‘Oh! down, down, there’s a good dog, Fly; you’ll knock me down! Vixen, poor little doggie, pray! Look at your paws,’ as a blue greyhound and rough black terrier came springing joyously upon her, brushing away the silver dew from the shaven lawn.
‘Down, down, lie down, dogs!’ and with an obstreperous bound, Fly flew to the new-comer, a young man in the robust strength of eight-and-twenty, of stalwart frame, very broad in the chest and shoulders, careless, homely, though perfectly gentleman-like bearing, and hale, hearty, sunburnt face. It was such a look and such an arm as would win the most timid to his side in certainty of tenderness and protection, and the fond voice gave the same sense of power and of kindness, as he called out, ‘Holloa, Honor, there you are! Not given up the old fashion?’
‘Not till you give me up, Humfrey,’ she said, as she eagerly laid her neatly gloved fingers in the grasp of the great, broad, horny palm, ‘or at least till you take your gun.’
‘So you are not grown wiser?’
‘Nor ever will be.’
‘Every woman ought to learn to saddle a horse and fire off a gun.’
‘Yes, against the civil war squires are always expecting. You shall teach me when the time comes.’
‘You’ll never see that time, nor any other, if you go out in those thin boots. I’ll fetch Sarah’s clogs; I suppose you have not a reasonable pair in the world.’
‘My boots are quite thick, thank you.’
‘Brown paper!’ And indeed they were a contrast to his mighty nailed soles, and long, untanned buskins, nor did they greatly resemble the heavy, country-made galoshes which, with an elder brother’s authority, he forced her to put on, observing that nothing so completely evinced the Londoner as her obstinacy in never having a pair of shoes that could keep anything out.
‘And where are you going?’
‘To Hayward’s farm. Is that too far for you? He wants an abatement of his rent for some improvements, and I want to judge what they may be worth.’
‘Hayward’s—oh, not a bit too far!’ and holding up her skirts, she picked her way as daintily as her weighty chaussure would permit, along the narrow green footway that crossed the expanse of dewy turf in which the dogs careered, getting their noses covered with flakes of thick gossamer, cemented together by dew. Fly scraped it off with a delicate forepaw, Vixen rolled over, and doubly entangled it in her rugged coat. Humfrey Charlecote strode on before his companion with his hands in his pockets, and beginning to whistle, but pausing to observe, over his shoulder, ‘A sweet day for getting up the roots! You’re not getting wet, I hope?’
‘I couldn’t through this rhinoceros hide, thank you. How exquisitely the mist is curling up, and showing the church-spire in the valley.’
‘And I suppose you have been reading all manner of books?’
‘I think the best was a great history of France.’
‘France!’ he repeated in a contemptuous John Bull tone.
‘Ay, don’t be disdainful; France was the centre of chivalry in the old time.’
‘Better have been the centre of honesty.’
‘And so it was in the time of St. Louis and his crusade. Do you know it, Humfrey?’
‘Eh?’
That was full permission. Ever since Honora had been able to combine a narration, Humfrey had been the recipient, though she seldom knew whether he attended, and from her babyhood upwards had been quite contented with trotting in the wake of his long strides, pouring out her ardent fancies, now and then getting an answer, but more often going on like a little singing bird, through the midst of his avocations, and quite complacent under his interruptions of calls to his dogs, directions to his labourers, and warnings to her to mind her feet and not her chatter. In the full stream of crusaders, he led her down one of the multitude of by-paths cleared out in the hazel coppice for sporting; here leading up a rising ground whence the tops of the trees might be overlooked, some flecked with gold, some blushing into crimson, and beyond them the needle point of the village spire, the vane flashing back the sun; there bending into a ravine, marshy at the bottom, and nourishing the lady fern, then again crossing glades, where the rabbits darted across the path, and the battle of Damietta was broken into by stern orders to Fly to come to heel, and the eating of the nuts which Humfrey pulled down from the branches, and held up to his cousin with superior good nature.
‘A Mameluke rushed in with a scimitar streaming with blood, and—’
‘Take care; do you want help over this fence?’
‘Not I, thank you—And said he had just murdered the king—’
‘Vic! ah! take your nose out of that. Here was a crop, Nora.’
‘What was it?’
‘You don’t mean that you don’t know wheat stubble?’
‘I remember it was to be wheat.’
‘Red wheat, the finest we ever had in this land; not a bit beaten down, and the colour perfectly beautiful before harvest; it used to put me in mind of your hair. A load to the acre; a fair specimen of the effect of drainage. Do you remember what a swamp it was?’
‘I remember the beautiful loose-strifes that used to grow in that corner.’
‘Ah! we have made an end of that trumpery.’
‘You savage old Humfrey—beauties that they were.’
‘What had they to do with my cornfields? A place for everything and everything in its place—French kings and all. What was this one doing wool-gathering in Egypt?’
‘Don’t you understand, it had become the point for the blow at the Saracen power. Where was I? Oh, the Mameluke justified the murder, and wanted St. Louis to be king, but—’
‘Ha! a fine covey, I only miss two out of them. These carrots, how their leaves are turned—that ought not to be.’
Honora could not believe that anything ought not to be that was as beautiful as the varied rosy tints of the hectic beauty of the exquisitely shaped and delicately pinked foliage of the field carrots, and with her cousin’s assistance she soon had a large bouquet where no two leaves were alike, their hues ranging from the deepest purple or crimson to the palest yellow, or clear scarlet, like seaweed, through every intermediate variety of purple edged with green, green picked out with red or yellow, or vice versâ, in never-ending brilliancy, such as Humfrey almost seemed to appreciate, as he said, ‘Well, you have something as pretty as your weeds, eh, Honor?’
‘I can’t quite give up mourning for my dear long purples.’
‘All very well by the river, but there’s no beauty in things out of place, like your Louis in Egypt—well, what was the end of this predicament?’
So Humfrey had really heard and been interested! With such encouragement, Honora proceeded swimmingly, and had nearly arrived at her hero’s ransom, through nearly a mile of field paths, only occasionally interrupted by grunts from her auditor at farming not like his own, when crossing a narrow foot-bridge across a clear stream, they stood before a farmhouse, timbered and chimneyed much like the Holt, but with new sashes displacing the old lattice.
‘Oh! Humfrey, how could you bring me to see such havoc? I never suspected you would allow it.’
‘It was without asking leave; an attention to his bride; and now they want an abatement for improvements! Whew!’
‘You should fine him for the damage he has done!’
‘I can’t be hard on him, he is more or less of an ass, and a good sort of fellow, very