"Here are two cart-saddles and a pair of blinkers, and a truss of clover hay. If her young spring-carrots can dance through all that, they must beat Berenice's and Helen's of Troy. Don't be quite a fool, Jack. You ought to know that girls can't abide being stared at with their slops on. They have got a finer word for it—peg something, in the novels. But Grace never gets herself up for a rustic surprise, like those fashionable dairymaids."
"I should hope not indeed! She is nature itself. And all nature is sweetest in the morning. But there is not a spark of poetry about you, George. All that has gone into the female line. What would I give, to see you frightfully in love!"
The piercing glance he gave me completely turned the tables; but I pulled him back so briskly that he came home to himself; for he was got up very bucklish in some Volunteer apparel, on his way to a swell rifle-meeting; and it may be imagined that he longed for Grace to look at him, almost as much as he longed to look at Grace. However, that was no concern of mine. He returned very modestly to his own affairs, and sat down where he could not see the window.
"Has she said anything about me lately? Does she seem to have the least idea? You know how I have tried to keep myself in the background according to your advice, which was most kindly meant. But meanwhile other fellows have been making play. Thank God, we have settled Melladew; I was most afraid of him. Coronet, and sonnets, and a head of curly hair. Foremost of her sex although she is—but, no, what am I talking of? Her mind is far too lofty. When I behold her in her graceful simplicity, like an Angel ministering what they get out of the cows—but allow me to hang that cart-saddle on the other peg, George."
To my vexation there was Grace again, standing in the doorway, with a great spoon in her hand—for a type of the greater one not so very far away—giving a taste of some white stuff to old Sally, who was stooping a hunchified back to save spilling. To see the light poise of the youthful figure, and the merry smile while the white froth was tilted carefully into that ancient mouth, little would you think that within so short a period, all this bright life had missed the grave by half an inch.
"Thank God!" whispered Stoneman. "How little heed we take of their goodness, George! All men in comparison ought to be killed."
"Not a bit of it," I answered. "Perhaps Melladew ought. He couldn't have made more row if he had been kilt, as an Irishman is being always. But perhaps he could not help it; for it is his nature to."
"In any other case I should not have blamed him much, though it is not altogether perhaps the style of Englishmen. But one thing we always forget—how intensely some people feel what to others is a flea-bite. And the ankle is a very nasty place after all, though the shot only just broke the skin, Hopmann says. You heard him claim the shot? Well, now he puts it upon me! However, he is quite welcome, for the tale might go against him with his 'bagients.' Ta, ta! I'm off to enquire for my lord, and I always let him know where I come from. Won't Hopmann make a fine thing out of this! I have lent him a trap and a man, to make the most of it. The man drives like a fury and calls out to everybody, 'Can't stop—very sorry—let them all know—the poor Hearl, he is in such hagony!' Hopmann's new letter-box is full already, and his hat is a hoarding of turnpike tickets."
"What a friend you are! What a friend to have!" I exclaimed, as he jumped upon his highly polished horse, for Grace had tripped away with a little turn of neck, which meant, "Wouldn't you like to come with me?" And Stoneman was hoping to get another glimpse from the saddle over the palings. Ay, and he did so too, as the light in his eyes made clear to me.
A firm friend is likely to be a faithful lover, and a true husband when the gloss is off the love; but whether Grace had any sense of this, or even thought at all about him, was more than I could say at present. Quick of perception as she was, it seemed almost impossible that she could have failed to observe his attention, or it might be called his entire devotion to her. Yet when I tried her with a lot of little dodges, such as a brother must have at command, if he wants to keep time with his sisters, she never turned a hair—as the sporting people say—and she looked me out of countenance sometimes, as if I were inferior to the female race. Knowing what she was, I was unable to suppose that there could be any depth in her beyond my understanding, so I said to myself, "Let her mind the milk. What can a sweet girl desire beyond that?"