“If you call it making provision for me to hire Old Tom’s Rib to cook me dinner for me, Miss Kate, all I’ve got to say is that you can’t have eaten anything that rabbit-pole woman ever spoiled! Which, of course, you haven’t. Meself, I’d as lief sit down to a dish of pig swill!”
At this point, Mr Philip Broome, who had been silently enjoying Mr Nidd’s embittered discourse, intervened with an offer of refreshment. “Forgive me, but before I leave you to be private with Miss Malvern, what would you wish me to order for you, Mr Nidd? Sherry, or beer? I’ve never sampled the sherry here, but I can vouch for the beer!”
“Thanking you kindly, sir, beer’s my tipple. Not that I ain’t partial to a glass of sherry in season,” he added grandly, if a trifle obscurely.
Philip lifted an eyebrow at Kate. “And you, cousin?”
“I should like some lemonade, if it might be had.”
He nodded, and left the room. “I’ve took a fancy to that young fellow,” said Mr Nidd decidedly. “He ain’t a buck of the first head, nor he ain’t as fine as a star, but to my way of thinking, Miss Kate, he’s true blue! He’ll never stain!”
To her annoyance, Kate felt herself blushing, and knew that Mr Nidd was watching her closely out of his aged but remarkably sharp eyes. With as much nonchalance as she could assume, she replied: “Yes, indeed: Mr Philip Broome is most truly the gentleman! But tell me, Mr Nidd—”
“Now, hold hard, miss!” begged Mr Nidd. “I’m one as likes to have everything made clear, and what I don’t know, and didn’t care to take the liberty of asking him, is what relation he is to the Bart? He ain’t the Bart’s son, that’s sure, because, according to what you wrote to Sarey, the Bart’s son has got an outlandish name, which I don’t hold with. And what’s more, Miss Kate, you said the Bart’s son was the most beautiful young man you’d ever clapped eyes on, and if you was meaning this young fellow, it don’t fit! Not but what he’s as good-looking as any man need to be—ah, and would strip to advantage, too!”
“He is Sir Timothy’s nephew,” answered Kate briefly. “It is my turn to ask questions now, Mr Nidd! Is it true that Sarah has received only one of my letters to her?”
“Gospel true, miss!” asseverated Mr Nidd. “That was the scratch of a note you wrote to her when you first arrived at this Staplewood, and it relieved Sarey’s mind considerable, because you told her how kind your aunt was, and the Bart, and what a beautiful place it was, and how happy you was to be here, which got up her spirits wonderful. Properly hipped she was, after you’d gone off! She took an unaccountable dislike to her ladyship, but I’m blessed if I know why! Happy as a grig she was when she read your letter, until she got into the dumps again because she never had no answer to the letter she wrote you, nor so much as a line from you from that day to this.”
“Mr Nidd,” said Kate, in a rigidly controlled voice, “I have never had a letter from Sarah. I have written to her repeatedly, begging her to reply, but never has she done so. When Mr Broome told me that you had come to Market Harborough the most terrible apprehension seized me that you had come to tell me Sarah was ill, or—or dead!”
The effect of this disclosure on the patriarch was profound. After hearing Kate out in great astonishment, he wrapped himself in a cloak of silence, and, when she started to speak again, raised a forbidding hand, and said: “I got to think!”
In the middle of his ruminations, the waiter came in with a tray, which he set down on the table. Having offered Kate, with a low bow, a glass of lemonade, he carried a tankard over to Mr Nidd, and gave it to him with a much lower bow, intended to convey condescension, contempt, and derision. Fully alive to the implications of this covert insolence, Mr Nidd, taking the tankard with a brief thank’ee, recommended him to wipe his nose on a handkerchief instead of on the knees of his smalls, and told him to take himself off. After thus routing the adversary, he refreshed himself with a copious draught from the tankard, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and said portentously: “It’s a good thing I’ve come, Miss Kate, that’s what it is! Yes, and so Sarey will have to own! If I’ve told her once she ought to come herself to see how you was going on, I’ve told her a dozen times! But would she do it? Oh, no! She took a maggot into her head that you wouldn’t want her to come here, poking her nose in, now that you was living with your grand relations, and nothing me nor Joe said made her think different!”
“Oh, no, no!” Kate cried distressfully. “How could she have thought such a thing of me?”
“It’s no manner of use asking me that, miss, because there’s no saying what notions a nidgetty female will take into her head—even the best of ’em! “Well,” I says to her, “it ain’t like Miss Kate to act bumptious, and more shame to you, Sarey, for thinking it!” Then she started napping her bib, and saying that she didn’t think no such thing, and nobody could wonder at you being so took up with your relations that you was forgetful of your old nurse. “Well,” I says, sharp-like, “I don’t wonder at it, because I ain’t bottleheaded enough to believe it!” Then she sobs fit to bust her laces, and says as how I don’t understand! Which was true enough! “I can’t explain!” she says. “That’s easy seen!” I told her. But argufying with a ticklish female don’t do a bit of good, so I gave over. But the more I thought about it, the more I didn’t like it, nor think it was natural. “Something havey-cavey about this,” I says to myself: so when Sarey took herself off to Polly’s house I bought a new hat, and a shirt with winkers, packed up me traps, and came to Market Harborough on the stage-coach.”
“But—do you mean that Sarah doesn’t know?” asked Kate, dismayed. “Mr Nidd, you shouldn’t have come here without telling her! Only think how anxious she must be!”
He looked a little guilty, but replied in a very lofty way that he had left a message with Tom’s wife that if anyone were to inquire for him she was to say that he had gone into the country to visit a friend. “Which ain’t gammon,” he assured Kate, “because the buffer at the Cock is an old friend of mine. Regular bosom-birds we was used to be, afore I retired. Many’s the time I’ve fetched up at the Cock with a wagon-load of goods, and greased the tapster’s boy in the fist to make up his bed in the wagon, in case there might happen to be a prig, sneaking on the lurk. So don’t you worry your pretty head about that, Miss Kate! You got troubles of your own!”
“Indeed I haven’t!” said Kate quickly. “My aunt is kindness itself, I assure you!”
“It’s my belief,” said Mr Nidd, eyeing her narrowly, “that you’re being put upon, miss!”
“No, no, I promise you that isn’t true! Aunt Minerva treats me as if I were her daughter—only I hope she would allow a daughter to be more useful to her than I am! Whenever I beg her to give me some task to perform, the best she can think of is to ask me to cut and arrange flowers!”
Mr Nidd looked to be unconvinced. “Well, I got a notion you’re moped, miss!” he said. “I may be wrong, but I disremember when I last had the wrong sow by the ear. I daresay I never did, because I’ve got a deal of rumgumption, and always did have—whatever Sarey may tell you to the contrary!”
“I know you have, Mr Nidd, but if you think I look moped you’ve made a mistake this time! To own the truth, I’m bored! From not having enough to do! And the worst of it is that I can’t persuade my aunt that I am yearning for occupation. You know, I have never been used to lead a life of indolence.”
“No, and nor you ain’t been used to enjoying yourself neither!” he retorted. “Many’s the time Sarey has got to fretting and fuming because you don’t go to balls, and routs, and suchlike as a young lady should, and the only thing which plucked her up when you didn’t write was thinking as you was probably too taken up with parties to have a minute to spare! Now, you don’t mean to tell me that you’re bored with parties already, Miss Kate!”