Eleanor C. Price

“ Here there were horses generally standing outside waiting to be shod, stretching their patient noses over the low paling, as if they liked to smell the flowers and to watch John's mother as she went backwards and forwards to the pump in the yard. Inside the forge was a warm red light, and a constant ringing and clanking noise of beaten iron; and the tall young blacksmith, strong and clever at his work, was a very grimy object as he bent over his anvil or blew up his fire. ”

“ Before John reached Carsham it was so dark under Sir Henry Smith's large trees that he lighted his lantern, being afraid of missing Mary by the way. Long before he entered the town, he could hear the discordant noises and see the flashing lights of the fair. At the near end of the bridge his hurried steps were suddenly checked by Mary's rushing up to him and clasping her two hands round his arm.
"O John!" she said in a low voice, which trembled on the edge of a sob. "Oh, some good angel's brought you! Have you heard? have you met mother? what shall we do?" ”

“ One need hardly say that she had not a covetous or an ambitious thought for herself, or that she spoke the exact truth in saying that she wished to end her days in the old cottage where all her married life had been spent. But it is possible to care not at all about worldly advantages for one's self, and yet to value them highly for those one loves; and Mrs. Randal, while John was talking of Colonel Maxwell's offers, had felt both glad and proud that her son was no longer to live a hidden life in this quiet village of Markwood. ”

“ Mary was looking out of her kitchen door. She had heard John talking to some one in the forge, and had seen the light little figure in the doorway, and guessed very well who it was, though she had not seen Lily since the terrible day of Carsham Fair, when the child was the innocent cause of the greatest sorrow of her life. But she bore no malice for that now; she was far too happy as a woman to find it worth while remembering the troubles of a girl, and she could not have been married more than six years to John without catching something of his wide, generous, simple way of looking at life. ”

“ He was an old-fashioned young man, and the life he knew was good enough for him—his cottage in the village street, his blacksmith's forge, his garden, where red roses and tall white lilies grew, his mother, with her gentle ways and slow movements. He did very well, it seemed to him, and he could not see that the railway would bring much good to a village like theirs. Noise, and smoke, and dirt; newspapers and bad characters. John thought and said that he and his neighbours could get on very well without the railway. ”

“ Mary came a step nearer, and they all three gazed with deep interest at the little creature on John's knee. She sat upright, staring from one woman to the other—Mrs. Randal's worn face and spectacles, the grave yet attractive look of Mary's earnest eyes. The shawl had fallen back from her little white flannel dress, her fair curls were ruffled, the small face and hands and feet were stained with mud and rain. Round her neck hung a tiny gold locket on a piece of discoloured blue ribbon. ”

“ The frost-fog that lingers there on a level with the river has the power of piercing to the marrow of one's bones; it is colder than the bitterest wind that ever blew.
Mary Alfrick thought she had never been so cold in her life as on that Christmas Eve, when she came home for her first holiday after fifteen months of steady work at the Orphanage. She had had a long cross-country journey. Her father met her with his trap at the station; he seemed glad to see her in his rough way, and the welcome, careless as it was, made Mary feel that she had been right in coming. ”

“ It is at all times a lonely country, with few farmhouses, the farms being very large; with villages several miles apart, and cottages standing alone here and there, half hidden in corners of the woods. Travellers on the roads are few, and that evening it seemed to John as if nobody was out but himself, for during more than half-an-hour's walk through constant thunder and lightning and drowning rain, he saw neither a human being nor an animal on the road. ”

“ But some people think, or pretend to think, that there is no manliness without wickedness, and of course, to such minds as these, men like John give no satisfaction whatever.
Days, weeks, months rolled by, and neither at Carsham nor Markwood was any inquiry made about the little lost child. The gossips talked a good deal at first, but soon—a nine days' wonder—the interest of the story died away, and it seemed as if Lily had always lived in the quiet village, in the blacksmith's low-roofed cottage, in the flowery garden which soon became as much hers as John's. ”

“ But reality was best, after all; a heart's love is not transferred in a moment, no matter who may have the best right to it; and there stood John, looking pale and grave, in the shadow of the apple-trees, listening in silence to all that was going on.
"I'm John's Lily!" she said, and slipping her hand out of Colonel Maxwell's, she sprang back to her old friend and began in an eager whisper, "John, John, pick me up and give me a ride round the garden. Quick, John dear! When we come back they'll all be gone and we'll have dinner." ”

“ And little Lily Randal, John's own little girl, proudly showed her father what the pretty young lady had fastened round her neck: a gold chain with a small locket engraved with the letter L, just like one she wore herself, except that the hair in it was not dark, but pale gold like her own.
"She always was a sweet child, and she is still," said Mrs. Randal. "They haven't spoilt her. She told me the four years with us was the happiest of her life. I hope not. I hope there's many blessings in store for her."
"She was always something like an angel," said John thoughtfully. ”

“ John's mother was not the only person who found the village a different place when he was away. The farmers for a long way round would not let any one else shoe their horses, and grumbled mightily; the old vicar missed his fine bass voice on Sunday in the choir; there was nobody else who would pick up a small child in the road and carry it on his shoulder, safe and triumphant above its companions, yet a little frightened at finding itself so high in the air. ”

