CHAPTER XII
Wherein Miss Betty Modeyne wins more Hearts
It was a month or more before the boy was allowed to go into the country; so that it was early summer by the time they sent him away with Netherby—the small Betty being added to mother the party at the last moment, there having arisen doubts as to the quality of the housekeeping owing to the absent-mindedness of the bear-leader. So for a fortnight there was a happy party at the old inn by Burford Bridge.
Where the Major slept during the fourteen nights was never known; but city wags to this day aver that it was beside the wine-cooler under the sideboard at The Cock and Bull in Fleet Street. There are discrepancies, but the weight of evidence lies near the wine-cooler....
The fresh air of the Surrey uplands soon had the lad Oliver strung to the full pitch of devilment that is nature’s questionable gift to boyhood; and he rapidly regained what Netherby Gomme, with meaning accent, called his “habitual rude health.”...
Whilst Netherby Gomme filled the morning hours with the winning of bread in his little room at the inn, Noll and Betty loitered by the river and watched the shadowy grey trout lying along the trailing weeds with blunt noses up stream below the stilly waters of the sluggish flood; or they wandered in the meadows where the high whispering poplars line the margin of the babbling rivulet, their gossip leafage never ceasing the tattling of secrets with the gadding winds amongst the passing rumours of the high heavens; or they climbed the long green slope of Box Hill up to the swinging sky a-top, until it seemed that they might touch the clouds by mere uplifting of outstretched hands, all England lying like a pleasant garden at their feet; or, topping the hill, they would clamber down its steep wooded side, and so out upon the road at foot to the little stone bridge, where they would lean over the parapet and watch the enamelled dragon-fly hang quivering above the glassy pond, scintillant in gay attire with all his silver armour on, bedecked in splendour of green and purple jewellery; or they would flirt pebbles at the shy black water-hen that bobbed up to her quaint swimmings; and so, strolling round by Dorking town, as the sun topped its ascent and blazed hottest to its first hour of decline, they would make for their inn, to drag Netherby out of his den for luncheon, and get them into the breezy dining-room that gave on to the grassy garden where the butterflies fluttered amongst the roses, and the lurching flycatchers swooped down upon such of the gadding beauties as were least bitter to their dainty palates, and drowsy bees buzzed at their honey-gathering amongst the fragrant white trumpets of the tobacco-plants, and the fantastic box-trees that hedged their ken danced in the sunny glare that shimmered upwards from the panting earth. And all the careless world was full of balladry.
The mid-day meal done, they would roam out on to the green lawn and sit in the shade, reading some thrilling adventure, or, dragging Netherby with them, break the law and invade the kitchen, where the jolly hostess of the inn would point to the written word above the chimney-place but scarce enforce the law, nay, even dust chairs instead to hold them there; and the cook would pin a kitchen clout to each of their shoulders to display their shame; so they would sit and gossip of the little world about them; and the big-hearted busy woman would discover little stores of hardbake and shortbread and suchlike delightful evils for young stomachs, for she had a soft heart and was fond of her joke—and Netherby came out ridiculously well on such occasions, and the others were not wholly demure. The gay banter would go a-tossing.
Or they would wander round to the stables to call upon their friend Sim Crittenden—the prize-fighting ostler with the gentle eyes and the temper that nought might ruffle and a singing voice like a baritone god—who, leaning on the long wooden handle of his pitchfork, his shirt-sleeves rolled up, and his braces hanging looped against his breeches’ flanks, would stand at the end of the stables and sing to them songs from Handel and the masters—Ruddier than the Cherry and Toreador and Nazareth, even descending, with apologies, occasionally to It’s a Great Big Shame or other latest music-hall lilt.
Netherby, who began to fear a too poetic pastoral atmosphere at the inn, was to have satisfaction in the life of action that he adored, and a lively descent to vigorous prose.
The hard-hitting ostler was to strike the dramatic note.