CHAPTER VI

_JUNE_

"Now is the time for mirth,

Nor cheek or tongue be dumbe,

For the flowrie earth

The golden pomp is come."

HERRICK.

Yes, the golden pomp had come. The earth was radiant. Down below the

Abbey extended sheets of golden buttercups, the world was full of

song, and a clear turquoise sky, cloudless and glorious, rose above

us, and all through the joyous days we were bathed in glad sunshine.

Peace had come, inside and outside the house. The storms that ended

May had vanished, and my domestic coach seemed rolling gaily along.

Bess had grown good again, the roughest children sometimes do. The

lessons were learnt without too much grumbling, and Miss Weldon no

longer carried her head low with shame. Mrs. Langdale and Célestine

had settled down into hostile neutrality, and for that I was thankful.

"Ma'zelle's tongue is like a firebrand, but I give her no chance, I

never speak to her," my old friend told me. And as angry silence is

better than open war, I received its advent with thanksgiving; but

all messages were impossible, and I suspected Fremantle had hard work

to steer his boat between the sullen seas of "the room."

[Sidenote: A SUMMER GARDEN]

But a truce to domestic worries, for early in June I gardened; that

is to say, I stood about on the close-shorn turf and Burbidge gave

directions for the summer plants to be put in the beds. This always

is a solemn summer function, and Burbidge had all the importance of a

Prime Minister moving amongst his Cabinet, whilst I stood by and

admired.

On the east side of the Abbey Farmery, as it was once called, we had

already put in round beds of heliotrope (the old cherry-pie of

childhood). Burbidge had planted a bed of scarlet verbenas, and was,

when I went out, putting in one of the delicate pure white variety,

that smells so sweet after a passing shower in the twilight. Besides

these, there were to be spudded in beds of crimson and scarlet

geraniums, near the high southern wall running from the oratory to

the gazebo. We had planted, a few years before, sweet tea-roses of

all colours--pink, orange, and copper, a _Choisya ternata_, the

orange-blossom of Mexico, patches of close-clinging Virginian

creeper, to enjoy their autumn glory, and over the pillars different

varieties of large-flowering clematises. These, as they make their

full growth, will be tied to the stone balls that crown the wall. The

clematises are of the most beautiful modern sorts, mauve, lavender,

and purple, and in August and September, I trust, will repay us amply

for our care during the dark winter months, and in the sharp winds of

March.

Burbidge was solemnly having his plants brought out, and stood

watching that no mishap took place, for, he assured me, "boys were

born careless."

Round the sundial were to be planted four scarlet plots of geraniums,

and all were to be edged with a ribbon of blue lobelia. "How

commonplace!" some of my readers will exclaim; but all the same, very

gay and cheery during the late summer and early autumn, and a

brilliant note of colour when the glory of the herbaceous borders is

over. We must always remember that there are many forms of beauty,

and that even the newest one day will be old-fashioned, and that a

fashion immediately past may have something to commend it, in spite

of the gardening papers of the day, and _learned critics_. When the

beds were planted and the tiny little string of lobelia added, then

the wire netting that encircled each bed was carefully put back, or

otherwise, to quote Burbidge, "Adam and his crew would soon be the

death of the greenhouse stuff, sure enough."

After that, we planted a bed of heliotrope, of a beautiful Jamaica

variety, that was brought back from there by a friend; and then a bed

or two of fuchsias, including a few two- or three-year-old standards

in the centre, for nothing gives a bed greater beauty than that it

should be of different heights. The old flat bed was poor and ugly,

and did not give half the effect of colour that one does of different

heights. Then I saw put out beds of latana, red, yellow, and brown,

and salmon and pink geraniums, and the old stone troughs and tubs

were filled with rich velvety petunias. After all the small beds were

planted, we came to the long border immediately in front of the new

southern wall. There Burbidge put in squares of that dear old plant

known to children as the lemon verbena plant, and great patches of

many different sorts of sweet-scented geraniums. Amongst these

delights were the old peppermint, the rose geranium, the

lemon-scented, the citron-scented, the apple-scented, and the

pennyroyal, and some of the best of the named sorts, such as Little

Gem, Pretty Polly, Lady Plymouth, Shottesham Park, and Lady

Scarborough. Altogether, Burbidge told me with pride, there were not

less than twenty sorts. All these perfumed pelargoniums have a

delicious fragrance of their own, distinct, and exquisitely sweet.

All will bed out well in an English garden, but care should be taken

to plant out in the same bed sorts that grow about the same height,

as some varieties are much more vigorous than others in the open,

and, to quote Burbidge's words, "fair trample down the weaker sorts,

like horses wud childer, if yer put 'em alongside."

In this long border there were also placed round bushes of Paris

Marguerites, and here and there Burbidge slipped in a castor-oil

plant with its overshadowing handsome foliage and horse-chestnut-like

fruit, and at intervals a spike of cannas, and a plant or two of

tasselled maize with variegated leaf, "to bring them tropics home," I

was told. Then in the foreground, "his boys" spudded in African

marigolds, soft mauve violas, asters, and stocks, besides patches of

geraniums, to bring in "a smart snap of colour," as my old gardener

put it.

[Sidenote: "SOME NOSEGAY BLOWS"]

After luncheon I went out on the other side of the old house, to what

is known as the Quadrangle, to witness further garden operations. I

pleaded in favour of putting into some of the tubs what Burbidge

calls "some nosegay blows." Burbidge acceded to my request; "But us

must mind the colours too," he declared. He put in, however, to

please me, a few little brown evening stocks, that smell sweetest at

nights, for I told him that it was delightful to come and sit out

after dinner, and enjoy the scents of night. He put in a few verbenas

also, for the chance of evening showers, some nicotianas, and a few

crimson humeas. Round the old redstone building, he planted three

rows of Jacoby geraniums, "For them will mean brightness," he said.

As I stood and watched the last row of geraniums being put in the

soil, I was joined by Bess and Mouse.

"Oh, mum!" Bess told me, "Mouse has been growling and growling at

something behind the ivy. If it had been at night, I should say she

had met a devil or ogre. Every minute she was with Nana and me, she

got crosser and crosser; and see, her nose is quite red and bleeding,

just like Hals' when he tumbled downstairs. Could it be a real

robber?" and Bess's eyes opened wide.

"No," I answered, "I don't think it could be a robber; but let's go

and see."

So we started off across the gravel. Mouse ran on ahead, as if

anxious to show us something. Suddenly she stopped with a whimper. I

followed on, jumped down the crypt, and, peering behind the ivy

leaves, soon discovered the cause of my dog's excitement and

displeasure. I found half covered up with dead leaves and rolled

tightly into a ball of prickles, a poor little hedgehog.

"For shame, Mouse!" I cried, and called her off. For Mouse, at the

sight of the poor little beast, growled angrily, and wished once more

to go for her antagonist.

"Better to kill un'," said Burbidge, who had arrived on the scene.

"Hedgehogs baint good for naught. They be milk-suckers, and death on

the squire's game."

For like most country-folks, Burbidge's hand was against hedgehogs.

Burbidge had in his hand a rake, and was about to strike the poor

little prickly creature, but I interposed.

[Sidenote: MY SANCTUARY]

"They do no harm. Besides, this is my sanctuary," I said. "In the

Abbey Church no bird or beast may be harmed."

Burbidge walked away growling, "Varmint should be killed anywhere."

Then Bess and I went and inspected the little ball of spikes.

"See, Bess," I said, "how it defends itself. All the winter this

hedgehog has slept amongst a bed of dead ivy leaves, and so has

passed long months. But now that summer has returned it will walk

about, and at nights he will crop the grass, and eat insects."

Mouse looked abashed at my lavishing notice on a hedgehog, and jumped

up on a bank of thyme and watched intently what I was doing. Great

Danes are remarkably sensitive dogs, and the mildest rebuke is often

sufficient to make them miserable for long spells. A friend of mine,

who had a very large one, said, "I never dared do more than whip its

kennel. As a puppy, that was punishment enough." So I spoke gently to

Mouse, and said, "You must never hurt hedgehogs again." At this,

Mouse gravely descended from her heights, sat down by my side, and

inspected the hedgehog, and I felt certain she would never hurt one

again.

Then I said to Bess that perhaps there were some little hedgehogs not

far off, funny little creatures, born with little, almost soft,

prickles; and I told the child how useful they were in a garden. How

they feed on slugs and insects, and how, when introduced in a

kitchen, they would even eat black beetles.

"Once," I told my little maid, "I had read that a poor scullion, in

the Middle Ages, had one that he taught to turn the spit. So you see,

Bess," I said, "hedgehogs can be very useful creatures; not at all

the wicked murderous race that Burbidge would wish you to believe."

Bess looked at me askance. "I cannot like them as much as you, mama,"

she answered in a pained voice; "for Nana said too that they sucked

the cows. And see how this one has pricked poor Mouse's nose."

"Well, let us leave the hedgehog," at last I said, "and wash foolish

Mouse's wounds." So we wandered off to the fountain, and dipped our

handkerchiefs into the clear water, and washed my great hound's fond

and foolish nose.

