The which, being at once hungry and obedient, I did: but presently, looking up, caught the poor maid unself-conscious. She no longer grieved––no longer sat sad and listless in her place. She was peering greedily into the cabin, as my uncle was wont to do, her slim, white neck something stretched and twisted (it seemed) to round a spreading cluster of buttercups. ’Twas a moving thing to observe. ’Twas not a shocking thing; ’twas a thing melting to the heart––’twas a thing, befalling with a maid, at once to provide a lad 195 with chivalrous opportunity. The eyes were the great, blue eyes of Judith––grave, wide eyes, which, beneficently touching a lad, won reverent devotion, flushed the heart with zeal for righteousness. They were Judith’s eyes, the same, as ever, in infinite depth of shadow, like the round sky at night, the same in light, like the stars that shine therein, the same in black-lashed mystery, like the firmament God made with His own hand. But still ’twas with a most marvellously gluttonous glance that she eyed the roast of fresh meat on the table before me. ’Twas no matter to me, to be sure! for a lad’s love is not so easily alienated: ’tis an actual thing––not depending upon a neurotic idealization: therefore not to be disillusioned by these natural appearances.
“Judy,” says I, most genially, “is you ever tasted roast veal?”
She was much abashed.
“Is you never,” I repeated, “tasted roast veal?”
“No, sir,” she whispered.
“‘Sir!’” cries I, astounded. “‘Sir!’” I gasped. “Maid,” says I, now in wrathful amazement forgetting her afflicted state, “is you lost your senses?”
“N-n-no, sir,” she stammered.
“For shame!” I scolded. “T’ call me so!”
“Daniel,” my uncle interjected, “volume II., page 24. ‘A distinguished politeness o’ manners.’”
By this my tutor was vastly amused, and delightedly watched us, his twinkling glance leaping from face to face.