Wych Hazel Part 11

'It does make a person feel very solemn to be so near to death.'

'Solemn!' cried Wych Hazel. 'Is _that_ all you would feel, Phoebe?'

'I'm not much afraid of pain, you know, ma'am--and if the fire took it couldn't last long.'

'But Phoebe;--' she sat straight up on her floury cus.h.i.+ons, looking at the girl's quiet face. 'What do you mean, Phoebe?'-- She could not have told what checked the expression of her growing wonder.

'O lie down, ma'am, please! Why I only mean,' said Phoebe speaking with perfect simplicity--'You know G.o.d calls us all to die somehow--and if he called me to die so, it wouldn't make much difference. I shouldn't think of it when I'd got to heaven.'

Again some undefined feeling sealed Wych Hazel's lips. She lay down as she was desired, and with her hand over her eyes thought, and wondered, and fell asleep.

For some hours thereafter the sunbeams were hardly quieter than the party they lighted on the miller's floor. Wych Hazel slept; Mrs. Saddler was even more profoundly wrapped in forgetfulness; Mr. Falkirk sat by keeping guard. The miller's daughter had run up the hill to her home for a s.p.a.ce. As to Rollo, he had not been seen. His gun was his companion, and with that it was usual for him to be in the woods much of the time. He came back from his wanderings however as the day began to fall, and now sat on a stone outside the mill door, very busy. The little lake at his feet still and dark, with the side of the woody glen doubled in its mirror, and the sunlight in the tops of the trees reflected in golden glitter from the middle of the pool, was a picture to tempt the eye: but Rollo's eye, if it glanced, came back again. He was picking the feathers from a bird he had shot, and doing it deftly. Sauntering leisurely up the miller approached him.

'Now that's what I like,' he remarked; 'up to anything, eh?

You don't seem so much used up as the rest on 'em. Even the little one talked herself to sleep at last!'

'Have you got a match, Mr. Miller?'

'No--I haven't,' said the man of flour--'I always light my pipe with a burning gla.s.s. Won't that serve your turn? So there she sits, asleep, and my Phoebe sits and looks at her.'

'I've something else that will serve my turn,' said the hunter applying to his gun. 'But stay--I do not care to see any more fire to-day than is necessary.'--And drawing his work off to a safe place, he went on to kindle tinder and make a nice little fire.--'Haven't you learned how to make bread yet, Mr. Miller?'

'Not a bit!' said he laughing. 'And when you've got a wife and four daughters you won't do much fancy cookig neither, I guess. But there's Phoebe--'

'A mistake, Mr. Miller,' said the fancy cook. 'Best always to be independent of your wife--and of everything else.'

And impaling his bird on a sharp splinter he stuck it up before the fire, to the great interest and amus.e.m.e.nt of the miller. Another spectator also wandered out there, and she was presently sent back to the mill.

'Miss Hazel,' said Mrs. Saddler, coming to the 'divan' where the young lady and her guardian were both sitting,--'Mr. Rollo says, ma'am, are you ready for him to come in?'

'I am awake, if that is what he means.'

'What do you mean, Mrs. Saddler?'

'If you please, sir, I am sure I don't know what I mean,--but that's a very strange gentleman, Miss Kennedy. There he's gone and shot a robin--at least, I suppose it was him for I don't know who else should have done it-- and his gun's standing by-- and then he's gone and picked it ma'am--picked the feathers off, and they 're lyin' all round; and then he washed it in the lake, and he was hard to suit, for he walked a good way up the lake before he found a place where he _would_ wash it; and now he's made a fire and stuck up the bird and roasted it; and why he didn't get me or Miss Miller to do it I don't comprehend. And he's got plates and things, ma'am, and salt, ma'am, and bread; and that's what _he_ means, sir; and he want's to know if you're ready. The bird's all done.'

Wych Hazel looked anything but ready. She was very young in the world's ways, very new to her own popularity, and somehow Mrs. Saddler's story touched her sensitiveness. The shy, shrinking colour and look told of what at six years old would have made her hide her face under her mother's ap.r.o.n. No such refuge being at hand, however, and she obliged to face the world for herself, as soon as she had despatched a very dignified message to Mr. Rollo, the young lady's feeling sought relief in irritation.