At first, Mouse objected; but as Bess told her, "One gets used to

washing, same as lessons," so after a minute or two, she sat by us

until we had washed away all traces of the fray.

As we were thus engaged, Auguste, the French cook, went by. I

noticed, as he passed us, that he carried in his hand a basket.

"Voyez, madame," he cried. "Quelle belle trouvaille. Elles sont

superbes." And he showed me a mass of creepy, crawly, slimy brown

snails. Auguste was as proud as if he had found a basketful of

new-laid eggs, and proposed with his aides to have a magnificent

_souper_. "Quelle luxe!" I heard him say to himself, as he made his

way to his kitchen, "et dire dans toute cette valetaille il n'y a que

nous, qui en voudrons."

Auguste will steep them in cold water, and then cook them. I must

honestly confess I have never had the courage to eat one, but I

believe now that there is a growing demand for escargots in London,

and I have been told that in one shop alone, more than a hundred

thousand are sold each season.

"Come on, mamsie," at last cried Bess. "Even Nana couldn't make Mouse

cleaner." So my little maid and I went off hand-in-hand across the

well-tended lawns of the Cloister garth.

[Sidenote: "ONLY YOU AND ME AND MOUSE"]

Bess was full of confidences. "Mamsie," said my little maid, "I never

want to grow any older, 'cause why--I should have to wear long, long

dresses, like grown-ups, and then, how could I climb the trees. But I

should like all days to go on just the same as to-day--no lessons, no

rain, no governesses, nobody but you and me and Mouse."

I caught something of the child's enthusiasm. The glory of the summer

was like an intoxicating draught. "Wouldn't it be lovely, dear," I

said, "to have no commonplaces, no tiresome duties--only summer and

the song of birds; and never to catch cold, or feel ill, or tired, or

worried?"

Bess laughed, and we kissed each other.

We walked on along the path that encircled the ruins. Young, fat,

flopperty thrushes, with large brown eyes and short tails, hopped

about the grass. On the bough of a lime tree, we came across a line

of little tom-tits, nine in a row. There they sat, chirping softly,

or charming, as the people call it here. The poor parent birds, in an

agony of terror, flew backwards and forwards, imploring their

offspring to return to the nest, but the young ones took no notice.

They would not believe in the existence of such monsters as boys or

cats. They, too, like us, were charmed with the sunshine and the

gaiety of the outside world, and utterly declined to go back to what

folks call here, "their hat of feathers." A little further on,

however, our enthusiasms received a chill. In the branches of a dead

laurel, that I had for some time been watching, was a thrush's nest,

and it was deserted. The mother-bird had sat day and night, and I had

watched the tips of her brown tail, or met, at intervals, the gaze of

her round anxious eye. And now the nest was forsaken. How sad! She

had become almost a friend. For days, after breakfast, I had brought

out a saucer full of bread and milk, and placed it at a respectful

distance from the nest. And yet in spite of all my care, behold! an

enemy had come in the night, some horrid boy or evil cat, and the

thrush had forsaken the nest, and we lamented over the eggs--cold as

stones.

I showed Bess the nest. "How wicked!" cried Bess, "to frighten off a

poor bird like that. Well, I am sure," she added, "the wicked

creature that has done that ought to go to prison. Perhaps Barbara,

the housemaid," she continued, after a moment's reflection, "might

tell her policeman. Policemen should be of use, sometimes."

With a sense of regret, I retraced my steps, till I reached the

tourist's wicket, that leads into the public road. Seated close by,

on a mossy bank, I found old Timothy Theobalds.

I told him about the forsaken thrush's nest.

"Lord, love yer, marm!" he answered contemptuously, "they be as

common as blackberries, be thrushes; there's any amount of

they--there be one not a hundred yards off, just on the ground. The

feathered gentry will fly, give 'em a week or so. I don't think

nothin' of they. But I do remember a yellow water wagtail's nest,

when I was a boy. It war down by the pond. I was stayin' with

grandam, and the missus that lived here at the farm had a fine lot of

white ducks then. Well, she seed me one day speerin' round, and her

thought I war arter her ducks. 'What be yer lookin' round here for?'

her cried out, furious. I told her I was arter a yellow dip-tail, but

her wouldn't believe me. 'I'll mak' yer know the taste of the

willow'--for there was a great one then by the pond--'and yer won't

wish to know it twice,' her said. Farmer folk war masterful then"

mused old Timothy; "they held the land from the gentry, and the land

was meat and drink."

After a pause I asked the old man if he was not enjoying the sunshine.

[Sidenote: THE APPLE HOWLERS]

"Pretty fair," he replied. "But how about the apples? 'Tis good," he

acknowledged, "a bit of summer; but yer should have know'd the

summers in the old days," he exclaimed; "they war built up by plenty.

Now," he said, sadly, "there's always somethin' agin' summer, like

there be agin' most things. Summer blows bain't enough to content

poor folks like me. Us old 'uns want our apples bobbin' in beer come

Christmas."

I then remembered hearing a few days before that the apple-blossom

had been sadly nipped by the late spring frosts.

"Them as is rich can buy the foreigners," pursued Master Theobalds,

"but to poor folks, frosts mean the end of pleasure. But there bain't

like to be much fruit now in the orchards," he continued, "since

folks have given up the decent customs of their forefathers."

"What ones?" I asked. "And how did folks in the years gone by prevent

frosts, and blights?"

"You'll hear, you'll hear," and old Timothy, in a high squeaky voice

of ninety years and more, told me of old Wenlock customs long since

forgotten.

"I mind me," he pursued, "when it war different; but in grandam's

time, it was a regular custom for them as had apple trees and plum

orchards to get the young men to go round and catch round the trees

with their arms----"

"What good did that do?" I asked, somewhat surprised.

"What good!" and old Timothy glared at me for this impertinent

interpellation. "Why, mam, it was accounted a deed of piety in those

days 'to march' the orchards, as folks called it. Religion war a

different thing altogether, even when I war a lad," he said sadly.

"The devil we thought a lot of 'im in my time--always raging and

rampaging up and down, it was supposed. Now, from what I hear, he

seems a poor lame kind of played-out devil, broken-winded and

drugged; not the rowdy, handsome chap us used to be afeard of. Years

agone we thought he could get anywhere--in our houses, in our

cupboards, up the chimney, down the wells, anywhere. 'Keep him out,'

parsons used to say; and us thought us had done a good job if us

could keep him out of our gardens, and from our fruit trees. So the

lustiest lads of a parish would come round, call out a benediction,

and tramp round. They would--they that war nimble with their

fists--have a set-to, mostly, at Wenlock, in the churchyard. Many's

the match I've a-seen. Two young fellows fighting, fair and square,

as Christians should, and after they had found the best man, they'd

go and brace the trees. 'Apple Howlers' folks used to call 'em, and

the best man war captain of the lot."

"What did they do?"

"Why, they used to march in smocks, and with garlands and blows, same

as on May Day. Holy Thursday war the great day, I've heard tell, and

'em used to shout till 'em fair broke their lungs, singing such old

songs as 'Blow winter snows across the plain,' 'Fair shines my lady's

garden,' 'Spring voices strong,' and 'Phoebus smiles on groves anew.'

Who Phoebus was I never knowd," remarked old Timothy, "but Salter

Mapps used to sing that finely and mak' the whole place alive when he

roared it out."

"And the maids," I said, "did they have no part in the merry-making?"

[Sidenote: "THE MAIDS HELD THEIR PEACE"]

"The maids," answered Master Theobalds, severely, "held their peace.

If they did anything, they peeped out of the winders, waved hankies,

and kissed their hands. 'Twas enough for the maids in those days."

"Yes; but tell me," I urged, "about the rite. What did the young men

do in the orchards?"

"Why, them rampaged round like young cart colts on spring grass, and

they seized each others' hands and danced aunty-praunty, as if their

arms were made of cart-ropes, round the trees, and they capered like

young deer, as the deer do at Apley Park, up beyond Bridgenorth, and

they kind of hugged a tree, crying out--

"'Stand fast root, bear well top,

God send us a youngling sop.

Every twig big apple,

Every bough fruit enough.'

And then wherever they passed they got cakes and ale. There war holy

beer, made from church water caught in a butt from the roof, and that

war supposed to be the best--'the life of the season,' folks called

it then. And if the lads got a touch too merry, folk knew what to

do--they looked the other way. Rough play, rough pleasure; but they

war men then."

As the old man ceased talking, I remembered having read in some old

book on "Strange Customs" an account of "Apple Blow Youling," as it

was called in the West. The rite was probably a survival of an old

heathen custom. It is supposed that it arose from a Roman practice of

giving thanks to Æolus, the god of the winds, and that this pious

invocation was instituted by them soon after their conquest of

Britain. Anyway, the rite became popular, and long survived the

occupation of the Romans; and in some places, apple youling, or

howling, went on through the early part of the nineteenth century.

