In the West Countrie

Front matter

Second] Routledge's Railway Library Advertiser. [Issue. ROWLANDS' ODONTO Is the best and purest Tooth Powder. It whitens the teeth, prevents decay, and gives a pleasing fragrance to the breath. It contains no acid, mineral, or gritty substances. Health depends in a great measure upon the : undness of the teeth, and all dentists will allow >. .at neither washes nor pastes can possibly be as tfficacious for polishing the teeth and keeping them sound and white as a pure and non-gritty tooth powder. Such Rowlands' ODONTO has always proved itself to be. Great care must be taken to ask for ROWLANDS' ODONTO, Of 20, HATTON GARDEN, LONDON, And to see that each box bears the 3d. Government Stamp, without which no ODONTO is genuine. Sold everywhere. Sent by post for 2a. lid. NURSE EDDA'S WONDERFUL BABY SOOTHER, This unequalled remedy is entirely free from any opiates or noxious or strong acting Medicine ; its effect is instant in relieving Infants from GRIPES, WIND, COLIC, Sec.

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Chapter I

Our home was lovely I I verily believe in all the length and breadth of England you could not find one other, of its own size, to match with the charms of that dearest old place. One knows old-world tales of love in a cottage ; which homely nest, of course, is always a bower of bliss, hidden in creepers. Our house was like three or four still more delightful cottages joined into one old Saxon homestead ; each just touching its brother at angles, and staring at a different quarter of pleasant earth and sky; but all bound together in love by the roses that almost smothered the walls, peeped in at the windows, hung from the carved barge-boards, and kissed the old home red or white with blossoms, from spring to autumn. Not only roses, but every pleasant plant that creeps on walls; as many as only Solomon — or our old gardener — knew.

And as to gables ! why, each side of the house seemed to have at least eight of them, some built with timber cross-beams in the masonry, others with wooden carvings everywhere, and stone niches for little patron saints ; while all had steep tiled roofs, with corbie-steps, crow-stones, glittering vanes, and the funniest twisted chimneys in the world. Windows here, there, everywhere ; big ones with cool embrasures and deep seats, little ones in the most unlikely nooks ; windows latticed, or paned with bottle-stump glass. But this last was no modern imitation. All was of ancient date at Stoke, excepting— well, perhaps ourselves. Stoke was simply the name of our home. (In ignorance, I once used to wonder why there were so many Stokes in England, till told it meant merely " place.") Stoke-Bracy used to be its proper designation; but that was when the former owners lived there.

My mother thought Stoke was simpler, and perhaps had fewer associations. Indoors, there was a real old dining-hall, dating from Saxon days, with no story betwixt the guests' board and the lofty roof, but a louvre overhead to let out the fumes of smoke and good cheer. The rest of the house was two-storied only ; which explains why it spread over so much ground. In the entrance-saloon, as it might be more properly termed than hall, seeing it had always been a sitting room, there were four splendid, full-length portraits let into the panelling, by Lely, Kndler, Reynolds, and Lawrence, of ancestors who — were not ours ! The fact is, to confess quickly, we were only Browns — Browns of no place, till the last spendthrift old Bracy squire was obliged to sell Stoke. Browns without an e ; Browns in trade ; nothing more !

None of us were even born at Stoke, though Rose was a mere baby when we came. My earliest recollections are of living in our grub stage, in a genteel semidetached villa outside the town where my father made his fortune ; of our perambulators being aired in a small provincial Zoo ; and of our mother's cool and haughty remarks, caught up unawares by our little pitcher-like ears, that " if her old equals in the county did not choose to call upon her. she for her part did not choose to be called upon by the ladies of the town." She was perfectly happy, she would observe in her beautifully-trained voice, without either society. For she was a Beaumanoir, daughter of Sir Reginald Beaumanoir, the last baronet of his impoverished family ; and our mother's marriage was supposed to have been a judicious alliance of fortune with family, though attach ment had somehow crept in.

Nevertheless, though so avowedly content, she never rested till my father first bought a county place, and then retired from the greater part of his business. What happiness was ours when we first heard the news, that we were henceforth to live among woods and pastures ! How we " babbled of green fields " ! Oh, the pictures we surreptitiously drew on our slates when the governess wasn't looking — of ourselves perched on strange animals, beneath which was generally written, " This is a Pony " ; of ourselves (recognisable as human by having outstretched hands with five fingers each as long as our bodies) standing five in a row before the ideal dwelling my father had described — which we portrayed as about half the height of the aforesaid five, all windows and chimneys, with a volcano cloud of smoke eddying away in the distance.

