The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green Part 35

~She.~ "Of you? Oh, no! Why should it? We are only severe on those we dislike."

~He.~ "Then you don't dislike me?"

~She.~ "No! - why should we?"

~He.~ "Well - I don't know - but I thought you might. Well, I'm glad of that - I'm ~very~ glad of that. 'Pon my word, it's ~very~ hot!

don't you think so?"

~She.~ "Yes! I'm burning. But I don't think we should find a cooler place." (~Does not evince any symptoms of moving.~) ~He.~ "Well, p'raps we shouldn't." (~A pause.~) "Do you know that I'm very glad you don't dislike me; because, it wouldn't have been pleasant to be disliked by you, would it?"

~She.~ "Well - of course, I can't tell. It depends upon one's own feelings."

~He.~ "Then you don't dislike me?"

~She.~ "Oh dear, no! why should I?"

~He.~ "And if you don't dislike me, you must like me?"

~She.~ "Yes - at least - yes, I suppose so."

At this stage of the proceedings, the arm that Mr. Verdant Green had pa.s.sed behind Miss Patty thrilled with such a peculiar sensation that his hand slipped down the bough, and the arm consequently came against Miss Patty's waist, where it rested. The necessity for saying something, the wish to make that something the something that was bursting his heart and brain, and the dread of letting it escape his lips - these three varied and mingled sensations so distracted poor Mr. Verdant Green's mind, that he was no more conscious of what he was giving utterance to than if he had been talking in a dream.

But there was Miss Patty by his side - a very tangible and delightful reality - playing (somewhat nervously) with those rebellious strings of her hat, which loosely hung in her hand, while the dappled shadows flickered on the waving ma.s.ses of her rich brown hair, - so something must be said; and, if it should lead to ~the~ something, why, so much the better.

Returning, therefore, to the subject of like and dislike, Mr. Verdant Green managed to say, in a choking, faltering tone, "I wonder how much you like me - very much?"

~She.~ "Oh, I couldn't tell - how should I? What strange questions you ask! You saved my life; so, of course, I am very, very grateful; and I hope I shall always be your friend."

~He.~ "Yes, I hope so indeed - always - and something more. Do you hope the same?"

~She.~ "What ~do~ you mean? Hadn't we better go back to the house?"

~He.~ "Not just yet - it's so cool here - at least, not cool exactly, but hot - pleasanter, that is - much pleasanter here.

[248 ADVENTURES OF MR. VERDANT GREEN]

~You~ said so, you know, a little while since. Don't mind me; I always feel hot when - when I'm out of doors."

~She.~ "Then we'd better go indoors."

~He.~ "Pray don't - not yet - do stop a little longer."

And the hand that had been on the bough of the tree, timidly seized Miss Patty's arm, and then naturally, but very gently, fell upon her waist. A thrill shot through Mr. Verdant Green, like an electric flash, and, after traversing from his head to his heels, probably pa.s.sed out safely at his boots - for it did him no harm, but, on the contrary, made him feel all the better.

"But," said the young lady, as she felt the hand upon her waist - not that she was really displeased at the proceeding, but perhaps she thought it best, under the circ.u.mstances, to say something that should have the resemblance of a veto - "but it is not necessary to hold me a prisoner."

"It's ~you~ that hold ~me~ a prisoner!" said Mr. Verdant Green, with a sudden burst of enthusiasm and blushes, and a great stress upon the p.r.o.nouns.

"Now you are talking nonsense, and, if so, I must go!" said Miss Patty. And she also blushed; perhaps it was from the heat. But she removed Mr. Verdant Green's hand from her waist, and he was much too frightened to replace it.

"Oh! ~do~ stay a little!" gasped the young gentleman, with an awkward sensation of want of employment for his hands. "You said that secrets were told here. I don't want to talk nonsense; I don't indeed; but the truth. ~I've~ a secret to tell you. Should you like to hear it?"

"Oh yes!" laughed Miss Patty. "I like to hear secrets." Now, how very absurd it was in Mr. Verdant Green wasting time in beating about the bush in this ridiculously timid way! Why could he not at once boldly secure his bird by a straightforward shot? She did not fly out of his range - did she? And yet, here he was making himself unnecessarily hot and uncomfortable, when he might, by taking it coolly, have been at his ease in a moment. What a foolish young man!

Nay, he still further lost time and evaded his purpose, by saying once again to Miss Patty - instead of immediately replying to her observation - "'Pon my word, it's uncommonly hot! don't you think so?"

Upon which Miss Patty replied, with some little chagrin, "And was that your secret?" If she had lived in the Elizabethan era she could have adjured him with a "Marry, come up!" which would have brought him to the point without any further trouble; but living in a Victorian age, she could do no more than say what she did, and leave the rest of her meaning to the language of the eyes.

"Don't laugh at me!" urged the bashful and weak-minded

[AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 249]

young man; "don't laugh at me! If you only knew what I feel when you laugh at me, you'd" -

"Cry, I dare say!" said Miss Patty, cutting him short with a merry smile, and (it must be confessed) a most wickedly-roguish expression about those bright flas.h.i.+ng hazel eyes of hers. "Now, you haven't told me this wonderful secret!"

"Why," said Mr. Verdant Green, slowly and deliberately - feeling that his time was coming on, and cowardly anxious still to fight off the fatal words - "you said that you didn't dislike me; and, in fact, that you liked me very much; and" -

But here Miss Patty cut him short again. She turned sharply round upon him, with those bright eyes and that merry face, and said, "Oh!

how ~can~ you say so? I never said anything of the sort!"

