One fine morning in the next spring, there was more stir and
cheerfulness about the Woodruffes’ dwelling than there had been of late.
The winter had been somewhat dreary; and now the spring was anxious; for
Woodruffe’s business was not, as yet, doing very well. His hope, when he
bought his pony and cart, was to dispatch by railway to the town the
best of his produce, and sell the commoner part in the country
neighbourhood, sending his cart round within the reach of a few miles.
As it turned out, he had nothing yet to send to the town, and his agent
there was vexed and displeased. No radishes, onions, early salads, or
rhubarb were ready: and it would be sometime yet before they were.
“I am sure I have done everything I could,” said Woodruffe to Fleming,
as they both lent a hand to put the pony into the cart. “Nobody can say
that I have not made drains enough, or that they are not deep enough;
yet the frost has taken such a hold that one would think we were living
in the north of Scotland, instead of in Staffordshire.”
“It has not been a severe season either,” observed Fleming.
“There’s the vexation,” replied Woodruffe. “If it had been a season
which set us at defiance, and made all sufferers alike, one must just
submit to a loss, and go on again, like one’s neighbours. But, you see,
I am cut out, as my agent says, from the market. Everybody else has
spring vegetables there, as usual. It is no use telling him that I never
failed before. But I know what it is. It is yonder great ditch that does
the mischief.”
“Why, we have nothing to do with that.”
“That is the very reason. If it was mine or yours, do you think I should
not have taken it in hand long ago? All my draining goes for little
while that shallow ditch keeps my ground a continual sop. It is all
uneven along the bottom;—not the same depth for three feet together
anywhere, and not deep enough by two feet in any part. So there it is,
choked up and putrid; and, after an hour or two of rain, my garden gets
such a soaking, that the next frost is destruction.”
“I will speak about it again,” said Fleming. “We must have it set right
before next winter.”
“I think we have seen enough of the uselessness of speaking,” replied
Woodruffe, gloomily. “If we tease the gentry any more, they may punish
you for it. I would show them my mind by being off,—throwing up my
bargain at all costs, if I had not put so much into the ground that I
have nothing left to move away with.”
“Don’t be afraid for me,” said Fleming, cheerfully, “It was chiefly my
doing that you came here, and I must try my utmost to obtain fair
conditions for you. We must remember that the benefit of your outlay has
all to come.”
“Yes; I can’t say we have got much of it yet.”
“By next winter,” continued Fleming, “your privet hedges and screens
will have grown up into some use against the frost; and your own
drainage——. Come, come, Allan, my boy! be off! It is getting late.”
Allan seemed to be idling, re-arranging his bunches of small radishes,
and little bundles of rhubarb, in their clean baskets, and improving the
stick with which he was to drive: but he pleaded that he was waiting for
Moss, and for the parcel which his mother was getting ready for Becky.
“Ah! my poor little girl!” said Woodruffe. “Give my love to her, and
tell her it will be a happy day when we can send for her to come home
again. Be sure you observe particularly, to tell us, how she looks; and,
mind, if she fancies anything in the cart,—any radishes, or whatever
else, because it comes out of our garden, be sure you give it her. I
wish I was going myself with the cart, for the sake of seeing Becky; but
I must go to work. Here have I been all the while, waiting to see you
off. Ah! here they come! you may always have notice now of who is coming
by that child’s crying.”
“O, father! not always!” exclaimed Allan.
“Far too often, I’m sure. I never knew a child grow so fractious. I am
saying, my dear,” to his wife, who now appeared with her parcel, and
Moss in his best hat, “that boy is the most fractious child we ever had:
and he is getting too old for that to begin now. How can you spoil him
so?”
“I am not aware,” said Mrs. Woodruffe, her eyes filling with tears,
“that I treat him differently from the rest: but the child is not well.
His chilblains tease him terribly; and I wish there may be nothing
worse.”
“Warm weather will soon cure the chilblains, and then I hope we shall
see an end of the fretting.—Now, leave off crying this minute, Moss, or
you don’t go. You don’t see me cry with my rheumatism, and that is worse
than chilblains, I can tell you.”
Moss tried to stifle his sobs, while his mother put more straw into the
cart for him, and cautioned Allan to be careful of him, for it really
seemed as if the child was tender all over. Allan seemed to succeed best
as comforter. He gave Moss the stick to wield, and showed him how to
make believe to whip the pony, so that before they turned the corner,
Moss was wholly engrossed with what he called driving.
“Yes, yes,” said Woodruffe, as he turned away, to go to his garden,
“Allan is the one to manage him. He can take as good care of him as any
woman, without spoiling him.”
Mrs. Woodruffe submitted to this in silence; but with the feeling that
she did not deserve it.
Becky had had no notice of this visit from her brothers: but no such
visit could take her by surprise; for she was thinking of her family all
day long, every day, and fancying she should see them, whichever way she
turned. It was not her natural destination to be a servant in a
farm-house: she had never expected it,—never been prepared for it. She
was as willing to work as any girl could be; and her help in the
gardening was beyond what most women are capable of: but it was a bitter
thing to her to go among strangers, and toil for them, when she knew
that she was wanted at home by father and mother, and brothers, and just
at present, by her sister too; for Mrs. Fleming’s confinement was to
happen this spring. The reason why Becky was not at home while so much
wanted there was, that there really was no accommodation for her. The
plan of sleeping all huddled together as they were at first would not
do. The girl herself could not endure it; and her parents felt that she
must be got out at any sacrifice. They had inquired diligently till they
found a place for her in a farm-house where the good wife promised
protection, and care, and kindness; and fulfilled her promise to the
best of her power.
