Part 18 (2/2)
”Then I defy you,” retorts Miss Ma.s.sereene, who, having manoeuvred until she has placed a good distance between herself and the foe, now turns, and flies through the trees, making very successful running for the open beyond. Not until they are within full view of the house does he manage to come up with her. And then the presence of John sunning himself on the hall-door step, surrounded by his family, effectually prevents her ever obtaining that richly-deserved punishment.
CHAPTER IX.
”After long years.”
It is raining, not only raining, but pouring. All the gracious suns.h.i.+ne of yesterday is obliterated, forgotten, while in its place the sullen raindrops dash themselves with suppressed fury against the window-panes. Huge drops they are, swollen with the hidden rage of many days, that fall, and burst heavily, and make the cas.e.m.e.nts tremble.
Outside, the flowers droop and hang their pretty heads in sad wonder at this undeserved Nemesis that has overtaken them. Along the sides of the graveled paths small rivulets run frightened. There is no song of birds in all the air. Only the young short gra.s.s uprears itself, and, drinking in with eager greediness the welcome but angry shower, refuses to bend its neck beneath the yoke.
”How I hate a wet day!” says Luttrell, moodily, for the twentieth time, staring blankly out of the deserted school-room window, where he and Molly have been yawning, moping for the last half-hour.
”Do you? I love it,” replies she, out of a sheer spirit of contradiction; as, if there is one thing she utterly abhors it is the idea of rain.
”If I said I loved it, _you_ would say the reverse,” says he, laughing, not feeling equal to the excitement of a quarrel.
”Without doubt,” replies she, laughing too: so that a very successful opening is rashly neglected. ”Surely it cannot keep on like this all day,” she says, presently, in a dismal tone, betraying by her manner the falsity of her former admiration: ”we shall have a dry winter if it continues much longer. Has any wise man yet discovered how much rain the clouds are capable of containing at one time? It would be such a blessing if they had: then we might know the worst, and make up our minds to it.”
”Drop a line to the clerk of the weather office; he might make it his business to find out if you asked him.”
”Is that a joke?” with languid disgust. ”And you professed yourself indignant with me yesterday when I perpetrated a really superior one!
You ought to be ashamed of yourself. I would not condescend to anything so feeble.”
”That reminds me I have never yet paid you off for that misdemeanor.
Now, when time is hanging so heavily on my hands, is a most favorable opportunity to pay the debt. I embrace it. And you too. So 'prepare for cavalry.'”
”A fig for all the hussars in Europe,” cries Molly, with indomitable courage.
Meantime, Let.i.tia and John in the morning room--that in a grander house would have been designated a boudoir--are holding a hot discussion.
Lovat, the eldest son, being the handsomest and by far the most scampish of the children, is of course his mother's idol. His master, however, having written to say that up to this, in spite of all the trouble that has been taken with him, he has evinced a far greater disposition for cricket and punching his companions' heads than for his Greek and Latin, Lovat's father had given it as his opinion that Lovat deserves a right good flogging; while Lovat's mother maintains that all n.o.ble, high-spirited boys are ”just like that,” and asks Mr.
Ma.s.sereene, with the air of a Q. C., whether he never felt a distaste for the dead languages.
Mr. Ma.s.sereene replying that he never did, that he was always a model boy, and never anywhere but at the head of his cla.s.s, his wife instantly declares she doesn't believe a word of it, and most unfairly rakes up a dead-and-gone story, in which Mr. Ma.s.sereene figures as the princ.i.p.al feature, and is discovered during school hours on the top of a neighbor's apple-tree, with a long-suffering but irate usher at the foot of it, armed with his indignation and a birch rod.
”And for three mortal hours he stood there, while I sat up aloft grinning at him,” says Mr. Ma.s.sereene, with (considering his years) a disgraceful appreciation of his past immoral conduct; ”and when at last the gardener was induced to mount the tree and drag me ignominiously to the ground, I got such a flogging as made a chair for some time a.s.sume the character of a rack.”
”And you deserved it, too,” says Let.i.tia, with unwonted severity.
”I did, indeed, my dear,” John confesses, heartily, ”richly. I am glad to see that at last you begin to take a sensible view of the subject.
If I deserved a flogging because I once s.h.i.+rked my tasks, what does not Lovat deserve for a long course of such conduct?”
”He is not accused of stealing apples, at all events; and, besides, Lovat is quite different,” says Let.i.tia, vaguely. Whereupon John tells her her heart is running away with her head, and that her partiality is so apparent that he must cease from further argument, and goes on with his reading.
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