There was a pause, and then old Timothy began to talk about the

difficulty of inducing village maids to go into domestic service.

"They all thinks themselves born ladies now," he said sourly.

"There's my cousin Polly Makin's granddaughter, a fine strapping lass

to look at, but her went off last week to Birmingham. Dull, 'er said,

it be here. What does her mean," asked the old man, in a tone of

righteous wrath, "by finding it dull in her native town? When folks

found it dull in their native place, when I war a lad, we called 'em

stoopid; now they calls 'em larned and too good. Now 'tis all roar

and express train. But her'll creep back some day, will Polly--young

Polly, and be glad and thankful to find a place to lie her head in.

They be all for pleasurin' now, expeditions and excursions, running

everywhere with no eyes, that's what I call their modern games."

"But in old days, if I had wanted a housemaid or a scullery-maid,

what should I have done?" I asked, bringing back my old friend to his

subject.

[Sidenote: OLD-WORLD SERVANTS]

"In old days," replied Timothy, "there warn't no manner of difficulty

in the matter. The men and the maids used to stand in their native

places on hire, which was a decent, open custom. At Christmas, there

war the Gawby Market in the North; at Whitchurch there war the Rag

Fair, as they called it; and at Shrewsbury, during fair time, all the

farmers and their wives used to go in to engage a maid or a man. At

Much Wenlock, I've heard hirin' day was 12th of May; at Church

Stretton it used to be on the 14th. At Market Drayton, I've often, in

the forties and fifties, seen the carters stand forth, whips in hand,

so that all might know their trade, and cry out, 'A driver, a driver,

good with a team,' and such-like. Then the lasses wud stand with

broom, or milk-pails and make known their callings, and the missuses

and the masters would look round and engage who they had a mind to;

and they cud mostly all scrub and clean, milk and churn, brew and

bake in those days, for they couldn't read nor write, so their hearts

were set on housewifely jobs. But now the maids know nought. It is

all eddication, all readin' and writin', and they mostly can do

nothing with a broom, or a brush. Readin' isn't often much good to

'em what works. Now servant wenches talk of getting engaged; hirin'

war the word in the old time. When they war got in the old time, it

war for a year, and not a penny did most of 'em get till the year had

slipped away."

"Wasn't that rather hard?" I asked.

"The lads and lasses of the old days," answered Timothy, not without

a certain dignity, "took the rough with the smooth. Folks then didn't

all spec' to find roast larks dissolved in their mouths when they

opened them, any more than to pull roses at Yuletide. Hard work and

plenty of it, small pay and long service, that war their lot--the lot

of the lads I knew by name. Times war harder than they be now, but

Shropshire war a better, more manly place than it be now. Now there's

no hirin'. The maids go off to registry offices in back streets.

Palaver, dress, and flummery, that's what service be now. They writes

up, and off they goes to London, Wolverhampton, or Birmingham. Not

much but paper and stamps now in service. A deal of dislikes and not

an honest peck of work in the whole year--that's what folks call

progress now."

Then we passed on to other subjects. "Is the world better, Timothy,"

I asked, "for the abolition of the stocks, and pillory? Surely the

punishments of the old world were very brutal."

But my old friend would not allow this.

"Rough sinners need rough measures," he said. "The stick, when used

properly, be a right good medicine, and when the stick bain't enough,

take the lash. They cannot rule, as be afraid of tears.

"In old Shropshire the law crushed offence. At Newport the stocks

were up till late years, and I mind me 'tisn't more than half a

century ago that they were used at Wenlock. They had made a new one,

it seems the last, and put it on wheels, so that it might run like a

Lord Mayor's coach, they said. But to the last man, Snailey, as they

put in, 'twas no punishment, for his friends they handed him up beer

the whole way, and he came out drunk as a lord. I've never seen 'em

whipped, but grandam did many's the time," continued old Timothy.

"One of the posts of the Guildhall made the whippin'-post in the old

times. And grandam often told me how she seed 'em herself whipped

from the dungeon below the Guildhall to the White Hart Inn, and so

round the town.

[Illustration:

_Photo by Frith._

THE OLD GUILDHALL.]

"When the job was over," pursued old Timothy, "they washed the

stripes with salt and water. Old Sally Shake-the-Pail, as they called

her, wud come round with salt and water, and sponge their backs. They

used, I've heard, some of 'em, to scream fit to leave their skins

behind; whilst others, grandam used to say, would never speak, lay on

the lash as they would, and walk round the town smilin', so braced up

war they, to appear as if they didn't mind a farthin' piece.

[Sidenote: PAINS AND JUDGMENTS]

"The Judgments, as they war called," continued my informant, "took

place on market days. Then it war as they put a bridle on the scolds.

"Lor!" chuckled old Timothy, "'tis a scurvy pity as they can't clap

'em on now. There's many a wench as would be the better for it. There

be Rachel Hodgkis, own cousin to Young Polly, and Mary Ann James, my

great-nevy's wife, as 'twould do pounds of good to. But things are

changed now, and 'tis all the women folks as have got the upper hand,

and any pelrollick may grin, flount, jeer, and abuse as much as it

plaizes her now. But in the old times it war different--different

altogether."

Then old Timothy went on to say, "Many's the time as I've seen Judy

Cookson in a bridle. Her war a terrible sight in one. Her wud scream

and yell till her mouth fair ran with blood. Judy, folks said, cud

abuse against any--in fact," old Timothy said, with local pride, "I

think her cud have given points to many in Shrewsbury. Her war that

free with her tongue, and bountiful of splitters.

"Besides these old judgments," said Timothy, "I've seen many strange

things--sale of wives, and such-like trifles. Did yer ever hear,

marm, the story of how Seth Yates sold his wife?" There was a pause,

then Timothy drew breath and began afresh. "It must have been seventy

years and odd," he declared, "but I mind it all as if war yesterday.

A bit of a showery day, rain on and off, but sunshine between whiles.

"Yates, the husband, he lived at Brocton, and he and his missus

couldn't git on nohow. They fought, they scratched, and scrabbled

like two tom-cats that had met on the roof. Mattie, they said, would

screech and nag, and then Seth wud take up a stick and lay it on

sharp. This went on for weeks, till the neighbours said there was no

peace, and that they cud bear it no longer. The hurly-burly and

rampage war that disgraceful.

"So Mattie thought matters over. She had a Yorkshire cousin at the

hall, came from Barnsley, or some such outlandish place, her said,

and her thought out, by her advice, how her cud carry out a

separation with her man. 'Getting shunt,' Venus, her cousin, named

it; for it appears in Yorkshire yer can sell yer wife, same as yer

dog, if yer've got a mind, and even the bishops there say 'tis a

handy practice. So Mattie said what can be done in Yorkshire can be

done in Shropshire, for 'tis the same king as rules over the land.

"Seth he spoke up for a private sale; but Mattie said, 'I war married

in public, and I'll be sold in public,' for her war fearful of the

law, seeing what back-handers the law can give, when they mightn't

reasonably be expected. And so they settled as all should be done

fair and square, and above board on market day. Then for once folks

said the pair they agreed."

"Was the sale effected?" I asked.

"Simple and straightforward, same as pigs in a pen," replied old

Timothy. "The missus, her came into the market, dressed in her Sunday

best, in a trim cotton, and wearin' a new and stylish tippet, with

fine ends of primrose ribbon, and round her neck her gude man had put

a halter.

[Sidenote: A WIFE FOR SALE]

"When Yates got to Wenlock market, he turned shy and silly. 'Let be,

missus,' he said to his wife, 'I'll treat thee fair, if thee'll keep

a civil tongue.' But her turned round savage like, like a hen when a

terrier pup will meddle with her clutch of chickens, and her flapped

her apurn slap in his face. 'I've come in to be sold,' her said, 'and

I wull be sold if there's justice in England according to civilized

customs.' And them as was standing by roared with laughter, and Tom

Whinnall, a cheap Jack, turned to Seth and he cried out, 'Let her be.

A man never did wisely yet what kept a woman 'gainst her will. A

woman what won't settle, be as mad as a tup in a halter.' So Seth he

got shamed like, and he called out, 'Have it thy own way.' And her

cried out furious, 'I'd rather go down the river like Jimmy Glover's

cat, than bide with thee.' Then she got up in an empty cart, and Tom

Whinnall he put her up for auction. Her fetched half a crown and a

pot of beer."

"And what happened afterwards?"

"Oh, nothing much," replied Master Theobalds. "Anyway, Mattie had

nothing to complain of. David Richards bought her, a great strapping

fellow, that worked for the farmer at the Abbey, afore they turned it

back into a mansion. Folks said that Mattie showed off first night,

but David he just looked at her, and she minded him from the

beginning. The neighbours never heard a sound. He war masterful war

David, and he looked blacker than night when he had a mind, which, I

take it, is the right way with such as Mattie, for sure enough the

two lived happy as Wreken doves in the Bull Ring till Mattie died."

"Were there any penances in your time, Timothy?" I asked.