When we did see Stoke it surpassed, however, our wildest imaginings. Shall I ever forget the close of our long journey there ; when, after wearisome, dusty highways, we passed into the shade of the great woods that for three miles round lovingly sheltered this gem of a home from the rough outside world ? The evening breeze again seems to fan my brow as we all sat up, refreshed and full of curiosity, and gazed at the great trees, the bracken coverts, the open down-like patches where the rabbits fed by scores ; getting sudden glimpses as we wound along a wooded height of a charming, mysterious valley below. Then — when the house came in sight — we all gave a cry ! The sun was sinking, and each window seemed redly illumined to " meet and greet " us on our first crossing the threshold of what was thenceforth "home."

The walls were covered with a drooping mantle of flowers. Flowers, flowers bloomed everywhere — around the dwelling in exquisitely trim borders, in parterres, in old fashioned vases round little pebbled courts filling nooks and angles, in the centre whereof small fountains played, or old sun-dials stretched shadow-fingers. And the whole quaint homestead, its flowers, gables, flashing weather cocks, all seemed to be peeping over the edge of a smoothly-shaven grassy slope, that descended with treacherous suddenness and depth into a bosky valley. There a little lake reflected woods around its further three sides, where beech-branches swept the water, while the swans, as On still St. Mary's lake, floated, Double, swan and shadow. And in the heart of these woods that trended lake-wards from the high ground whereon we stood, were hid baby ravines and gorgelets.

Down these trickled little brook lets under the thick foliage overhead, singing only to fairy glens, tall forested with ferns such as human eye or hand had hardly ever seen or disturbed in their damp, cool haunts. Next morning a slight incident happened that always associated itself afterwards with my first impressions of Stoke. Bob and I had agreed to rise early and explore our new kingdom, while the rest of the dull world was still asleep. Bob came next to me in the family, callow, awkward, and constantly in disgrace with our parents and teachers, but dearest and most delightful of brothers. His head was long ; his straight hair, always ill-cut and ill-parted, was just the colour of a canary's wing ; his eyes, though beaming with high spirits, were of the weakest light-blue, his hands and feet were much too big, and his joints loose.

Ugly was he ? — "No matter for that," King Henrye cryd; " I love him the better therefore." There was no use in asking Alice, our elder sister, to come too. She loved pranks, but not early rising or hurried dressing, thank you ; besides, she slept near the governess. Our eldest brother Beaumanoir was at school. Beau we all called him when our mother was out of earshot. Rose was too much of a baby. So we two rose and stole out by ourselves. I remember, like yesterday, the dewy freshness of the whole sweet face of earth around us that new morning. How the birds sang their matin praises in all the bushes more clearly, and the flowers smelt sweeter, than ever before or after, and the trees seemed taller, and swayed their branches in more stately harmony. " Let's come down to that little flower-garden that we found last night," said Bob, as if he was a first discoverer of the spot.

We agreed, as usual. The garden was a delightful spot of primness, though just beyond its stone boundary wall nature reasserted her easy wilder sway in meadows and woodland. Its little paths were paved carefully in chequers of black and white pebbles; the box edges were clipped straight and stiff like rows of military vegetation ; yew-trees stood about shaped like chess pieces among the Queen Anne flower-beds. On the one side peeps could be had through outside shrubbery of the lake, that still lay in shadow, but for one bright gleam at the far side, where rays from the east just flashed on it a wakening summons. And, looking upwards behind us a little way, the old house showed its most charming side of all. " Isn't it a little Paradise, Bob ! " I exclaimed, after we had dived down a pleached alley of jessamine and emerged among the yew pawns to gaze round, hard breathing in our haste and full of enchantment.

" How I should love to be queen here!" (i.e. be lord over my brethren in this acre and a half). " There can't be any other home in the wide world half so delightful as this ! " " There cannot I" said a strange voice beside us, with a sound more like a sudden sob of pain wrung out unawares than a sigh. We both started. Close beside us, hidden hitherto by the yews, stood a young lad, much older than Bob, older even than Beau. His arms were folded, as if we had surprised him in a meditative survey of Stoke and its grounds. One quick, hesitating look at us, one glance all round at house, woods, and*''"ov; then he darted towards a corner of the ivy coloured garden-wall, and springing up, seized a strong tree-branch that hung just overhead along the wall, and swung himself into invisibility, as far as we were concerned, on the other side.

