A Changed Heart. May Agnes Fleming

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СКАЧАТЬ to a hall like the one below; flanked, like it, by doors. Natty, with a glance of wicked delight at his dolorous face, opened the first door to the right, and ushered him at once into the presence of the awful Lady Leroy.

      Something—it certainly looked more like an Egyptian mummy than anything else—swathed in shawls and swaddling-clothes, was stuck up in a vast Sleepy Hollow open arm-chair, and had its face turned to the door. That face, and a very yellow, and seared, and wrinkled, and unlovely face it was, buried in the flapping obscurity of a deeply-frilled white cap, was lit by a pair of little, twinkling eyes, bright and keen as two stilettos.

      "Mrs. Leroy," said Natty, her tone demure, but her mischievous eyes dancing under their lashes, "this is Captain Cavendish."

      "How d'ye do, Captain Cavendish?" said Mrs. Leroy, in a shrill, squeaking voice, like a penny whistle out of tune; "sit down—do! Natty, can't you give the young man a cheer?"

      Natty did not cheer, but she placed a chair for him, whispering, as she did so, "Speak loud, or she won't hear you."

      "What's the weather like out o' doors?" inquired the old lady, scanning him from head to foot with her little piercing eyes; "be the sun a-shining, hey?"

      "No, Madam," said Captain Cavendish, in a loud key, "it is foggy."

      She had paid no attention to his reply; she had been staring at him all the time, until even he, cool as any man of the world could be, got a trifle disconcerted. Natty, sitting demurely near, was enjoying it all with silent but intense delight.

      "So you're the young English captain Natty was telling me about. You're not so handsome as she said you were; leastways, you ain't to my taste!"

      It was Natty's turn now to look disconcerted, which she did with a vengeance, as the dark, laughing eyes of the young officer turned upon her.

      "Miss Marsh does me too much honor to mention me at all," he said, speaking more at the young lady than to the old one.

      "Hey?" inquired Lady Leroy, shrilly. "What's that? What did you say?"

      "I was saying how remarkably well you were looking, ma'am," said the captain, raising his voice, "and that this Redmon is a very fine old place."

      "It's not!" screamed Lady Leroy, viciously; "it's the hatefulest, daftest, uncomfortablest hole ever anybody set foot in! Natty!"

      "Yes, ma'am!" said Natty. "What is it?"

      "Is old Nettleby planting them potatoes to-day?"

      "Yes, of course he is."

      "He'll plant Carters where he ought to plant Early Blues! I know he will!" cried the old lady in an ecstasy of alarm; "run out as fast as you can, Natty, and tell him not to plant any Carters in the three-cornered field. Run, run, run!"

      Natty knew Lady Leroy a great deal too well to expostulate. "I will be back directly," she said, in a low voice, the laughing light in her eyes still, as she passed her visitor; "do not get into trouble if you can help it, in my absence."

      She was gone, and Lady Leroy, with her eyes fixed on the opposite wall, seemed to have gone off into a fit of musing. Captain Cavendish tried to look about him, which he had not ventured to do before, under those basilisk eyes. It was a large square room, like all the rest in the house, and stiflingly close and warm. No wonder, for a small cooking-stove was burning away, and every window was closed and shuttered. A bed stood in one corner, an old-fashioned clock ticked in a loud hoarse voice on the mantel-piece, a small round table stood at the old lady's elbow, and the floor was covered with a carpet that had been Brussels once, but which was dirty, and colorless, and ragged now. There was an open cupboard with dishes, and a sort of pantry with a half glass door, through which he could see boxes and barrels, hams and dried beef, and other commissary stores. The chair matched the flinty sofa down stairs, and the only thing to attract attention in the room was a green cabinet of covered wood that stood beside the bed. While he was looking at it, the old-fashioned clock began striking twelve in a gruff and surly way, as if it did it against its better judgment. The sound woke the old lady up from her brown study—woke her up with a sharp jerk.

      "It's twelve o'clock!" she exclaimed shrilly, "and I want my dinner! Call Midge!"

      This was addressed to Captain Cavendish, and in so peremptory a tone that that gallant young officer looked alarmed and disconcerted.

      "Call Midge, I tell you! Call her quick!" yelped Lady Leroy in an excited way. "Call Midge, will you!"

      "Where is she? Where will I call her?" said the young man, in considerable consternation.

      "Open that door, stupid, and call Midge!" cried the old woman, violently excited; "call her quick, I tell you!"

      Thus ordered, Captain Cavendish opened the door and began calling loudly on the unknown lady bearing the name of Midge.

      Out of the gloom and dismalness below a hoarse voice shouted in reply, "I'm a coming;" and Captain Cavendish went back to his seat. The voice was that of a man, and of a man with a shocking bad cold, too; and the step lumbering up stairs was a man's step; but for all that, Midge wasn't a man, but a woman. Such a woman! the Egyptian mummy in the arm-chair was a Parisian belle compared to her. Between three and four feet high, and between four and five feet broad, Midge was just able to waddle under the weight of her own fair person, and no more. A shock of hair, very like a tar-mop, stood, bristling defiance at combs and brushes, up on end, like "quills upon the fretful porcupine." To say she had no forehead, and only two pinholes for eyes, and a little round lump of flesh in lieu of a decent nose, would be doing no sort of justice to the subject; for the face, with its fat, puffy cheeks, was altogether indescribable. The costume of the lady was scant, her dress displaying to the best advantage a pair of ankles some fifteen inches in circumference, and a pair of powerful arms, bare to the shoulders, were rolled up in a cotton apron. With the airy tread of an elephant inclined to embonpoint, this sylph-like being crossed the hall and stood in the doorway awaiting orders, while Captain Cavendish stared aghast, and backed a few paces with a feeble "By Jove!"

      "What do you want, ma'am?" inquired the damsel in the doorway, who might have been anywhere in the vale of years between twenty and fifty.

      "Get my dinner! It's after twelve! Don't I always tell you to come and get my dinner when you hear the clock strike twelve?"

      "And how do you suppose I can hear that there clock half a mile off, down in that kitchen!" retorted Midge, sharply. "I ain't jest got ears as sharp as lancets, I'd have you know. I'll take the key!"

      Mrs. Leroy produced a key from a pocket somewhere about her; and Midge, rather jerking it out of her hands than otherwise, unlocked the pantry, and began busying herself among the forage there. Mrs. Leroy's keen eyes followed every motion as a cat follows its prey, and Captain Cavendish gazed too, as if fascinated, on the fairy form of Miss Midge. In passing to and fro, Midge had more than once caught his eye, and at last her feelings got the better of her, and, pausing abruptly before him, with her arms akimbo, burst out, "Look here, sir! I don't know who you are, but if you're a doggertype-man, come to take my picter, I'd jest thank you to be quick about it, and not sit there gaping like——"

      "Midge!" called a ringing voice in the doorway. It was Nathalie, her face stern, her voice imperative. "Midge, how dare you speak so?"

      "Oh, never mind!" said Captain Cavendish, who, in the main, was a good-natured young officer. "I deserve it, I dare say. I have made an unpardonably long call, I believe. Mrs. СКАЧАТЬ