Part 1 (2/2)
It had been already arranged that the two little girls should spend the evening together, and as they entered the garden before the house a rude voice exclaimed, ”Holloa! London Nan whimpering. Has my fine lady met a spider or a cow?” and a big rough lad of twelve, in a college gown, spread out his arms, and danced up and down in the doorway to bar the entrance.
”Don't, Sedley,” said a st.u.r.dy but more gentlemanlike lad of the same age, thrusting him aside. ”Is she hurt? What is it?”
”That spiteful imp, Peregrine Oakshott,” said Lucy pa.s.sionately.
”He had a cord across the Slype to trip us up. I heard him laughing like a hobgoblin, and saw him too, grinning over a tombstone like the malicious elf he is.”
The college boy uttered a horse laugh, which made Lucy cry, ”Cousin Sedley, you are as bad!” but the other boy was saying, ”Don't cry, Anne None-so-pretty. I'll give it him well! Though I'm younger, I'm bigger, and I'll show him reason for not meddling with my little sweetheart.”
”Have with you then!” shouted Sedley, ready for a fray on whatever pretext, and off they rushed, as nurse led little Anne up the broad shallow steps of the dark oak staircase, but Lucy stood laughing with exultation in the intended vengeance, as her brother took down her father's hunting-whip.
”He must be wellnigh a fiend to play such wicked pranks under the very Minster!” she said.
”And a rascal of a Whig, and that's worse,” added Charles; ”but I'll have it out of him!”
”Take care, Charley; if you offend him, and he does really belong to those--those creatures”--Lucy lowered her voice--”who knows what they might do to you?”
Charles laughed long and loud. ”I'll take care of that,” he said, swinging out at the door. ”Elf or no elf, he shall learn what it is to play off his tricks on _my_ sister and my little sweetheart.”
Lucy betook herself to the nursery, where Anne was being comforted, her bleeding lip washed with essence, and repaired with a pinch of beaver from a hat, and her other bruises healed with lily leaves steeped in strong waters.
”Charley is gone to serve him out!” announced Lucy as the sovereign remedy.
”Oh, but perhaps he did not mean it,” Anne tried to say.
”Mean it? Small question of that, the cankered young slip! Nurse, do you think those he belongs to can do Charley any harm if he angers them?”
”I cannot say, missie. Only 'tis well we be not at home, or there might be elf knots in the horses' manes to-night. I doubt me whether _that sort_ can do much hurt here, seeing as 'tis holy ground.”
”But is he really a changeling? I thought there were no such things as--”
”Hist, hist, Missie Anne!” cried the dame; ”'tis not good to name them.”
”Oh, but we are on the Minster ground, nurse,” said Lucy, trembling a little however, looking over her shoulder, and coming closer to the old servant.
”Why do they think so?” asked Anne. ”Is it because he is so ugly and mischievous and rude? Not like boys in London.”
”Prithee, nurse, tell her the tale,” entreated Lucy, who had made large eyes over it many a time before.
”Ay, and who should tell you all about it save me, who had it all from Goody Madge Bulpett, as saw it all!”
”Goody Madge! It was she that came when poor little Kitty was born and died,” suggested Lucy, as Anne, laying her aching head upon nurse's knees, prepared to listen to the story.
”Well, deary darlings, you see poor Madam Oakshott never had her health since the Great Fire in London, when she was biding with her kinsfolk to be near Major Oakshott, who had got into trouble about some of his nonconforming doings. The poor lady had a mortal fright before she could be got out of Gracechurch Street as was all of a blaze, and she was so afeard of her husband being burnt as he lay in Newgate that she could scarce be got away, and whether it was that, or that she caught cold lying out in a tent on Highgate Hill, she has never had a day's health since.”
”And the gentleman--her husband?” asked Anne.
”They all broke prison, poor fellows, as they had need to do, and the Major's time was nearly up. He made himself busy in saving and helping the folk in the streets; and his brother, Sir Peregrine, who was thick with the King, and is in foreign parts now, took the chance to speak of the poor lady's plight and say it would be the death of her if he could not get his discharge, and his Majesty, bless his kind heart, gave the order at once. So they took madam home to the Chace, but she has been but an ailing body ever since.”
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