“I could complain of something much worse,” muttered Walter. “Get away, Lucy?”
“I won’t at your bidding, sir.”
To Walter’s great relief, Rose entered at that moment, and all was smooth and quiet; Lucy became silent, and the conversation was kept up in safe terms between Rose and the young officer. The colonel, it appeared, was so much better that he intended to leave Forest Lea that very day; and it was not long before he came down, and presently afterwards Lady Woodley, looking very pale and exhausted, for her anxieties had kept her awake all night.
After a breakfast on bread, cheese, rashers of bacon, and beer, the horses were brought to the door, and the colonel took his leave of Lady Woodley, thanking her much for her hospitality.
“I wish it had been better worth accepting,” said she.
“I wish it had, though not for my own sake,” said the colonel. “I wish you would allow me to attempt something in your favour. One thing, perhaps, you will deign to accept. Every royalist house, especially those belonging to persons engaged at Worcester, is liable to be searched, and to have soldiers quartered on them, to prevent fugitives from being harboured there. I will send Sylvester at once to obtain a protection for you, which may prevent you from being thus disturbed.”
“That will be a kindness, indeed,” said Lady Woodley, hardly able to restrain the eagerness with which she heard the offer made, that gave the best hope of saving her son. She was not certain that the colonel had not some suspicion of the true state of the case, and would not take notice, unwilling to ruin the son of his friend, and at the same time reluctant to fail in his duty to his employers.
He soon departed; Mistress Lucy’s farewell to Sylvester being thus: “Good-bye, Mr. Roundhead, rebel, crop-eared traitor.” At which Sylvester and his father turned and laughed, and their two soldiers looked very much astonished.
Lady Woodley called Lucy at once, and spoke to her seriously on her forwardness and impertinence. “I could tell you, Lucy, that it is not like a young lady, but I must tell you more, it is not like a young Christian maiden. Do you remember the text that I gave you to learn a little while ago—the ornament fit for a woman?”
Lucy hung her head, and with tears filling her eyes, as her mother prompted her continually, repeated the text in a low mumbling voice, half crying: “Whose adorning, let it not be the putting on of gold, or the plaiting of hair, or the putting on of apparel, but let it be the hidden man of the heart, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.”
“And does my little Lucy think she showed that ornament when she pushed herself forward to talk idle nonsense, and make herself be looked at and taken notice of?”
Lucy put her finger in her mouth; she did not like to be scolded, as she called it, gentle as her mother was, and she would not open her mind to take in the kind reproof.
Lady Woodley took the old black-covered Bible, and finding two of the verses in S. James about the government of the tongue, desired Lucy to learn them by heart before she went out of the house; and the little girl sat down with them in the window-seat, in a cross impatient mood, very unfit for learning those sacred words. “She had done no harm,” she thought; “she could not help it if the young gentleman would talk to her!”
So there she sat, with the Bible in her lap, alone, for Lady Woodley was so harassed and unwell, in consequence of her anxieties, that Rose had persuaded her to go and lie down on her bed, since it would be better for her not to try to see Edmund till the promised protection had arrived, lest suspicion should be excited. Rose was busy about her household affairs; Eleanor, a handy little person, was helping her; and Walter and Charles were gone out to gather apples for a pudding which she had promised them.
Lucy much wished to be with them; and after a long brooding over her ill-temper, it began to wear out, not to be conquered, but to depart of itself; she thought she might as well learn her lesson and have done with it; so by way of getting rid of the task, not of profiting by the warning it conveyed, she hurried through the two verses ending with—“Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth!”
As soon as she could say them perfectly, she raced upstairs, and into her mother’s room, gave her the book, and repeated them at her fastest pace. Poor Lady Woodley was too weary and languid to exert herself to speak to the little girl about her unsuitable manner, or to try to bring the lesson home to her; she dismissed her, only saying, “I hope, my dear, you will remember this,” and away ran Lucy, first to the orchard in search of her brothers, and not finding them there, round and round the garden and pleasance. Edmund, in his hiding-place, heard the voice calling “Walter! Charlie!” and peeping out, caught a glimpse of a little figure, her long frock tucked over her arm, and long locks of dark hair blowing out from under her small, round, white cap. What a pleasure it was to him to have that one view of his little sister!
At last, tired with her search, Lucy returned to the house, and there found Deborah ironing at the long table in the hall, and crooning away her one dismal song of “Barbara Allen’s cruelty.”
“So you can sing again, Deb,” she began, “now the Roundheads are gone and Diggory come back?”
“Little girls should not meddle with what does not concern them,” answered Deborah.
“You need not call me a little girl,” said Lucy. “I am almost eleven years old; and I know a secret, a real secret.”
“A secret, Mistress Lucy? Who would tell their secrets to the like of you?” said Deborah, contemptuously.
“No one told me; I found it out for myself!” cried Lucy, in high exultation. “I know what became of the pigeon pie that we thought Rose ate up!”
“Eh? Mistress Lucy!” exclaimed Deborah, pausing in her ironing, full of curiosity.
Lucy was delighted to detail the whole of what she had observed.
“Well!” cried Deborah, “if ever I heard tell the like! That slip of a thing out in all the blackness of the night! I should be afraid of my life of the ghosts and hobgoblins. Oh! I had rather be set up for a mark for all the musketeers in the Parliament army, than set one foot out of doors after dark!”
As Deborah spoke, Walter came into the hall. He saw that Lucy had observed something, and was anxious every time she opened her lips. This made him rough and sharp with her, and he instantly exclaimed, “How now, Lucy, still gossipping?”
“You are so cross, I can’t speak a word for you,” said Lucy, fretfully, walking out of the room, while Walter, in his usual imperious way, began to shout for Diggory and his boots. “Diggory, knave!”
“Anon, sir!” answered the dogged voice.
“Bring them, I say, you laggard!”
“Coming, sir, coming.”
“Coming, are you, you snail?” cried Walter, impatiently. “Your heels are tardier now than they were at Worcester!”
“A man can’t do more nor he can do, sir,” said Diggory, sullenly, as he plodded into the hall.
“Answering again, lubber?” said Walter. “Is this what you call cleaned? You are not fit for your own shoe-blacking trade! Get along with you!” and he threw the boots at Diggory in a passion. “I must wear them, though, as they are, or wait all day. Bring them to me again.”
Walter had some idle notion in his head that it was Puritanical to speak courteously to servants, and despising Diggory for his cowardice and stupidity, he was especially overbearing with him, and went on rating him all the time he was putting on his boots, to go out and try to catch some fish for the morrow’s dinner, which was likely to be but scanty. As soon as he was gone, Diggory, who had listened in sulky silence, began to utter his complaints.
“Chicken-heart, moon-calf, awkward lubber, those be the best words a poor fellow gets. I can tell Master Walter that these are no times for gentlefolks to be hectoring, especially when they haven’t a penny to pay wages with.”