It was blowing hard, and the rain was pelting furiously on the roof of the caravan. He tried to go to sleep again, but the face of Matt (as he had seen it in his dream) kept him for a long time awake.
“Now, young man,” he said to himself, “this is idiotic. In the first place, Matt is a child, not a young woman; in the second place, she is a vulgar little thing, not a young lady; in the third place, you ought to be ashamed of yourself for thinking of sentiment at all in such a connection. Is your brain softening, youngster? or are you labouring under the malign influence of William Jones? The kiss you gave to this unsophisticated daughter of the desert was paternal, or say, amicable; it was a very nice kiss, but it has no right to make you dream of stuff and nonsense.”
But the influence of the dream was over him, and in that half-sleeping, half-waking state, he felt like a boy in love. He found himself calculating the age of his own friend. Let him see! it was fifteen years since, in her own figurative expression, she “come ashore,” and the question remained, how old was she on that interesting occasion? As far as he could make out from her appearance, she could not be more than sixteen. For a damsel of that age, her kiss was decidedly precocious.
At last he tumbled off again, and dreamed that Matt was a young lady of beautiful attire and captivating manners to whom he was “engaged;” and her speech, strange to say, was quite poetical and refined; and they walked together, hand in hand, to a country church on a green hillside, and were just going to enter, when who should appear upon the threshold but Mr. Monk of Monkshurst? But they passed him by, and stood before the altar, where the parson stood in his white robes, and when the parson asked aloud whether any one saw any just cause or impediment why the pair should not be joined in holy matrimony, the same Monk stepped forward with Mephistophelian smile, and cried, “Yes, I do!” On which the young man awoke again in agitation, to find that it was broad daylight, and a fine fresh summer morning.
Whom should he find waiting for him when he had dressed himself and stepped from the house on wheels but Matt herself?
Yes, there she was, as wild and quaintly attired as ever, quite unlike the ethereal individual of his dreams; but for all that her smile was like sunshine, and her eyes as roguish and friendly as ever.
Conscious of his dream he blushed while greeting her with a friendly nod.
“Well, Matt? Here again, eh?” he said; adding to himself, “This won’t do at all, my gentleman; if the young person continues to appear daily, the caravan will have to ‘move on.’”
Matt had evidently something on her mind. After looking at Brinkley thoughtfully for some few minutes, she exclaimed abruptly—
“William Jones don’t like you neither. No more does William Jones’s father.”