“ Though the more Mary thought of that the more astonished she felt that Mrs. Randal should have done it. A particular person like her! it seemed unnatural.
Mary suddenly stood still in front of a toy-stall, at which she appeared to stare with the deepest interest. But in reality she saw nothing; it was a new thought that had stopped her. Was it possible that Lily had been left alone in the house for a few minutes, and had dressed herself and run away to join the other children? She wanted to go to the fair, Mary knew; she had been crying about it the day before. ”

“ Outside the railings Granny Pierce came hobbling along in her shabby cloak, wild grey locks escaping under her old sun-bonnet. No one else seemed to be astir in the quiet village street: everybody now was gone to the fair.
"Good afternoon, Granny," said Mrs. Randal, in her kind voice. "Have you seen my little girl or Mary Alfrick?"
"They be never gone without your knowledge, be they?" said the old woman.
"What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Randal, a faint flush rising in her pale face. "Gone where?"
"To Carsham Fair, to be sure. They're young, and it's the right place for 'em. ”

“ A man and woman walked by the side of the horse and talked together in low tones. In the cart a child was tied to the seat, muffled in shawls and handkerchiefs, so that Lily in her bright fairness could hardly have been recognised. She was terribly frightened, poor little girl; she was moaning to herself, crying out for John, yet afraid to cry loudly, for the woman, after petting and cajoling her at first, had threatened to beat her within an inch of her life if she made any noise. ”

“ The garden that used to be her own, with all its fruit and flowers, where she was queen, and the first of her subjects used to carry her throned on his shoulder—her garden now belonged to this fat, rosy creature of five years old, whose life had been troubled with no adventures, no wild changes of losing and finding, who had a little brown face and dark eyes like John's, and hair of that brown fairness which means to become dark by-and-by. ”

“ They were not in the boats, or on the merry-go-rounds, they were not standing about listening to the band near the market-place, they were not to be seen among the ever-thickening crowd that made its way slowly along the line of booths. Mary began to feel lonely, as well as anxious. Some of the ruder people, the strangers, stared at her, and she felt that Carsham Fair was hardly the place for a girl of her age to be wandering about alone. Her presence there would not please John, she knew, any more than Lily's—and if he could see her there alone, he would certainly be angry. ”

“ Whole families flowed in from quiet villages and lonely commons; old and young, on foot or on wheels, they kept on coming; and this would go on till late in the evening, till the fair, which had always a few London roughs mingled with its crowd, was neither a safe nor respectable place for quiet people.
But there was not much rowdyism to be seen in the afternoon, when Mary walked in from Markwood; the amusements in the street were harmless enough; the gay booths were crowded with women and children, many of whom she knew, busily buying all manner of rubbish. ”

“ And the world outside Markwood—so his mother thought—must be so much the better for knowing John. However, it was not to be; and Mrs. Randal, who never fretted over useless fancies, told herself that John knew best and that he had decided rightly. She understood him; she was all the prouder of him in her heart, really, because he chose to live his life independent of another man's money or help, and to work on in his own quiet way. ”

“ Then there was a white chalky road through Fiddler's Wood, going straight off uphill to the right, hidden at once in the deep shade of the clustering beech-trees. Then there was a narrow lane to the left, which led past an untidy duck-pond, over a low bridge, past some tall poplars, a thatched cottage or two, and a large farmhouse, so winding on, with broad green margins, till it became the regular village street, where the cottages stood nearer together, each in its large straggling garden full of flowers and fruit. Farther on were the church, the vicarage, and the little old school ”

“ John knew very well that Mary's troubles, though always bravely borne, were never far to seek. He had often agreed with his mother in wondering how a girl like Mary could put up with such a home as hers, with her father's roughness and ill-temper, her stepmother's selfish meanness, with nothing except the sense of duty to brighten life and make it something better than a dull, hard round of daily tasks. Mrs. Randal knew more about Mary than her son did, though hardly from what the girl herself had told her, for she was a proud girl, and never spoke of her own feelings. ”

“ There's something behind as we don't understand," said Mrs. Bland. "As to this child, Isaac, wherever John picked her up, she is a little lady. Now I wonder if those people knew——"
She murmured these words mysteriously, while Lily gazed at her with heartfelt anxiety in her blue eyes, and repeated, "Please take me home."
"Yes, little one, and that's what we are going to do," said the schoolmaster. "Lift her up, Jemima, if you please. I'll carry her, and the umbrella too, if it isn't too wet to be of use. London must keep for another day: this child's safety must be seen to first." ”

“ Neither he nor the whole world, she was convinced, would ever come between her and John, now that they once understood each other. There was no hurry: she had told them John could not marry yet, though she had said nothing about the length to which that waiting might possibly be stretched. For herself, on this point, she felt a power of patience that seemed likely to last for years. A traveller does not much mind his miles of dusty road, if at the far end, shining in the sun, he can see the gates and towers of the city where he is going. ”