"A cat may be choked with cream as well as fishbones, Mrs Stella. Keep
your pretty little eyes open, child, and thou shalt see."
In a week she was his humble servant. 'T is scarce credible, but I saw her
once lay her hand, sparkling with jewels, upon his, and he shake it off as
if 't were dirt. I saw the water brim her eyes as she lookt at him and he
laught and turned away. Indeed, her Ladyship had her lesson ere she left
Moor Park, and I knew not then enough to pity her. Pity--'t is a flower
that grows in the furrows of a heart ploughed over by sorrow, and my day
was not yet come. He laught with me over the disconsolate beauty, when she
importuned him to be her son's tutor, and he replied he had far other
views.
Yet for all his caution we met sometimes, when I be gathering flowers and
lavender, or fruit for Mrs Groson the cook. And I knew he loved to talk
with me. He loves it still. Many was the jest we had--jests with their
root in childhood and folly to all but him and me.
So came the day that changed all.
'Twas a fair sunset, with one star shining, and I stood in the copse far
from the house, to hear the nightingale; and, though I thought of him, did
not see that he leaned against the King's Beech, until he stirred and made
my heart to flutter.
"I watch your namesake, Stella," says he, "and wonder if in that sweet
star are plots and envyings--a Marlborough intriguing against his King, a
Burnet plotting for an archbishopric, an ugly Dutch monsterkin on the
throne--and a naughty rogue called Stella, that hath forgot her old tutor
and loves him no more. Yet if that love should miscarry, I know not--"
"If it miscarry," says I, trembling, "there will be many to succeed it.
But I think, Mr Swift, it cannot."
"Many?" he answered, and up went his brows. "Such as my Lady Mary and
such-like? But that is no love, Stellakin. 'T is only thy innocence could
mistake it. The true name is none so pretty, and not for thy lips. Get
thee to a nunnery, child--the world is not for such as thee."