I passed the place where I first had Kitty in my arms, a year and a half ago. Then all had been storm, and flood, and roar. Now all was calm, and sunny silence, broken only by the lapping of the brook. I leaned against the old carved stone, from which she had leaped into my embrace, and the budding shadows of the alder bush, like bars of sad music, stole over me. It seemed to me, in my disconsolate mood, that the young leaf had better spring back into the bud, and the flower get quickly through its work, and die. But my thoughts were interrupted by a grating voice.
“Halloa, young man, you look down in the mouth! Not much luck for you in my house, by all accounts. Ha, that was a scurvy trick?”
I answered not a word, for I disliked the man, an ill-conditioned, evil-omened fellow—old Harker, who had meant to live rent-free for ever in Honeysuckle Cottage. He looked very shabby, and shaky, and uncombed, as if he slept in a hay-rick, and washed himself with it.
“Ah, you wouldn’t be quite so uppish, my brave young cock, if you knew all that I could tell you. Give my love to old bonfire-raker. Hear he’ll come to ashes himself pretty soon.”
This was so mean and ungrateful of him, after all my uncle’s forbearance, that I seized him by the collar, as he stepped upon the bridge, and brought him back and made him look at me.
“Now, Harker, you’ll just have the kindness,” I said, “to speak out, like a man, what your meaning is. I am not going to hurt you, if you do the right thing. Otherwise you shall have a wash, and not before you want it. Out with it. Out with everything that you can tell me; though I don’t believe there’s much of it.”
“Very likely not. And I would not say a word of it—such as it is—for any fear of you; but only because he has treated me shabby. Promised me five pounds, and only gave me one. That wasn’t arkerate, you know. Why it hardly paid for shoe-leather. What will you give me, Master Kit, to tell you all I know of him, and all his tricks about you?”
“That depends upon what I find it worth. In the first place, who is the he you talk of?”
“As if you didn’t know? Well you are a pretty muff, if you don’t know when a man hates you. I have no love for you, mind, because of the scurvy way I was treated; but I would not go out of my way to hurt you, without being paid for it. What will you give? You will be glad to know it; though I don’t promise you it will help you much. I am always arkerate, I am.”