Queen Bee all to himself in a remote corner of the cow-house, rubbing old spotted Nancy's curly brow, catching at her polished black-tipped horn, and listening to his hopes and fears for the next half year. Not so Frederick, as he stood at the door with Jessie Carey, who, having no love for the cow-house, especially when in her best silk, thought always ready to take care of the children there, was very glad to secure a companion outside, especially one so handsome, so much more polished than any of her cousins, and so well able to reply to her small talk. Little did she guess how far off he wished her, or how he longed to be listening to his uncles, talking to Beatrice, sticking holly into the cows' halters with John and Richard, scrambling into the hay-loft with Carey and William-anywhere, rather than be liable to the imputation of being too fine a gentleman to enter a cow-house.
This accusation never entered the head of any one but himself; but still an attack was in store for him. After a few words to Martin the cowman, and paying their respects to the pigs, the party left the farm-yard, and the inhabitants of Sutton Leigh took the path to their own abode, while Beatrice turned round to her cousin, saying, 'Well, Fred, I congratulate you on your politeness! How well you endured being victimised!'
'I victimised! How do you know I was not enchanted?'
'Nay, you can't deceive me while you have a transparent face. Trust me for finding out whether you are bored or not. Besides, I would not pay so bad a compliment to your taste as to think otherwise.'
'How do you know I was not exercising the taste of Rubens himself? I was actually admiring you all, and thinking how like it all was to that great print from one of his pictures; the building with its dark gloomy roof, and open sides, the twilight, the solitary dispersed snow-flakes, the haze of dust, the sleek cattle, and their long white horns.'
'Quite poetical,' said Queen Bee, in a short, dry, satirical manner. 'How charmed Jessie must have been!'
'Why?' said Fred, rather provoked.
'Such masterly eyes are not common among our gentlemen. You will be quite her phoenix; and how much 'Thomson's Seasons' you will have to hear! I dare say you have had it already-
'Now, shepherds, to your helpless charge be kind!''
'Well, very good advice, too,' said Fred.
'I hate and detest Thomson,' said Beatrice; 'above all, for travestying Ruth into 'the lovely young Lavinia;' so whenever Jessie treated me to any of her quotations, I criticised him without mercy, and at last I said, by great good luck, that the only use of him was to serve as an imposition for young ladies at second-rate boarding schools. It was a capital hit, for Alex found out that it was the way she learnt so much of him, and since that time I have heard no more of 'Jemmy Thomson! Jemmy Thomson! O!''
The laughter which followed this speech had a tone in it, which, reaching Mr. Geoffrey Langford, who was walking a little in front with his mother, made him suspect that the young people were getting into such spirits as were not quite Sunday-like; and, turning round, he asked them some trifling question, which made him a party to the conversation, and brought it back to a quieter, though not less merry tone.
Dinner was at five, and Henrietta was dressed so late that Queen Bee had to come up to sum- mon her, and bring her down after every one was in the dining-room-an entrée all the more formidable, because Mr. Franklin was dining there, as well as Uncle Roger and Alexander.
Thanks in some degree to her own dawdling, she had been in a hurry the whole day, and she longed for a quiet evening: but here it seemed to her, as with the best intentions it usually is, in a large party, that, but for the laying aside of needlework, of secular books and secular music, it might as well have been any other day of the week.
Her mamma was very tired, and went to bed before tea, the gentlemen had a long talk over the fire, the boys and Beatrice laughed and talked, and she helped her grandmamma to hand about the tea, answering her questions about her mother's health and habits, and heard a good deal that interested her, but still she could not feel as if it were Sunday. At Rocksand she used to sit for many a pleasant hour, either in the darkening summer twilight, or the bright red light of the winter fire, repeating or singing hymns, and enjoying the most delightful talks that the whole week had to offer, and now she greatly missed the conversation that would have 'set this strange week to rights in her head,' as she said to herself.
She thought over it a good deal whilst Bennet was brushing her hair at night, feeling as if it had been a week- day, and as if it would be as difficult to begin a new fresh week on Monday morning, as it would a new day after sitting up a whole night. How far this was occasioned by Knight Sutton habits, and how far it was her own fault, was not what she asked herself, though she sat up for a long time musing on the change in her way of life, and scarcely able to believe that it was only last Sunday that she had been sitting with her mother over their fire at Rocksand. Enough had happened for a whole month. Her darling project was fulfilled; the airy castle of former days had become a substance, and she was inhabiting it: and was she really so very much happier? There she went into a reverie-but musing is not meditating, nor vague dreamings wholesome reflections; she went on sitting their, chiefly for want of energy to move, till the fire burnt low, the clock struck twelve, and Mrs. Frederick Langford exclaimed in a sleepy voice, 'My dear, are you going to sleep there?'
CHAPTER VIII.
BREAKFAST was nearly over on Monday morning, when a whole party of the Sutton Leigh boys entered with the intelligence that the great pond in Knight's Portion was quite frozen over, and that skating might begin without loss of time.
'You are coming, are you not, Bee?' said Alex, leaning over the back of her chair.
'O yes,' said she, nearly whispering 'only take care. It is taboo there,'-and she made a sign with her hand towards Mrs. Langford, 'and don't frighten Aunt Mary about Fred. O it is too late, Carey's doing the deed as fast as he can.'
Carey was asking Fred whether he had ever skated, or could skate, and Fred was giving an account of his exploits in that line at school, hoping it might prove to his mother that he might be trusted to take care of himself since he had dared the danger before. In vain: the alarmed expression had come over her face, as she asked Alexander whether his father had looked at the ice.
'No,' said Alex, 'but it is perfectly safe. I tried it this morning, and it is as firm as this marble chimney- piece.'
'He is pretty well to be trusted,' said his grandfather, 'more especially as it would be difficult to get drowned there.'
'I would give a shilling to anyone who could drown himself there,' said Alex.
'The travelling man did,' exclaimed at once Carey, John, and Richard.
'Don't they come in just like the Greek chorus?' said Beatrice, in a whisper to Fred, who gave a little laugh, but was too anxious to attend to her.
'I thought he was drowned in the river,' said Alex.
'No, it was in the deep pool under the weeping willow, where the duckweed grows so rank in summer,' said Carey.
Uncle Geoffrey laughed. 'I am sorry to interfere with your romantic embellishments, Carey, or with the credit of your beloved pond, since you are determined not to leave it behindhand with its neighbours.'
'I always thought it was there,' said the boy.
'And thought wrong; the poor man was found in the river two miles off.'
'I always heard it was at Knight's Pool,' repeated Carey.
'I do not know what you may have heard,' said Uncle Geoffrey; 'but as it happened a good while before you were born, I think you had better not argue the point.'
'Grandpapa,' persisted Carey, 'was it not in Knight's Pool?'
'Certainly not,' was the answer drily given.
'Well,' continued Carey, 'I am sure you might drown yourself there.'
'Rather than own yourself mistaken,' said Uncle Geoffrey.
