Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/89

Rh heart. Mr. Peters, armed with a formidable whip, mounted to his seat by her side, and away drove the trap, leaving the juvenile population aforesaid venting its envy in the explosion of a perfect artillery of jeux de mots.

Mr. Vorkins's trap was as a fairy vehicle to Kuppins, and Mr. Vorkins's elderly pony an enchanted quadruped, under the strokes of whose winged hoofs Slopperton flew away like a smoky dream, and was no more seen—an enchanted quadruped, by whose means the Slopperton suburbs of unfinished houses, scaffolding, barren ground for sale in building lots, ugly lean streets, and inky river, all melted into the distance, giving place to a road that intersected a broad heath, in the undulations of which lay fairy pools of blue water, in whose crystal depths the good people might have admired their tiny beauties as in a mirror. Indeed, it was pleasant to ride in Mr. Vorkins's jingling trap through the pure country air, scented with the odours of distant bean-fields, and, looking back, to see the smoke of Sloppertonian chimneys a mere black daub on the blue sky, and to be led almost to wonder how, on the face of such a fair and lovely earth, so dark a blot as Slopperton could be.

The Rosebush tea-gardens were a favourite resort of Slopperton on a Sunday afternoon; and many teachers there were in that great city who did not hesitate to say that the rosebushes of those gardens were shrubs planted by his Satanic Majesty, and that the winding road over Halford's Heath, though to the ignorant eye bordered by bright blue streams and sweet-smelling wild flowers, lay in reality between two lakes of fire and brimstone. Some gentlemen, however, dared to say—gentlemen who wore white neckcloths too, and were familiar and welcome in the dwellings of the poor—that Slopperton might go to more wicked places than Rosebush gardens, and might possibly be led into more evil courses than the consumption of tea and watercresses at ninepence a-head. But in spite of all differences of opinion, the Rosebush gardens prospered, and Rosebush tea and bread-and-butter were pleasant in the mouth of Slopperton.

Mr. Peters deposited his fair young companion, with the baby in her arms, at the gate of the gardens—after having authorized her to order two teas, and to choose an arbour—and walked off himself into the village of Halford to transact his official business.

The ordering of the teas and the choosing of the arbour were a labour of love with the fair Kuppins. She selected a rustic retreat, over which the luxuriant tendrils of a hop-vine fell like a thick green curtain. It was a sight to see Kuppins skirmishing with the earwigs and spiders in their sylvan bower, and ultimately routing those insects from the nests of their fathers.