Purchase, not very lucidly, "one could understand it."
"I--I"m going to be ill," wailed the wretched Calvin, with a spasmodic heave of the shoulders.
"Well," his aunt commented grimly after a moment, "you told the truth that time, anyway."
Having conveyed him to the house and put him, with Susannah"s help, to bed, Aunt Hannah went off to Myra"s room, but descended after a few minutes in search of Mr. Sam, whom she found pacing the garden walk.
"Well?" he asked.
"I"ve told her the punishment--bread and water, and to keep her room all day. She says nothing against it, and I think she"s sorry about the powder; but I can get no sense into her until her mind"s set at rest about Clem."
"What about him?"
"Why, the poor child"s left behind at the school."
"Is that all? Miss Marvin will bring him home, no doubt."
"So I told her. But it seems she don"t trust Miss Marvin--hates her, in fact."
"The child must be crazed."
"Couldn"t you send Peter Benny?"
"Oh, certainly, if you wish it." Mr. Sam went indoors to the counting-house, where Mr. Benny jumped up from his desk in alarm at sight of the bandages.
"Mercy on us, sir--you have met with an accident?"
"A trifle. Are you busy just now?"
Mr. Benny blushed. "I might answer in your words sir--a trifle.
Indeed, I hope, sir, you will not think it a liberty; but the late Mr.
Rosewarne used very kindly to allow it when no business happened to be doing."
His employer stared at him blankly.
"On birthdays and such occasions," pursued Mr. Benny. "And by the way, sir, might I ask you to favour me with the date of your birthday?
Your dear father"s was the 28th of May." Mr. Sam"s stare lost its blankness, and became one of sharp suspicion.
"What have you to do with my birthday, pray?"
"Nothing, sir--nothing, unless it pleases you. Some of our best and greatest men, sir, as I am well aware--the late Duke of Wellington, for instance--have had a distaste for poetry; not that my verses deserve any such name."
"Oh!" said Mr. Sam, his brow clearing, "you were talking of verses?
I"ve no objection, so long as you don"t ask me to read them." He paused, as Mr. Benny"s face lengthened dejectedly. "I mean no reflection on yours, Benny."
"I thank you, sir."
"Shakespeare--and I am told you can"t get better poetry than Shakespeare"s--doesn"t please me at all. I tried him once, on a friend"s recommendation, and came on a pa.s.sage which I don"t hesitate to call lascivious. I told my friend so, and advised him to be more careful in the reading he recommended. He was a minister of the gospel, too.
I destroyed the book: one can"t be too careful, with children about the house."
"I a.s.sure you, sir--"
"I don"t suggest for a moment that you would be guilty of any such expressions as Shakespeare uses. We live in a different age.
Still, poetry, as such, gives me no pleasure. I believe very firmly, Benny--as you may have gathered--in another world, and that we shall be held strictly to account there for all we do or say in this one."
"Yes, sir."
"If you will wait a moment, I have a note to write. You will deliver it, please, to Mrs. Trevarthen on your way home. But first I wish you to walk up to the school and fetch Master Clem."
Mr. Benny, absorbed in poetical composition, had either failed to hear the explosion at the gate, or had heard and paid no heed to it. He wondered why Master Clem should need to be fetched from school.
"And Miss Myra?" he suggested.
"Miss Myra has been sent to her room in disgrace," said Mr. Sam.
Mr. Benny asked no further questions, but pocketed the letter which Mr.
Sam indited, and fetched his hat. As it happened, however, at the gate he met Hester leading Clem by the hand; and receiving the child from her, handed him over to Susannah.
"You are going home?" he asked, as he rejoined Hester at the gate.
They were already warm friends.
"I am on my way. And you?"
"We"ll cross the ferry together, if you"ll wait a moment while I deliver a note at Mrs. Trevarthen"s."
Mrs. Trevarthen was at her door. She took the note, and, before opening it, looked at Hester curiously.
"You know what"s inside of it, I reckon?" she said, turning to Mr. Benny.
"Not a word."
"My eyes are bad," said Mrs. Trevarthen, who, as a matter of fact, could not read.
Mr. Benny knew this, and knew also that Mrs. Trevarthen as a rule employed Aunt Butson to write her few letters and decipher the few that came to her.
"The light"s bad for the time of year," he said. "Shall I read it for you, missus?"
"No; let _her_ read it," answered the old woman, holding out the letter to Hester. Hester took it and read--
"Madam,--This is to inform you that the rent of my cottage, at present occupied by you on a monthly tenancy at 9 pounds per annum, will from the first of next month be raised to 15 pounds per annum; also that the tenancy will not, after that date, carry with it a permission to let lodgings.--Yours truly, S. ROSEWARNE."
In the silence that followed Mrs. Trevarthen fixed her bright beady eyes steadily on Hester. "You"ve driven forth my son from me," she said at length, "and you"re driving forth my lodger, and there"s n.o.bbut the almshouse left. Never a day"s worry has my son Tom given to me, and never a ha"p"orth o" harm have we done to you. A foreigner you are and a stranger; the lad made me promise not to curse "ee, and I won"t. But get out of my sight, and the Lord deliver us from temptation!--Amen."
Poor Mr. Benny, who had written half a dozen enthusiastic verses on the opening of the new school, crushed them down in his pocket. He had been so proud of them, too!
They ran--