I said something in praise of her self-possession in a time of alarm, but she urged me to the present work.
"The poor people out in the flood," said she, "will have little or nothing to eat. Their food will be spoiled, and they will have no means of procuring fresh supplies. That is the first thing to be thought of. And the mere sight of a friendly face will do them much good. Will it not be best to load your boat with a stock of such provisions as are to be had, and to send some one of influence round the town to urge others to follow you?"
To this I agreed, and, after some further talk, I turned to go. As I stepped into the water at the foot of the stairs, she called to me from the landing—
"Oh, Frank, don't forget milk for the children."
I looked up, and saw her face burning. "I will not forget," I answered, and out I strode with the music lingering in my ears.
Old men and women still tell the tale of the great flood, and part of the tale is how the "young squire" of Temple did feats of rowing, lifting, and carrying in helping the folk. If I was bold and active beyond the ordinary on that day, and I think I was, the secret is that I had heard my name for the first time from the lips of my love, and seen her blush to use it.
It is no affair of mine to repeat the chimney-corner story. It suffices to say that I and Luke and a dozen willing fellows worked our hardest until dark, visiting every farmstead and every hovel which remained standing on the lower levels.
A score cottages right on the bank of the river, occupied by labourers and marshmen and their families, had been swept clean away, with what destruction of life could not then be known. The farmers' losses were terribly heavy. The havoc done among horses and cattle was considerable, and hundreds of swine and thousands of sheep had been drowned. Stacks were overthrown and spoiled, and the standing crops were ruined.
How the men cursed the Dutch! Their threats of vengeance made me wish that Mistress Goel and her father were safely out of Crowle. For our Islonians are not fellows who ease their minds with a curse, and then think no more of it, but of that slow, stubborn kind, which smoulders first and does not flame until the end. I assured them that their "Solicitor" would demand compensation for their losses. I argued that this disaster might have so much good in it as to justify my father's resistance to the Vermuijden scheme, and oblige the King and his advisers to hear reason. But I met with bitter and scornful laughter for the most part.
One man said, "'Taint no sort of use to talk so, Mester Frank. Your father is a real gentleman, but he's no match for the Dutch devils. We didn't ought to ha' listened to his peaceable kind of discoursing. Squire Portington's is the way to deal with robbers and murderers like Vermuijden and his gang."