'I suppose _I_ am not to blame this time, for making myself conspicuous, sir! Have you given me up as a bad bargain, Mr.

Falkirk?'

'It can't be helped, my dear,'--said her guardian somewhat dryly, and soberly too. 'I think however it is rather somebody else who is making himself conspicuous at this time.'

He became conspicuous to their vision a minute after, appearing in the mill door-way with a little dish in his hand and attended by Phoebe with other appliances; but nothing mortal could less justify Wych Hazel's sensation of shyness.

With the coolness of a traveller, the readiness of a hunter, and the business attention of a cook or a courier, both which offices he had been filling, he went about his arrangements.

The single chair that was in the mill was taken from Mr.

Falkirk and brought up to do duty as a table, with a board laid upon it. On this board was set the bird, hot and savoury, on its blue-edged dish; another plate with bread and salt, and a gla.s.s of water; together with a very original knife and fork, that were probably introduced soon after the savages 'left.' Mrs. Saddler's eyes grew big as she looked; but Rollo and the miller's girl understood each other perfectly and wanted none of her help. Well----

'Girls blush sometimes because they are alive'--but seeing it could not be helped, as Mr. Falkirk had said, Wych Hazel rallied whatever of her was grown up, and tried to do justice to both the cooking and the compliment. The extreme gravity and propriety of her demeanour were a little suspicious to one who knew her well, and there could be no sort of question as to the prettiest possible curl which now and then betrayed itself at the corners of her mouth; but Miss Kennedy had herself remarkably in hand, and talked as demurely from behind the breast-bone of her robin as if it had been a small mountain ridge. Mr. Falkirk looked on.

'Where did you find that, Rollo?'

'Somewhere within a mile of circuit, sir,' said Rollo, who had taken a position of ease in the mill doorway, half lying on the floor, and looking out on the lake.

'You are a good provider.'

'Might have had fish--if my tackle had not been out of reach. I did manage to pick up a second course, though----Miss Phoebe, I think it is time for the second course----'

His action, at least, Phoebe understood, if not his words; for as he sprang up and cleared the board of the relics of the robin, the miller's daughter, looking as if the whole thing was a play, brought out from some crib a large platter of wild strawberries bordered with vine leaves; along with some bowls of very good looking milk.

'Upon my word, Rollo!'--said the other gentleman.

'Ah, that touches you, Mr. Falkirk! You don't deserve it--but you may have some. And I will be generous--Mr. Falkirk, here is a wing of the robin.'

'No, thank you,' said the other, laughing. 'Why these are fine!'

'Is the air fine out of doors, Mr. Rollo?' asked the young lady.

'Nothing can be finer.'

'What you call "strong," sir?'

'Strong as a rose--or as a lark's whistle--or as June sunlight; strong in a gentle way; I don't admire things that are _too_ strong.'

'Things that you think ought to be weak. But I was trying to find out whether your private collation of air could have taken away your appet.i.te.'

'I think not--I haven't inquired after it, but now that you speak of the matter, I think it must have been bread and cheese.'

'And I suppose you tried the strawberries--just to see if they were ripe.'

'No, I didn't, but I will now.' And coming to Wych Hazel's side he proceeded to help her carefully and to put a bowl of milk in suggestive proximity to her right hand; then taking a handful himself he stood up and went on talking to Mr.

Falkirk.

'What is your plan of proceeding, sir?'

'I don't know,' said Mr. Falkirk. 'I am puzzled. The coach goes back to-morrow morning to the foot of the mountain; there is no object in our making such a circuit, if we could get on from here,--besides the fact that none of us want to go over the ground again; but to get on from here seems out of the question.

'It seems to me, to stay here is out of the question,'

observed Rollo.

'I don't see how to help it--for one night. The only sole vehicle here is Mr. Miller's little wagon, and that will hold but two.'

'So I understand.--Those strawberries are not bad,' he said, appealing to Wych Hazel.

'A very mild form of praise, Mr. Rollo. Harmless and inoffensive--to berries. What will you do, then, Mr. Falkirk?

seeing there are five of us.'

'I am in a strait. Could you spend the night here in any tolerable comfort, Wych, do you suppose?'