The farmer laughed. “Ah! my dear, but what matter? I shall see her soon enough; all I want to, maybe.”
“But most engaged people like to see a little of one another before they’re married, don’t they, uncle? I know Ralph would be quite mad if he couldn’t see me.”
“But, my pretty, this is quite a different case. When Bert and I”—he spoke of the idiot as if they had been comrades, instead of master and servant—“have bought a new load of lop-ears, we never tease ’em or fret ’em before we get ’em home.”
“But Lacrima isn’t a rabbit!” cried Gladys impatiently; “she’s a girl like me, and wants what all girls want, to be petted and spoilt a little before she’s plunged into marriage.”
“She didn’t strike me as wanting anything of that kind, when I made up to her in our parlour,” replied Mr. Goring.
“Oh you dear old stupid!” cried his niece, “can’t you understand that’s what we’re all like? We all put on airs, and have fancies, and look cross; but we want to be petted all the same. We want it all the more!”
“I reckon I’d better leave well alone all the same, just at present,” observed the farmer. “If I was to go stroking her and making up to her, while she’s on the road, maybe when we got her into the hutch she’d bite like a weasel.”
“She’d never really bite!” retorted his companion. “You don’t know her as well as I do. I tell you, uncle, she’s got no more spirit than a tame pigeon.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” said the farmer.
Gladys flicked the grass impatiently with the end of her parasol.
“You may take my word for it, uncle,” she continued. “The whole thing’s put on. It’s all affectation and nonsense. Do you think she’d have agreed to marry you if she wasn’t ready for a little fun? Of course she’s ready! She’s only waiting for you to begin. It makes it more exciting for her, when she cries out and looks injured. That’s the only reason why she does it. Lots of girls are like that, you know!”
“Are they, my pretty, are they?’ Tis difficult to tell that kind, maybe, from the other kind. But I’m not a man for too much of these fancy ways.”
“You’re not drawing back, uncle, are you?” cried Gladys, in considerable alarm.
“God darn me, no!” replied the farmer. “I’m going to carry this business through. Don’t you fuss yourself. Only I like doing these things in my own way — dost understand me, my dear? — in my own way; and then, if so be they go wrong, I can’t put the blame on no one else.”
“I wonder you aren’t more keen, uncle,” began Gladys insinuatingly, following another track, “to see more of a pretty girl you’re just going to marry. I don’t believe you half know how pretty she is! I wish you could see her doing her hair in the morning.”
“I shall see her, soon enough, my lass; don’t worry,” replied the farmer.
“I should so love to see you give her one kiss,” murmured Gladys. “Of course, she’d struggle and make a fuss, but she’d really be enjoying it all the time.”
“Maybe she would, my pretty, and maybe she wouldn’t. I’m not one that likes hearing either rabbits or maidens start the squealing game. It fair gives me the shivers. Bert, he can stand it, but I never could. It’s nature, I suppose. A man can’t change his nature no more than a cow nor a horse.”
“I can’t understand you, uncle,” observed Gladys. “If I were in your place, I’m sure I shouldn’t be satisfied without at least kissing the girl I was going to marry. I’d find some way of getting round her, however sulky she was. Oh, I’m sure you don’t half know how nice Lacrima is to kiss!”
“I suppose she isn’t so mighty different, come to that,” replied the farmer, “than any other maid. I don’t mind if I give you a kiss, my beauty!” he added, encircling his niece with an affectionate embrace and kissing her flushed cheek. “There — there! Best let well alone, sweetheart, and leave your old uncle to manage his own little affairs according to his own fashion!”
But Gladys was not so easily put off. She had recourse to her fertile imagination.
“You should have heard what she said to me the other night, uncle. You know the way girls talk — or you ought to, anyhow! She said she hoped you’d go on being the same simple fool, after you were married. She said she’d find it mighty easy to twist you round her finger. ‘Why,’ she said, ‘I can do what I like with him now. He treats me as if I were a high-born lady and he were a mere common man. I believe he’s downright afraid of me!’ That’s the sort of things she says about you, uncle. She thinks in her heart that you’re just a fool, a simple frightened fool!”
“Darn her! she does, does she?” cried Mr. Goring, touched at last by the serpent’s tongue. “She thinks I’m a fool, does she? Well! Let her have her laugh. Them laughs best as laughs last, in my thinking!”
“Yes, she thinks you’re a great big silly fool, uncle. Of course its all pretence, her talk about wanting you to be like that; but that’s what she thinks you are. What she’d really like — only she doesn’t say so, even to me — would be for you to catch her suddenly round the waist and kiss her on the mouth, and laugh at her pretendings. I expect she’s waiting to give you a chance to do something of that sort; only you don’t come near her. Oh, she must think you’re a monstrous fool! She must chuckle to herself to think what a fool you are.”
“I’ll teach her what kind of a fool I am,” muttered Mr. Goring, “when I’ve got her to myself, up at the farm. This business of dangling after a maid’s apron strings, this kissing and cuddling, don’t suit somehow with my nature. I’m not one of your fancy-courting ones and never was!”
“Listen, uncle!” said Gladys eagerly, laying her hand on his arm. “Suppose I was to take her up to Cæsar’s Quarry this afternoon? That would be a lovely chance! You could come strolling round about four o’clock. I’d be on the watch; and before she knew you were there, I’d scramble out, and you could climb down. She couldn’t get away from you, and you’d have quite a nice little bit of love-making.”
Mr. Goring paused, and prodded the ground with the end of his stick.
“What a little devil you are!” he exclaimed. “Darn me if this here job isn’t a queer business! Here are you, putting yourself out and fussing around, only for a fellow to have what’s due to him. You leave us alone, sweetheart, my young lady and me! I reckon we know what’s best for ourselves, without you thrusting your hand in.”
“But you might just walk up that way, uncle; it isn’t far over the hill. I’d give — oh, I don’t know what! — to see you two together. She wants to be teased a little, you know! She’s getting too proud and self-satisfied for anything. It would do her ever so much good to be taught a lesson. It isn’t much to do, is it? Just to give the girl you’re going to marry one little kiss?”
“But how do I know you two wenches aren’t fooling me, even now?” protested the cautious farmer. “’Tis just the sort of maids’ trick ye might set out to play upon a man. How do I know ye haven’t put your two darned little heads together over this job?”
Gladys looked round. They were approaching the Mill Copse.
“Please, uncle,” she cried, “don’t say such things to me. You know I wouldn’t join with anyone against you. Least of all with her! Just do as I tell you, and stroll up to Cæsar’s Quarry about four o’clock. I promise you faithfully I haven’t said a word to her about it. Please, uncle, be nice and kind over this.”
She threw her arms round Mr. Goring’s neck. “You haven’t done anything for me for a long time,” she murmured in her most persuasive tone. “Do you remember how I used to give you butterfly-kisses when I was a little girl, and you kept apples for me in the big loft?