"Now then, do you like it?" asked this frank young person. But Hugh Boy was silent as to what he thought of his first knowledgable kiss. Not that it mattered, for the gay little lady rattled on regardless. "And what is your name, little boy? You are very ragged, and you have come a long way. But you are clean, and Aunt Robina can't scold me, for she tells me to be kind to the poor, especially when they are quite clean."
Boy Hugh bashfully answered that his name was Hugh Kavannah. "And a very nice name it is, nice little boy!" the maid rattled on, heeding him but little, but loving the sound of her own twitter.
The children went over the moor together, till it began to feather into sparse birch-woods and thicker copses towards the plain. Sometimes as they went the little girl's hair whipped Boy Hugh's brow. He had forgotten all about Vara and the baby.
"Do they make you say your prayers in the morning as well as at night?" she asked; "they do me—such a bother! Aunt Robina, she said last week, that it was self-denial week, and we must give up something for the Lord. So I said I did not mind giving up saying my prayers in the morning. 'Oh, but,' said cousin Jimmy, 'you must give up something you like doing.' Horrid little boy, Jimmy, always blowing his nose—you don't, well, I don't believe you have a handkerchief—and Aunt Robina, she says, 'Well, and what do you think God would say if you gave up saying your prayers?' 'God has said already,' I told her. 'What has God said?' she [217]wanted to know, making a face like this——. So I told her that God said, 'Pray don't mention it, Miss Briggs.' My name is Miss Briggs, you know. I have ten cats. Their names are Tom and Jim, and Harry and Dick, and Bob and Ben and Peter. But Peter's an awful thief."
She paused for breath, and shook her head at the same time. Hugh Boy listened with the open mouth of unbounded astonishment.
"Yes, indeed," said Miss Briggs, "and I fear he will come to a bad end. I've thrown him into the mill-dam three times already, like Jonah out of the ship of Tarshish. Aunt Robina says I may play Bible stories on Sundays, you know. So I play Jonah. But he always gets out again. Next time I'm going to sit squash on him till he's dead. Once I set on a nestful of eggs because I wanted some dear wee fluffy chickens—but I need not tell you about that. I got whipped, but Aunt Robina had to buy me a new pair of—oh, I forgot, I was telling you about wicked Peter. Peter is not a house-cat like the rest, you see. He is a bad, wicked cat. He lives in the barn or in the coach house and eats the pigeons. And he lies on the cows' backs on cold nights. But in the daytime Peter sleeps on the roof of the outhouses, and when any one of the other cats gets anything nice to eat, Peter comes down on them like a shot——"
"Oh aye!" cried Boy Hugh, excited to hear about something he understood, "I hae seen them do like that. Then there's a graund fecht, lying on their backs and tearing at ane anither wi' their claws, and spittin' and rowin' ower yin anither like a ba'——"
"My cats are not horrid creatures like that!" said Miss Briggs, in a dignified manner, "as soon as ever they see Peter coming they take to their heels and—oh, you should just see them run for the kitchen door! And [218]their tails are just like the fox's brush that Aunt Robina dusts the pictures with. And then in a minute after you can see wicked Peter sitting on the rigging of the barn eating my poor darling house-cat's nice breakfast."
"Three cheers for Peter!" cried Hugh, who did not know any better than to express his real sentiments to a lady.
Miss Briggs instantly withdrew her hand from his. Her nose turned up very much, till its expression of scorn became almost an aspiration.
"I am afraid you are not such a nice little boy after all," she said, severely.
As they went on together the children came to the very edge of the moorland. They ascended a few steps to a place where there were many tumbled crags and cunning hiding-places. From the edge of these they looked down upon a plain of tree tops, in the midst of which peeped out the front of a considerable mansion. The lower windows and the door were hidden in a green haze of beech leaves.
"That is where I live, little boy," said Miss Briggs, grandly. "The propriety will belong to me some day. And then I shall send Peter away for good."
Miss Briggs looked down on the house and gardens with the eye of the possessor of a "propriety."
"Tissy, wissy—tissy—wissy!" she cried, suddenly forgetting her dignity.
There was a stirring here and there among the trees. And lo! from off the roofs of the barn and the byre, out of the triangular wickets, from off round-topped corn-stacks and out of different doors in the dwelling-house, there sprang a host of cats. "See them," said Miss Briggs, impressively, "every one of them comes to meet me. That's Peter, wicked Peter," she said, pointing to a [219]large brindled pussy which led the field by half-a-dozen lengths. Over the bridge they came, all mewing their best, and all arching their tails.
"Their ten tails over their ten backs!" said Miss Briggs, as if she found much spiritual comfort in the phrase.
The cats rubbed themselves against her. Some of them leaped upon her shoulder and sat there, purring loudly. Hugh Boy was unspeakably delighted.