Timothy scratched his head and looked puzzled, and at last answered,

"I never seed any, but I've heard of 'em. Betty Beaman was the last

as I've heard tell of. She had, it seems, to appear before all the

people in a white sheet. Her felt it war cruel hard, I've heard

grandam say. One day a neighbour told, of how years afterwards, her

stood by the pump and told a friend that her had never got over that

job. Her felt the misery of it even then. And her hoped some good

soul would help the Lord to disremember, if so be she ever got to

paradise."

Old Timothy stopped talking. "I must get back to my cup of tea," he

said simply.

I put in his hand a little coin. "This will fill your pipe," I said.

"There's nought like backy," he answered. "'Tis meat and drink, and

makes yer forget." Then leaning heavily on his stick, the old man got

up.

I saw him walk past the old watch-tower of the monks, and stop at his

old black and white timber house in the Bull Ring. As he pattered

along, the brilliant sunshine struck upon his smock, and lighted up

the elaborately embroidered yoke.

What a changed world it is, I said to myself. How completely one

seems to hear the voice of the Middle Ages in listening to old

Timothy's tales. Scolds, bridles, whipping-posts, penances, and

stocks. As I mused, the sound of all others that belongs essentially

to modern England reached me. Within a few hundred yards away I heard

an engine puffing up and down.

Truly, in this country of ours, the old and the new are very close. I

stood up on the base of a broken column, heard the guard's whistle,

and saw engine and train go off into the far country. Whilst I was

thus engaged, Bess ran up.

"Have you done?" she asked. "When you and old Timothy get together,

he tells you a pack of rubbish, Nan says."

[Sidenote: A TWILIGHT STROLL]

That evening, in the twilight, I walked round the bee garden. Mouse

lay outside by the wrought-iron gates and watched me. How delicious

it is, the first fulfilment of everything in the glory of early June.

My white Martagon lilies were covered with lovely little wax-like

bells. The English crimson peony blossoms were all out, whilst their

Chinese sisters had great knobby buds which would open shortly, and

their bronze-tinted foliage was a beautiful ornament to the garden.

My hybrid perpetual roses were not yet in flower, for Shropshire is a

cold county compared to Sussex or Surrey; but the glory was on the

wing, and would come to us surely, if a little later than in the

south of England. My single rose bushes were all rich with buds. How

lovely Harrisoni would be shortly, I thought. And soon my hedge of

Penzance briars would be a perfect barrier of sweetness, I mused.

Then I looked below, and saw that my beautiful columbines were nearly

all in full perfection. How delicate they were in colouring, in their

soft grey, topaz pinks, and die-away lavenders and ambers. They

recalled shades of opal seen through flame and sunlight, and fading

skies after glorious sunsets. Last summer I got a packet of Veitch's

hybrids, and this year I have been amazed at their beauty.

Then I passed on to my lupines. They were all in bud, white, blue,

and purple, a great joy to the bees. A little further off were great

clumps of Oriental poppies, neatly and fully staked by Burbidge. Tied

so that they could flower to their heart's content and in full

enjoyment of air and sunlight; not tied up in faggots, such as the

ordinary gardener delights in.

I fondly wandered round and round. How good it was to be out in the

opening splendour of June, and to look at everything to one's heart's

content.

There was no sound of voices. Burbidge and his men had left the

garden for the night, only the notes of blackbird and thrush reached

me softly from the bushes beyond. To-night they, too, seemed almost

dazed, with the glory of summer and were singing below their breath,

as if worn out with the beauty of nature.

At last I tore myself away from the red-walled garden, and went and

looked at the tubs full of geraniums and at the beds on the east

side. How cool and happy they looked, and how grateful for the

bountiful moisture they had received from hose and water-can. Drops

glistened faintly on the stems, and the plants seemed to be drinking

in the water with avidity. How good it was, accomplished work, and

how sweet the stillness of a summer evening.

I stole back into the house and looked on the little table for the

letters that had come by the second post. I found one from Mrs.

Stanley. "I think," she wrote "after all, that you and Bess have the

best of it. For poor little Hals ever since he has been here has been

poorly and ailing. Oh! why cannot children be well in London?"

I asked Bess the question, for she stood by me, about to say "good

night" before going off to the little white cot upstairs.

"Why should poor children?" she answered, with a pout. "London is so

dull."

I kissed my little maid and said, "Then we must get Hals down here."

At this Bess clapped her hands. "Of course we must," she cried. "If

people want to be happy, they should live at Wenlock."

I sat down that evening and asked Mrs. Stanley to send her little boy

down to us. "The country just now is so sweet and fresh that it must

do him good," I wrote. "We will take the greatest care of him; and

here he has all the world to play in." The next morning I told Bess

what I had done.

"Yes," repeated Bess, gravely, "all the world to play in, and that is

what a poor boy can never have in London. There is no place there,

excepting for motors and policemen."

[Sidenote: AFTER THE RAIN]

All through the night sweet summer rain fell. How delightful a

morning is after such rain. How happy every plant and leaf looked,

how greedily all seemed to have drunk their fill--trees, shrubs,

grass, and flowers. What an aspect of deep refreshment everything

had, as if an elixir of life had been poured into the veins of every

tree and herb.

Speckled thrushes hopped about and caught earthworms as they peered

up through the lawns. On the stone steps leading up to the red-walled

garden lay the broken remains of many dusky shells of the monks'

snails, or as the children call them here, "snail housen." Beside

these lay also broken fragments of beautiful yellow, and pale pink

ones. A little later I walked into the garden to look at my great bed

of roses. What a wonderful change one night of rain had made! How the

shoots had lengthened, how "the blows," as Burbidge calls them, had

expanded. What a difference in the fat buds! The aphides, which

seemed such a pest a week before, had vanished, while the leaves were

refreshed and glittered with dew-drops.

Henricus Stephanus' old lines came back to me--

"The rose, is the care and the love of the spring,

The rose is the pleasure of th' heavenly Pow'rs;

The boy of fair Venus, Cyther's darling,

Doth wrap his head round with garlands of rose

When to the dance of the graces he goes."

Amongst my beautiful modern roses, I noted that La France was opening

two delicious buds. What a beautiful rose it is; and what an

exquisite perfume it possesses! Then I found a gorgeous Fisher

Holmes, a General Jacqueminot, and a Captain Christy. All these had

been born, as Bess calls it, in the night. Besides these modern joys,

I paused to notice my old-world friends. I could not pass by without

casting a glance upon the loves of Gerard and Parkinson. The

pimpernel rose, little Scotch briars of different sorts, the little

single rose without thorns, the damask, the yellow cabbage, and the

splendid vermilion, the musk, the single cinnamon and the great

Holland, all these have their places in different parts of my garden.

Parkinson tells us how at Longleete in his time people said that a

rose tree then bore white roses on one side, and red on the other;

but the old writer looked upon this as a fable, and declared, "This

may be as true as the old story that a white hen visited Livia

Augusta with a sprig of bays, and foretold, Augusta believed, by so

doing empire to Augusta's posterity, and extinction to the race when

the brood of the hen failed." Be this as it may, I have a standard

rose with a Gloire de Dijon and a General Jacqueminot budded on the

same tree. Burbidge was much pleased with the combination of colours

and called it Christian and Heathen--names, I fancy, first bestowed

by his old wife Hester.

[Sidenote: THE GREY MARE AND ROSEMARY]

Before I left the red-walled garden, I stopped before a bush of

rosemary. I pinched a leaf and picked a little spray on which were

some minute blossoms just coming into flower. Farmers' wives of

Shropshire use the leaves for flavouring their lard, and a bush or

two is to be found in every farmhouse border.

I remembered the great bushes of this plant that I saw in the Riviera

above Mentone, and near the Italian frontier on the road to

Bordighera. I recalled Evelyn's affection for this fragrant plant,

and I recollected what he tells us in his delightful diary, after a

night at Loumas in 1644, about this delightful aromatic shrub.

After passing the Durance, he wrote, "We came upon a tract of country

covered with rosemary, lavender, lentiscs and the like sweet shrubs,

for many miles together, which to me was very pleasant."

Yes, I said to myself, the scent is very pleasant, health and

sweetness combined, in which is nothing cloying or sickly. I laughed

for the old Shropshire proverb came back to me of "Where the grey

mare is stalled, rosemary grows apace." I have heard it said that in

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was the fashion to put

rosemary on and round the corpses of the old. "Vors for maids,

rosemary and lavender for those as die old in God," an old cottager

once said to me; and the same old body told me that in her mother's

time "'twas thought a mark of respect to put a bunch of

sweet-smelling herbs round a dear dead face, such as the sage tree, a

sprig of thyme, a bunch of lavender, or a branch of rosemary." What a

pretty offering such must have been! One can imagine dim figures in

the gloaming going up to the chamber of death some summer

evening--old friends and gossips in smocks, or with countryside

chintz bonnets, and each guest placing a spray of some sweet herb, as

a tribute of affection, by the dear dead face that would never wake

up, or speak to them again.

