her head and listening.
“What are still there?” asked her aunt.
“The gulls.”
In fact, these animated foam-flakes of the ocean were about in vast numbers, uttering their peculiar cries as they hovered over the mud.
“Of course they are there--why not?”
“Father said he was going to make ladies’ waistcoats of them, and I’ve been fretting and crying--and then, the daffodils”--
“Oh, bother the daffodils and the gulls! They may wait a long while before waistcoats are made of them.”
“It is not of daffodils father was going to make waistcoats. He said he would have all the gulls shot.”
“Never worrit your head about that. The birds can take care of themselves and fly away to sea.”
“But the daffodils cannot get away. He was going to have a scythe and mow them all down and sell them.”
“Wait till folk are fools enough to buy.”
There was much to be done in the house. Mrs. Pepperill was unable to be always in the room with her niece. It was too early in the year for pleasure parties to come up the river in boats for tea or coffee, winkles and cockles, in the open air, but the house itself exacted attention--the cooking, the washing, had to be done. Now that Zerah was deprived of the assistance of her niece, perhaps for the first time did she realise how useful the girl had been to her. By night Kate was left alone; there was no space in the attic chamber for a second bed, nor did her condition require imperatively that some one should be with her all night.
When her consciousness returned, Kate woke in the long darkness, and watched the circular spots of light that danced on the walls and careered over the floor, as the rushlight flickered in the draught between window and door. Above, on the low ceiling, was the circle of light, broad and yellow as the moon, cast by the candle, its rays unimpeded in that direction, but all round was the perforated rim, and through that the rays shot and painted stars--stars at times moving, wheeling, glinting; and Kate, in a half-torpid condition, thought she could make out among them the Plough with its curved tail, and wondered whether it were turning. Then she passed into dreamland, and woke and saw in the spots of light the white pearls of her uncle’s neckcloth, and was puzzled why they did not remain stationary. Whilst vexing her mind with this question she slid away into unconsciousness again, and when next her eyes opened, it was to see an orchard surrounding her, in which were daffodils that flickered, and she marvelled what that great one was above on the ceiling, so much larger than all the rest. Always, whenever with the ebb the gulls came up the river in thousands, and their laugh rang into the little room, it was to Kate as though a waft of sea-air blew over her hot face; and she laughed also, and said to herself, “They are not yet made into waistcoats.”
Occasionally she heard under her window a whistle piping, “There was a frog lived in a well,” and she once asked her aunt if that were father, and why he did not come upstairs to see her.
“Your father is on Dartmoor,” answered Zerah. Then, with a twinkle in her eye, she added, “I reckon it is Jan Pooke. He has taken on terribly about you. He comes every day to inquire.”
Whenever Mrs. Pepperill had a little spare time, she clambered up the steep staircase to see that her niece lacked nothing, to give her food, to make her take medicine, to shake up her bed. And every time that she thus mounted, she muttered, “So, I am killing her with cruelty! The only suitable quarters for me is Exeter gaol; the proper end for me is the gallows! I have put her into one of the atmospheric engine-towers and have pumped the life out of her! And yet, I’m blessed if I’m not run off my legs going up and down these stairs! If I ain’t a ministering angel to her; if she doesn’t cost me pounds in doctor’s bills; I don’t begrudge it--but I’m a murderess all the same!”
Certain persons are mentally incapable of understanding a simile; a good many are morally unwilling to apply one to themselves. Whether, when it was spoken, Mrs. Pepperill comprehended or not the bearing of the rector’s simile relative to the exhausting engine, in the sequel she came to entirely misconceive it, and to distort it into something quite different from what the speaker intended. That was easily effected. She was quite aware that much that the parson had said was true; her conscience tingled under his gentle reproof; but no sooner was that unfortunate simile uttered, than her opportunity came for evading the cogency of his reproach, and for working herself up into resentment against him for having charged her falsely. That is one of the dangers that lurk in the employment of hyperbole, and one of the advantages hyperbole gives to those addressed in reprimand with it. Zerah had sufficient readiness of wit to seize on the opportunity, and use her occasion against the speaker, and in self-vindication.
The rector had not said that Zerah was depriving her niece of vital air; that mattered not--he had said that she was depriving her of what was as essential to life as vital air.
“It is my own blessed self that I am killing,” said Mrs. Pepperill; “running up these stairs ten hundred times in the day, my heart jumping furiously, and pumping all the vital air out of my lungs. I’m sure I can’t breathe when I get up into Kate’s room. And he don’t call that love! He ought to be unfrocked by the bishop.”
She came into the girl’s chamber red in the face and puffing, and went direct to her.
“There, now; I’m bothered if something does not come of it to your advantage and mine, Kate, for I’m tired of having to care about you. Jan Pooke has been here again. That’s the second time to-day; of course asking after you. There is no one in the family but Jan and his sister, and she is about to be married. The Pookes have a fine farm and money in the bank. If you manage matters well, you’ll cut out that conceited minx, Rose, who has marked him down. Come, you are a precious!”
She stooped to kiss Kate, but the girl suddenly turned her face with a flaming cheek to the wall.
Zerah tossed her head and said to herself, “Love? she won’t love! I was about to kiss her, and she would not have it.”
Then she got her needlework and seated herself at the window. Kate turned round at once to look at her. She had shrunk from her aunt involuntarily; not from her kiss, but from her words, which wounded her.
A strange child Kate was. If not asking questions with her lips, she was seeking solutions to problems with her eyes. She had fixed her great solemn orbs on her aunt, and they remained on her, not withdrawn for a moment, till Zerah Pepperill became uneasy, fidgeted in her seat, and said sharply, “Am I a murderess or an atmospheric pump that you stare at me? Can’t you find something else to look at?”
Kate made no reply, but averted her face. Ten minutes later, nevertheless, Zerah felt again that the eyes were on her, studying her features, her expression, noting everything about her, seeming to probe her mind and search out every thought that passed in her head.
“Really, if this is going on, I cannot stay,” she said, rose and folded up the sheet she was hemming. “There’s such a thing as manners. I hate to be looked at--it is as if slugs were crawling over me.”
As Zerah descended, she muttered, “The girl is certainly born without a heart. I would have kissed her but that she turned from me. I wish the parson had seen that!”
The weather changed, the edge was taken off the east wind, the sun had gained power. The rooks were in excitement repairing their nests and wasting sticks about the ground under the trees, making a mess and disorder of untidiness. The labourers begged a day from their masters, that