“I hope they do well by you here, Becky,” asked Allan, when the surprise
caused by his driving up with a dash had subsided, and everybody had
retired, to leave Becky with her brothers for the few minutes they could
stay. “I hope they are kind to you here.”
“O, yes,—very kind. And I am sure you ought to say so to father and
mother.”
Becky had jumped into the cart, and had her arms round Moss, and her
head on his shoulder. Raising her head, and with her eyes filling as she
spoke, she inquired anxiously how the new cottages went on, and when
father and mother were to have a home of their own again. She owned, but
did not wish her father and mother to hear of it, that she did not like
being among such rough people as the farm servants. She did not like
some of the behaviour that she saw; and, still less, such talk as she
was obliged to overhear. When _would_ a cottage be ready for them?
“Why, the new cottages would soon be getting on now,” Allan said: but he
didn’t know; nobody fancied the look of them. He saw them just after the
foundations were laid; and the enclosed parts were like a clay-puddle.
He did not see how they were ever to be improved; for the curse of wet
seemed to be on them, as upon everything about the Station. Fleming’s
cottage was the best he had seen, after all, if only it was twice as
large. If anything could be done to make the new cottages what cottages
should be, it would be done: for every body agreed that the railway
gentlemen desired to do the best for their people, and to set an example
in that respect: but it was beyond anybody’s power to make wet clay as
healthy as warm gravel. Unless they could go to work first to dry the
soil, it seemed a hopeless sort of affair.
“But, I say, Becky,” pursued Allan, “you know about my garden—that
father gave me a garden of my own.”
Becky’s head was turned quite away; and she did not look round, when she
replied,
“Yes; I remember. How does your garden get on?”
There was something in her voice which made her brother lean over and
look into her face; and, as he expected, tears were running down her
cheeks.
“There now!” said he, whipping the back of the cart with his stick;
“something must be done, if you can’t get on here.”
“O! I can get on. Be sure you don’t tell mother that I can’t get on, or
anything about it.”
“You look healthy, to be sure.”
“To be sure I am. Don’t say any more about it. Tell me about your
garden.”
“Well: I am trying what I can make of it, after I have done working with
father. But it takes a long time to bring it round.”
“What! is the wet there, too?”
“Lord, yes! The wet was beyond everything at first. I could not leave
the spade in the ground ten minutes, if father called me, but the water
was standing in the hole when I went back again. It is not so bad now,
since I made a drain to join upon father’s principal one; and father
gave me some sand, and plenty of manure: but it seems to us that manure
does little good. It won’t sink in when the ground is so wet.”
“Well, there will be the summer next, and that will dry up your garden.”
“Yes. People say the smells are dreadful in hot weather, though. But we
seem to get used to that. I thought it sickly work, just after we came,
going down to get osiers, and digging near the big ditch that is our
plague now: but somehow, it does not strike me now as it did then,
though Fleming says it is getting worse every warm day. But come—I must
be off. What will you help yourself to? And don’t forget your parcel.”
Becky’s great anxiety was to know when her brothers would come again. O!
very often, she was assured—oftener and oftener as the vegetables came
forward: whenever there were either too many or too few to send to the
town by rail.
After Becky had jumped down, the farmer and one of the men were seen to
be contemplating the pony.
“What have you been giving your pony lately?” asked the farmer of Allan.
“I ask as a friend, having some experience of this part of the country.
Have you been letting him graze?”
“Yes, in the bit of meadow that we have leave for. There is a good deal
of grass there, now. He has been grazing there these three weeks.”
“On the meadow where the osier beds are? Ay! I knew it, by the look of
him. Tell your father that if he does not take care, his pony will have
the staggers in no time. An acquaintance of mine grazed some cattle
there once; and in a week or two, they were all feverish, so that the
butcher refused them on any terms; and I have seen more than one horse
in the staggers, after grazing in marshes of that sort.”
“There is fine thick grass there, and plenty of it,” said Allan, who did
not like that anybody but themselves should criticise their new place
and plans.
“Ay, ay; I know,” replied the farmer. “But if you try to make hay of
that grass, you’ll be surprised to find how long it takes to make, and
how like wool it comes out at last. It is a coarse grass, with no
strength in it; and it must be a stronger beast than this that will bear
feeding on it. Just do you tell your father what I say, that’s all; and
then he can do as he pleases: but I would take a different way with that
pony, without loss of time, if it was mine.”
Allan did not much like taking this sort of message to his father, who
was not altogether so easy to please as he used to be. If anything vexed
him ever so little, he always began to complain of his rheumatism—and he
now complained of his rheumatism many times in a day. It was managed,
however, by tacking a little piece of amusement and pride upon it. Moss
was taught, all the way as they went home, after selling their
vegetables, how much everything sold for; and he was to deliver the
money to his father, and go through his lesson as gravely as any big
man. It succeeded very well. Everybody laughed. Woodruffe called the
child his little man-of-business; gave him a penny out of the money he
brought; and when he found that the child did not like jumping as he
used to do, carried him up to the railway to listen for the whistle, and
see the afternoon train come up, and stop a minute, and go on again.