A few steps from the rosemary bush is my plant of fraxinella. Its

stalk glistened with sweet stickiness. It was of the white variety,

far more beautiful than the one generally known as the pink.

Years ago in an old Hampshire garden I loved as a child, I was taken

out by my father's old gardener with my sister to see his "Burning

Bush." I recollected, as if it had been only yesterday, that as

little girls we had been allowed to sit up once till nine, to see the

bush set on fire. I thought then this harmless bonfire the most

wonderful and mystic thing that I had ever seen. We went out with our

old nurse and saw it lighted at a distance, our old nurse holding

both our hands. How wonderful it seemed in the stillness of the

summer's evening, with no sound but the distant singing of the birds.

I remember how the old gardener, who had lived with father,

grandfather and great-uncle, told us the story of the burning bush

and bade us read our Bibles, and how we believed for years afterwards

that we two had seen a miracle and had stood on holy ground that

summer night.

For many years I lost sight of the fraxinella as a border plant. The

good old gardener of my old home died, and the burning bush was dug

up, I heard, under an evil successor, and thrown on the midgeon heap,

and alone the memory of the mystic plant and the still summer's

evening remained with me.

But after my marriage, I remembered spending a June in France, and

one day in the first week in June I saw the altar of the cathedral at

Laon decked with great sprays of lovely white fraxinella. The scent

was intense--heavier than the heaviest incense. I am sensitive to the

perfume of flowers, and therefore could not remain long in the

edifice, but the odour brought back the memory of the burning bush of

my childhood, and I went off to a florist in the market-place and

bought two packets of seeds for my Shropshire home. One was a packet

of the pink variety, and the other was of the white. When I returned

to the Abbey the seeds were sown by Burbidge, but, to quote the old

man, "they was as shy of coming up as blows be in snow." We waited

and we waited for any sign of life.

All through the late summer and autumn there was no symptom of

vegetation. The seeds, which were like little black shot, remained

dormant. For many months there was no change.

[Sidenote: "THE FOREIGNERS" CONDEMNED]

At last Burbidge lost all patience. "Put they," and he pointed to the

boxes in which the fraxinella seeds were sown, "put they on the

midgeon heap, and let the foreigners get their deserts."

Happily I stood by when this order was given, and pleaded that they

should be left a little longer. One chilly day in February, when the

only sign of the return of life seemed the gilding of the willows, I

peered into the frame, and I saw, as gardeners say, "my seeds on the

move," and in due time my old gardener reared me some half-dozen

plants. After some abuse, Burbidge has taken kindly to the

"foreigners," and now graciously allows "that yer might do worse than

grow fraxinella in a garden."

I leant over and smelt the long white spikes, and thought of the old

plant in the Hampshire garden. I noticed that the sticky stem was a

perfect fly-trap, and that hundreds of little insects were caught and

drowned in it like in the leaves of the sun-dew on Scotch moors. It

is this sticky fluid, I am told, that burns without injuring the

plant, when set on fire on a summer's night. Every part of the

fraxinella is redolent of fragrance--leaf, stalk, and petals--later,

even the husk of the seed pod. All are exquisitely perfumed; and the

husks, if gathered, will retain their sweetness for long months

together.

A little further off, I stood before my clumps of pinks. I have a

great many sorts, and all are deliciously sweet--the sweetest of all

flowers I have heard them called.

In Chaucer's time it was the fashion, it seems, to talk of the

"parwenke of prowesse;" in Sir Philip Sidney's age, writers spoke of

"the pink of courtesy." We no longer compare a high and noble spirit

to a flower. Do we love flowers less?

I walked up and down before my lines of pinks and wondered. I have

the lovely Amoor pink, the pretty Maiden, the chocolate brown and

white, the delicate little Cheddar, peeping up between stones and

rocks, and a lovely little Norwegian variety that a friend brought me

back from a fishing-lodge. My little Scandinavian friend has a low

habit of growth, in fact, only rears its pink head a few inches from

the soil, but its blossoms are of a radiant rose, and deliciously

sweet.

Later in the day I went down a quiet path in the kitchen garden, that

faces east. There were no bright colours there, only sober-tinted

old-world herbs. Every monastic garden in the days of the

Plantagenets had its herbularis, or physic garden.

[Sidenote: THE HERB GARDEN]

Here there were little square beds of rosemary, of rue, fennel,

linseed, rye, hemp, thyme, woodruff, camomile, mallow, clove, and

basil. Of the clove basil Parkinson wrote, that "it was a restorative

for a weak heart, and was known to cast out melancholy and sadness."

Burbidge still cuts and dries these herbs, and village folks and

cottagers from the neighbourhood come for others.

"Fennel tea," he tells me, "is good to purify the blood, mallow is

excellent for rheumatism, whilst thyme, pounded fine, serves in cases

of colic." Boiled lily bulbs for healing wounds, I am told, are also

good. Then, in the corner against the wall, there is a patch of the

old single violet, which I have heard is very soothing for

inflammation, and now often advocated for curing cancer. Also a clump

of borage, which Gerard declares, "comforteth the heart, purgeth

melancholy, and quieteth the phrantick." A few steps away I saw a

patch of crane's-bill, the old geranium of the Middle Ages, which the

same writer recommended to be prepared with red snails and to be

taken internally.

Besides these, nestling against the wall, I noted a plant of golden

mouse-ear just coming into blossom. Here they call it "grin the

collar." It is a wild plant which the Elizabethan herbalist speaks of

with affection, and which he says he found growing in dame Bridget

Kingsmill's ground, on distant downs, "not far from Newberry."

I saw also bursting into blossom roots of the old single peony. It

was of the sort that I have been told must be gathered in the night,

or else the ill-fated gatherer may be struck blind.

Some years ago, I remembered once asking for a blossom of this sort

in a cottage garden to copy in my embroidery. But the old woman to

whom the plant belonged would not hear of picking a flower.

"Best leave it--best leave it," she had said. I thought her churlish

for the moment, and then thought no more about it; but the same

evening, whilst we were at dinner, a blossom of the single peony was

brought in to me on a salver, and I was told that little Betty, old

widow Hodgkis's granddaughter, had run up from below the Edge "to

pleasure me."

Granny, said the child, had told her that "you're welcome to it, and

that, bein' as it is there, was no ill-luck."

On being pressed to explain, the child had answered, "Us dursn't pick

that blow early, but granny says, picked at night, peonies be as safe

as Job Orton in his shop, but in noontime 'tis only suckin' gulleys

as wud pick 'em." For some moments I could not get the reason out of

the little maid, but at last, when we were alone, she whispered to

me. "'Tis along of the ecalls. If one war to see yer in the day,

madder yer'd be than a tup at Bridgenorth fair, and blind, behappen."

There is also in Shropshire a lingering belief that the seed of the

single peony has magic powers to soothe and quiet women. A young

widow, who had lost her husband in an accident connected with the

blasting of the lime rock, obtained sleep by drinking a tea made from

the seeds, I was assured.

[Sidenote: THE PHYSICIAN OF THE GODS]

"My Jane," her mother said, "couldn't sleep nohow before. It was

rocks, and falls in darkness, and screams all the time with her, let

her do what she would. Her got fair tired of physic, nothing the

doctor gave her seemed to bring peace, or to padlock her tongue. Then

came Jill Shore," I was told, "as lives halfway up the heights of

Tickwood. A witch some counted her, and her made my Jane lie down,

and her charmed her with verses and made her drink a draught of

peonina seed. And Jane her fell asleep, like a lamb beside its dam,

and her slept, and slept, and woke up reasonable and quiet, and for

all she was mortal sad, she was a decent soul again, and gave up

screeching and tearing out her hair, and screaming out things not fit

for a decent body to say."

Then there was, at the end of the garden, a plant of goat's rue, and

a patch of mustard seed. An old writer declared that mustard would

take away the black and blue marks that come from bruises. How that

may be, I know not, but later on we shall take up the crop, root and

blossom, and dig in the plants as manure into the fresh ground where

we hope to grow our tulips for next year. It is the best manure that

can be given to tulips, and an old secret amongst the tulip growers

of past centuries. Just beyond the crop of mustard I saw a root of

wild clary. In some of the old herbals this plant was accounted an

excellent remedy for weak eyes, and Gerard tells us that it was a

common practice in his day to put the seeds into poor folks' eyes, to

cure disease.

Just by the door that led into the paddock, there was a plant of

woodruff. Very delicate and sweet is the scent of this little flower.

It grows in great patches under the hazel trees of the Edge Wood.

Formerly woodruff was used in church decoration, and was deftly woven

into many garlands. In the north of Europe woodruff is still used as

a herb to flavour drinks. I never heard of this being done in

England, but in Shropshire it is often culled in the farmhouses to

put in muslin bags, in the place of lavender. It has a sweet scent,

which remains with letters and kerchiefs like a memory of the past.

