“All right, old fellow,” he said as coolly as if I had come to recover a loan. “You needn’t turn a hair. It is not about your Kitty, but my skittish little Sally—Sally Chalker. You know I told you all about her, the daughter of the old bloke down at Ludred.”
“Oh, I remember now,” I answered, with a sudden chill of disappointment. “I might have known that it was not for me you were in such a precious hurry. You were very wise not to come into our place. My uncle is a man of short measures.”
“A man of uncommonly short measures. He will get fined some fine day, I’m afraid.” Sam laughed wonderfully at his own wit. “But I know he don’t want me to see his little tricks. Don’t bluster, beloved Kit; we all do it, and we respect one another all the more for it. Free trade has turned John Bull into Charley Fox. I can feel for you, my boy; for now there’s a foreign rogue come poaching on my preserves at Ludred. And he doesn’t know how many legs make a horse.”
Sam tapped his own dapper and well-curved legs with a light gold-headed riding-whip, and his favourite mare, who was under the charge of a lad down the lane, gave a whinny to him. “There’s nothing she don’t know,” said Sam; “and her name it is Sally.”
I was not sure which of the two fillies—for I knew that he called his sweetheart one, and her name too was “Sally”—my friend was thus commending. But I rose to the situation, and said—“Let us go, and rout the fellow out.”
“I was sure you would stand by a brother Briton,” cried Sam, shaking hands very heartily; “and you won’t find me forget it, Kit, when old Crumbly Pot comes back again. I am keeping a look-out for you there, as I gave you my word to do. It has been kettles to mend, I am told, in the fen-land where he hails from. I know a Jew fellow who brought him to book, and was very nearly quodding him. He won’t be back this side of Christmas, unless my friend is a liar, and then I shall do you as good a turn as you are going to do me now. Can you make it fit to come to-morrow? I’ll put my Sally in the spider, and call for you about ten o’clock. You can tell old Punnets, that you want to see your Aunt Parslow about important business—for important it is and no mistake. Think of a dirty Frenchman nobbling sweet Sally Chalker, and all her cash!”
Old Punnets—as he insolently called my uncle—was glad enough that I should pay a visit to my aunt, or rather my mother’s aunt, Miss Parslow, who was said to be worth at least 10,000l., as well as a very nice house, and large garden, and three or four meadows by the river Mole.
“You should never neglect such folk,” he said; “you have no proper sense of the plainest duty. She has only one relation as near as you are, and he has got plenty of tin of his own. You might cut him out easy enough, if you tried, and now is the nick of time for it. Hannah Parslow is as proud as Punch, I know; and if you can only put it to her, with a little of the proper grease, of course, that your mother’s son is considered unfit to marry a young lady, because he cannot cut a shine,—who can tell what she might do for you? She doesn’t spend half of her income, I know. I was thinking of it only the other night. And she might allow you two hundred a year, without stinting a pinch of Keating’s powder. You love dogs, and dogs love you. Half the dogs in the village come to see you home. Make up to Jupiter, and Juno, and the other bow-wows she has taken to her bosom, and you’ll never want my thirty shillings a week, nor yet the little balance of your father and mother’s money. You go and see her, Kit. Don’t lose a day. You may accept a lift from that fast Sam Henderson; but throw him over, as soon as you have got it.”
Now, this little speech was as like as two peas to Uncle Corny’s nature. He had never said a word about meaning to give me any one pound ten a week—though Heaven knows that I was worth it; for let the weather be what it would, there was I making the best of it. On the contrary, I had very seldom put into the purse (which I carried more for the husk than kernel) so much as five shillings on a Sunday morning, which was my uncle’s particular time for easing his conscience about me. Of course I had my victuals, and my clothes to a certain extent, and the power to pay his bills (which made people offer me something sometimes); also I could talk as if the place belonged to me; but people knew better for at least three miles away. So that his talking of thirty shillings proved, without another word on his part, his high and holy views of marriage.
And again it was like him, to try to put me up to get something good out of good Aunt Parslow. Whatever I could get from her would mean so much relief for the Orchardson firm—as he often called us in his prouder times; though if I had asked for a penny of the proceeds, he would have banged his big desk upon my knuckles. But do not let me seem to say a word against him; for a better uncle never lived; and I felt his generosity very deeply, until I began to think of it.