“Anglo-Saxon, Joe,” said I, “not angular.”
“Well, Anglo or angular, it’s no odds,” said Joe; “I calls it angular—that’s good English at any rate.”
“But, Joe,” said I, “I’ve taken down all he said, and should like to read it to you. I’m sure it would interest you.”
“Well, after supper to-night, over a pipe, perhaps,” said Joe; “I ain’t much of a hand at your old-world talk, you see. Or, I’ll tell you what, you shall read it to Lu; she takes to book-learning and all that better than I.”
“I shall be very glad indeed to read it to your sister,” said I; “and I daresay she can tell me something more.”
“May be,” said Joe, drawing his whip gently over the mare’s loins; and then he began telling me about the talk he had had with the Squire.
He seemed to have been telling him all about his quarrel at the vestry with the other farmers, about keeping up the parish roads; and the Squire had smoothed him down, and given him some good advice as to how to get the roads made and the fences kept up without losing his temper. Joe owned to me that he was often falling out with some of his neighbours, or his hired men, when he couldn’t get things quite his own way (for that’s what it came to, and Joe is a warm-tempered fellow), and that he would sooner come six miles to get the Squire to “tackle it,” than go to any other justice who lived nearer; “for he knows our ways, and manages one way or another to get it out all straight without making a Sessions job of it,” said Joe, as we drove up to his gate; and though I was looking out to catch a sight of Miss Lucy, and hoping she might be out in the garden, I couldn’t help allowing to myself that perhaps the country mightn’t get on so much better after all if the unpaid magistracy were done away with.
Joe went off to the stable to see after his precious chestnut, and seemed to pity me because I didn’t go with him. But I was off round the house and into the garden, to try and find Miss Lucy. When I did find her though, I wasn’t quite pleased at first, as you may fancy when you hear what she was doing.
There is a trellis-work about eight feet high, between the little flower-garden and the kitchen-garden, and in it a wicket-gate, through which runs a nice green walk by which you get from one to the other. The trellis-work is so covered with roses, and jessamine, and other creepers, that you can’t see through, at least not in summer time; and I heard merry voices on the other side, but they couldn’t hear me on the turf. So I hurried up to the wicket-gate; and the moment I got through, there I saw Miss Lucy, and close by her side a young man in a black coat, dark gray trousers, and a white tie. He had a great ribstone-pippin apple in one hand, off the best tree in the orchard, out of which he had taken a great bite or two, which I thought rather vulgar; and there he was, holding up his bitten apple and some of the creepers against the trellis-work, with both hands above Miss Lucy’s head. And she stood there in her pretty white-straw hat, with the ribbons dangling loose over her shoulders, tying up the creepers to the trellis-work close to his face. I could see, too, that she was very well dressed, for she had on a pretty embroidered collar, as white as snow, with a nice bow of fresh pink ribbon in front; and the sleeves of her gown were loose, and fell back a little as she reached up with the string to tie the creepers, and showed her nice, white, round arms, which looked very pretty, only I wished she had waited for me to hold up the creepers instead of him. At her feet lay a basket full of apples and pears, and lavender and mignonette; so they must have been going about together for some time, picking fruit and flowers.