" Stop thief! " cried Bob, instantly giving chase. " Stop, Bob ! " cried I, instantly full of fears for my valorous brother, but running after him — with a very weak heart and a very great wish to run the other way. Bob sprang at the wall, trying likewise, he too, to vault it, but fell back with injured, bleeding hands, a fringe of cruel glass in the masonry having been hidden by the ivy. No matter! still gallant, he jumped up at the branches above, but caught no doubt the wrong ones, for one only swung him a little upwards, and another fairly broke under his weight. After this second fall, Bob sat still on the ground looking rueful. "Come away, come away," I urged, in a tone of beseeching comfort ; " he's gone longago." " If we could only have caught him ! " sighed my young brother, slowly rising, and not understanding apparently my feminine reasons for leaving the spot.

" He may have been a poacher, you know, or some sort of a desperate robber." "Oh, do come back to the house," I entreated. trembling. Bob, however, would only do this after a careful examination of the mysterious visitor's means of dis appearance. By standing on inverted flower-pots we discovered that the wall was everywhere protected by a deep dry ditch on the far side, excepting at this one especial spot. And, presently, we marked the very bough the trespasser had used, though it was too high for Bob, jump as he might. 1 " I say ! he must have known his way about most awfully well," observed Bob, putting his head on one side with a sagaciously mysterious air. Then a six-o'clock farm-bell rang to work (for we had been out since five), and the figure of the gardener was seen approaching. " Let us go and tell him about it," I suggested.

"You know papa says he is such an honest man." On our father's return from one of his previous visits to prepare Stoke for our arrival, we had heard him praising this man Verity to our mother, as a pattern of rude fidelity. Born and bred in Stoke, and having hardly ever been out of its parish, Joe Verity had since boyhood attached himself so devotedly to the Bracys, that he curtly told my father he could never bear to see a new family there, so he would go " when the place went." " Now, you know, that's what I call a fine fellow, so I begged him to remain," cried my father, in whom staid business traditions had never damped a warm natural enthusiasm. "You don't see too much of that spirit now. I offered to raise the poor fellow's wages, for the Bracys could not afford to give him much, you know.

But no ! — no use, till at last young Bracy, the grandson, himself advised him to stay on, and that settled the matter. The poor man had some wild notion, it seems, of being able to go with his young master. He'll make us a good servant, that you may depend on," ended my father. " I hope he will make us a good gardener," said my mother, in her gentle, high-bred voice, never so carried away by feeling as to lose sight of the main object, like my father, although she was a Beaumanoir born, and he only a business Brown. Verity was fastening creepers on the wall when we went up to him eagerly with our story. He listened stolidly enough till we described the tree-branch, but at that looked round hastily, and made a few steps towards the spot. Then he stopped himself, and returning to his work, asked us gruffly, with an averted head : " What was he like ? was he common-looking ?

" " No, no," we cried ; and hastened to describe the strange youth, whose figure now I can hardly recall. Joe Verity only nodded, holding some nails and a bunch of list in his mouth. "But was he a robber? tell us! was he a thief?" cried Bob, impatient of this unmoved man's manner of receiving our news. Verity turned round to us — a squarely-built, self reliant man, strong in body as in his iron will, with a broad brow in which were two wrinkles furrowed by honest endeavour to do constantly the best that was in him. "It was no robber," he just answered, taking the nails out of his mouth to speak, and then putting them in again, while he looked at us with a doubtful expression in his deep-set gray eyes, that we detected. " He'll not come back again ; so you need trouble your heads no more about him."

But the gardener did not then quite understand children's ways, nor our curiosity. We slipped away, grumbling to each other at the romance of our adventure being stifled. " Well, we'll tell nurse about it ; and papa when we see him at lunch-time," we murmured, sure of fellow feeling in those quarters. Verity looked after us, scratching his head, while the two wrinkles in his forehead deepened extraordinarily. Then he called out to me : "Hi — little Missy ! Miss Brown, I suppose ? " " Yes," I said, coming back with a child's willingness, though thinking him a rude man to go on with his work and call me to come to him. " But I'm not Miss Brown ; that is my elder sister. I'm only Miss Pleasance." " That's a queer name, anyhow," remarked Verity, as if loth to say yet why he had called me back.

