Armadale

smiling, at the flowers in her lap.

'I deserve a good scolding,' she said. 'I don't deserve compliments, Mr. Armadale—least of all from you.'

'Oh, yes, you do!' cried the headlong Allan, getting briskly on his legs. 'Besides, it isn't a compliment; it's true. You are the prettiest—I beg your pardon, Miss Milroy! my tongue ran away with me that time.'

Among the heavy burdens that are laid on female human nature, perhaps the heaviest, at the age of sixteen, is the burden of gravity. Miss Milroy struggled, tittered, struggled again, and composed herself for the time being.

The gardener, who still stood where he had stood from the first, immovably waiting for his next opportunity, saw it now, and gently pushed his personal interests into the first gap of silence that had opened within his reach since Allan's appearance on the scene.

'I humbly bid you welcome to Thorpe Ambrose, sir,' said Abraham Sage, beginning obstinately with his little introductory speech for the second time. 'My name—'

Before he could deliver himself of his name, Miss Milroy looked accidentally in the horticulturist's pertinacious face, and instantly lost her hold on her gravity beyond recall. Allan, never backward in following a boisterous example of any sort, joined in her laughter with right goodwill. The wise man of the gardens showed no surprise, and took no offense. He waited for another gap of silence, and walked in again gently with his personal interests the moment the two young people stopped to take breath.

'I have been employed in the grounds,' proceeded Abraham Sage, irrepressibly, 'for more than forty years —'

'You shall be employed in the grounds for forty more, if you'll only hold your tongue and take yourself off!' cried Allan, as soon as he could speak.

'Thank you kindly, sir,' said the gardener, with the utmost politeness, but with no present signs either of holding his tongue or of taking himself off.

'Well?' said Allan.

Abraham Sage carefully cleared his throat, and shifted his rake from one hand to the other. He looked down the length of his own invaluable implement, with a grave interest and attention, seeing, apparently, not the long handle of a rake, but the long perspective of a vista, with a supplementary personal interest established at the end of it. 'When more convenient, sir,' resumed this immovable man, 'I should wish respectfully to speak to you about my son. Perhaps it may be more convenient in the course of the day? My humble duty, sir, and my best thanks. My son is strictly sober. He is accustomed to the stables, and he belongs to the Church of England—without incumbrances.' Having thus planted his offspring provisionally in his master's estimation, Abraham Sage shouldered his invaluable rake, and hobbled slowly out of view.

'If that's a specimen of a trustworthy old servant,' said Allan, 'I think I'd rather take my chance of being cheated by a new one. You shall not be troubled with him again, Miss Milroy, at any rate. All the flower-beds in the garden are at your disposal, and all the fruit in the fruit season, if you'll only come here and eat it.'

'Oh, Mr. Armadale, how very, very kind you are. How can I thank you?'

Allan saw his way to another compliment—an elaborate compliment, in the shape of a trap, this time.

'You can do me the greatest possible favor,' he said. 'You can assist me in forming an agreeable impression of my own grounds.'

'Dear me! how?' asked Miss Milroy, innocently.

Allan judiciously closed the trap on the spot in these words: 'By taking me with you, Miss Milroy, on your morning walk.' He spoke, smiled, and offered his arm.

She saw the way, on her side, to a little flirtation. She rested her hand on his arm, blushed, hesitated, and suddenly took it away again.

'I don't think it's quite right, Mr. Armadale,' she said, devoting herself with the deepest attention to her collection of flowers. 'Oughtn't we to have some old lady here? Isn't it improper to take your arm until I know you a little better than I do now? I am obliged to ask; I have had so little instruction; I have seen so little of society, and one of papa's friends once said my manners were too bold for my age. What do you think?'

'I think it's a very good thing your papa's friend is not here now,' answered the outspoken Allan; 'I should quarrel with him to a dead certainty. As for society, Miss Milroy, nobody knows less about it than I do; but if we had an old lady here, I must say myself I think she would be uncommonly in the way. Won't you?' concluded Allan, imploringly offering his arm for the second time. 'Do!'

Miss Milroy looked up at him sidelong from her flowers 'You are as bad as the gardener, Mr. Armadale!' She looked down again in a flutter of indecision. 'I'm sure it's wrong,' she said, and took his arm the instant afterward without the slightest hesitation.

They moved away together over the daisied turf of the paddock, young and bright and happy, with the sunlight of the summer morning shining cloudless over their flowery path.

'And where are we going to, now?' asked Allan. 'Into another garden?'

She laughed gayly. 'How very odd of you, Mr. Armadale, not to know, when it all belongs to you! Are you really seeing Thorpe Ambrose this morning for the first time? How indescribably strange it must feel! No, no; don't say any more complimentary things to me just yet. You may turn my head if you do. We haven't got the old lady with us; and I really must take care of myself. Let me be useful; let me tell you all about your own grounds. We are going out at that little gate, across one of the drives in the park, and then over the rustic bridge, and then round the corner of the plantation—where do you think? To where I live, Mr. Armadale; to the lovely little cottage that you have let to papa. Oh, if you only knew how lucky we thought ourselves to get it!'

She paused, looked up at her companion, and stopped another compliment on the incorrigible Allan's lips.

'I'll drop your arm,' she said coquettishly, 'if you do! We were lucky to get the cottage, Mr. Armadale. Papa said he felt under an obligation to you for letting it, the day we got in. And I said I felt under an obligation, no longer ago than last week.'