Slow as I am of imagination, this picture had such an effect upon me, that I caught up my stick which had stood against the tree, and determined to knock the front door in, if they would not admit me decently. But glancing back first, to be sure of having the place to myself, I beheld through the wind-hurried flakes an advancing figure. Two looks were enough; it was my darling, bending to the wind, but walking bravely, and carrying a basket in her ungloved hand. Her little thin cloak, and summer hat—for they had given her no other—were as white as the ground itself with snow, and so were the clusters of her rich brown hair, which time shall whiten by the side of mine. But her large blue eyes and soft rosy cheeks were glistening bravely through the fleecy veil, and a smile of resolve to make the best of all things showed little teeth whiter than any snowflake. Through the brunt of the storm she had not descried me, until she was suddenly inside my arms.
Then she dropped her basket in the snow, and looked up at me, and tried hard to be vexed. But nature and youth were too many for her, and she threw her glad arms round my neck, and patiently permitted me to leave no snow either on her face or in her curls.
“Oh, Kit, if they should see us from the house!” she whispered; and I said,—
“They had better not, or they shall have this stick.”
However, for fear of any rashness about that, I led her with a smooth and easy pace—for she could move beautifully with my arm round her, which no clumsy girl could do—to a snug little nook, where a large bay tree broke the power of the wind, and screened the snow. Here we found a low branch upon which we could sit, with the fragrant leaves to shelter us; and ever since that when I smell a bayleaf, I can never help thinking of my love, even when it is in pickled mackerel.
When I had told her a thousand times of my delight at finding her, and she, with a hundred blushes perhaps, had begged me to show it judiciously, I asked where she had been in such dreadful weather, and what she had got in the basket. “Two bottles of brandy,” she answered as coolly as if it had been a cowslip ball; “from the Bricklayers’ Arms I had to fetch them, because nobody else would go out in the storm.”
“What!” I cried, looking at her pure and bashful eyes, “do you mean to say that you are sent alone to a common public-house, where the navvies go?”
“Oh, they never say anything to me, dear Kit. But I cannot bear to go, when there are noisy people there. And I believe that my father would be angry if he knew it. It has only happened once or twice, when the weather was very bad.”
“Does she ever send her own daughters there?” I asked as mildly as I could, for Kitty was trembling at my natural wrath, and stern manner.
“Oh no! She would not like to send them at all, even if they would go, which is very doubtful. But she says that my place is to be useful; and she never can do without brandy long. She gets tired of wine in the evening.”