"Well," said Mr. Verdant Green, who was now desperate, and mentally prepared to take the dreaded plunge into that throbbing sea that beats upon the strand of matrimony, "whether ~you~ like ~me~ very much or not, ~I~ like ~you~ very much! - very much indeed! Ever since I saw you, since last Christmas, I've - I've liked you - very much indeed."

Mr. Verdant Green, in a very hot and excited state, had, while he was speaking, timidly brought his hand once more to Miss Patty's waist; and she did not interfere with its position. In fact, she was bending down her head, and was gazing intently on another knot that she had wilfully made in her hat-strings; and she was working so violently at that occupation of untying the knot, that very probably she might not have been aware of the situation of Mr.

Verdant Green's hand. At any rate, her own hands were too much busied to suffer her to interfere with his.

[250 ADVENTURES OF MR. VERDANT GREEN]

At last the climax had arrived. Mr. Verdant Green had screwed his courage to the sticking point, and had resolved to tell the secret of his love. He had got to the very edge of the precipice, and was on the point of jumping over head and ears into the stream of his destiny, and of bursting into any excited form of words that should make known his affection and his designs, when - when a vile perfume of tobacco, a sudden barking rush of Huz and Buz, and the horrid voice of little Mr. Bouncer, dispelled the bright vision, dispersed his ideas, and prevented the fulfilment of his purpose.

"Holloa, Giglamps!" roared the little gentleman, as he removed a short pipe from his mouth, and expelled an ascending curl of smoke; "I've been looking for you everywhere! Here we are, - as Hamlet's uncle said, - all in the horchard! I hope he's not been pouring poison in ~your~ ear, Miss Honeywood; he looks rather guilty. The Mum - I mean your mother - sent me to find you. The luncheon's been on the table more than an hour!"

Luckily for Mr. Verdant Green and Miss Patty Honeywood, little Mr.

Bouncer rattled on without waiting for any reply to his observations, and thus enabled the young lady to somewhat recover her presence of mind, and to effect a hasty retreat from under the apple tree, and through the garden gate.

"I say, old feller," said Mr. Bouncer, as he criticized Mr. Verdant Green's countenance over the bowl of his pipe, "you look rather in a stew! What's up? My gum!" cried the little gentleman, as an idea of the truth suddenly flashed upon him; "you don't mean to say you've been doing the spooney - what you call making love - have you?"

"Oh!" groaned the person addressed, as he followed out the train of his own ideas; "if you ~had~ but have come five minutes later - or not at all! It's most provoking!"

"Well, you're a grateful bird, I don't think!" said Mr. Bouncer. "Cut after her into luncheon, and have it out over the cold mutton and pickles!"

"Oh no!" responded the luckless lover; "I can't' eat - especially before the others! I mean - I couldn't talk to her before the others.

Oh! I don't know what I'm saying."

"Well, I don't think you do, old feller!" said Mr. Bouncer, puffing away at his pipe. "I'm sorry I was in the road, though! because, though I fight shy of those sort of things myself, yet I don't want to interfere with the little weaknesses of other folks. But come and have a pipe, old feller, and we'll talk matters over, and see what pips are on the cards, and what's the state of the game."

Now, a pipe was Mr. Bouncer's panacea for every kind of indisposition, both mental and bodily.

[AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 251]

CHAPTER V.

MR. VERDANT GREEN MEETS WITH THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER.

MENTION had frequently been made by the members of the Honeywood family, but more especially by Miss Patty, of a cousin - a male cousin - to whom they all seemed to be exceedingly partial - far more partial, as Mr. Verdant Green thought, with regard to Miss Patty, than he would have wished her to have been. This cousin was Mr. Frank Delaval, a son of their father's sister. According to their description, he possessed good looks, and an equivalently good fortune, with all sorts of accomplishments, both useful and ornamental; and was, in short (in their eyes at least), a very admirable Crichton of the nineteenth century.

Mr. Verdant Green had heard from Miss Patty so much of her cousin Frank, and of the pleasure they were antic.i.p.ating from a visit he had promised shortly to make to them, that he had at length begun to suspect that the young lady's maiden meditations were not altogether "fancy free," and that her thoughts dwelt upon this handsome cousin far more than was palatable to Mr. Verdant Green's feelings. In the most unreasonable manner, therefore, he conceived a violent antipathy to Mr. Frank Delaval, even before he had set eyes upon him, and considered that the Honeywood family had, one and all, greatly overrated him. But these suppositions and suspicions made him doubly anxious to come to an understanding with Miss Patty before the arrival of the dreaded Adonis; and it was this thought that had helped to nerve him through the terrors of the orchard scene, and which, but for Mr. Bouncer's ~malapropos~ intrusion, would have brought things to a crisis.

However, after he had had a talk with Mr. Bouncer, and had been fortified by that little gentleman's pithy admonitions to "go in and win," and to "strike while the iron's hot," and that "faint heart never won a nice young 'ooman," he determined to seek out Miss Patty at once, and bring to an end their unfinished conversation. For this purpose he returned to the hall, where he found a great commotion, and a carriage at the door; and out of the carriage jumped a handsome young man, with a black moustache, who ran up to the open hall-door (where Miss Patty