Mrs. Gillett shrunk back—she was on her slippery rock: had they been alone, she would gladly have spoken to Miles, before witnesses she durst not. She looked down, and, affecting not to hear, stooped, resting on one toe to support her knee, on which, placing a patten, she very assiduously begun tying its string. Miles laughed aloud: it was a cold, contemptuous, unpained laugh. "Miss Dalzell," he said, lowly bowing, and changing his tone to one of feeling, "I do indeed thank you for to-day, for all your gentle words. Whenever I revisit this spot, here shall I pause to salute the shade of one whose kindness will be ever present with me." He was turning sadly away: "Good bye, Mr. Tremenhere," she cried, extending her hand; "and when we meet again, may you be very differently circumstanced to what you are to-day."
He grasped her hand, and all the speeches ever formed could not have been half so eloquent, as his tremulous "I thank you deeply and sincerely, may your kind wish be heard;" and with a sigh, which we often grant to sympathy, though refusing it to our own hardened feelings, he turned away with Skaife, who shook Minnie kindly by the hand; it was a parting of three very kindred spirits. As they walked off, Mrs. Gillett rose from her occupation. "Your dear aunts sent me to meet you, darling," she said, glancing round cautiously, "and I always like to bring my pattens with me; I don't like damp grass, it don't agree with my rheumatics." At that moment Tremenhere paused in his walk, and turned round, as if irresolute whether to return, and perhaps say something left unsaid. Mrs. Gillett saw it, and, once more stooping, she gave a violent tug to her patten string; she had raised herself three inches upon those kind of young stilts, which even yet old-fashioned country folks wear. "Bless the tie!" she cried, bent nearly double, her back curved like a boy at leap-frog; "bless the tie, it always comes undone, or gets into a knot—I never see such strings!" Minnie saw nothing of this; she could not have comprehended Mrs. Gillett's policy; then, too, her thoughts were more knotted than even the patten tie;—who might unweave and straighten them? Alas! a few moments will often entangle the skein of our existence, knotting up hopes, fears, and cares, in one unravelable mass. Tremenhere turned, and walked on; Minnie had seen the action, and it troubled her, "What had he wished to say? would he tell Skaife? could she serve him in any way? poor fellow—poor Miles Tremenhere!" Every one knows the reputed relationship between friendship and love; they have a family likeness, and are not unfrequently mistaken for one another, till the latter pirouettes, and then we find the arrowless quiver, (they remain with us,) and the extended wings,—who may clip them?
"Your aunts were very anxious about you," continued Minnie's companion, peering over her spectacles to read if the other had read her; "poor, dear ladies, I'm sure it's a great blessing for you to have such relations in your orphan state; and then your kind uncle, too, he is more sensible, and judges better what's good for you than any, as in course he should—in course he should," here she paused, and peeped at the thoughtful girl. "The lawyer Mr. Dalby's very well," ran on Mrs. Gillett, "and so is Mr. Skaife—oh, he's a pious young man! and his sermons are quite edifying; but then, I've always remarked, your very pious young men don't make very good husbands, or happy homes. A man should only think of his wife, and how can the clargy do that when they're the fathers of the whole parish? and I'm sure Mr. Skaife has enough to do hereabouts, for they are an ill broughtened-up set as ever I met with, and, as his housekeeper says, when he isn't writin' his sermons, he's astonishing some one," (query, admonishing?) "Now, as to marrying him, with all his occupation, it might do very well for Miss Sylvia, or Miss Dorcas, but for a fine young lady like you, why, you should have horses, and carriages, and servants at command, and be the grandest lady in the neighbourhood. Then, as for Mr. Dalby, why, what with lattycats, rejectments, and briefs, it's but little time he'd find to pay you proper attention."
"Mrs. Gillett!" exclaimed Minnie, so suddenly that she almost frightened her off her pattens, "don't you know Mr. Tremenhere? didn't you know him as a boy?"
"Bless me, Miss Minnie, what are you talking of! don't speak of that dreadful young man, Miss; it's unbecoming a modest young lady to know there's such a person living."
"Mrs. Gillett!" and the girl stood still in amazement.
"To be sure," responded the woman, "he must be a bad character—wasn't his mother? and how could he be good?—Don't a cat always have kittens?"
"Mrs. Gillett," cried Minnie, again grasping her arm, and her eyes looked deepest violet with emotion. "You would be a very wicked woman to think what you say; that was Miles Tremenhere with Mr. Skaife. I pitied him before knowing him, and now, if I could by any means see him righted, I'd lend my hand to the good work, and I do hope some day he may be at the manor-house again!"
"That Mr. Tremenhere!" exclaimed the politic Gillett. "How boys do alter, to be sure!" She evaded replying to the other things said; it would not do, too decidedly, to take any side of the question; the womb of Time is very prolific—we never know what offspring it may produce. They were in the shrubberies of Gatestone by this time; a few moments' silence ensued, interrupted only by the click-clack of Mrs. Gillett's pattens.
"Mrs. Gillett, why will you wear those horrid things on the gravel walks? you cut them up terribly," said a voice behind them. Minnie turned, her companion stopped, and stooped to disencumber her feet of their appendages, by which movement Juvenal nearly fell over her. She was pitched forward on her hands and knees by the concussion, with a scream; another picked her up—'twas the squire. Juvenal was evidently cross, or he would not have spoken so disrespectfully to his matron housekeeper.