" Well, but what do you want ? " I now questioned with some dignity, feeling Bob's chin planted on my left shoulder, while his face, I knew, was alive with expecta tion. " See," said Verity gravely, " I've been taking crown counsel, as the lawyers might say ; " and he gave a last inquiring rub at his crisply black head. " I'm not forbidding you to tell your father or your nurse ; that's right enough, but still — I think him you saw this morn ing would rather not have it spoke about. He had as good a right here as yourselves ; ay, and far better unto — yesterday." Here the gardener's face softened wonder fully, and he turned slowly to fasten up a rose-branch, continuing : "If so be as he came early this morning to take a last look at the old place, he didn't think to disturb any of ye ; and you, miss, being older than your brother, have sense enough to know a sore heart shuns gossip." ii " Was it — the grandson of old Squire Bracy ?

" I asked in an awe-struck whisper. " We won't say a word about it." Our oracle just gave a sort of satisfied nod at us, and replied : " It might ha' been — or one of the family, leastwise. I did not see him, mind ye." We went away quite proud of the secret, as of our own future staunchness in keeping it ; and that morning was thenceforth enveloped in a halo of romance to us. To our credit be it said, I only told Rose after a year or so ; and Bob only told Beau. When the latter came back from school, he treated the adventure loftily as one of our silly childish marvels, and soon forgot it. For fear of more ridicule, we neither of us ever told Alice, who always laughed at us in an elderly and irritating way.

Chapter II

The next event I most clearly remember in our family history happened some years later. Bob must have been at Harrow a year or two, I think ; and both he and Beau had come home for the Easter holidays. It was a chilly, sunny Sunday morning. " Pleasance ! Pleasance ! Are you ready for church ? " they were calling in the house; and I can recall so well creeping slowly down the shallow steps of dark-oak stairs, holding heavily by the balusters with a swimming sensation in my head. " Why, child, what is the matter with you ? " asked my mother, who was standing below in a ray of sunshine that came through a latticed window. She somehow impressed me that moment as looking so calm, elegant, pretty ; so different in everything from myself. Her dress of that respectably old, if not venerable, date is before my mind's eye now.

A pink cambric made in three great flounces all round ; her taper waist drawn still tighter by a sash tied in long loops in front; her sleeves puffed wide at the shoulder, but skin-fitting at the wrists; her fair hair brought down in shining bands below her ears; and a tiny gathered bonnet almost falling back off her pretty head. " Are you ill ? " she repeated with light marvelling, as if such an occurrence was most unlikely in her family. " I don't know, mother," replied that miserable being Me ; " but I do feel rather sick. Please, may I stay at home from church ? " " Sick l what an expression ! " said my mother, with a gesture of slight disgust ; but she gave the required permission after critically looking at me. I slipped away into the library because it was least frequented, and, feeling rather ashamed of myself, hid in a window-seat behind the curtains.

A door near was open into the morning-room, and my mother's voice reached me, saying confidentially : " Pleasance is unwell. I don't know how it is, that child is such a goose." " My dear, you ought to think your " Every goose a swan, And every lass a queen," laughingly remonstrated my father in his clearest and cheeriest of strong voices coming from a little body. " Can any of us help feeling out of sorts at times ? " " Well, somehow, if there is any infection going she is sure to catch it," repeated my mother with accusation still in her tone. " Certainly, neither she nor Bob are Beaumanoirs in that or anything else." " Well, my dear, they are good Browns, and take after my family in names and natures, so I must see after this sick gosling," returned my father, good humouredly as ever ; and then I heard his voice calling me, evidently full of solicitude.

Slipping out by the other door, I found him standing below the stairs just where my mother had been. Trim, tidy, he was a very little man, who always seemed trying to stand on his heels with his chest much expanded in order to look bigger. He had the ruddiest English face, and the largest loving heart in the world. No ; he certainly was not handsome, but there never was, or will be, his like to me again. After receiving his caresses, and advice to go out and have some fresh air, I watched them all packing into the long family waggonette. There was Beau, our pride, our Etonian, carefully smoothing his tall hat with a fine-airs expression on his handsome young face. There was Alice, laughing at my woebegone looks, as usual ; always laughing, always lovely ! Certainly, it was very odd that she and Beaumanoir should have been given by our mother her family's names while in their cradles, and that they dutifully followed her family's characteristics.

