"It was a lover and his lass
With a hey and a ho, and a hey-nonino!
That o'er the green cornfield did pass
In the Spring-time, the only pretty ring-time,
When birds do sing hey-ding-a-ding,
Sweet lovers love the Spring."
Joyce is running through the garden, all the sweet wild winds of heaven
playing round her. They are a little wild still. It is the end of lovely
May, but though languid Summer is almost with us, a suspicion of her
more sparkling sister Spring fills all the air.
Miss Kavanagh has caught up the tail of her gown, and is flying as if
for dear life. Behind her come the foe, fast and furious. Tommy, indeed,
is now dangerously close at her heels, armed with a ferocious-looking
garden fork, his face crimson, his eyes glowing with the ardor of the
chase; Mabel, much in the background, is making a bad third.
Miss Kavanagh is growing distinctly out of breath. In another moment
Tommy will have her. By this time he has fully worked himself into the
belief that he is a Red Indian, and she his lawful prey, and is prepared
to make a tomahawk of his fork, and having felled her, to scalp her
_somehow_, when Providence shows her a corner round a rhododendron bush
that may save her for the moment. She makes for it, gains it, turns it,
dashes round it, and _all but_ precipitates herself into the arms of a
young man who has been walking leisurely towards her.
He is a tall young man, not strictly handsome, but decidedly good to
look at, with honest hazel eyes, and a shapely head, and altogether very
well set up. As a rule he is one of the most cheerful people alive, and
a tremendous favorite in his regiment, the ---- Hussars, though just now
it might suggest itself to the intelligent observer that he considers he
has been hardly used. A very little more haste, and that precipitation
_must_ have taken place. He had made an instinctive movement towards her
with protective arms outstretched; but though a little cry had escaped
her, she had maintained her balance, and now stands looking at him with
laughing eyes, and panting breath, and two pretty hands pressed against
her bosom.
Mr. Dysart lets his disappointed arms fall to his sides, and assumes the
aggrieved air of one who has been done out of a good thing.
"You!" says she, when at last she can speak.
"I suppose so," returns he discontentedly. He might just as well have
been anyone else, or anywhere else--such a chance--and _gone_!
"Never were you so welcome!" cries she, dodging behind him as Tommy,
fully armed, and all alive, comes tearing round the corner. "Ah, ha,
Tommy, _sold_! I've got a champion now. I'm no longer shivering in my
shoes. Mr. Dysart will protect me--_won't_ you, Mr. Dysart?" to the
young man, who says "yes" without stirring a muscle. The heaviest bribe
would not have induced him to move, because, standing behind him, she
has laid her dainty fingers on his shoulders, from which safe position
she mocks at Tommy with security. Were the owners of the shoulders to
stir, the owners of the fingers might remove the delightful members.
Need it be said that, with this awful possibility before him, Mr. Dysart
is prepared to die at his post rather than budge an inch.
And, indeed, death seems imminent. Tommy charging round the
rhododendron, finding himself robbed of his expected scalp, grows
frantic, and makes desperate passes at Mr. Dysart's legs, which that
hero, being determined, as I have said, not to stir under any
provocation, circumvents with a considerable display of policy, such as:
"I say, Tommy, old boy, is that you? How d'ye do? Glad to see me, aren't
you?" This last very artfully with a view to softening the attacks. "You
don't know what I've brought you!" This is more artful still, and
distinctly a swindle, as he has brought him nothing, but on the spot he
determines to redeem himself with the help of the small toy-shops and
sweety shops down in the village. "Put down that fork like a good boy,
and let me tell you how----"
"Oh, _bother_ you!" says Tommy, indignantly. "I'd have had her only for
you! What brought you here now? Couldn't you have waited a bit?"
"Yes! what brought you?" says Miss Kavanagh, most disgracefully going
over to the other side, now that danger is at an end, and Tommy has
planted his impromptu tomahawk in a bed close by.
"Do you want to know?" says he quickly.
The fingers have been removed from his shoulders, and he is now at
liberty to turn round and look at the charming face beside him.
"No, no!" says she, shaking her head. "I've been rude, I suppose. But it
is such a wonderful thing to see you here so soon again."
"Why should I not be here?"
"Of course! That is the one unanswerable question. But you must confess
it is puzzling to those who thought of you as being elsewhere."
"If you are one of 'those' you fill me with gratitude. That you should
think of me even for a moment----"
"Well, I haven't been thinking much," says she, frankly, and with the
most delightful if scarcely satisfactory little smile: "I don't believe
I was thinking of you at all, until I turned the corner just now, and
then, I confess, I was startled, because I believed you at the
Antipodes."
"Perhaps your belief was mother to your thought."
"Oh, no. Don't make me out so nasty. Well, but _were_ you there?"
"Perhaps so. Where are they?" asks he gloomily. "One hears a good deal
about them, but they comprise so many places that now-a-days one is
hardly sure where they exactly lie. At all events no one has made them
clear to me."
"Does it rest with me to enlighten you?" asks she, with a little
aggravating half glance from under her long lashes; "well--the North
Pole, Kamtschatka, Smyrna, Timbuctoo, Maoriland, Margate----"
"We'll stop there, I think," says he, with a faint grimace.
