"Well, perhaps he had," she said, "but that was quite different."
"How different?" queried Hugh John.
"Well, that was only dogs and Billy Blythe," said Cissy, somewhat shamefacedly; "that doesn"t count, and besides I like it. Doing good has got to be something you don"t like--teaching little brats their duty to their G.o.dfathers and G.o.dmothers, or distributing tracts which only make people stamp and swear and carry on."
"Isn"t there something somewhere about helping the fatherless and the widow?" faltered Hugh John. He hated "talking good," but somehow he felt that Cissy was doing herself less than justice.
"Well, I don"t suppose that the fox-terrier"s pa does much for him,"
she said gaily; "but come along and I"ll "interjuce" you to your ally Billy Blythe."
So they walked along towards the camp in silence. It was a still, Sunday-like evening, and the bell of Edam town steeple was tolling for the six o"clock stay of work, as it had done every night at the same hour for over five hundred years. The reek of the burgesses"
supper-fires was going up in a hundred pillar-like "pews" of tall blue smoke. Homeward bound humble bees b.u.mbled and blundered along, drunk and drowsy with the heady nectar they had taken on board--strayed revellers from the summer-day"s Feast of Flowers. Delicate little blue b.u.t.terflies rose flurriedly from the short gra.s.s, flirted with each other a while, and then mounted into a yet bluer sky in airy wheels and irresponsible balancings.
"This is my birthday!" suddenly burst out Hugh John.
Cissy stopped short and caught her breath.
"Oh no--it can"t be;" she said, "I thought it was next week, and they aren"t nearly ready."
Whereat Cissy Cartar began most incontinently and unexpectedly to cry.
Hugh John had never seen her do this before, though he was familiar enough with Prissy"s more easy tears.
"Now don"t you, Ciss," he said; "I don"t want anything--presents and things, I mean. Just let"s be jolly."
"Hu-uh-uh!" sobbed Cissy; "and Janet Sheepshanks told me it was next week. I"m sure she did; and I set them so nicely to be ready in time--more than two months ago, and now they aren"t ready after all."
"What aren"t ready?" said Hugh John.
"The bantam chickens," sobbed Cissy; "and they are lovely as lovely.
And peck--you should just see them peck."
"I"d just as soon have them next week, or the next after that--rather indeed. Shut up now, Ciss. Stop crying, I tell you. Do you hear?" He was instinctively adopting that gruff masculine sternness which men consider to be on the whole the most generally effective method of dealing with the incomprehensible tears of their women-kind. "_I_ don"t care if you cry pints, but I"ll hit you if you won"t stop! So there!"
Cissy stopped like magic, and a.s.sumed a distant and haughty expression with her nose in the air, the surprising dignity of which was marred only by the recurring spasmodic sniff necessary to keep back the moisture which was still inclined to leak from the corners of her eyes.
"I would indeed," said Hugh John, like all good men quickly remorseful after severity had achieved its end. "I"d ever so much rather have the nicest presents a week after; for on a regular birthday you get so many things. But by next week, when you"ve got tired of them all, and don"t have anything new--that"s the proper time to get a present."
"Oh, you _are_ nice," said Cissy impulsively, coming over to Hugh John and clasping his arm with both her hands. He did not encourage this, for he did not know where it might end, and the open moor was not by any means the ivy-grown corner of the stable. Cissy went on.
"Yes, you are the nicest thing. Only don"t tell any body----"
"I won"t!" said Hugh John, with deepest conviction.
"And I"ll give you the mother too," continued Cissy; "she is a perfect darling, and won a prize at the last Edam show. It was only a second, but everybody said that she ought by rights to have had the first.
Yes, and she would have got it too--only that the other old hen was a cousin of the judge"s. That wasn"t fair, was it?"
"Certainly not!" said Hugh John, with instant emphasis.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE GIPSY CAMP.
At this point a peculiar fragrance was borne to them upon the light wind, the far-blowing smell of a wood-fire, together with the odour of boiling and fragrant stew--a compound and delicious wild-wood scent, which almost created the taste by which it was to be enjoyed, as they say all good literature must. There was also another smell, less idyllic but equally characteristic--the odour of drying paint. All these came from the camp of the gipsies set up on the corner of the common lands of Windy Standard.
The gipsies" wood was a barren acre of tall, ill-nurtured Scotch firs, with nothing to break their st.u.r.dy monotony of trunk right up to the spreading crown of twisted red branches and dark green spines.
