Kit and Kitty: A Story of West Middlesex

by R. D. Blackmore

“You are a perfect stupe,” said my aunt, with sound judgment; “you don’t know what a woman is, half so well as Jupiter. Not to talk of affection, or any of that stuff, a woman thinks ten times as much as a man does of the wickedness of wasting money. If I went myself, she would think I came for a drive, and her conscience would be easy. If I sent one horse, she would hesitate a great deal, if she did not want to come. But when she sees two horses and an empty carriage, do you think she would let the man get all the money for nothing? It would take four horses going the other way, to prevent her jumping in and saying, ‘Well, I suppose I must.’ I shall write her a very pretty note, of course. You had better not be well enough to send anything but your love.”

I was only afraid that Uncle Corny might take it as rather a slur upon him, to have his new visitor stolen like this. But Miss Parslow (who was always extremely desirous to have her own way, when her mind was made up) declared that she would make that all right with him. And so she did by reasoning which I did not try to penetrate, and which she put vaguely in her note to him. For it was something about clothing, and deficiency of wardrobe, which men cannot understand, and are impressed with readily, when the duty of paying for it falls on some one else.

“Not that I intend to pay,” said Miss Parslow, in confidence to me, though my uncle was led by her letter to a contrary conclusion; “but my credit is good in Leatherhead. I shall get a few things of a becoming style and tone for her, and have the bill made out to Professor Fairthorn. Messrs. Flounce and Furbelow may have only got one window, but they get their goods direct from Paris; and I see from their circular they expect a large consignment of very chaste articles, and the latest mode, to-morrow. It will be most fatiguing at my time of life. But if I like the girl, as I know I shall, I can scarcely refuse her the benefit of my judgment.”

“I think I shall go down the hill a little way, and see what they have got in the window now,” I answered, for the two horses now had been gone some four hours; “and then I shall know the old stuff, if they attempt to mix it with the latest mode. You can scarcely be too sharp in these little places. It is not that they want to cheat anybody, and they would rather not do it to a native. But I should just like to see how much they have got now.”

“Ah, there is a fine view from the pavement there. You can see right into Middlesex, and even Berkshire, I am told, when the day is unusually fine. But I never knew it fine enough to see five miles. You might as well go and play with the dogs, my dear.”

To play with the dogs was very well in its way, and had lightened many a listless hour, when the body was slack for its to and fro of action, and the mind could take no food, except as a dog bites grass. Then the tricks of the doggies, their sprightly flashing eyes, and perception of one’s meaning almost before it knew itself, as well as their good nature and enjoyment of a joke, and readiness to time their wits by the slower pulse of mine—take it as I would or might, here was always something to teach me that one is not every one.

But I could not see the beauty of this lesson now. Selfish love had got me by the button-hole, and there never is much humour in the tale he tells. It is all about himself, and the celestial one who sent him; and he is so much in earnest that he cannot bear a laugh. Even the crinolines in the little narrow window of Messrs. Flounce and Co., where they had to hang alternate, one high and one low, not to poke each other’s ribs, although they reminded me of what I had seen in church, suggested it without a single smile to follow; for my mind, in the reverence of love, was able to people them with the sacred form inside. And yet at any other time I must have laughed, recalling as it did the ingenuity of ladies, who contrived in our narrow pews to reconcile their worship of a Higher Power with that of their own frocks. And the ladies who now go limp may be glad—when fashion comes round in its cycle—to remember how their mothers made the best of it. Each lady alternate stood on a high hassock, each lady intermediate upon the church boards; and so their cages underlapped or overlapped each other; and when it came to kneeling one could hear them all contract. There were quite as clever women then in balloons, as those who end in serpents now.

Vainly I looked down the hill, and vainly back at the crinolines. The only way to get the thing desired is to leave off hoping for it. When the sun was gone, and the silver mist was gliding like a slow-worm up the vale, and all the good people of Leatherhead had lit their pipes and come out to talk, I went back slowly to Valley-view, with many a futile turn of head, and ears too ready to be deceived. But the only wheels I heard were those of the fishmonger’s cart going quite the wrong way, for I knew that he had been with a middle cut of salmon to the hospitable gate of Miss Parslow.

“You had better go to sleep. Here is Betty, nearly wild,” my aunt cried as she pushed me in; “that blessed butcher has only just sent the lamb, and the boy let it fall in the middle of the road. I hope to goodness she won’t come for two hours. If she does, she will want sandwiches; and there is nothing in the house to make them of. Go and lie down, Kit; don’t you see you are in the way? What a lucky thing I told the man to rest the horses for at least two hours at the Flowerpot. When he gets into the tap, he is pretty sure to make it four. You look as white as a ghost, poor boy! Bother that love, it spoils everybody’s dinner! I haven’t got a bit of appetite myself; and the first bit of salmon for the season, except one! Go in, get in; lie down there and roll. Why, you couldn’t even tell where to find the mint!”

This was all the sympathy I got in my distress; and when she had poked me into the little room, or lobby, with a horsehair sofa, where to roll meant to roll off, she locked me up, as if I had been a pot of jam; and all I could hear was the rattle of the dripping-pan, or the clink of the plates in the warmer. It was worse than useless to repine; so I turned my back to everything and went to sleep.