Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/598

 [. 12, 1864.] benefit of his health and to get his broken wind mended. I had just turned out of my lodgings, and was following in the wake of the fair craft, Amy Ellis—when at Rome we must do as the Romans do; and being in a fishing village full of amphibious farmers, I of course felt it incumbent upon me to talk sea slang, which of course I did very badly and out of place. I was soon down upon the sands amongst shingle, dogfish, and skate eggs, star fish and jelly fish, and the stranded shells of many a shipwrecked cockle.

Being naturally of a sociable turn of mind, and having plenty of idle time on my hands, I had pretty well made myself known throughout the length and breadth of Delsthorpe. I had been rabbiting with this farmer all amongst the “sine-hills;” speared eels in the dykes with that one; shot mews as they floated lazily overhead; been shrimping, boating, fishing, marketing, learned to appreciate hogs—mutton hogs, beasts, pigs, turnips, and potatoes, and had played loo of a night at nearly every house in the village. I had free access to the house of the Ellises, much to the disgust of some of the young farmers, who looked bludgeons at me till I asked two or three of them into my rooms, and over some choice cigars laughed them out of their jealous fancies. They were good friends again with me directly, but not so among themselves, for little Amy Ellis of the deep blue eyes and ruddy lips was a perfect apple of discord, and no one could tell to whom the prize would belong. I had heard in confidence several times that the fortunate winner would be Mark Warren, then Philip Franks; another week Harry Henderson would be the ruling favourite, but only to be supplanted by Fred Wilson, until conjecture wearied itself out in guessing Amy Ellis’s future husband. Now, being her father’s senior by some few years, I considered myself quite at liberty to laugh and chat with the saucy little maiden, and I soon made up my mind that she was what Mrs. Ellis affectionately called her, “a merry little hussy,” without a thought of matrimony in her pretty little head. She was far more ready for a good romp or girlish bit of merriment than making soft speeches or listening to them. Fond of admiration, artless as a child, and with the powerful passions of a woman’s nature as yet sleeping in her breast, she was ready to laugh and flirt with any of the youths who had played with her as a child, and if coquetry could be innocent, then decidedly her flirtations were free from guile. But she was a very firebrand amongst the young bachelors of Delsthorpe, and did more mischief in one night than a Notting Hill boarding school would in a month, and my ideas were, that it would have been a blessing for the village if the little puss had been sent out of it.

I was not surprised upon reaching the shore to find that Fred Wilson had made a circuit, and crossing the sandbank, had reached the spot where Amy was walking, and was now by her side, leading his horse by the rein. The sight put me in mind of a score of years before, of moonlight walks, of evening rambles, and wild-flower gathering, and I felt rather lonely as I thought of years slipped by, never to return, buried hopes and fears; and looking far out to sea at the pallid rising moon, I had gone into a deep fit of musing, living the past over again, and wondering as to the future, when my chain of thought was broken by the heavy thud, thud, of Fred Wilson’s horse as he cantered up to me. In a minute he pulled up at my side, and I was about to ask after Amy when I saw the last flutter of her ribbons, and the last wave of her hair as she stepped lightly through the gap in the sandbank, called by the people of the district a “stavver.” Something was evidently wrong, for Fred was looking most fearfully blue. He was a favourite of mine, for I used to set him down as the beau-idéal of a bluff young Saxon farmer, and by way of cheering him up, I pressed him to sup with me, perhaps rather selfishly, for it would help to cheer me up, too.

I could see plainly enough what was the matter, and I had to use a great deal of persuasion before I could gain his consent, but I carried my point, and an hour afterwards we were chatting over the fire, smoking some capital Havannas which I had brought down with me, and drinking some brandy-and-water, the essence of which had never paid duty, and under whose influence Fred had become communicative. He was in love, and Amy was a jilt—a flirt: he was half mad, he said, and nothing would give him any satisfaction but breaking the heads of Harry Henderson and a few others. But he would not do that; he would leave the place for good and emigrate, that he would.

And so days and weeks rolled by, and my stay had almost reached its fullest limits. I had made acquaintance with every ono, even to the revenue men who practised with the great gun in the shed; I knew the crew who manned the life-boat, and had been well instructed in all the gear and management; but now that inexorable fellow called Conscience whispered of business and the world’s every-day duties, and so I was fain to make my few preparations for departure. Somehow or other I had grown to be rather an important person in the place, and, failing a better, was looked up