Beneath, the earth was covered with a carpet of dry and brown pine-needles, several inches thick, soft and silent under the feet as velvet pile. Ditches wet and dry closed in the place of sanctuary for the wandering tribes of Egypt on all sides, save only towards the high road, where a joggly, much-rutted cart track led deviously in between high banks, through which the protruding roots of the Scotch firs, knotted and scarred, were seen twisting and grappling each other like a nest of snakes. Suddenly, between the ridges of pine-trees, the pair came in sight of the camp.
"I declare," cried Hugh John, "they are painting the waggons. I wish they would let me help. I can slick it on like a daisy. Now I"m telling you. Andrew Penman at the coach-works in Church Street showed me how. He says I can "line" as well as any workman in the place. I"m going to be a coach-painter. They get bully wages, I tell you."
"I thought you were going to be a soldier," commented Cissy, with the cool and inviting criticism of the model domestic lady, who is always on hand with a bucket of cold water for the enthusiasms of her men-folk.
Hugh John remembered, saw his mistake, and shifted his ground all in the twinkling of an eye; for of course a man of spirit ought never to own himself in the wrong--at least to a girl. It is a bad precedent, occasionally even fatal.
"Oh yes, of course I am going to be a soldier," he said with the hesitation of one who stops to think what he is going to say; "but I"m to be a coach-painter in my odd time and on holidays. Besides, officers get so little pay now-a-days, it"s shameful--I heard my father say. So one must do something."
"Oh, here"s the terrier--pretty thing, I declare he quite knows me--see, Hugh John," cried Cissy, kneeling with delight in her eye, and taking hold of the little dog, which came bounding forward to meet her--stopping midway, however, to paw at its neck, to which the Chianti wicker-work still clung tightly round the edge of the bandage.
Billy Blythe came towards them, touching his cap as he did so in a half-military manner; for had he not a brother in the county militia, who was the best fighter (with his fists) in the regiment, the pest of his colonel, but in private the particular pet of all the other officers, who were always ready to put their money on Gipsy Blythe to any amount.
"Yes, miss," he said; "I done it. He"s better a"ready, and as lively as a green gra.s.s-chirper. Never seed the like o" that ointment. "Tis worth its weight in gold when ye have dogs."
A tall girl came up at this moment, dusky and lithe, her face and neck tanned to a fine healthy brown almost as dark as saddle-leather, but with a rolling black eye so full and piercing that even her complexion seemed light by comparison. She carried a back load of tinware of all sorts, and by her wearied air appeared to be returning to the encampment after a day"s tramp.
"Ah, young lady and gentleman, sure I can see by your eyes that you are going to buy something from a poor girl--ribbons for the hair, or for the house some nice collanders, saucepans, fish-pans, stew-pans, patty-pans, jelly-pans----"
[Ill.u.s.tration: "SHE CARRIED A BACK LOAD OF TINWARE."]
"Go "way, Lep.r.o.nia Lovell," growled Billy; "don"t you see that this is the young lady that cured my dog?"
"And who may the young gentleman be?" said the girl. "Certain I am I"ve seen him before somewhere at the back o" beyant."
"Belike aye, Lep.r.o.nia, tha art a clever wench, and hast got eyes in the back o" thee yead," said Billy, in a tone of irony. "Do you not know the son of Master Smith o" t" Windy Standard--him as lets us bide on his land, when all the neighbours were on for nothing else but turning us off with never a rest for the soles of our feet?"
"And what is his name?" said the girl.
"Why, the same as his father of course, la.s.s--what else?" cried Billy; "young Master Smith as ever was. Did you think it was Blythe?"
""Faith then, G.o.d forbid!" said Lep.r.o.nia, "ye have lashin"s of that name in them parts already. Sure it is lonesome for a poor orphan like me among so many Blythes; and good-looking young chaps some o" them too, and never a wan o" ye man enough to ask me to change my name, and go to church and be thransmogrified into a Blythe like the rest of yez!"
Some of the gipsies standing round laughed at the boldness of the girl, and Billy reddened. "I"m not by way of takin" up with no Paddy,"
he said, and turned on his heel.
"Paddy is ut," cried the girl indignantly after him, ""faith now, and it wad be tellin" ye if ye could get a daycent single woman only half as good lookin" as me, to take as much notice av the likes o" ye as to kick ye out of her road!"