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Page 15
"We were talking all the time of the sweetbrier and hollyhocks,--and
things like that."
"You might have talked of the days of the week or the
multiplication-table: one kind of words was just as good as another. Any
thing Steve said last night could have been spelled with four letters."
"Four letters?"
"To be sure. L-o-v-e."
"You used to like Stephen."
"I like all bright, honest, good lads; but when they want to make love
to Miss Charlotte Sandal, they think one thing, and I think another.
There has been ill-luck with love-making between the Sandals and the
Latriggs. My brothers Launcie and Tom quarrelled about one of Barf
Latrigg's daughters, and mother lost them both through her. There is no
love-line between the two houses, or if there is nothing can make it run
straight. Don't you try to, Charlotte; neither the dead nor the living
will like it or have it."
He intended then to tell her about Julius Sandal, but a look at her face
checked him. He had a wise perception about women; and he reflected
that he had very seldom repented of speaking too little to them, but
very often repented of speaking too much. So he dropped Stephen, and
dropped Julius; and began to talk about the fish in the becks and tarns,
and the new breed of sheep he was trying in the lower "walks." Ere long
they came into the rich valley of Furness; and he made her notice the
difference between it and the vale of Esk and Duddon, with its dreary
waste of sullen moss and unfruitful solitudes.
"Those old Cistercian monks that built Furness Abbey knew how to choose
a bit of good land, Charlotte. Eh? What?"
"I suppose so. What did they do with it?"
"Let it out."
"I wonder who would want to come here seven hundred years ago."
"You don't know what you are saying, Charlotte. There were great men
here then, and great deeds doing. King Stephen kept things very lively;
and the Scots were always running over the Border for cattle and sheep,
and any thing else they could lay their hands on. And the monks had
great flocks, so they rented their lands to companies of four fighting
men; and one of the four was to be ready day and night to protect the
sheep, and the Scots kept them busy. Eh? What?"
"The Musgraves and Armstrongs and Netherbys, I know," and the cloud
passed from her face; and to the clatter of her horse's hoofs, she
lilted merrily a stanza of an old border song:--
"The mountain sheep were sweeter,
But the valley sheep were fatter;
We therefore deemed it meeter
To carry off the latter.
We made an expedition;
We met a force, and quelled it;
We took a strong position,
And killed the men who held it."
And the squire, who knew the effort it cost her, fell readily into her
mood of forced gayety until the simulated feeling became a real one; and
they entered Dalton neck and neck together, after a mile's hard race.
In the mean time the letter which was to summon Fate sped to its
destination. When it arrived in Oxford, Julius had left Oxford for
London, and it followed him there. He was sitting in his hotel the
ensuing night, when it was delivered into his hands; and as it happened,
he was in a mood most favorable to its success. He had been down the
river on a picnic, had found his company very tedious; and early in the
day the climate had shown him what it was capable of, even at
mid-summer. As he sat cowering before the smoky fire, the rain plashed
in the muddy streets, and dripped mournfully down the dim window-panes.
He was wondering what he must do with himself during the long vacation.
He was tired of the Continent, he was lonely in England; and the United
States had not then become the great playground for earth's weary or
curious children.
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