"I shall tumble down, Aunt Judith; I know I shall," said she, and budge she would not.
"Tumble down, little stupid! Why, what should make you tumble down? Are you going forever to be a baby? Any baby can crawl down-stairs by holding on to the balusters."
"I know I shall tumble down, Aunt Judith—and then I shall cry."
But even this threat was of no avail.
"Come along, little goose; 'tis easy enough when you try it. Do you think I have dressed you up as a grown woman to see you crawl like a baby? A fine woman—you! Come along, I say!"
But this lesson, happily for the half-frightened pupil, was abruptly brought to an end. Judith was standing with her face to the staircase, and her back to the central hall and the outer door, so that she could not see any one entering, and indeed the first intimation she had of the approach of a stranger was a voice behind her:
"Be gentle with the child, Judith."
And then she knew that she was caught. For some little time back she had very cleverly managed to evade the good parson, or at least to secure the safety of company when she saw him approach. But this time she was as helpless as little Bess herself. Dr. Hall was away from home; Judith's sister was ill of a cold, and in bed; there was no one in the house, besides the servants, but herself. The only thing she could do was to go up to the landing, swing her niece on to her shoulder, and say to Master Walter that they were going round to New Place, for that Susan was ill in bed, and unable to look after the child.
"I will walk with you as far," said he, calmly, and, indeed, as if it were rather an act of condescension on his part.
She set out with no good-will. She expected that he would argue, and she had an uncomfortable suspicion that he would get the best of it. And if she had once or twice rather wildly thought that in order to get rid of all perplexities, and in order to please all the people around her, she would in the end allow Master Walter Blaise to win her over into becoming his wife, still she felt that the time was not yet. She would have the choosing of it for herself. And why should she be driven into a corner prematurely? Why be made to confess that her brain could not save her? She wanted peace. She wanted to play with Bess Hall, or to walk through the meadows with Willie Hart, teaching him what to think of England. She did not want to be confronted with clear, cold eyes, and arguments like steel, and the awful prospect of having to labor in the vineyard through the long, long, gray, and distant years. She grew to think it was scarcely fair of her father to hand her over. He at least might have been on her side. But he seemed as willing as any that she should go away among the saints, and forsake forever (as it seemed to her) the beautiful, free and clear-colored life that she had been well content to live.