“How it makes one jump! I thought as how the house would come down! I’d as lief not live quite so near a railway! But I’ll get used to it, no doubt; and they say, as the trains come in so reg’lar, they’ll serve instead of a clock. Missus must be a-travelling by that train; she’ll get to the town in no time. She’ll be gladsome to find Mr. Gray at the station, all ready to welcome her back. They say, poor dear lady, she’s had a deal of trouble since that merry day of the wedding, when we had such a feast on the green. First there was the good old captain drowned, and she was the light of his eyes—I guess there was no love lost atween them; then her money ran away. How it went at once I can’t make out. Mr. Effingham seemed to have no end of it when he married! Had we not each of us a warm winter’s cloak, and Mr. Gray a silver inkstand! and did not Mr. Effingham’s gentleman tell the clerk as how his master was wondrous rich, and lived in a palace in Lunnon, whose very stables were bigger than the parsonage, and that he would spend as much at one dinner as would build us a new church-tower! It’ll be a mighty change to Miss Clemence,” soliloquized the girl, her merry, good-humoured face assuming a graver expression as she looked around her; “certain, things are very different here from what they was even in the captain’s cottage. She made everything so pretty around her! But so she will here; we shan’t know the place when she’s been here a month!” quoth the light-hearted Martha, as she arranged for the last time in a saucer of white crockery some six or seven early violets discovered after much search by the school-children at Stoneby, and sent as tokens of affection to their former dear young teacher. Surely the perfume of those wild-flowers would not have been sweeter had they been placed in a vase of Sèvres china!
The sun had now entirely disappeared, though a red glow remained on the horizon. Martha became more and more impatient. Even at the hazard of spoiling the dinner, she could not help running to the little broken gate at the end of the garden, to see if any one were coming up the road.
“Surely they’ll take the evening coach; Mr. Gray must return in it to Stoneby, or he’ll not get back to-night. ’Twill drop ’em just at the gate. Was not that the sound of wheels? Yes! surely! and there’s the coach turning the corner!—and—I’ve never cut the bacon ready for frying, and the chicken will be burned to a coal!”
Back flew the little maid to her post of duty, busy, bustling and happy as a bee in a clump of heather; and she returned to the gate just in time to see Mr. Gray bending from the top of the coach to give a last word and blessing to Clemence, while Vincent assisted, with more good-will than strength, to haul down a corded box and portmanteau.
Clemence stood for some moments with clasped hands and swimming eyes, watching the coach as in the darkening twilight it rattled away, bearing from her the only friend upon earth who had given her ready assistance and counsel in this her time of adversity and trial. How gladly would she have accompanied the pastor to the dear village where her happy childhood had been spent! Vincent was too busy to watch his step-mother. He felt as self-important in charge of the luggage as if all the wealth that his father had ever possessed had been intrusted to his sole care.
“Here, you—what’s your name, little girl!” he cried to Martha, “just help me in with this box. Is not the servant there to uncord it?” Clemence turned at the sound of his voice, and her kindly greeting to the smiling, curtsying Martha, first announced to Vincent that the “little girl” was actually the servant who was to comprise in herself all the establishment of Willow Cottage.
Vincent was young and merry-hearted, and as he helped to drag the portmanteau into the cottage, and looked at its white-washed walls and bare floor, so unlike everything to which he had been accustomed, the idea of actually dwelling in such a place struck him as irresistibly comic.
“I say, mamma!” he exclaimed with a laugh, “are we really to live in this nut-shell? How amazed Aunt Selina would be could she see it! It’s just like a gardener’s cottage!”
“As we can’t turn the cottage into a palace to suit Master Vincent,” said Clemence, with a desperate attempt at cheerfulness, “suppose that Master Vincent turn into a gardener to suit the cottage?”
“I think that I must turn into a great many other things besides—cook, for instance,” he added, as Martha placed the roasted chicken upon the table; “I think that we must call that a black cock!”