Love and Life: An Old Story in Eighteenth Century Costume. Yonge Charlotte Mary

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СКАЧАТЬ she is the best mother in the yard. Besides, it is time that the cowslip wine were made, and I will give you some bread and cheese and gingerbread for noonchin, so that you may fill your baskets in the meadows before they are laid up for grass. Mrs. Jewel will give you a drink of milk.”

      “O let me go, sister!” pleaded Eugene. “She gives us bread and honey! And I want to hear the lapwings in the meadows cry pee-wit.”

      “We shall have you falling into the river,” said Harriet, rather fretfully.

      “No, indeed! If you fall in, I will pull you out. Young maids should not run about the country without a gentleman to take care of them. Should they, sister?” cried the doughty seven years’ old champion.

      “Who taught you that, sir?” asked Betty, trying to keep her countenance.

      “I heard Mrs. Churchill say so to my papa,” returned the boy. “So now, there’s a good sister. Do pray let me go!”

      “If you say your tasks well, and will promise to be obedient to Harriet and to keep away from the river, and not touch the basket of eggs.”

      Eugene was ready for any number of promises; and Harriet, seeing there was no escape for her, went off with Aurelia to put on their little three-cornered muslin handkerchiefs and broad-brimmed straw hats, while Eugene repeated his tasks, namely, a fragment of the catechism, half a column of spelling from the Universal Spelling-Book, and (Betty’s special pride) his portion of the Orbis Sensualium Pictus of Johannes Amos Comenius, the wonderful vocabulary, with still more wonderful “cuts,” that was then the small boys path to Latinity.

      The Eagle, Aquila, the King of Birds, Rex Avium, looketh at the Sun, intuetur Solem, as indeed he could hardly avoid doing, since in the “cut” the sun was within a hairsbreath of his beak, while his claws were almost touching a crow (Corvus) perched on a dead horse, to exemplify how Aves Raptores fed on carrion.

      Thanks to Aurelia’s private assistance, Eugene knew his lessons well enough for his excitement not to make him stumble so often as to prevent Betty’s pronouncing him a good boy, and dispensing with his copy, sum, piece, and reading, until the evening. These last were very tough affairs, the recitation being from Shakespeare, and the reading from the Spectator. There were no children’s books, properly so called, except the ballads, chap-books brought round by pedlers, often far from edifying, and the plunge from the horn-book into general literature was, to say the least of it, bracing.

      The Delavie family was cultivated for the time. French had been brought home as a familiar tongue, though Telemaque, Racine, and Le Grand Cyrus were the whole library in that language; and there was not another within thirty miles. On two days in the week the sisters became Mesdemoiselles Elisabeth, Henriette, and Aurelie, and conversed in French over their spinning, seams, lace, or embroidery; nor was Aurelia yet emancipated from reciting Racine on alternate days with Milton and Shakespeare.

      Betty could likewise talk German with the old Austrian maid, Nannerl, who had followed the family from Vienna; but the accomplishment was not esteemed, and the dialect was barbarous. From the time of her mother’s death, Betty had been a strict and careful, though kind, ruler to her sisters; and the long walk was a greater holiday to Aurelia than to Eugene, releasing her from her book and work, whereas he would soon have been trundling his hoop, and haunting the steps of Palmer, who was gardener as well as valet, butler, and a good deal besides, and moreover drilled his young master. Thus Eugene carried his head as erect as any Grenadier in the service, and was a thorough little gentleman in miniature; a perfect little beau, as his sisters loved to call the darling of their hearts and hopes.

      Even Harriet could not be cross to him, though she made Aurelia carry the eggs, and indulged in sundry petulant whisks of the fan which she carried by way of parasol. “Now, why does Betty do this?” she exclaimed, as soon as they were out of hearing. “Is it to secure to herself the whole enjoyment of your beau?”

      “You forget,” said Aurelia. “You promised to fetch the eggs, when we met Mrs. Jewel jogging home from market on her old blind white horse last Saturday, because you said no eggs so shaken could ever be hatched.”

      “You demure chit!” exclaimed Harriet; “would you make me believe that you have no regrets for so charming a young gentleman, my Lady’s son and our kinsman.”

      “If he spoke to me I should not know how to answer. And then you would blame my rudeness. Besides,” she added, with childish sagacity, “he can be nothing but a fine London macaroni. Only think of the cowslips! A whole morning to make cowslip balls,” she added with a little frisk. “I would not give one for all the macaronies in England, with their powder and their snuff-boxes. Faugh!”

      “Ah, child, you will sing another note perhaps when it is too late,” said her sister, with a sigh between envy and compassion.

      It floated past Aurelia unheeded, as she danced up one side of a stile, and sprang clear down into a green park, jumped Eugene down after her by both hands, and exclaimed, “Harriet is in her vapours; come, let us have a race!”

      She was instantly careering along like a white butterfly in the sunshine, flitting on as the child tried to catch her, among the snowy hawthorn bushes, or sinking down for very joy and delight among the bank of wild hyacinths. Life and free motion were joy and delight enough for that happy being with her childish heart, and the serious business of the day was all delight. There lay the rich meadows basking in the sun, and covered with short grass just beginning its summer growth, but with the cowslips standing high above it; hanging down their rich clusters of soft, pure, delicately-scented bells, from their pinky stems over their pale crinkled leaves, interspersed here and there with the deep purple of the fool’s orchis, and the pale brown quiver-grass shaking out its trembling awns on their invisible stems. No flower is more delightful to gather than the cowslip, fragrant as the breath of a cow. And Aurelia darted about, piling the golden heap in her basket with untiring enjoyment; then, producing a tape, called on Harriet, who had been working in a more leisurely fashion, to join her in making a cowslip ball, and charged Eugene not to nip off the heads too short.

      The sweet, soft, golden globe was made, and even Harriet felt the delicious intoxication. The young things tossed it aloft, flung from one to the other, caught it, caressed it, buried their faces in it, and threw it back with shrieks of glee.

      Suddenly Harriet checked her sister with a peremptory sign. She heard horse-hoofs in the lane, divided from the field by a hedge of pollard willows, so high that she had never thought of being overlooked, till the cessation of the trotting sound struck her; and looking round she saw that a horseman had halted at the gate, and was gazing at their sports. It was from the distance of a field, but this was enough to fill Harriet with dismay. She drew herself up in a moment, signing peremptorily to Aurelia, who was flying about, her hat off, her one long curl streaming behind as she darted hither and thither, evading Eugene who was pursuing her.

      As she paused, and Eugene clutched her dress with a shout of ecstasy, Harriet came up, glancing severely toward the gate, and saying, as she handed her sister the hat, “This comes of childishness! That we should be seen thus! What a hoyden he will think you!” as the hoofs went on and the red coat vanished.

      “He! Who? Not the farmer?” said Aurelia. “This is not laid up for hay.”

      “No indeed. I believe it is he,” said Harriet, mysteriously.

      “He?” repeated Aurelia. “Not Mr. Arden, for he would be in black,” and at Harriet’s disgusted gesture, “I beg your pardon, but I did not know you had a new he. Oh! surely you are not thinking of the young baronet?”

      “I am sure it was his figure.”

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