“Yes, I said, as we came away, I’m a very peculiar, particular old lady, my dear; and I can’t have tall gentlemen making bows to you when you are in my charge.”
“Oh, Miss Rosebury!” cried Grey, catching her hand and blushing scarlet, “please – pray don’t think that! It was not to me!”
“Ah!” exclaimed the little lady, softly. “Hum! I see;” and she looked searchingly in the fair young face so near to hers. “It was my mistake, my dear; I beg your pardon.”
Grey’s face was all smiles, though her eyes were full of tears, and the next moment she was clasped tightly to Miss Rosebury’s breast, responding to her motherly kisses, and saying eagerly:
“I could not bear for you to think that.”
“And I ought never to have thought it, my dear,” said the little lady, softly patting and smoothing Grey’s hair. “Why, I ought to have known you a long time ago; and now I do know you, I hear you are going away?”
“Yes,” said Grey, “and so very soon. My father wishes me to join him at the station.”
“Yes, I know, my dear. It is quite right, for he is alone.”
“And he says it is dull without me; but he wished me to thoroughly finish my education first.”
“You don’t recollect mamma, my dear, the doctor tells me?”
“No,” said Grey, shaking her head. “She died when I was a very little child – the same year as Mrs Perowne.”
“A sad position for two young girls,” said Miss Rosebury.
“But the Misses Twettenham have always been so kind,” said Grey, eagerly. “I shall be very, very sorry to go away?”
“And will Helen Perowne be very, very sorry to go away?”
Grey Stuart’s face assumed a troubled expression, and she looked appealingly in her questioner’s face, which immediately became all smiles.
“There, there, I fetched you both over to enjoy yourselves, and I’m pestering you with questions. Come into my room, my dear, while I wash my hands, and then we’ll go and join the truants in the garden. I want you to like my brother very much, and I am sure he will like you.”
“I know I shall,” said Grey, quietly, but with a good deal of bright girlish ingenuousness in her tones. “Dr Bolter told me a great deal about him; how clever he is as a naturalist. I do like Dr Bolter.”
Miss Rosebury glanced at her sharply. It was an involuntary glance, which changed directly into a beaming look of satisfaction, as they crossed the landing into Miss Rosebury’s own room, where their conversation lengthened so that the “truants,” as the little lady called them, were forgotten.
Volume One – Chapter Seven.
A Lesson in Botany
Meanwhile the Reverend Arthur, with growing solicitude, was walking his garden as in a dream, explaining to his companion the progress of his flowers, his vegetables, and his fruit.
The beds were searched for strawberries that were not ready; the wall trees were looked at reproachfully for not bearing ripe fruit months before their time; and the roses, that should have been in perfection, were grieved over for their fall during the week-past storm.
It was wonderful to him what sweet and earnest interest this fair young creature took in his pursuits, and how eagerly she listened to his discourse when, down by the beehives, he explained the habits of his bees, and removed screens to let her see the working insects within.
Miss Mary Rosebury took an interest in his garden and in his botanical pursuits, but nothing like this. She did not keep picking weeds and wild flowers from beneath the hedge, and listen with rapt attention while he pointed out the class, the qualities, and peculiarities of the plant.
Helen Perowne did, and it was quite a privilege to a weed to be picked, as was that stitchwort that had run its long trailing growth right up in the hedge, so as to give its pale green leaves and regular white cut-edged blossoms a good long bathe in the sunshine where the insects played.
“I have often seen these little white flowers in the hedges,” she said softly. “I suppose they are too insignificant to have a name?”
She stooped and picked the flower as she spoke, looking in her companion’s eyes for an answer.
“Insignificant? No!” he cried, warming to his task. “No flower is insignificant. The very smallest have beauties that perhaps we cannot see.”
“Indeed,” she said; and he looked at the blue veins beneath the transparent skin, as Helen held up the flower. “Then has this a name?”
“Yes,” he said, rousing himself from a strange reverie, “a very simple, homely name – the stitchwort. Later on in the season you will find myriads of its smaller relative, the lesser stitchwort. They belong to the chickweed tribe.”
“Not the chickweed with which I used to feed my dear little bird that died?”
“The very same,” he replied, smiling. “Next time you pluck a bunch you will see that, though tiny, the flowers strangely resemble these.”
“And the lesser stitchwort?”
“Yes?” he said, inquiringly. “Is it like this?”
“Nearly the same, only the flowers are half the size.”
“And it grows where?”
“In similar places – by hedges and ditches.”
“But you said something about time.”
“Yes,” replied the Reverend Arthur, who was thinking how wondrous pleasant it would be to go on teaching botany to such a pupil for evermore. “Yes, it is a couple of months, say, later than the great stitchwort.”
“Ah!” said Helen, with a sigh. “By that time I shall be far away.”
The stitchwort fell to the ground, and they walked on together, with Helen, Circe-like, transforming the meek, studious, elderly man by her side, so that he was ready to obey her slightest whim, eagerly trying the while to explain each object upon which her eye seemed to rest; while she, glorying in her new power, led him on and on, with soft word, and glance, and sigh.
They had been at least an hour in the garden when they reached the vinery, through whose open door came the sweet, inviting scent of the luxuriant tender growth.
“What place is this?” she cried.
“My vinery. May I show you in?”
“It would give you so much trouble.”
“Trouble?” he said; and taking off his hat he drew back for her to enter.
“And will all those running things bear grapes?” she asked, as, throwing back her head and displaying the soft contour of her beautifully moulded throat, she gazed up at the tendril-handed vines.
“Yes,” he said, dreamily, “these are the young bunches with berries scarcely set. You see they grow too fast. I have to break off large pieces to keep them back, and tie them to those wires overhead.”
“Oh, do show me, Mr Rosebury?” she cried, with childlike eagerness.
“Yes,” he said, smiling; “but I must climb up there.”
“What, on to that board?”
“Yes, and tie them with this strong foreign grass.”
“Oh, how interesting! How beautiful!” she cried, her red lips parted, and showing the little regular white teeth within. “I never thought that grapes would grow like this. Please show me more.”
He climbed and sprawled awkwardly on to the great plank that reached from tie to tie, seating himself astride with the consequence that his trousers were dragged half way up his long, thin legs, revealing his clumsily-made garden shoes. In his eagerness