Mary, carrying her little Mary, and trying to keep a smile that might reassure her, followed Tirzah across the orchard on the opposite side of the house. They had to scramble through a gap in the hedge; Tirzah went over first, breaking it down further, then the baby was put into her arms, and Rachel came next, receiving Mary from her mother, who was telling her how funny it was to get over poor papa’s fence, all among the apple trees, and here was Don jumping after them. Don, the Clumber spaniel, wanted a bit of Mary’s cake, and this and her mother’s jump down from the hedge and over the ditch, happily distracted her attention, and made her laugh, while the three maids were screaming that here were the rascals, hundreds of them a-coming up the drive; they saw them over the apple trees when on the top of the hedge, and heard their horrid shouts. “Oh, the nasty villains, with black faces and all!”
Mrs Carbonel dreaded these cries almost as much as the mob itself for her delicate child, and went on talking to her and saying all the nursery rhymes that would come into her head, walking as fast as she could without making her pace felt, though the little maid—albeit small and thin for five years old—was a heavy weight to carry for some distance over a rough stubble field for unaccustomed arms. Tirzah had the baby, who happily was too young to be even disturbed in his noontide sleep, and Rachel Mole had tarried with the other maids, unable to resist her curiosity to see what was doing at the farm since they were out of reach.
The fugitives reached a stile which gave entrance to a rough pathway, through a copse, and it was only here, when her mother sat down on the trunk of a tree taking breath with a sense of safety, that little Mary began to cry and sob. “Oh, we are lost in the wood! Please, please, mamma, get out of it. Let us go home.”
“No indeed, Mary, we aren’t lost! See, here’s the path. We are going to see Mrs Pearson’s pussy cat and her turkey.”
“I don’t want to. Oh! the wolves will come and eat us up,” and she clung round her mother in real terror.
“Wolves! No, indeed! There are no wolves in England, darling, here or anywhere.”
“Rachel said the wolves would come if I went in here.”
“Then Rachel was very silly. No, there are no wolves. No, Mary, only—see! the little rabbit. Come along, take hold of my hand, we will soon get out. Never mind; God is taking care of us. Come, we will say our hymn as we go on.”
The mother said her verse, and Mary tried to follow, in a voice quivering with sobs. Those imaginary wolves were a far greater alarm and trouble to her than the real riot at her father’s farm. She clung round her mother’s gown, and there was no pacifying her but by taking her up in arms.
“Let me take her, ma’am,” said Tirzah Todd, making over the sleeping Edmund to his mother. “Come, little lady, I’ll carry you so nice.”