stay indoors if there cum so much as a spot of rain." And they rang their bells at all sorts of awkward times. "You couldn't be sure of 'em like you was of gentlemen. When a gentleman settles down, he settles down, and you knows where you are, and what's more, you knows where _'e_ is. Now, ladies, as often as not, 'ud be upon you in your kitching before you so much as knew they was in the passage--an' it were onsettlin'."

No lady was ever allowed to set foot in Mrs. Cushion's hospitable house in May or June or the first part of July. Those months were sacred to the fishers; but as a favour to one of the references she would sometimes consent to take a lady in August.

The vicar, my old friend, was my reference, and he stood surety for my general "peaceableness." He assured Mrs. Cushion that so long as I might sleep with my back to the light that I would not want to alter everything in my bedroom (one lady lodger had done this, and Mrs. Cushion never forgot or forgave the "'ubbub" that ensued), that I was in search of perfect quiet in which to finish a book, and lastly he got at Mrs. Cushion through her kind heart--declaring that I was a delicate, muddly, incapable sort of person who required looking after.

So at the beginning of a singularly sunny August I went down to Redmarley to take possession of two rooms in "Snig's Cottage." The cottage stands about half a mile from Redmarley itself, high above a bend of the river known as "Snig's Ferry," and the villagers always call it "Snig's."

Who Snig was no one knows, for the cottage was built "nigh up on three 'undred year ago." The vicar, who is something of an antiquarian, says even earlier. In the memory of man "Snig's" has never been bought, it is always "left," and the heritor, so far, has never been willing to sell, though, as Mrs. Cushion remarked scornfully, "Artises an' sich do often come after it, an' one, an American gentleman 'e was, wanted to buy 'un and build out at the back all over my bit o' garden and kip the old 'ouse just as a' be for a curiositee. I let 'im talk, but, bless you, my uncle left it to me in 'is will and I shall leave it the same in mine; and so it'll always be, so long as there's one stone to another. 'Ouses is 'ouses in these parts."

Solid and grey and gabled, the little six-roomed house still stood in its trim garden, outwardly the same as when the untraceable Snig first named it. Inside, its furniture was a jumble of periods, but there were no aspidistras, nor did any ornament cling to a plush bracket on the walls. Jacob and Rachel were there, and the infant Samuel, and on either side of the clock was a red-and-white china spaniel and a Toby jug. Mrs. Cushion frankly owned that she had preferred her own "bits of things" to some of her uncle's that were there when she came. To make room for her mahogany sideboard she had sold an old oak chest to the American gentleman, who was glad to give a good price for it.

"A hoak chest," said Mrs. Cushion, "is an on'andy thing to keep the gentlemen's beverages in. One always 'as to lift everything off the top to get inside. Now, my sideboard 'as doors and shelves all convenient one side, and a reg'lar cellar for beverages on the other. Not but as what folks 'ud be much better without them."

Mrs. Cushion was, herself, strong for the temperance cause, but she was too tolerant a woman and too excellent a landlady to do more than hint her disapproval. And by calling every form of alcohol "a beverage" I'm certain she felt that in some inexplicable way she so rendered it more or less innocuous. She never spoke of either wines or spirits by their names, only collectively as "beverages."

And I speedily learned that although indulgence in such pleasures of the table was to be tolerated, even condoned, in men, women were expected to be of sterner stuff; and I believe my modest half-flagon of Burgundy, reposing in meek solitude in all the roomy glory of the "cellaret," grieved her far more than when that same cellaret was filled by the varied and much stronger "beverages" of her male guests. Yet she never failed to remind me when there was only, as she put it, "one more dose," that I might order a fresh supply from the grocer.

Men she regarded as children. Her mental attitude towards them was that of "boys will be boys," and they might be bald and stout, Generals or Viceroys or Secretaries of State in their public capacity--but did such an one become Mrs. Cushion's lodger she instantly felt called upon to stand between him and every discomfort, to condone his vagaries, and to give him, so far as was humanly possible, every mortal thing he wanted. Small wonder that her "fishing-gentlemen" took her rooms months before-hand and year after year.

"I don't suppose as you've noticed, miss, being, so to speak, unmarried yourself--but there's something in men-folk as seems to stop growin' when they be about ten year old. It crops up different in different sorts, but it's there all the same in all of 'em. And when it crops up--no matter if 'e be hever so majestical an' say nothing to nobody, the seein' eye can figure 'im out in tore knickerbockers an' a dirty face same as if he stood in front of you--more especially if you've 'ad little boys of your own."

"I suppose," I said--perhaps a bit wistfully, for Mrs. Cushion was rather fond of referring to my spinsterhood--"it does make a great difference.... First you know your husband so well, and then your sons.... By the way, what was your husband, Mrs. Cushion?"

