“What, Mr Hallam, dear? Oh, don’t talk like that.”
“Humph!” ejaculated the doctor, making the whiplash whistle about the cob’s ears; “you are not very fond of him, then?”
“Well, no, dear, I can’t say I am. He’s very gentlemanly, and handsome, and particular, but somehow – ”
“Ah!” said the doctor, with a dry chuckle, “that’s it – ‘somehow.’ That’s the place where I stick. No, old lady, he won’t do. I was a bit afraid at first; but he seems to keep just the same: makes no advances. He wouldn’t do.”
“Oh, dear me, no!” cried Mrs Luttrell, with quite a shudder.
“Why not?” said the doctor sharply; “don’t you like him?”
“Perhaps it would not be just to say so,” said Mrs Luttrell nervously, “but I’m glad Milly does not seem to take to him.”
“So am I. Curate would be far better, eh?”
“And you charge me with match-making, my dear! It is too bad.”
“Ah! well, perhaps it is; but don’t you think – eh?”
“No,” said Mrs Luttrell, “I do not. Millicent is very friendly to Mr Bayle, and looks upon him as a pleasant youth who has similar tastes to her own. And certainly he is very nice and natural.”
“And yet you object to his going to see the girl when we are out! There, get along, Betsy; we shall never be there.”
The whip whistled round the cob’s head and the chaise turned down a pleasant woody lane, just as Christie Bayle lifted the latch and entered the doctor’s garden.
It was very beautiful there in the bright morning sunshine; the velvet turf so green and smooth, and the beds vying one with the other in brightness. There was no one in the garden, and all seemed strangely still at the house, with its open windows and flower-decked porch.
Bayle had been requested to look in and execute a commission for the doctor, but all the same he felt guilty: and though he directed an eager glance or two at the open windows, he turned, with his heart throbbing heavily, to the end of the closely-clipped yew hedge, and passed round into the kitchen-garden, and then up one walk and down another, to the sunny-sheltered top, where the doctor grew his cucumbers, and broke down with his melons every year.
There was a delicious scent from the cuttings of the lawn, which were piled round the frame, fermenting and giving out heat: and as the curate reached the glass lights, there was the interior hung with great dewdrops, which began to coalesce and run off as he raised the ends of the lights and looked in.
Puff! quite a wave of heated air, fragrant with the young growth of the plants, all looking richly green and healthy, and with the golden, starry blossoms peeping here and there.
Quite at home, Christie Bayle thrust in his arm and took out a little block of wood cut like an old-fashioned gun-carriage or a set of steps, and with this he propped up one light, so that the heat might escape and the temperature fall.
This done he moved to the next, and thrust down the light, for he had seen from the other side a glistening, irregular, iridescent streak, which told of the track of an enemy, and this enemy had to be found.
That light uttered a loud plaintive squeak as it was thrust down, a sound peculiar to the lights of cucumber-frames; and, leaning over the edge, Bayle began to peer about among the broad prickly leaves.
Yes, there was the enemy’s trail, and he must be found, for it would have been cruel to the doctor to have left such a devouring creature there.
In and out among the trailing stems, and over the soft black earth, through which the delicate roots were peeping, were the dry glistening marks, just as if someone had dipped a brush in a paint formed of pearl shells dissolved in oil, and tried to imitate the veins in a block of marble.
Yes; in and out – there it went, showing how busy the creature had been during the night, and the task was to find where it had gone to rest and sleep for the day, ready to come forth refreshed for another mischievous nocturnal prowl.
“Now where can that fellow have hidden himself?” said the follower of the trail, peering about and taking off his hat and standing it on the next light. “One of those great grey fellows, I’ll be bound. Ah, to be sure! Come out, sir.”
The tale-telling trail ended where a seed-pan stood containing some young Brussels sprouts which had attained a goodly size, and upon these the enemy had supped heartily, crawling down afterwards to sleep off the effects beneath the pan.
It was rather difficult to reach that pan, for the edge of the frame was waist-high; but it had to be done, and the slug raked out with a bit of stick.
That was it! No, it was not; the hunter could not quite reach, and had to wriggle himself a little more over and then try.
The search was earnest and successful, the depredator dying an ignominious death, crushed with a piece of potsherd against the seed-pan, and then being buried at once beneath the soil, but to a looker-on the effect was grotesque.
There was a looker-on here, advancing slowly along the path with a bunch of flowers in one hand, a pair of scissors in the other. In fact, that peculiar squeak given by the frame had attracted Millicent’s attention, at a time when she believed every one to be away.
As she approached, she became conscious of the hind quarters of a man clothed in that dark mixture that used to be popularly known as “pepper-and-salt,” standing up out of one of the cucumber-frames, and executing movements as if he were practising diving in a dry bath. Suddenly the legs subsided and sank down. Next they rose again, and kicked about, the rest of the man still remaining hidden in the frame, and then at last there was a rapid retrograde motion, and Christie Bayle emerged, hot, dishevelled, but triumphant for a moment, then scarlet with confusion and annoyance as he hastily caught up his hat, clapped it on, but hurriedly took it off and bowed.
“Miss Luttrell!” he exclaimed.
“Mr Bayle!” she cried, forbearing to smile as she saw his confusion. “I heard the noise and wondered what it could be.”
“I – I met your father,” he said, hastily adjusting the light; “he asked me to open the frames. A tiresome slug – ”
“It was very kind of you,” she said, holding out her hand and pressing his in her frank, warm grasp, and full of eagerness to set him at his ease. “Papa will be so pleased that you have caught one of his enemies.”
“Thank you,” he said uneasily; “it is very kind of you.” – “I’m the most unlucky wretch under the sun, always making myself ridiculous before her,” he added to himself.
“Kind of me? No, of you, to come and take all that trouble.” – “Poor fellow!” she thought, “he fancies that I am going to laugh at him.” – “I’ve been so busy, Mr Bayle: I’ve copied out the whole of that duet. When are you coming in to try it over?”
“Do you wish me to try it with you?” he said rather coldly.
“Why, of course. There are no end of pretty little passages solo for the flute. We must have a good long practice together before we play in public.”
“You’re very kind and patient with me,” he said, as he gazed at the sweet calm face by his side.
“Nonsense,” she cried. “I’m cutting a few flowers for Miss Heathery; she is the most grateful recipient of a present of this kind that I know.”
They were walking back towards the house as she spoke, and from time to time Millicent stopped to snip off some flower, or to ask her companion to reach one that grew on high.
In a few minutes she had set him quite at his ease and they were talking quietly about their life, their neighbours, about his endeavours to improve the place; and yet all the time there seemed to him to be an undercurrent in his life, flowing beneath that surface talk. The garden was seen through a medium that tinted