Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/170

Rh  with commonplaces; "but I should not fancy them at this season. They look cold and damp."

"No one stays in them during the winter," said Lucy; "they all belong to London people, who merely come down for the summer months."

"That one seems to be inhabited," observed Yorke; "look at the smoke coming from the chimney." He pointed to the house nearest to them, standing in a little garden in the angle where the road left the river — a small, rather dilapidated cottage of wood. In the summer, and when covered with leafy creepers to hide the state of disrepair, it might have been attractive from its picturesque situation, but now it looked shabby and forlorn.

"That little cottage has been taken only lately," replied Lucy, "by an invalid lady."

"It does not seem a very good situation for an invalid; do you know her?"

"Papa and Mrs. Peevor have called on her, — we always call on everybody, you know, as soon as they come to his neighbourhood," she said, with a little jerk of the chin and pout of the lip, which Yorke thought very piquant, "although everybody does not always return our calls. But they did not see her. I daresay it would be too far for her to walk to "The Beeches" in return; but I am sure papa would send a carriage for her in a minute if he knew how to offer it without giving offence."

"Is the lady a widow?"

"No; I believe her husband is abroad somewhere, but we really know very little about her. She is a Mrs. Wood. These must be her children, I think;" and as Lucy spoke, a maid with two children, coming along the Coldbrook road past the inn while they had been looking up the river, was almost close to them. She was a common-looking girl, who might be a maid of all work. The children, although evidently of gentle-folk, were poorly and not very warmly clad. One, a little girl who might be between four and five years old, the maid led by the hand, the younger she carried in her arms.

As the little party passed by where Yorke and Lucy were standing, the child on foot turned to look at Minnie and Lottie, the servant meanwhile dragging her along.

Yorke stepped up to them, and the girl stopped and made a rough curtsy.

"You seem cold, my little maid," said Yorke to the child, taking her face kindly between his hands, "you must get indoors by the fire, and then you will soon be warm again."

The child looked up at him inquiringly, without replying, and then turned towards Minnie and Lottie, who had come up and were standing by. She had an oval face, and large, dark, melancholy, eyes, and only wanted colour to be very pretty.

She looked as if admiringly at the rich fur-trimmed jackets and gay worsted gaiters which Minnie and Lottie wore, in marked contrast to her own shabby clothes. There seemed no envy in her gaze, although perchance some vague perception may have aroused the child's mind that these fine clothes symbolized the difference in the lot of the happy wearers from that which had been cast for herself.

Minnie and Lottie, their hoops, in one hand, and holding the skirts of their elder sister's dress with the other, stood looking at the little stranger with the sort of mistrust that children are wont to evince towards other children at first sight.

Yorke, too, looked silently at the little pale sad face, which seemed to him to call up memories of some bygone scene, when and how he could not tell; perchance some dim-remembered dream.

Then the younger child in the nurse's arms began to whimper, and turning its face away as if frightened, hid it in the girl's shoulder; and the latter, with another awkward curtsy, stepped out towards the cottage, dragging the elder child after her.

"Poor little things!" said Lucy, as they passed on, "they must feel the cold terribly. Don't you wish you had brought some sugarplums, Lottie, to give to that poor little girl?"

"Me told too," said Lottie, "and me so tired — won't you tarry me, 'Oocie? "And, indeed, these little hot-house plants were already feeling the reaction from their unwonted exercise; and Lucy observing that her papa would scold them for having come so far, the party set out homewards, Yorke carrying Lottie on his shoulder, while Lucy led the other little one by the hand.

This arrangement was not favourable for pursuing the conversation into the interesting course it had taken before; and it was still hovering about the commonplace when the rumble of carriage-wheels was heard, and the landau drove up. Mrs. Peevor was inside, having come downstairs in time to take her usual drive, and the whole party were taken up and the horses turned towards home. And wrapped