from dense copse to meadow, through goodly fields of grain, and down in deep little vales, with steep sides covered with fern, bramble, and stunted pollard oaks.
“Poor youth!” said Pratt, and stopped to mop his forehead. “How low-spirited you must feel to be the owner of such a place. It’s lovely. Nature’s made it very beautiful; but no wonder – see what practice she has had.”
Trevor laughed, and Humphrey smiled, saying —
“If you come a bit farther this way, sir, there’s a capital view of the house.”
Pratt followed the man; and there, at about half a mile distance, on the slope of a steep hill, was the rugged, granite-built seat – Penreife – half ancient, half modern; full of buttresses, gables, awkward chimney-stacks, and windows of all shapes, with the ivy clustering over it greenly, and a general look of picturesque comfort that no trimly-built piece of architecture could display. The house stood at the end of one of the steep valleys running up from the sea, which shone in the autumn sun about another half-mile farther, with grey cottages clustering on the cliff, and a little granite-built harbour, sheltering some half a dozen duck-shaped luggers and a couple of yachts.
“Ah,” said Pratt, “that’s pretty! Beats Ludgate Hill and Fleet Street all to fits. Is that your master’s yacht?”
“The big ’un is, sir – the Sea Launce,” said Humphrey; “the little ’un’s Mr Mervyn’s – the Swallow.”
“By the way, who is this Mr Mervyn?” said Trevor, who had sauntered up.
“Well, sir,” said Humphrey, taking off his hat and rubbing his brown curls, “I don’t kinder know what he is. He’s been in the navy, I think, for he’s a capital sailor; but he’s quite the gentleman, and wonderful kind to the poor people, and he lives in that little white house the other side of the cliff.”
“I can’t see any white house,” said Pratt.
“No, sir, you can’t see it, ’cause it’s the other side of the cliff; but that’s his flagstaff rigged up, as you can see, with the weathercock on it, and – Here, hi! you, sir, come out of that! Here, Juno, lass, come along.”
“Has he gone mad?” cried Pratt.
For Humphrey had suddenly set off down a steep slope towards a meadow, and went on shouting with all his might.
“No,” said Trevor, shading his eyes, “there’s a man – two men with billhooks there – labourers, I should think. Come along, or perhaps there’ll be a quarrel; and I can’t have that.”
The Lion at Home
Sir Hampton Rea was out that morning, and very busy.
He had been round to the stables and seen the four horses that had arrived the night before, and bullied the coachman because he had said that one of them had a splinter in its leg, and that the mare meant for Miss Rea had rather a nasty look about the eye.
“You’re an ass, Thomas,” he said.
The man touched his hat, and Sir Hampton walked half across the stable-yard.
“Er-rum!” he ejaculated, half turning; and the coachman came up, obsequiously touching his hat again.
“Those horses, Thomas, were examined by a veterinary surgeon.”
“Yes, sir,” said the man.
“Er-rum! And I chose them and examined them myself.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ve made a mistake, Thomas.”
“Very like, sir,” said the man. “Very sorry, sir.”
Sir Hampton did not respond, but gave a sharp glance round the very new-looking stable-yard and buildings, saw nothing to find fault about; and then, clearing his throat, went into the garden as the coachman winked at the groom, and the groom raised a wen upon his cheek by the internal application of his tongue.
“Er-rum! – Sanders!” cried the knight.
And something that had worn the aspect of a huge boa constrictor in cord trousers, crawling into a melon-frame, slowly drew itself back, stood upright, and revealed a yellow-faced man with a scarlet head and whiskers.
Perhaps it is giving too decided a colour to the freckles which covered Mr Sanders’s face to say they were yellow, and to his hair to say it was scarlet; but they certainly approached those hues, “Er-rum! Sanders, come here,” said Sir Hampton.
Sanders leisurely closed the melon-frame and raised the light a few inches with a piece of wood, and then slowly approached his master, to stop in front of him and scrape his feet upon a spade.
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