Then there was, I saw, a plant of wormwood, the plant from which

absinthe is distilled. In the sixteenth and seventeenth century the

leaves of this plant were chopped up for flavouring, and it was

thought an excellent seasoning to venison. By the wormwood there was

a line of camomile. A little later in the summer the plants will be

covered with little white star-like blossoms. Burbidge will cut

stalks and flowers and his wife will dry them in the sun, and give

them away to the parents of sick children. "My missus," the old man

once said to me, "mostly does her kindnesses by nastiness. Her will,"

he added, "fair poison a body to keep her alive."

But though Burbidge allows himself the privilege of a free tongue as

regards his wife's remedies, he permits no criticism elsewhere. On

one occasion one of "his boys" objected to a gigantic draught of

ales-hoof and mallow, flavoured with camomile. "What dost thee stand

there for, loselling?" was the vigorous rebuke I heard addressed by

my old friend, as the victim hesitated to drink down at a gulp, a

bumper of a frothy brown fluid. "I tell thee, Roderick, if it fair

blows off thy stomach, it will make a new man of thee." "I canna,"

feebly protested Burbidge's man. But he had to; for as my old

gardener said, with a purple face of wrath, "I and my missus don't

make physic for folks to chuck abroad, and a man that works under,

needs must drink under." Whatever the immediate effect of the awful

beverage was, I cannot say, but this I do know, Roderick did not die;

he even looked as usual a week later.

Few gardeners now have their herb plots, but through the fifteenth

and sixteenth centuries ladies and their waiting-women made household

medicines, and administered these themselves to the villagers, and to

the members of their households.

Suddenly, whilst I was looking at my herbs and thinking of how they

were used in earlier days, the garden door was thrown abruptly open

and Bess danced in before me.

"What a time you have been away!" she cried. "I can't run about, and

only look at flowers or watch idle birds. Hals is coming, that is

what I have to think of."

I went into the house after luncheon, my chair and table were carried

out, and I sat and embroidered. This time I worked a cherubim's face,

who possessed long locks and had dark-blue eyes.

"I am going to give him chestnut hair," I said; and I looked out six

different shades of reddish-brown to produce the desired effect.

[Sidenote: BESS TALKS OF HEAVEN]

"He ought to be pretty," said Bess, who had seated herself by me.

"Good children should be beautiful."

"Why?" I asked.

"Why?" repeated Bess. "Why, because God could never do with ugly

little squinting things up there. He wouldn't want boys that had

crooked noses and red warty hands, and ugly eyes that didn't look

straight."

"But suppose, Bess, the good children," I urged, to see what Bess

would say, "had crooked noses, red warty hands, and squinting eyes,

what must be done then?"

"Oh, mamsie, you don't understand heaven," said Bess, loftily, "but I

and Prince Charming do," and she hugged her puppy. "We do. We know

that God can't have ugly boys in His garden, or what would the poor

girl angels do? I know what heaven is like--beautiful, beautiful,"

and my little maid stood panting with excitement before me. "All the

flowers all out, and all the fruit quite ripe, and you may pick what

you like, and no cross Nanas ever make you wash, or go to bed until

you're quite, quite tired."

"Have you ever been there?" I asked, smiling at my little girl's

enthusiasm.

"Once," said Bess. "Nana said I was asleep, but I know better. The

snow was on the ground, deep, deep, but I wasn't frightened, for when

I looked out--and I got out of bed all myself, when Nana was at

supper--I saw the stars, and I knew the angels were close to me; and

when I crept back to bed I said, 'God make me good,' and I didn't

sleep, but I went to heaven, and that's better than a picnic on the

Edge, or making toffee with Mrs. Langdale. So you see I know there

are no ugly people in heaven, because, mamsie, I've been there."

"But in your philosophy, Bess," I answered, "what happens to poor

people, sick people, old people, all the people who have worked for

God and done the work of His kingdom here?"

"Oh, God," said Bess, softly, "God gives them all prizes. When you

give children prizes at the school, they don't get nothing more, but

when God gives one prize they get everything."

"Everything?" I asked.

"Yes," said Bess, "dolls, cakes, pups. And then they play, and are

always young, and they never have rheumatics, not even colds or

coughs."

I kissed my little girl and told her to dream of heaven again.

[Illustration:

_Photo by Mr. W. Golling_.

THE ORATORY.]

A minute or two later, and Bess was off chasing a butterfly.

"Mama," she said after a long chase, when she returned to me with a

scarlet face and dripping temples, "do you know that Mrs. Burbidge's

nephew, Frank Crossley, has brought her back a beautiful glass case,

and it's full of butterflies--real butterflies. There's a beautiful

blue one--all blue, and a red one, and a yellow one, like the gorse

you told me not to pick because it was so prickly, and one green,

like the Edge Wood when you look below and can't see a cornfield, and

can only hear flies buzzing. And do you know Frank caught them all

himself, and he stuck a pin into each to keep them tight, and spread

their wings as if they were flying; but they can't really fly for

they've always got to stay in his box." Then, after a gasp, my little

maid put her hand in mine, "Mama, may I have a net and a box, and

some pins, for I should like to have what Burbidge calls a

'collection'?"

"But you won't like to hurt butterflies, Bess?" I said. "Just think

how horrid it would be to run pins through them and to pin down their

beautiful wings in boxes."

[Sidenote: "STUPID LITTLE INSECTS CANNOT FEEL"]

"Well," said Bess, "I suppose I shouldn't like that at first, but

Frank doesn't mind. I'm not an ignorant little insect," said Bess,

loftily, "and you won't make me believe, mamsie, that stupid little

insects can feel like girls or boys."

I did not argue, for I am aware that the best wisdom of the child

comes sometimes from the silence of the parent, rather than from the

speech; but I felt sure my words would come back later to Bess, and

that when she had had time for reflection, her better nature would

make her give up the wish to have a collection of butterflies. Whilst

we thus sat on, Nana swooped down and captured Bess.

"I must wash your face and hands, miss, before going to the station,"

she said tartly, and at the same time informed me that a poor woman

was waiting outside in the monk's passage, who wished to speak to me.

"I can't make head nor tail of what she wants," said Nana, sourly.

"A pack of rubbish and not a grain of sense, that's what we often

feel about our neighbours' sayings and doings," I answered. "But ask

her to come and see me."

Mrs. Milner disappeared, and in a few moments reappeared, followed by

a little brown, undersized woman, with a mahogany skin, and wrinkled

like a walnut. Mrs. Eccles was a little hunchback, and had come from

the Dingle to see me. She walked a bit lamely, and carried a stick.

Mouse gave a growl, and Prince Charming, who had rolled himself up on

the edge of my skirt, tumbled up with a snort, and a gruffle. I

begged the poor woman not to be afraid, told her to sit on a bench

close by, and asked her mission.

"'Tisn't no flannel, no, nor no dinners neither, not even a packet of

tea," she answered. For a moment Nana returned to fetch a ribbon or a

tie--some lost possession of Bess's. On seeing her Mrs. Eccles

remained silent, for, as she whispered, "'twas a private matter."

Then when Nana had disappeared, her courage returned, and she blurted

out, "I knows as yer have one, for all Mr. Burbidge says. There

always was one--one out alongside of the walled garden."

I felt puzzled, but nodded and begged my old friend to tell me what

it was she had come for. But a direct answer is not often to be got

from the poor, you must wait for an answer, as a dear old clergyman

once said to me, "as you must wait for flowers in an English spring."

So I threaded my needle with a brilliant brown, and Mrs. Eccles's

speech bubbled on, like a brook in February.

[Sidenote: MRS. ECCLES'S MISSION]

"It be in this way, for I know this place, same as the inside of my

own kitchen," she said. "Didn't I work here fifty years agone, in the

old days? I knowed this place," she said, looking round, "afore it

war a haunt of the gentry, when it was farmer folk as lived here, and

when I war a servin' wench, when I scrubbed, and cleaned, plucked

geese at Yule-tide, and helped the missus in making mince-meat, and

in making butter for the market. I know'd it then, and I knows it

now."

I tried to stem the old dame's eloquence, for the time I had at her

disposal was limited; but my little old guest was voluble, and I had

to sit quiet to learn her mission. At last light pierced through her

discourse, and I discovered that she had come down for a leaf, or a

sprig, of some plant.

"You must come round and show me what it is you want," I said at

last; and I covered up my embroidery and prepared to take her to the

herb plots in the kitchen garden, as the most likely spot to find out

what she was in need of.

But halfway, Mrs. Eccles stopped dead, shook her head, and called

out, "It never grow'd there, I be sure it never did. I know it does

there," and she pointed back to the Abbey, "for I have a-know it

afore yer was born, and, my dear, it war along top-side of the mound,

at back of the red wall, where the missus used to grow her fever

drinks, and where they put in cabbages for Christians and cows

alike." As she spoke my funny old friend turned her back on the

kitchen garden, and made for the quadrangle as hard as her old legs

would take her. Mouse and I followed hot-foot behind. Suddenly Mrs.

Eccles came to a dead stop at the foot of a green slope, on which the

red wall was built, and pointed with her black stick, at a green

shrub above her.

"There her be," she cried triumphantly, "sure enough, same as a

galenny's nest, snug and safe."