"I wish Vara could see," he said, remembering for the first time his sister and Gavin.
A harsh voice broke in upon them.
"Elizabeth Briggs! Elizabeth Briggs! What is all this play-acting? And what gangrel loon is this that ye are bringing to the door by the hand? Is there not enough wastry and ruination aboot the house of Rascarrel already, without your wiling hame every gypsy's brat and prowling sorrow of a gutter-bluid? Think shame o' yoursel', Elizabeth Briggs!"
Hugh Boy dropped the hand which held his. He would not bring disgrace on the friend who had helped him.
"Aunt Robina, you forget yourself," interposed the young lady with prim dignity, "and you forget 'what sayeth the Scripture.'"
She took Boy Hugh's hand again, and held it tighter. "Forget the Scripture," cried a tall dark-browed woman who came limping out from a seat under a weeping elm. She was leaning heavily with both hands upon a staff, which she rattled angrily on the ground as she spoke.
"Yes," said Miss Briggs, "do you not know that I am Pharaoh's daughter, and this is little Moses that I drew out of the water?"
"Hold your tongue, Elizabeth Briggs, and come here [220]instantly!" said the dark woman, tapping the ground again with her staff.
Hugh Boy knew the tone. He had heard something like this before.
"Is that your 'awfu' woman'?" he said aloud, pointing with his finger at the woman leaning upon the stick.
"Elizabeth Briggs," she commanded again, pointing at the little girl with her stick, "come in to your lesson this minute. And you, whatever you may call yourself, take yourself off at once or I'll get the police to you!"
"Yes, do go away, nice little boy," said Miss Briggs; "but when you grow big, come back to the house of Rascarrel and Miss Briggs will marry you. And I will give you another kiss at the garden stile—and so will Peter!" she added. For she felt that some extra kindness and attention was due from her, to make up for the most unscriptural hardheartedness of her Aunt Robina.
So the children took their way together to the garden stile, and as they went out of sight, Boy Hugh turned round to the dark-browed woman:
"My name is Boy Hugh," he said, "but I'm not a beggar, awfu' woman!"
The children went slowly and sorrowfully along a gravel walk thickly overgrown with chickweed and moss. Their feet made no sound upon it. On either side box borders rose nearly three feet, straggling untended over the walks. Still further over were territories of gooseberry bushes, senile and wellnigh barren, their thin-leaved, thorny branches trailing on the ground and crawling over each other. Beyond these again was a great beech hedge rising up into the sky. Boy Hugh looked at the dark Irish yews standing erect at the corner of every plot. He thought they were like the sentinels at the gate of Holyrood, [221]at whom he used to look as often as he could slip away from the Tinklers' Lands.
Then all suddenly and unexpectedly he began to cry. Miss Briggs stopped aghast. She was, like all womenfolk, well accustomed to her own sex's tears. But a male creature's emotion took her by surprise.
"What is the matter?" she said; "tell me instantly, nice little boy."
"This maun be heaven, after a'," said he, "an' your awfu' woman winna let Boy Hugh bide."
Presently they came out upon a circular opening where the bounding beech edge bent into a circle, and the gloomy yew tree sentinels stood wider about. Overhead the crisp leafage of the beeches clashed and rustled.
Here was a great garden seat of stone, and there at the back rose a fountain with stone nymphs—a fountain long since dry and overgrown with green moss. It seemed to Boy Hugh as if they could never get out of this vast enclosure.
There was also a little stone building at the end down the vista of the gravel walk. Its door stood open and Boy Hugh looked within. It was empty like a church. The floor was made of unpainted wood in squares and crosses. There were painted pictures on the walls, and a shining thing with candles standing upon it at the far end. Behind this the sun shone through a window of red, and yellow, and blue.
"Is that God?" said Hugh Boy, after gazing a long time at the glory of the shining crimson and violet panes and the shining gold upon the altar.
But Miss Briggs dragged him away without making him any answer.
Presently they came to half-a-dozen steps in an angle, which led over the outer wall. They had slipped under [222]a mysterious archway of leaves and so through the beech hedge in order to reach this ladder of stone.
"Good-bye!" said Miss Briggs; "remember—come back, nice little boy, as soon as you are growed up, and I will marry you. And then we will send Aunt Robina to the poorhouse. Kiss me, nice boy—and now kiss Peter."
With that Miss Briggs disappeared, running as hard as ever she could, so that she would not need to cry within sight.
But as soon as she got to the great circle of the beeches and yews, she burst out sobbing. "He was the very nicest boy—the nicest boy. But of course there could be nothing in it. For he is only a mere child, you know!"
But Boy Hugh walked stolidly up the steps, and so out of Paradise.
"I am very hungry!" he said.