“Really, Mr. Pennibacker, you’ll not care about them,” said Bessy, in a voice made sweeter by her simple, affectionate looks. “But if you really wish to see them”——
“Yes, yes; that’s right, Bessy. It’s a sight that may do the young men of our day good,” said old Carraways, coming up with a host of visitors, Mrs. Jericho and Monica being of the number. “It will be a change, too, from the juggler. By the way—that poor brother of yours, Mr. Candituft”——
“Brother, Mr. Carraways!” cried Candituft; and then he recollected the human relationship, and warmly smiled, and said—“Oh yes! very true; to be sure.”
“He earns his daily mutton hard enough. I never knew such tricks. Ha! ha! Stock Exchange is nothing to it,” said Carraways, and he led the way between high laurel hedges—winding and winding—until he came into a small garden. Here the company heard clamorous shouts of laughter. The quiet, well-bred mirth of the party seemed to have migrated hither to break loose into the largest enjoyment. A few paces, and a happy scene revealed itself. The garden was skirted by a hay-field. A heavy second crop had blessed the land. Some thirty or forty of the youngest and sprightliest of the visitors were making hay; and—one or two or three in a violent spirit of romps—were pitching the hay at one another. “Ha! ha! ha! I like this,” cried Carraways. “Well, I do think that young folks never look so happy or so handsome as when they’re making hay. What say you, Mrs. Jericho?”
“I was ever of that sentiment,” said Mrs. Jericho, with one of her fullest smiles. “’Tis so pastoral—so innocent; so far away from the fastidious conventionalities of life.” And then Mrs. Jericho darkly frowned, and suddenly squeezing her daughter Monica by the arm, and whispering anxiously between her maternal teeth, cried—“That never can be your sister, Agatha!” But it was; and the flushed delinquent—with a sharp, chirping laugh—was at the moment throwing a wisp of hay at Sir Arthur Hodmadod, who had evidently made up his mind to receive it as the largest of blessings.
“It is Agatha,” said Monica, sharing more than her mother’s trouble at the exposure; for she much wondered that her younger sister could take such freedom with a baronet.
“Don’t mind Sir Arthur,” said Miss Candituft in her own sympathetic way, to the anxious parent. “Nobody minds him. He hasn’t the genius to be even dangerous.” Mrs. Jericho stared, and then smiled and jerked her head, at once acknowledging and despising the information.
In a minute the disturbed merry-makers, as suddenly grave as they might be, joined the party, Carraways laughing and giving them heartiest praise for their romps. “That’s it! I love to see people not ashamed to enjoy themselves after their own hearts. For my part, I never see a haycock that I don’t wish to go plump head over heels into it. I think, somehow, it’s an instinct of the natural family of man, eh, Mr. Candituft?”
“No doubt, my dear sir,” said Candituft; “not the least doubt—a remnant of Eden that still sweetens the fall.”
“Agatha, I am ashamed of you,” whispered Mrs. Jericho to her red-faced daughter as she sidled up. The next moment Sir Arthur Hodmadod, with a gay confident look, proffered to the rebuked Agatha an arm of the baronetage. The motion was not lost upon the scrupulous Monica; who—to comfort her mother—immediately whispered—“And I’m ashamed of her, too, ma.”