I scrambled up the bank, and Mouse followed with a bound. The old

body was almost breathless for a minute, but went on pointing like a

pointer at the shrub.

"What is it for?" I asked. The shrub in question was a bay tree, and

in a severe winter in the nineties, had almost died, but last spring

it revived somewhat, and sent out a few weakly branches this summer.

"What does I want it for?" repeated Mrs. Eccles. "Why I wants it for

salvation; to save my boy from the Lightning." Then she went on to

tell me, with a burst of eloquence, about the Shropshire belief, to

the effect that a spray of bay-leaf, or a feather of an eagle, if

worn in a cap or hat, can preserve the wearer from lightning.

"The big hawk's feather, there's none as can get now," she said. "The

railways and the holiday-makers have killed they, but they have left

the bay trees."

Then I remembered having heard that Mrs. Eccles's husband, some forty

odd years ago, had been killed whilst haymaking, struck by lightning.

"'Twas the death of Job, his fork," an old man had once told me. "The

lightning came clean down, and struck him by the command of the Lord."

"If my gude man had had but a sprig, he might have been hearty now,"

broke from Mrs. Eccles; and she went on to tell me that her grandson,

Joseph Holroyd, "war goin' to work for Farmer Church, and that she

had come here, for I know'd as you'd provide."

I opened the little knife on my chain, and cut off a sprig and gave

it to my old friend.

[Sidenote: AN OLD PAGAN BELIEF]

She bobbed low, and scuttled away. "Won't you have a cup of tea?" I

called after her. But she shook her head, and cried out, "Nay, nay, I

have my widdies (ducks) to feed;" and as I stood and looked, the

little brown figure disappeared up the drive. When I went back to the

east garden, I thought over my conversation with Mrs. Eccles, and I

recollected having read somewhere, that the Romans believed that a

phoenix's feather, if it could be obtained and worn in the bosom,

would avert disaster; and a learned friend once told me that the

Emperor Tiberius was much alarmed by thunder, and always wore a

wreath of laurel round his neck if the weather was stormy, because he

believed that laurels were never blasted by lightning. So I reflected

that my old friend, bred amidst the wilds of Shropshire, held, after

all, unconsciously an old pagan belief, of which the plume from the

big hawk was only another version of the phoenix's feather, whilst the

laurel and the bays sprang, likely enough, from the same legend.

Whilst revolving the old beliefs of past empires in my mind, I was

called back to the present by Bess rushing up to me, and calling out--

"Where have you been Mum, Mum? We shall be late, I know we shall be

late. And if Hals didn't find some one to meet him, what would he

say?"

"I'm sure I don't know," I said penitently.

"Nor me," retorted Bess, indignantly.

So without more ado, my daughter, Prince Charming and I walked up a

golden field of glittering buttercups to the station. We waited on

the platform. The train was late--when isn't the train late in the

country?--and Bess and I sat down on the long bench that faced the

line.

Bess seemed lost in a brown study. "A penny for your thoughts, miss,"

I said.

"Mum," replied Bess, dreamily, "I am thinking and thinking----"

"Yes, dear?"

"What is the use of London?"

The subject is rather large, I urged. But Bess had the sharp,

incisive intellect of a quick child, and stood firm to her opinion.

"I don't see," she said, "that noise, shows, and smart people make

use. Why should poor children be taken to London? If the grown-ups

want it, they had better go there by themselves."

"My dear little person," I said, "even the youngest of others must

sometimes do disagreeable things, even in the twentieth century."

But this was a hard matter for an only child to understand, and Bess

would have none of it.

At the same moment, we heard the noise and rattle of the approaching

train, and our discussion broke off abruptly. A second later the

train had stopped, and the guard alighted and opened a first-class

compartment, and proceeded to lift out little Hals. Bess dashed up

breathless. The children were too excited to embrace each other. They

only rushed to each other, took each other's hands, and went on

dangling them, and blushing like two rose buds. Whereupon so, Prince

Charming fell with a yelp to the ground. Happily, I was by to pick up

and console the poor little puppy. A quiet, nice-looking young woman

came out, bearing in her arms a host of packages and rugs. In a

minute or two Hals' luggage was collected, and we walked down across

the buttercup field to the old Abbey, whilst swallows flew overhead,

and sunshine chased purple clouds across the sky.

[Sidenote: HALS ARRIVES]

"Fräulein is not here?" I heard Bess say to Hals.

"No," answered Hals.

"Then," whispered Bess, "I shall be able to pray to-night. For all

God lives so far, I think He can understand a girl sometimes."

"That's handy," agreed Hals, shortly.

"Yes," answered Bess; "He knew what I wanted at Christmas all of His

own accord, and now He has left out Fräulein, and He couldn't have

done better, even if He had been papa."

To this, Hals made no answer, but both children danced with glee.

Then followed tea, and two hours afterwards, bed.

When my little girl was in bed, I went up and found her, and said the

last good-night. Her eyes shone like little stars, and she put her

arms round my neck.

"Mum--Mum," she said, so I went quite close. "I thought," said my

little maid, "when I had got Prince Charming, that I never could want

anything else, but I do now want something bad--bad."

"Yes?" I answered.

"Is there nowhere," pursued my little girl, "where one can buy a

brother? I want one so bad."

The children and I passed a happy week--a week of golden sunshine.

Miss Weldon went off and spent the time with a cousin at Hereford,

and I was left alone with lad and lass. We read, and talked, and

played. There were no lessons, but I told them "lovely stories."

Beautiful old legends, pretty tales from history, and I read aloud

from Hans Andersen, and parts of Charles Kingsley's delicious "Water

Babies."

"I think," said Bess one day as I closed the book, "that I love Tom

best of all as a little sweep."

"Yes," said Hals, "for he was so game, running across the moor all by

himself. When I am a man, I hope I shall never be afraid. I am sure

my father never is." Then, after a pause, he added, "Some day I shall

be a soldier, and fight the king's enemies."

"So shall I," said Bess.

But this Hals would not allow. "Girls cannot fight," he assured me,

gravely. "They can only scratch. Besides, boys cannot fight girls, so

it wouldn't be fair."

"Then I must fight girls," said Bess, sadly; "but I'm afraid that

wouldn't be much fun, for girls mostly pinch, and run away."

The weather was beautiful during Hals' stay with us. The Shropshire

fields and woods seemed all under an enchanter's wand. Blue mist lay

on the Wrekin and on the Clee. Sunshine glowed all the day, and in

the evening, glorious sunsets, and tranquil twilights. After tea, we

sometimes took Jill, the little pony, and the children rode one

behind the other along the lanes. All the hedges were redolent with

honeysuckle, and great pink sprays of the most exquisitely lovely of

all flowers, the wild dog-rose, curled over branch and stem; whilst

larks sang over green seas of rippling wheat, which moved in broad

waves over stormless, summer seas.

[Sidenote: WE MEET THADY]

Far away I showed the children one evening the Brown Clee, the land

of witches and romance to Shropshire youth. No rain fell, no tempests

gathered. It was June, and the perfection of June weather. Sheets of

buttercups glistened in the meadows, moon-daisies nodded in the

upland grasses, and over disused lime-kilns blew beds of rosy thyme

and rock-roses, whilst here and there, on the outskirts of forest

lands, we found the sweetest of all wild flowers--pale butterfly

orchises, with their strange sweet perfume, which, as Bess said, made

you long to live, only in afternoons. Thady one day joined us in one

of our expeditions. He got up from a bush suddenly as we were

passing--bare-legged, jovial, courteous, as only an Irish lad can be.

"The 'top of the morning,' mam," he cried, and his face lit up with a

simultaneous smile.

"It is afternoon," I laughed.

"Whatever the hour or the season, 'tis only well I wish yer," he

replied, with the spontaneous politeness of the Celt.

"Have you anything pretty to show us?" I asked.

"Yes," repeated Bess, "show us something pretty."

"Well," said Thady, looking down, "it's getting late, I'm thinking,

for seeing sights; most that's young is getting fledged. But I know a

field where there's a lot of little leverets, soft as down, pretty as

kittens."

So we followed on. I led Jill, with Bess riding on a boy's saddle,

and Hals followed behind. We passed a wild, rough field, with the

steep pitch of the Edge Wood on one side, and the view of a great

stretch of country up to Shrewsbury, and beyond. To the west we

saw Caer Caradoc and the Long-mynd sleeping in purple haze. Then

we passed through a hunting wicket, and went into another

rough-and-tumble field, with rampant thistles, full of old disused

lime-kilns, and sheep-nipt bushes of thorns.

"What lovely places to play in!" cried Bess, enthusiastically.

"Perhaps real gnomes and goblins live there, and if we stayed till

the church-tower clock struck twelve, we might really see them in red

caps. The sort, mamsie, that you and I know. Perhaps," she added,

"then they might bring us gold. You know they do."

"Begorra!" cried Thady, indulgently, "if yer was to come here at

midnight, yer couldn't count them for jostling, the leprechauns and

such like gentry. They be plentiful as faiberries in Muster

Burbidge's garden in August."