"There! At Margate? No, thanks. _You_ can, if you like, but as for
me----"
"I don't suppose you would stop anywhere with me," says he. "I have
occasional glimmerings that I hope mean common sense. No, I have not
been so adventurous as to wander towards Margate. I have only been to
town and back again."
"What town?"
"Eh? What town?" says he astonished. "_London_, you know."
"No, I don't know," says Miss Kavanagh, a little petulantly. "One would
think there was only one town in the world, and that all you English
people had the monopoly of it. There are other towns, I suppose. Even we
poor Irish insignificants have a town or two. Dublin comes under that
head, I suppose?"
"Undoubtedly. Of _course_," making great haste to abase himself. "It is
mere snobbery our making so much of London. A kind of despicable cant,
you know."
"Well, after all, I expect it is a big place in every way," says Miss
Kavanagh, so far mollified by his submission as to be able to allow him
something.
"It's a desert," says Tommy, turning to his aunt, with all the air of
one who is about to impart to her useful information. "It's raging with
wild beasts. They roam to and fro and are at their wits' ends----" here
Tommy, who is great on Bible history, but who occasionally gets mixed,
stops short. "Father says they're there," he winds up defiantly.
"Wild beasts!" echoes Mr. Dysart, bewildered. "Is _this_ the teaching
about their Saxon neighbors that the Irish children receive at the hands
of their parents and guardians. Oh, well, come now, Tommy, really, you
know----"
"Yes; they are there," says Tommy, rebelliously. "_Frightful_ beasts!
_Bears!_ They'd tear you in bits if they could get at you. They have no
reason in them, father says. And they climb up posts, and roar at
people."
"Oh, nonsense!" says Mr. Dysart. "One would think we were having a
French Revolution all over again in England. Don't you think," glancing
severely at Joyce, who is giving way to unrestrained mirth, "that it is
not only wrong, but dangerous, to implant such ideas about the English
in the breasts of Irish children? There isn't a word of truth in it,
Tommy."
"There _is_!" says Monkton, junior, wagging his head indignantly.
"Father _told_ me."
"Father told us," repeats the small Mabel, who has just come up.
"And father says, too, that the reason that they are so wicked is
because they want their freedom!" says Tommy, as though this is an
unanswerable argument.
"Oh, I see! The socialists!" says Mr. Dysart. "Yes; a troublesome pack!
But still, to call them wild beasts----"
"They _are_ wild beasts," says Tommy, prepared to defend his position to
the last. "They've got _manes_, and _horns_, and _tails_!"
"He's romancing," says Mr. Dysart looking at Joyce.
"He's not," says she demurely. "He is only trying to describe to you the
Zoological Gardens. His father gives him a graphic description of them
every evening, and--the result you see."
Here both she and he, after a glance at each other, burst out laughing.
"No wonder you were amused," says he, "but you might have given me a
hint. You were unkind to me--as usual."
"Now that you have been to London," says she, a little hurriedly, as if
to cover his last words and pretend she hasn't heard them, "you will
find our poor Ireland duller than ever. At Christmas it is not so bad,
but just _now_, and in the height of your season, too,----"
"Do you call this place dull?" interrupts he. "Then let me tell you you
misjudge your native land; this little bit of it, at all events. I think
it not only the loveliest, but the liveliest place on earth."
"You are easily pleased," says she, with a rather embarrassed smile.
"He isn't!" says Tommy, breaking into the conversation with great
aplomb. He has been holding on vigorously to Mr. Dysart's right hand for
the last five minutes, after a brief but brilliant skirmish with Mabel
as to the possession of it--a skirmish brought to a bloodless conclusion
by the surrender, on Mr. Dysart's part, of his left hand to the weaker
belligerent. "He hates Miss Maliphant, nurse says, though Lady Baltimore
wants him to marry her, and she's a fine girl, nurse says, an' raal
smart, and with the gift o' the gab, an' lots o' tin----"
"_Tommy!_" says his aunt frantically. It is indeed plain to everybody
that Tommy is now quoting nurse, _au naturel_, and that he is betraying
confidences in a perfectly reckless manner.
"Don't stop him," says Mr. Dysart, glancing at Joyce's crimson cheeks
with something of disfavor. "'What's Hecuba to me, or I to Hecuba?' I
_defy_ you," a little stormily, "to think I care a farthing for Miss
Maliphant or for any other woman on earth--_save one_!"
"Oh, you mustn't press your confidences on me," says she, smiling and
dissembling rather finely; "I know nothing. I accuse you of nothing.
Only, Tommy, you were a little rude, weren't you?"
"I wasn't," says Tommy, promptly, in whom the inborn instinct of
self-defence has been largely developed. "It's true. Nurse says she has
a voice like a cow. Is _that_ true?" turning, unabashed to Dysart.
"She's expected at the Castle, next week. You shall come up and judge
for yourself," says he, laughing. "And," turning to Joyce, "you will
come, too, I hope."
"It is manners to wait to be asked," returns she, smiling.
"Oh, as for that," says he, "Lady Baltimore crossed last night with me
and her husband. And here is a letter for you." He pulls a note of the
cocked hat order out of one of his pockets.