his great carving-knife was playing a tune in that skilful way peculiar to butchers, upon a silver-mounted steel, while the vicar looked aghast and George Canninge stooped down to hide a smile.
It was quite an insult when the vicar was present but in the innocency of his heart, Mr William Forth Burge was hoping the joints were done, and eager to begin.
“Now, gentlemen, carve away, please,” he shouted. “Other ladies and gentlemen and servants, please pass the plates and ’taters. I want the youngsters to have a good dinner to-day. Now, Thomas,” he cried to his coachman, who had just set down a pile of plates, “you lay hold of that – that spoon, and do nothing but ladle out gravy to every plate.”
As he spoke, he was slicing off in the most skilful way prime sirloin of beef, and, smiling with delight, he said that it was done to a turn, as he called it.
“I chose every joint myself,” he said to one. “Pass the plates quick. See that they have plenty of ’taters, ladies. Eat away, girls.”
The visitors, after a few moments’ awkward hesitation, turned themselves into waiters, and the carvers had a tremendous time, for quite two hundred hearty girls and boys were eating with all the enjoyment of their young healthy appetites.
“More! That’s right!” cried the young squire. “I beg your pardon, Miss – I really don’t know your name; I’m afraid I’ve splashed your dress.”
“Pray don’t mention it,” said Hazel quietly, for she had been busily handing plates, looking brighter and happier than she had appeared for months.
“I’m quite envious of our host,” said Canninge the next time Hazel brought a plate. “He carves beautifully, and I’ve hacked my joint to pieces.”
“Send your knife up here, Mr Canninge,” roared Mr W.F.B. from the other end of the table. “I’ll give it a touch on my steel.”
“Will you allow me?” said Hazel, who was the only waiter near.
“No, really, I could not think of – Well, if you will – ”
“There.”
He had paused to wipe the rather greasy handle upon his white handkerchief, and then, in passing the knife, their hands just touched – a mere touch, and Hazel had gone.
The meat had disappeared, the puddings and pies had followed, and, turned waiter now, the young squire had merrily passed along the plates, till the time for rising had nearly arrived, when accident once more placed him beside Hazel.
“Your girls have thoroughly enjoyed themselves, Miss Thorne,” he said, for he had learned her name now from one of the elder children – Feelier Potts, to wit.
“Oh, most thoroughly,” said Hazel, smiling brightly and with genuine pleasure. “It is delightful to see them so happy.”
“Do you see that Beatrice?” whispered Miss Lambent from the other end of the tent.
“Yes.”
“Grace next I suppose? Oh, there is my mother beckoning to me, Miss Thorne,” said the squire hastily, “it is a pity to have so pleasant an affair spoiled. Would you mind hinting to Mr Burge that he should ask the vicar to say grace!”
“Oh, yes, I will,” said Hazel, nodding to him.
“As if he were her equal,” said Miss Lambent indignantly; while, hurrying to the end of the table. Hazel was just in time to whisper to the host.
“Why, of course,” he said. “What a stupid! Thank you. Miss Thorne. Mr Lambent!” he cried aloud, “would you be kind enough to say grace?”
Out in the field then, with the sun shining, the band playing, and plenty of enjoyment for the schools, which were separated by a rope stretched from one end to the other. Races were run for prizes of all kinds, and, full of animation, while the vicar stood with his hands behind him patronisingly looking on, the young squire was the life and soul of the affair, and ready with a dozen fresh ideas to suggest to the host. There were prizes for the fastest runners, prizes for the slowest, for the first in and the last in, for jumps and hops, and the best singers, and the worst singers, scramblings, blindfold-walking, sports galore.
Hazel forgot her troubles, and with Miss Burge’s help she was always the centre, of some new sport or game; Cissy and Mabel being like a pair of attendant fairies, ready to be seized upon by Mr Canninge as the bearers of the prizes that were to be won.
“I never saw George so full of spirits before,” said Mrs Canninge to Rebecca Lambent as they sat in a garden-chair looking on.
“I should say he will have a bad headache afterwards,” replied that lady.
“Oh, no, he is fond of athletics and that sort of thing. Charming young person, your new schoolmistress, Beatrice dear,” she continued. “Very ladylike and well-spoken.”
“Yes, a very well educated person,” said Beatrice coldly.
“The squire’s a brick, that’s what he is, Betsey,” said the host, wiping his forehead with his handkerchief, about five o’clock. “I tell you what, I’m about tired out. Now, look here, you go in and get yourself a cup of tea, or you’ll be done up, and if you’re as wise as I take you to be, you’ll put just a pinch of ody-wee in the cup. It’ll be all over at six, and then well have a comfortable dinner.”
“But what are you going to do, Bill!”
“To do? I’m going to fetch that girl in to have a cup of tea with you. Bless her, she’s worked like a slave. No, I won’t it’s all right, I’ll take in her mother. Poor old lady, no one seemed to speak to her. Look at that now. That’s what I call a genuine English gentleman, Betsey. Here, hi! Mr Chute, that’ll do; now come up to the house, let them play by themselves. I say, Betsey, this has been a day!”
A day to be remembered, for Mr Chute was tightening his fists and scowling at one of the young Potts, wishing the while that he had a cane. Not that young Potts had been behaving so very badly, but his schoolmaster was annoyed, and some people when hurt look round at once for some one as a spleen-vent. He was suffering from the same pain that had sent a sting through Beatrice Lambent, and made her sister frown.
For just as Mr William Forth Burge had told his sister his determination, George Canninge, the principal landholder and personage of those parts, the newly-elected magistrate on the county bench, had gone up to Hazel Thorne, raised his hat and said quietly:
“Miss Thorne, you look tired out. Will you allow me to take you into the house and get you some tea?”
“And she forgot herself,” cried Beatrice Lambent passionately, as she paced her room that night Hazel Thorne’s self-forgetfulness consisted in acting, like any unconscious girl would under the circumstances. She gave the speaker a grateful look full of innocency, and, taking his proffered arm, walked with him into Miss Burge’s drawing-room, where she was received with smiles.
Chapter Eleven.
Touching the Sensitive Plant
It was Burns who wrote his wish that some power would give us the ability to see ourselves from other people’s point of view. If Hazel Thorne had received this gift she would not have remained so steeped in ignorance, but gazing at herself through Beatrice Lambent’s eyes, have seen that she had been guilty of an almost deadly sin.
For