Mrs. Cushion turned very red and was manifestly uncomfortable. "I'd rather not talk about 'im, miss," she said hastily. "He weren't an overly good 'usban' to me ... but the children..." Here Mrs. Cushion beamed, and with restored tranquillity continued, "The children 'ave made it all up to me over and over."

Yet from an outsider's point of view, especially from that of one who was "so to speak unmarried," Mrs. Cushion didn't seem to get any great benefit from her two sons. One was in Australia and one in Canada, and though she had been living in Redmarley some six years, I could not discover that either had ever been home. They were not, I gathered, particularly good correspondents, nor did they seem to assist their mother in any way financially, or send presents home. All the same, they were a source of pride and joy to Mrs. Cushion, and a never-failing topic of conversation. In fact, I think that one of the things that caused her to tolerate my sex and my spinsterhood was the real interest I took in Arty and Bert, and my readiness to talk about either or both at all times.

They were never quite clear to me, and this was odd, because Mrs. Cushion was certainly graphic and vivid in her descriptions as a rule. She would never show me their portraits because she said they "took badly," both of them.

By my third August I could have passed a stiff examination in her "gentlemen." I felt that I knew _them_ intimately, both as to their appearance, manners, and taste both in viands and beverages.

There was Mr. Lancaster, who ate meat only once a day, drank white wine, and was that gentle and considerate you'd never know he was there except that he did lose his things so, and had a habit of putting his coffee-cup and pipes and newspapers under the valance of the sofa.

"Faithful-'earted, I calls 'im!" said Mrs. Cushion. "Every Saturday reg'lar he sends me the _Times_ newspaper, and it is gratifying to see a 'igh-class newspaper like that once a week. It do make me feel like a real lady just to read the rents of them 'ouses on the back page, and it does me no end of good to know who's preaching at St. Paul's Cathedral--all the churches, in fact; it's almost as good as being there."

"Wouldn't you rather have a picture paper?" I asked.

"Certainly not, miss," Mrs. Cushion replied with dignified asperity. "I much prefer what Mr. Lancaster reads his-self, an' it's the kind thought I values far more than the amusingness of the paper. It seems to keep him an' me in mind of one another."

"Do your boys often send you papers, Mrs. Cushion?"

"Well ... not so to speak often.... It's difficult for them, and I dare say the papers in those parts ain't like ours. Perhaps they wouldn't be suitable----"

"Is Mr. Lancaster married?"

"Not to my knowledge, miss," answered the cautious Mrs. Cushion. "He don't behave like a married man.... Not"--she added hastily, eager to give no wrong impression--"not that 'e's ever anything but most conformable; only there's a difference between them as is married and them as isn't. I'm sure you see it yourself, miss, though, to be sure, you're nothing like so set in your ways as some. If I was you, miss," said Mrs. Cushion, suddenly beaming upon me like a rosy sun in spectacles, "I shouldn't give up hope. Mr. Right may come along for you even yet. I 'ad a friend who married when she were fifty-nine.... To be sure, 'er 'usban' was bedridden, but 'e's living to this day, an' it's a good fifteen years ago."

"I don't think I should like a bedridden husband, Mrs. Cushion."

"You'll like whatever you gets, my dear, never you fear." And Mrs. Cushion bustled out with the tray, leaving me to the rather rueful reflection that her last speech was more complimentary to my stoicism than to my matrimonial prospects.

"Snig's" was an ideal place to work in: quiet without being lonely; fresh and bracing, yet seldom cold; beautiful with the homely, tender grace of pastoral England. The doctor and his wife "over to Winstone" were hospitable and kind, the villagers were friendly as only peasant folk in the remote Cotswolds still are; the vicar I always look upon as one of the most understanding and delightful people I've ever met. That autumn the squire and his large lively family were up in Scotland, but this only increased possibilities of work, and I stayed on at Snig's into October.

One day the vicar summoned me to luncheon. A friend from a distance had motored over, bringing with him his guests, a visiting parson and his wife, to see the church and the village, and he implored my presence "to keep Mrs. Robinson in countenance."

Not that anything of the kind was needed, for Mrs. Robinson turned out to be a most self-sufficient and didactic lady, with "clergyman's wife" writ large all over her. Her husband was of the conscientious, mentally mediocre type of parson, with much energy and no imagination; and luncheon seemed a very long meal. There appeared a curious dearth of topics of conversation, and for lack of something better the vicar explained my presence in Redmarley, mentioning that I had been living for the last two months with the excellent Mrs. Cushion--"who comes, I believe," he added, "from your part of the world."