Doubtless as pretty a pair of feet as hers were to be found in the shire; but if Cinderella's own were smaller—IF they were—they could not have been prettier; and let her wear what she might, those partial people who knew her, declared that Ruth Rumbold's clothes always became her. Be that as it may, very certain it is that that kirtle of flowered chintz looped above the pink-and-white striped tiffany petticoat marvellously becomes her trim figure, and matches bravely with the red and snow white hawthorn wreath crowning her shapely head; and never, declare her loving lieges, was fairer Queen of May than this Queen Ruth.
The master of Nether Hall.
Her Majesty's partner in the dance now being so spiritedly carried on, is the lord of those May-day revels, Lawrence Lee, the young master of the Nether Hall farm. The natural order of the festivities would assign him the distinction; but in this particular instance it is no empty one. Left to his choosing, he would in every probability have invited Ruth, queen or no queen, to dance with him, for the two were fast friends; and such they had been since first Madam Lee, Lawrence's mother, had gone with her own five-year-old boy toddling beside her, across the fields to the Rye House; and there, taking the motherless baby Ruth in her kind arms, she had tenderly kissed the winsome face; and the little boy saw with wondering awe how some tears were left shining, bright as dewdrops on daisy flowers, upon the placid sleeping eyelids as she laid the little creature down again in its cradle. "We must love her dearly, for she has no mother," murmured Madam Lee; and so faithfully had Lawrence backed up her proposition from that day forward, that his affection had gone on growing with his own inches; and if he loved Ruth when he paddled, a barefooted urchin, along with the ducks about the reedy shallows of the moat, inveigling her to the like unlawful courses, she was every whit as dear to him now that he stood a good five feet eleven in his buff boots.
As handsome a young fellow as you were likely to meet on a long summer day's journey, with his lithe figure, dark eyes, and crisp locks, was this young master, now in fact and in right, of the Nether Hall farm and its broad acres, since he became turned of twenty-one last Shrovetide, as for quite two years before he had been to all intents and purposes; for his farming genius was inborn, and he was never happier than when he was busy among his barns and his hayfields.
A secret.
Possibly Lawrence Lee carries his liking for hard work so far, that holiday-making bores him. At all events, let him succeed as he may in cheating his guests generally into admiration of his high spirits, his efforts at gaiety are so exaggerated and fitful that Ruth is not for an instant to be imposed upon by them. And when at last the dance is done, and the syllabub is being handed round, and the two stroll away into the hornbeam maze, which brings you, if you are acquainted with its mysteries, to the field-path leading straight to the river's brink, the good folks would stare to see—or can it be the leafy shadows which so heavily darken those two young faces? Nay; the shadows are from within, as if black care were busy at their hearts. Yet with a difference; for while Lawrence's brow is brooding and abstracted, Ruth's eyes are full of wistful anxiety; and with her little hand tight in his clasp the two silently thread the maze, until suddenly the fiddles and fifes strike up afresh; and this time their tune is "Begone Dull Care."
"Let us go back," said Lawrence, breaking from his moody silence into a laugh of forced merriment, "and enjoy ourselves while we can. Come, Ruth, one more dance," and he seized her by both hands.
"No," she answered. "I must go, Lawrence; and at once. It will be almost dark now before I am home, and father will be angry."
On the River Lea.
Lee's brow fell again; but he only said, "As you will;" and they walked on till they reached the river's brink, where a small boat, newly painted, and decked with ribbon-tied cowslip and daisy posies, lay moored to a stout stake.