Part 18 (1/2)

Lady G.o.dolphin did not detect the irony, and felt really alarmed. Maria, growing calmer, and perhaps feeling half ashamed of the emotion which fear had caused her to display, drew away from George G.o.dolphin. He would not suffer that, and made her take his arm. ”I am sorry to have alarmed you all so much,” she said. ”Indeed, I could not help it, Lady G.o.dolphin.”

”A serpent in the gra.s.s!” repeated her ladys.h.i.+p, unable to get over the surprise. ”How did it come to you, Maria? Were you lying down?”

”I was sitting on the camp-stool, there; busy with my drawing,” she answered. ”My left hand was hanging down, touching, I believe, the gra.s.s. I began to feel something cold at my wrist, but at first did not notice it. Then I lifted it and saw that dreadful thing wound round it.

I could not shake it off. Oh, Lady G.o.dolphin! I felt--I hardly know how I felt--almost as if I should have died, had there been no one near to run to.”

Lady G.o.dolphin, her skirts still lifted, the tips of her toes touching the path gingerly, to which they had now hastened, and her eyes alert, lest the serpent should come trailing forth from any unexpected direction, remarked that it was a mercy Maria had escaped with only fright. ”You seem to experience enough of that,” she said. ”Don't faint, child.”

Maria's lips parted with a sickly smile, which she meant should be a brave one. She was both timid and excitable; and, if terror did attack her, she felt it in no common degree. What would have been but a pa.s.sing fear to another, forgotten almost as soon as felt, was to her agony.

Remarkably susceptible, was she, to the extreme of pleasure and the extreme of pain. ”There is no fear of my fainting,” she answered to Lady G.o.dolphin. ”I never fainted in my life.”

”I am on my road to see an old servant who lives in that house,” said Lady G.o.dolphin, pointing to the tenement, little thinking how far it had formed their theme of discourse. ”You shall come with me and rest, and have some water.”

”Yes, that is the best thing to be done,” said George G.o.dolphin. ”I'll take you there, Maria, and then I'll have a hunt after the beast. I ought to have killed him at the time.”

Lady G.o.dolphin walked on, Charlotte Pain at her side. Charlotte's lip was curling.

The house door, to which they were bound, stood open. Across its lower portion, as if to prevent the exit of children, was a board, formerly placed there for that express purpose. The children were grown now and scattered, but the board remained; the inmates stepping over it at their will. Sandy Bray, who must have skulked back to his home by some unseen circuit, made a rush to the board at sight of Lady G.o.dolphin, and pulled it out of its grooves, leaving the entrance clear. But for his intense idleness, he, knowing she was coming, would have removed it earlier.

They entered upon a large room, half sitting-room, half kitchen, its boarded floor very clean. The old Welshwoman, a cleanly, well-mannered, honest-faced old woman, was busy knitting then, and came forward, curtseying: no vestige of pipe to be seen or smelt. ”Selina was in bed,”

Bray said, standing humbly before Lady G.o.dolphin. ”Selina had heard bad news of one of the brats, and had worried herself sick over it, as my lady knew it was in the stupid nature of Selina to do. Would my lady be pleased to step up to see her?”

Yes; my lady would be pleased to do so by-and-by. But at present she directed a gla.s.s of water to be brought to Miss Hastings. Bray brought the water in a cracked yellow cup.

”Eh, but there is some of them things about here,” he said, when the cause of alarm was mentioned. ”I think there must be a nest of 'em. They are harmless, so far as I know.”

”Why don't you find the nest?” asked Mr. George G.o.dolphin.

”And what good, if I did find 'em, sir?” said he.

”Kill the lot,” responded George.

He strode out of the house, Bray following in his wake, to look for the reptile which had caused the alarm. Bray was sure nothing would come of it: the thing had had time to get clear away.

In point of fact, nothing did come of it. George G.o.dolphin could not decide upon the precise spot where they had stood when he threw away the reptile; and, to beat over the whole field, which was extensive, would have been endless work. He examined carefully the spot where Maria had sat, both he and Bray, but could see no trace of anything alarming.

Gathering up her treasures, including the camp-stool, he set off with them. Bray made a feeble show of offering to bear the stool. ”No,” said George, ”I'll carry it myself: it would be too much trouble for you.”

Charlotte Pain stood at the door, watching as they approached, her rich cheek glowing, her eye flas.h.i.+ng. Never had she looked more beautiful, and she bent her sweetest smile upon Mr. George, who had the camp-stool swinging on his back. Lady G.o.dolphin had gone up to the invalid. Maria, quite herself again, came forward.

”No luck,” said George. ”I meant to have secured the fellow and put him under a gla.s.s case as a memento: but he has been too cunning. Here's your sketch, Maria; undamaged. And here are the other rattletraps.”

She bent over the drawing quite fondly. ”I am glad I had finished it,”

she said. ”I can do the filling-in later. I should not have had courage to sit in that place again.”

”Well, old lady,” cried George in his free-and-easy manner, as he stood by the Welshwoman, and looked down at her nimble fingers, ”so you have come all the way from Wales on foot, I hear! You put some of us to shame.”

She looked up and smiled pleasantly. She understood English better than she could speak it.

”Not on foot all the way,” she managed to explain. ”On foot to the great steamer, and then on foot again after the steamer landed her in Scotland. Not less than a hundred miles of land, taking both ways together.”

”Oh, I see!” said George, perceiving that Margery had taken up a wrong impression. ”But you must have been a good time doing that?”