“George,” said Susan gently, “I am very sorry my father was so unkind.”
“Thank ye kindly, Susan; that is the first drop of dew that has fallen on me to-day.”
“But obedience to parents,” continued Susan, interrogating, as it were, her conscience, “is a great duty. I hope I shall never disobey my father,” faltered she.
“Oh!” answered the goose George hastily, “I don't want any girl to be kind to me that does not love me; I am so unlucky, it would not be worth her while, you know.”
At this Susan answered still more sharply, “No, I don't think it would be worth any woman's while, till your character and temper undergo a change.”
George never answered a word, but went and leaned his head upon the side of a cart that stood half in and half out of a shed close by.
At this juncture a gay personage joined the party. He had a ball waistcoat, as alarming tie, a shooting jacket, wet muddy trousers and shoes, and an empty basket on his back.
He joined our group, just as George was saying to himself very sadly, “I am in everybody's way here”—and he attacked him directly.
“Everybody is in this country.”
The reader is to understand that this Robinson was last from California; and California had made such an impression upon him, that he turned the conversation that way oftener than a well-regulated understanding recurs to any one topic, except, perhaps, religion.
He was always pestering George to go to California with him, and it must be owned that on this one occasion George had given him a fair handle.
“Come out of it,” continued Robinson, “and make your fortune.”
“You did not make yours there,” said Susan sharply.
“I beg your pardon, miss. I made it, or how could I have spent it?”
“No doubt,” said William. “What comes by the wind goes by the water.”
“Alluding to the dust?” inquired the Cockney.
“Gold dust especially,” retorted Susan Merton.
Robinson laughed. “The ladies are sharp, even in Berkshire,” said he.
Mr. Robinson then proceeded to disabuse their minds about the facility of gold.
“A crop of gold,” said he, “does not come by the wind any more than a crop of corn; it comes by harder digging than your potatoes ever saw, and harder work than you ever did—oxen and horses perspire for you, Fielding No. 2.”
“Did you ever see a horse or an ox mow an acre of grass or barley?” retorted William dryly.
“Don't brag,” replied the other; “they'll eat all you can mow and never say a word about it.”
This repartee was so suited to their rustic idea of wit, that Robinson's antagonists laughed heartily, except George.
“What is the matter with him?” said Robinson, sotto voce, indicating George.
“Oh! he is cross, never mind him,” replied Susan ostentatiously loud. George winced, but never spoke back to her.
Robinson then proceeded to disabuse the rural mind of the notion that gold is to be got without hard toil, even in California. He told them how the miners' shirts were wet through and through in the struggle for gold; he told them how the little boys demanded a dollar apiece for washing these same garments; and how the miners to escape this extortion sent their linen to China in ships on Monday morning, and China sent them back on Saturday, only it was Saturday six weeks.
Next Mr. Robinson proceeded to draw a parallel between England and various nations on the other side of the Atlantic, not at all complimentary to his island home; above all, he was eloquent on the superior dignity of labor in new countries.
“I heard one of your clodhoppers say the other day, 'The squire is a good gentleman, he often gives me a day's work.' Now I should think it was the clodhopper gave the gentleman the day's work, and the gentleman gave him a shilling for it—and made five by it.”
William Fielding scratched his head. This was a new view of things to him, but there seemed to be something in it.
“Ay! rake that into your upper soil,” cried our republican orator; then collecting into one his scattered items of argument, he invited his friend George to take his muscle, pluck, wind, backbone, and self, out of this miserable country, and come where the best man has a chance to win.
“Come, George,” he cried, “England is the spot if you happen to be married to a duke's daughter, and got fifty thousand a year and three houses.
“And a coach.
“And a brougham.
“And a curricle.
“And ten brace of pointers.
“And a telescope so big the stars must move to it, instead of it to the stars.
“And no end of pretty housemaids.
“And a butler with a poultice round his neck and whiskers like a mop-head.
“And a silver tub full of rose-water to sit in and read the Morning Post.
“And a green-house full of peaches—and green peas all the year round.
“And a pew in the church warmed with biling eau de Cologne.
“And a carpet a foot thick.
“And a piano-forte in every blessed room in the house. But this island is the Dead Sea to a poor man.”
He then, diverging from the rhetorical to the metropolitan style, proposed to his friend “to open one eye. That will show you this hole you are in is all poor hungry arable ground. You know you can't work it to a profit.” (George winced.) “No! steal, borrow, or beg 500 pounds. Carry out a cargo of pea-jackets and fourpenny bits to swap for gold-dust, a few tools, a stout heart, and a light pair of—'Oh, no; we never mention them; their name is never heard'—and we'll soon fill both pockets with the shiney in California.”
All this Mr. Robinson delivered with a volubility to which Berkshire had hitherto been a stranger.
“A crust of bread in England before buffalo beef in California,” was George's reply; but it was not given in that assured tone with which he would have laughed at Robinson's eloquence a week ago.
“I could not live with all those thieves and ruffians that are settled down there like crows on a dead horse; but I thank you kindly, my lad, all the same,” said the tender-hearted young man.
“Strange,” thought he, “that so many should sing me the same tune,” and he fell back into his reverie.
Here they were all summoned to dinner, with a