At this Hals said gravely, "I should like to come and see them one

night, although I have never heard my father speak of them. I don't

think he knows many goblins at Westminster."

"Westminster," retorted Thady, magnificently, "is a poor place for

meeting anything but common men and women."

Then we walked on in single file, for I had to guide the pony with

care, for the pitches on each side of the path were steep and

slippery. In one part of the field there was a large round clump of

white dog roses, such as are often to be found in waste places, with

brilliant yellow stamens and bronze-coloured stalks and buds.

"I think 'tis here as you'll find, missie, the little yellow fluffs

at home," said Thady.

Evidently in the innermost recesses of the rose bush there was a fine

scent of something very good to the canine mind, for Mouse pricked up

her ears, sniffed boisterously, and began to move her tail like a

fox-hound drawing a covert. Then with a great swirl and pounce, she

darted right into the brake, bending and breaking all by her weight,

and brought out in her mouth a little ball of fluff. The poor little

creature screamed in terror, almost like a child.

I rushed forward. "Mouse, Mouse!" I cried, "drop it, drop it!"

[Sidenote: THE LITTLE HARE]

Mouse looked at me reproachfully out of her topaz eyes, held it, but

allowed me to pass my fingers between her great jaws and to release

the little captive. Great was my delight to find that poor little

puss was quite unhurt, only very wet with my dog's saliva.

I sat down, and Thady lifted off Bess from the pony, and then the

children flocked round to see the long-eared little creature I was

holding in my arms.

"Isn't it pretty?" I said, and held up the little tawny ball of

fluff. "Look what lovely brown eyes it has, and what tender shades of

buff and fawn are in its long ears."

"Let us take him home," cried Bess, enthusiastically.

"But," I asked, "how about Tramp and Tartar? They would not be gentle

like Mouse." And I added, "It was lucky that they did not come with

us this afternoon. They would not only have caught the little

leveret, they would have killed him, too."

Bess agreed. "They are very wicked for all their nice ways." And then

she added dreamily, "I wonder if terriers ever go to heaven."

"Begorra! if it is the holy Mother that has a fancy for the breed,

I'll be bound she gets them past St. Peter. 'Dade," said Thady, "if I

was the saint, I'd never shut the door in a good bitch's face."

"Well," says Bess, after a little pause, "for all terriers kill

things, they love us badly; and, besides, there may be rats in

heaven."

"How about heaven, then, being quite a perfect place?" I asked, for I

must plead guilty to a strong dislike to rats.

"Mum, Mum," answered Bess, impatiently, "you must leave the poor Lord

a few rats, or what would his poor dogs do?"

I laughed and had no answer ready, for a child's wit is generally the

hardest to fight. The best being bred by simplicity and kindness of

heart. A minute later I slipped back my little furry nursling into

the rose-bush, and we threaded our way across the fields.

As we retraced our steps no bird sang, only the faint barking of a

dog in some distant farm reached our ears, and away in the hollow

came the far-off sound of distant church bells. We walked along

grassy fields, down dim lanes, and beside the budding wheat.

Thady was to come down and get a slice of cake and a glass of milk.

"With raisins, real raisins!" exclaimed Bess. The prospect of the

feast opened his heart.

"Begorra, I'll tell you at last," he cried, with a sly chuckle, and

he bubbled over with laughter. "You shall hear all about the job. Yer

leddyship," continued Thady, "has taught me to hate the thieving of a

poor bird's nest, same as the blessed Virgin has taught me to be a

Christian."

I nodded in approbation, but did not quite understand; but then that,

as Bess says, "never matters, if you're not found out." In a minute

Thady went on--whilst I led both children, mounted on old Jill--and

told me of an adventure of his.

"It was this ways," he said. "Two gentlemen last month came over from

Manchester, and they put up at the Raven. I watched them come, out of

the corner of my eye--and 'tis little," Thady added, "that escapes me

at such times. So when they had been round the churchyard, and peered

at the ruins, as is the habits of town-bred folks, I made so bold as

to approach them. Indade, I had kept, ever since they left the hotel,

remarkably near them. My mother watched me up the Bull Ring, for she

knowed that I had a bit of somethin' up my sleeve, and as I passed,

lookin' as dacent as a lad that had just been bishopped, she

whispered, 'Ye spalpeen, what be yer tricks?' But I shook her off, as

a lad of spirit should, for when yer minded to have a bit of fun,

give yer mother a wide berth sure.

"Such is the advice of Thady Malone," and my little friend drew

himself up loftily, and spoke as one who had solved a hard problem.

[Sidenote: THE RUN OF THE SEASON]

"I followed the gentlemen right enough," he continued, "and never

took my eyes off them, but kept on with them, eyeing and peering

round, same as a hawk above a clutch of chickens. And by their talk I

made out it was after specimens that they had come. I crept round by

a bush, and discovered, right enough, it was after birds and eggs

that they had journeyed; and at last one of 'em, the tall, dark, lean

'un, he called out to me, and he said to the fat, sandy-whiskered one

that was standing by, 'Perhaps this lad could help us.' Then he

turned to me. 'My lad,' he said, 'we want to go over a bit of wild

country, and to see a bit of wild life. Take us to a wood that is

known here as the Edge Wood. They say rare birds still nest there.

Hawks, we've heard, some of the scarce tomtits, and one or two of the

rare fly-catchers, and we want to get some eggs.' Said I to myself,

'Thady, yer shall have fine sport.' But one of them, the lean 'un,

had a nasty stick, so I said, 'Thady, my man, be careful;' but

comforted myself after a bit, for 'tis only on louts' backs that

sticks need fall. Then I stood up and answered bold, 'Is it the big

hawk that your honours want, or the fern owl, the sheriff-man, or any

other fowl?' Begorra, and indade yer leddyship, there was no fowl

that I wouldn't have pretended acquaintanceship with. And they

nodded, and I nodded, and they, the fat and the lean, they winked,

and I winked, and they talked of eggs and fine prices, and they

offered me shillin's, beautiful silver shillin's; but I said I'd

serve them for the pleasure, for though silver is good, a bit antic

is better. Besides," added Thady, gallantly, "what her leddyship has

taught me, I canna unlearn," and Thady bowed to me with the instinct

of a born courtier.

"So I started at a trot," pursued Thady, "and I sang out, 'Gentlemen,

I'm yer man,' and I gave a bow and then away, as hard as I could make

the pace, and they followed on, like two mad bullocks, or fox-hounds

in full cry, and away we tore, over the fields, up the lanes, along

the high-road where need be. On, on, I headed 'em like a young

he-goat. I'm allus in training, and they followed. I gave 'em a

splendid lead over field and fallow, and whenever the fat 'un panted

bad, I told 'im to cheer up, for the fern owl and the great hawk's

nests were just ahead.

"At last they began to get a bit rusty. Like enough, by the twinkle

of my eye, they began to fear as their cases would never get filled.

So I shouted out, as if I were leading the king's army. 'Keep up your

peckers, misters, a field more and yer'll see the great hawk

hisself,' and so on up a sharpish pull. I looked back, and saw 'em

fair sick--the lean one coming on, but the fat sandy 'un fit to

burst. I stopped to catch the breeze, and in the pause I shouted out,

'Yer'll find the nest with old Bolas, or where folks says the crows

fly at nights,' and I laughed; and then, begorra, I ran like the best

Jack-hare that ever I set eyes on. And when they guessed I had had a

bit of a spree, they didn't take it kindly, not at all, at all, but

called out no end of bad words--words," said Thady, sanctimoniously,

"that I never could repeat in your leddyship's hearing, and that

shocked even poor me. So I kept at a proper distance, for the stick

that the lean gent had was a right nasty one, and," added Thady, "a

wise man only stops to argue with men of his own size. But I did hear

they went up to the station that evening, those two poor gentlemen

with never an egg or a grub in their cases, and the porter did say

that they made tracks to Manchester like two bears with sore heads.

'Tis wonderful how some folks can never see a joke."

[Sidenote: THE NATURALISTS GO EMPTY AWAY]

"Few of us can do that when the joke goes against us," I answered

laughing. "But I am glad, Thady, that you played them a trick.

Naturalists of that sort are a pest. In the name of science, they rob

our woods, and exterminate all our rare birds and butterflies. Every

honest man's hand should be against them."

At this Thady grinned all over, "Indade," he said, "I'll remember yer

leddyship's words of wisdom to my dying day, and never let go by a

chance of honest amusement."

So speaking we reached the old Abbey Farmery. Hals and Bess, drowsy

from their long expedition, were lifted off the pony half asleep. We

all had a standing meal, which, as Bess said, was much better than

sitting down, because you never eat what you don't want; and then the

young life vanished--Bess and my little guest to bed, and Thady into

the silent fields, and only Mouse was left to keep me company. I

agreed that evening with the children, that it is very nice sometimes

to have no dinner, and to return to simple habits, because the sense

so of wood and field lingers longer with you.