Part 19 (2/2)

”Who told you this, Beth?”

”Mildred. Mamma told her. And Horner said the other day to cook--I'll have to say it the way Horner says it. If I said it my way, you know, then it wouldn't be Horner--Horner said to cook as 'ow Captain Caldwell 'ud 'a' gone to law about it, but squire 'e swore if 'e'd let the matter drop, 'e'd make 'is nevee, Master Jim, as is also 'is G.o.dson, 'is heir, an' so square it; and Captain Caldwell, as was a real gen'lmon, an' fond of the ladies, tuk 'im at 'is word, an'

furgiv' 'im. But, lardie! don't us know the worth o' Mr. James Patten's word!”

Aunt Grace Mary had turned very pale.

”Beth,” she gasped, ”promise me you will never, never, _never_ say a word about this to your uncle.”

”Not likely,” said Beth.

”How do you remember these things you hear?”

”Oh, I just think them over again when I go to bed, and then they stay,” Beth answered. ”I wouldn't tell you half I hear, though--only things everybody knows. If you tell secrets, you know, you're a tell-pie. And I'm not a tell-pie. Now, Bernadine is. She's a regular tell-pie. It seems as if she couldn't help it; but then she's young,”

Beth added tolerantly.

”Were you ever young, I wonder?” Aunt Grace Mary muttered to herself.

CHAPTER XIII

Meanwhile the English spring advanced in the beautiful gardens of Fairholm, and was a joy to Beth. Blossoms showered from the fruit-trees, green leaves unfurled, the birds were in full song, and the swans curved their long necks in the suns.h.i.+ne, and breasted the waters of the lake, as if their own grace were a pleasure to them.

Beth was enchanted. Every day she discovered some new wonder--nests in the hedgerows, lambs in the fields, a foal and its mother in the paddock, a calf in the byre--more living interests in one week than she had dreamt of in the whole of her little life. For a happy interval the scenes which had oppressed her--the desolation, the sombre colours of the great melancholy mountains, the incessant sound of the turbulent sea, the shock and roar of angry breakers warring with the rocks, which had kept her little being all a-throb, braced to the expectation of calamity--lapsed now into the background of her recollection, and under the benign influence of these lovelier surroundings her mind began to expand in the most extraordinary way, while her further faculty awoke, and gave her glimpses of more delights than mortal mind could have shown her. ”Such nice things,” as she expressed it, ”keep coming into my head, and I want to write them down.” Books she flung away impatiently; but the woods and streams, and the wild flowers, the rooks returning to roost in the trees at sunset, the horses playing in the paddocks, the cows dawdling back from their pastures, all sweet country scents and cheerful country sounds she became alive to and began to love. There would be trouble enough in Beth herself at times, wherever she was; it was hard that she could not have been kept in some such paradise always, to ease the burden of her being.

One morning her mother told her that Uncle James was extremely displeased with her because he had seen her pelting the swans.

”He didn't see me pelting the swans,” Beth a.s.severated. ”I was feeding them with crusts. And how did he see me, any way? He wasn't there.”

”He sees everything that's going on,” Mrs. Caldwell a.s.sured her.

”He's only pretending,” Beth argued, ”or else he must be G.o.d.”

But she kept her eyes about her the next time she was in the grounds, and at last she discovered him, sitting in the little window of his dressing-room with a book before him, and completely blocking the aperture. She had never noticed him there before, because the panes were small and bright, and the s.h.i.+ne on them made it difficult to see through them from below. After this discovery she always felt that his eyes were upon her wherever she went within range of that window. Not that that would have deterred her had she wanted to do anything particularly; but even a child feels it intolerable to be spied upon; and as for a spy! Beth scorned the creature.

That day at luncheon Uncle James made an announcement.

”Lady Benyon is going to honour us with a visit,” he began in his most impressive manner. There is no sn.o.b so inveterate as your sn.o.b of good birth; and Uncle James said ”Lady” as if it were a privilege just to p.r.o.nounce the word. ”She will arrive this afternoon at a quarter to four.”

”But you will be practising,” Beth exclaimed.

”The rites of hospitality must be observed,” he condescended to inform her.

”Lady Benyon is my mother, Beth,” Aunt Grace Mary put in irrelevantly.

”I know,” Beth answered. ”Your papa was a baronet; Uncle James loves baronets; that was why he married you.” Having thus disposed of Aunt Grace Mary, Beth turned to the other end of the table, and resumed: ”But you went on practising when _we_ arrived, Uncle James.”

Uncle James gazed at her blandly, then looked at his sister with an agreeable smile. ”Lady Benyon will probably like to see the children.

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