“LWONESOME LIZZIE”
It was late on a bright spring afternoon when Mrs Caines betook herself to a certain out-of-the-way wood, in the midst of which her mother’s cottage was situated. This wood lay at a considerable distance from the high road, and the nearest approach to it was across a number of ploughed fields, so that Phoebe Caines was hot and somewhat exhausted when she at last reached the longed-for friendly and familiar shade. There was a high wind that March day, and Phoebe’s face had been blistered alike by it and the sun as she toiled along the road proper. Even in the fields the light soil, newly harrowed, had been caught up now and then by the mischievous wind and dashed into eyes and hair.
But here was the wood at length, and the narrow little moss-grown path along which she had so often tripped as a child. Phoebe had been born and bred in that wood, as had her mother before her. The queer little thatched cottage in which the latter dwelt had been the old keeper’s house, and there Mrs Sweetapple had first seen the light. Her father had been keeper in those far-away days, and both her husbands had been keepers too. If she had been blest with a son he would doubtless have followed the family traditions; but Phoebe was her only child, and the grand new two-storied brick house which the Squire had built at a quarter of a mile’s distance from the old cottage was inhabited by a stranger.
The Squire had not had the heart to turn out old Lizzie Sweetapple, who was allowed to live on in her tumble-down abode, and to keep cocks and hens in the empty kennels, and even to fancy herself extremely useful by bringing up a certain number of pheasants. No hens were ever so conveniently broody as Lizzie’s, no pens so carefully sheltered, no young broods so well watched or tenderly nurtured.
Mrs Sweetapple—“Lwonesome Lizzie,” as her few acquaintances laughingly called her—was quite a celebrated personage in the neighbourhood, and though her apparently desolate plight won her much commiseration, she herself never complained of her solitude.
But Daughter Phoebe did not approve of the existing state of things, and frequently endeavoured to induce her mother to take up her residence with her. The little pension allowed her by the Squire would more than pay for her keep, and why not tend children, of whom Mrs Caines possessed “a plenty,” as well as cocks and pheasants? It was dangerous for her, living so entirely alone at her age, where nobody could look after her if she were taken ill; and if there were an accident, such as setting the house on fire or breaking her leg, nobody would be the wiser.
Though the old woman had hitherto stoutly refused to contemplate any such possibility as illness or mischance, and resolutely announced her intention of remaining where she was, Phoebe returned to the charge periodically, and the present expedition was undertaken with the view of shaking her mother’s determination.
Being a practical person, she wasted no time in looking about her now, but pressed on with as much speed as she could muster, occasionally repeating over to herself the arguments by means of which she hoped to convince the old woman.
Yet indeed the scene was lovely enough to have tempted a less business-like person to dally on her way. The young grass was springing up beneath the budding trees on one side, while on the other the ground was strewn with fir-needles and last year’s beech-leaves. Grass and moss were alike emerald green, withered leaves and needles copper and gold. These tints were repeated again on the trunks of Scotch firs, on the boughs of the heavily-clothed spruces; while the elders and a few stray thorns had borrowed the living green of the herbage below. The sycamores were brave with little crimson tufts, and the larches most glorious of all at this hour, raising as they did their delicate tracery of pendant twigs against the luminous sky, imprisoning the light, as it were, in a golden cage, the floating bars of which were studded here and there with jewels—emeralds that would soon become tassels, rubies that in course of time would turn into cones. The bank on the right was studded with wild violets, and here and there primroses grew in profusion, their tender young leaves flaming in the evening glow almost like the blossoms they protected.
At the turn of the path Mrs Caines caught sight of the lichen-grown roof of the cottage, and heaved a deep sigh of relief. Increasing her pace she hurried on, unceremoniously bursting into the kitchen, into which the door opened.