My name, I afterwards learnt, had been a matter of slight dispute, since it was most pre-eminently a Brown one. " There always had been a Pleasance in his family," my father, however, firmly insisted though so easy-going, " and he wished there always might be." It must have cost my mother a little effort to repress a slight curl of her lip at the idea of the Brown family having " always " existed, or indeed having any clear reason to give for their being (except on the plea thai trade is a human want), till the best of them was united B to a Beaumanoir. But, to do her justice, she never snubbed my father on this point ; never even tried to assert authority over him openly like so many wives. Still she managed to get her own way with him in almost everything, for he adored her. She always made him and all of us feel that she had condescended greatly in her marriage — but she had loved him, deep down in her heart, we could be sure, though he was a Brown, and though she was so gracefully indifferent and superior in her ways.

Rose, our youngest, nodded at me from the carriage, like a sympathetic China mandarin. She was also said by our mother to show Beaumanoir promise, and was expected to be a beauty — though this was less certain. But, why did Bob stand with his head drooped on one side ; and why did he limp back dismally to the house as they drove off? What could be ? " Come along ; let us go off for a ramble somewhere," exclaimed that young man cheerfully, bursting into my retreat. "Why, Bob, what kept you from church ?" Bob screwed up his features deprecatingly, and dropped his lip ; which made him look very ugly, as I promptly told him. " My toe is all smashed. I got it caught in a gate yesterday when Beau was riding the colt, and I sought them both for fun." " Oh, Bob ! — you came in here not a bit lame."

Staying away from church, without being really ill, was rare indeed with us. " But it is really sore though," assured Bob, with a quizzical screw of pain to all his features, that were as flexible as those of any clown. " Besides, you would have been all alone, poor old girl. Come ! — I'll hobble with a stick as far as the lake, and we'll search for wild ducks' nests along the edge." He soon persuaded me, though I felt very unwell ; and down by the lake we hunted through reed-beds and rushes. The only thing that kept Bob from pulling off his boots and stockings to wade, was, I believe, that his toe was better than it should be. At last, we tried up a little back-water all fringed with alders and willows. Suddenly there was a startling whirr and rush of wings from under our very noses, and with a great " Quack — quack !

" disturbing the Sunday quiet of the woods, out flew a mallard and his mate from the rushes. " Hooroo ! " cried Bob, and plunged along the bank through boughs and brambles joyfully. "Here's the nest just below me — and eggs! I can see them! It's down there close by the water." See the eggs, yes ! but he could not reach them. We did not mean to rob the poor wild duck, but who could resist inspection of such a nest? So Bob crept down to the edge cautiously, and then — there being little foothold — caught firmly by an alder branch above him with both hands. He Thought it was a trusty tree, But syne it bowed and then it brak.— Even so ! — A crack — a souse ! — and down went poor Bob into the oozy stream, still clinging as he went to that faithless branch. To my eternal shame be it recorded, as he rose all streaming and spluttering, I laughed till my sides so ached that, being weak, I had to sit down and hold by another alder.

How ridiculously one does laugh while still in short frocks ! But the first thing Bob did b was, to stand up in the muddy water and laugh too. To end the matter, we retreated homewards, hoping devoutly to reach unseen the cottage of our former nurse, who had now been taken to wife by Joe Verity. But as ill-luck would have it, back came the church-party and caught us — Bob watering the carriage-drive as he went from all his garments, and every lank hair of his head. That afternoon I grew worse, and the old doctor was sent for ; " black dose " being whispered by my sinking heart, and read in my brothers' and sisters' pitying looks. But when our village medicine-man left, towards evening, my good father — finding Master Bob alone outside the porch, looking dejected under my mother's silent scorn of the existence of such a goose — put his hand on his shoulder, saying kindly : " Look here, old fellow !

That toe of yours was rather shammed this morning. Come — you know I don't like you boys to miss church. Still, considering the lesson you got, we'll say no more about it." Bob looked and felt desperately contrite ; but then seeing my father smile, thought he might as well smile too. "What about Pleasance?" he asked with interest; " how is she ? " " Oh, she's not at all badly," said father with an intentionally cheerful air. " It doesn't signify, they say, only she's got the measles." "NO," said Bob, awestruck. "How many of them?" Poor Bob soon might ask the same question about himself, for, faithful to me in all things, he was ill too by morning. And then with a whistle from Beau at the news, and a shiver of Alice's pretty shoulders, and a frightened laugh from Rosie, my mother announced further, that these uninfected ones were straight to be hurried off on a visit to our grand-aunt, Miss Beaumanoir, who lived ten miles away in a tumbledown dower-house styled by its owner The Barn.