“They are struck by the way you drive, Kitty,” said Regy, laughing, “and by the uncommon pretty picture you make, sitting up here, in that jolly little hat. I should stare at you myself if I were in their place.”
“Not in that rude way, I hope. If you did, I should never speak to you again,” I retorted, still indignant, but mollified.
So we went on and on; and my spirits rose in the freshness of the morning and the freedom growing around me. The horses gradually subsided to a steady pace, and my hands and arms became more used to the strain they put upon them. I was conscious that I was proving myself a good whip; and, altogether, I so enjoyed myself that I never thought how the time went. My cousin and I had a good deal of conversation, particularly in the quieter parts of the road, and became very confidential about our respective families and affairs. I was in such spirits that I must have talked to the little groom, if no one else had been there; but Regy was as ready to talk as I was, and made himself infinitely more companionable and amusing than ever his sisters had done. He asked me many questions about Australia, and particularly about my father’s property; and then he informed me that his own “governor” had been glued to the desk and stool ever since he was a lad, and had been anxious to put his (Regy’s) nose to the grindstone also, but that he “wasn’t going to touch that beastly city business, not if he knew it.” Then he waxed communicative about Bertha and Bella, the former of whom he likened to Miss Arabella Green in the “Lays of Ind,” describing her career for two or three seasons past as a systematic husband-hunt, in which she had descended in a graduated scale from seedy lords and baronets, and merchant millionaires, to curates and doctors, and poor subalterns in marching regiments, and such like, at which she had heretofore turned up her nose. “She’s after old Damer now,” said he calmly; “but he don’t see it, I fancy. If he fails her, she will take to Wiggles. I think it’s very likely Wiggles may succumb, if he doesn’t propose to Bella first, for he’s been living to a pretty tune lately, to pretend to us all that he’s a gentleman, and he is no end hard-up. They are both coming to dine to-night. If you look out, you’ll see her little game as plain as the nose on your face.”
“I shall do nothing of the kind,” I answered, indignantly; “and if you don’t know better than to talk of your own sister in that way, Regy, you ought. Now, I won’t hear any more. Turn the conversation, if you please. Don’t you think those green tints in the hedges and gardens lovely?”
“I suppose they are, Miss Chamberlayne, but they don’t strike me as remarkable. I suppose you have never seen a green tree before? Yours are grey, aren’t they?”
I set him right upon that point, and then I got telling him about Australian scenery—how it was late autumn now at Narraporwidgee, the green grass springing, and full of mushrooms, and the rivers and creeks rising; how mother would have been storing her winter pears and apples, and cherishing the last of her grapes, and tying down her batches of quince jelly and tomato sauce; and how father would have been carrying his gun on his shoulder as he went about the run, on the chance of starting a promiscuous hare. And then I paused to think of somebody else (whom I would not name to any Goodeve of them all on any consideration), and of what he would be doing. Whereupon Regy took up his parable again. He talked about autumn from his English point of view, and of the good seasons and bad seasons that he had experienced—what a nuisance it was to get shooting in Kent when the season was early and the crops were harvested in August, so that the young partridges were so scared and wild that you couldn’t get near them; and what a worse calamity it was to be invited to a jolly place in Scotland, and to find when you got there that that beastly climate had kept everything from ripening, so that the birds hid away in the standing corn, and the farmers made no end of a row if you or your dogs trampled over it after them, though it might be twenty times September, etc.
So we approached Richmond; and, as the inhabitants began to show themselves in the quiet road, I asked Regy to take the reins, not because I was tired, but because I did not like to be stared at; and he very handsomely acknowledged that I had vindicated my reputation, and that he would never doubt my ability to do anything any more.
“And now, Kitty,” said he, as we were climbing the street, for the first time at walking pace, “it is much later than I thought, and you’ll want some lunch. Shall we put up the horses for half an hour, and have something at the inn?”
“I certainly do feel hungry,” I replied. “I’d rather not go to the inn. Can’t we get something at a shop, and go and sit in the park and eat it?”
“Hardly,” he said, laughing in gentle derision. And at that moment we passed by the trees of the terrace, under which nursemaids and children were sitting and playing, and I saw for the first time that enchanting picture of the valley of the Thames, in its morning beauty and all its early summer colours, and for a few seconds I felt as if my breath had been taken away.