Part 82 (1/2)

Sally, whose hands were wet from the tub, whipped her hand under the corner of her checkered ap.r.o.n, and so took the note with a finger and thumb operating through the linen. By this means she avoided two evils--her fingers did not wet the letter, and the letter did not dirty her fingers.

She took it into the kitchen to her mistress, whose arms were deep in a wash-tub.

Mrs. Meyrick had played the fine lady at first starting, and for six months would not put her hand to anything. But those twin cajolers of the female heart, Dignity and Laziness, made her so utterly wretched, that she returned to her old habits of work, only she combined with it the sweets of domination.

Sally came in and said, ”It's an old gypsy, which he have brought you this.”

Mrs. Meyrick instantly wiped the soapsuds from her brown but shapely arms, and, whipping a wet hand under her ap.r.o.n, took the note just as Sally had. It contained these words only:

”NURSE--The old Romance will tell you all about me.

”REGINALD.”

She had no sooner read it than she took her sleeves down, and whipped her shawl off a peg and put it on, and took off her ap.r.o.n--and all for an old gypsy. No stranger must take her for anything but a lady.

Thus embellished in a turn of the hand, she went hastily to the door.

She and the gypsy both started at sight of each other, and Mrs. Meyrick screamed.

”Why, what brings you here, old man?” said she, panting. The gypsy answered with oily sweetness, ”The little gentleman sent me, my dear.

Why, you look like a queen.”

”Hus.h.!.+” said Mrs. Meyrick.--”Come in here.”

She made the old gypsy sit down, and she sat close to him.

”Speak low, daddy,” said she, ”and tell me all about my boy, my beautiful boy.”

The old gypsy told Mrs. Meyrick the wrongs of Reginald that had driven him to this; and she fell to crying and lamenting, and inveighing against all concerned--schoolmaster, Sir Charles, Lady Ba.s.sett, and the gypsies. Them the old man defended, and a.s.sured her the young gentleman was in good hands, and would be made a little king of, all the more that Keturah had told them there was gypsy blood in him.

Mrs. Meyrick resented this loudly, and then returned to her grief.

When she had indulged that grief for a long time, she felt a natural desire to quarrel with somebody, and she actually put on her bonnet, and was going to the Hall to give Lady Ba.s.sett a bit of her mind, for she said that lady had never shown the feelings of a woman for the lamb.

But she thought better of it, and postponed the visit. ”I shall be sure to say something I shall be sorry for after,” said she; so she sat down again, and returned to her grief.

Nor could she ever shake it off as thoroughly as she had done any other trouble in her life.

Months after this, she said to Sally, with a burst of tears, ”I never nursed but one, and I shall never nurse another; and now he is across the seas.”

She kept the old gypsy at the farm; or, to speak more correctly, she made the farm his headquarters. She a.s.signed him the only bedroom he would accept, viz., a cattle-shed, open on one side. She used often to have him into her room when she was alone; she gave him some of her husband's clothes, and made him wear a decent hat; by these means she effaced, in some degree, his nationality, and then she compelled her servants to call him ”the foreign gent.”

The foreign gent was very apt to disappear in fine weather, but rain soon drove him back to her fireside, and hunger to her flesh-pots.