The Unbidden Guest
The Unbidden GuestCHAPTER I.—THE GIRL FROM HOME.CHAPTER II.—A BAD BEGINNING.CHAPTER III.—AU REVOIR.CHAPTER IV.—A MATTER OF TWENTY POUNDS.CHAPTER V.—A WATCH AND A PIPE.CHAPTER VI.—THE WAYS OF SOCIETY.CHAPTER VII.—MOONLIGHT SPORT.CHAPTER VIII.—THE SAVING OF ARABELLA.CHAPTER IX.—FACE TO FACE.CHAPTER X.—THE THINNING OF THE ICE.CHAPTER XI.—A CHRISTMAS OFFERING.CHAPTER XII.—"THE SONG OF MIRIAM."CHAPTER XIII.—ON THE VERANDAH.CHAPTER XIV.—A BOLT FROM THE BLUE.CHAPTER XV.—A DAY OF RECKONING.CHAPTER XVI.—A MAN'S RESOLVE.CHAPTER XVII.—THE TWO MIRIAMS.CHAPTER XVIII.—THE WAY OF ALL FLESH.CHAPTER XIX.—TO THE TUNE OF RAIN.CHAPTER XX.—THE LAST ENCOUNTER.CHAPTER XXI.—"FOR THIS CAUSE."Copyright
The Unbidden Guest
E. W. Hornung
CHAPTER I.—THE GIRL FROM HOME.
Arabella was the first at the farm to become
aware of Mr. Teesdale's return from Melbourne. She was reading in
the parlour, with her plump elbows planted upon the faded green
table-cloth, and an untidy head of light-coloured hair between her
hands; looking up from her book by chance, she saw through the
closed window her father and the buggy climbing the hill at the old
mare's own pace. Arabella went on reading until the buggy had drawn
up within a few feet of the verandah posts and a few more of the
parlour window. Then she sat in doubt, with her finger on the
place; but before it appeared absolutely necessary to jump up and
run out, one of the men had come up to take charge of the mare, and
Arabella was enabled to remove her finger and read on.The parlour was neither very large nor at all lofty, and the
shut window and fire-place closely covered by a green gauze screen,
to keep the flies out, made it disagreeably stuffy. There were two
doors, but both of these were shut also, though the one at the far
end of the room, facing the hearth, nearly always stood wide open.
It led down a step into a very little room where the guns were kept
and old newspapers thrown, and where somebody was whistling rather
sweetly as the other door opened and Mr. Teesdale entered,
buggy-whip in hand.He was a frail, tallish old gentleman, with a venerable
forehead, a thin white beard, very little hair to his pate, and
clear brown eyes that shone kindly upon all the world. He had on
the old tall hat he always wore when driving into Melbourne, and
the yellow silk dust-coat which had served him for many a red-hot
summer, and was still not unpresentable. Arabella was racing to the
end of a paragraph when he entered, and her father had stolen
forward and kissed her untidy head before she looked
up."Bad girl," said he, playfully, "to let your old father get
home without ever coming out to meet him!""I was trying to finish this chapter," said Arabella. She
went on trying."I know, I know! I know you of old, my dear. Yet I can't
talk, because I am as bad as you are; only I should like to see you
reading something better than theFamily
Cherub." There were better things in the little
room adjoining, where behind the shooting lumber was some motley
reading, on two long sagging shelves; but that room was known as
the gun-room, and half those books were hidden away behind
powder-canisters, cartridge-cases, and the like, while all were
deep in dust."You read it yourself, father," said Arabella as she turned
over a leaf of herFamily Cherub."I read it myself. More shame for me! But then I've read all
them books in the little gun-room, and that's what I should like to
see you reading now and then. Now why have you got yon door shut,
Arabella, and who's that whistling in there?""It's our John William," Miss Teesdale said; and even as she
spoke the door in question was thrown open by a stalwart fellow in
a Crimean shirt, with the sleeves rolled up from arms as brown and
hard-looking as mellow oak. He had a breech-loader in one hand and
a greasy rag in the other."Holloa, father!" cried he, boisterously."Well, John William, what are you doing?""Cleaning my gun. What have you been doing, that's more like
it? What took you trapesing into Melbourne the moment I got my back
turned this morning?""Why, hasn't your mother told you?""Haven't seen her since I came in.""Well, but Arabella——""Arabella! I'm full up of Arabella," said John William
contemptuously; but the girl was still too deep in theFamily Cherubto heed him. "There's no
getting a word out of Arabella when she's on the read; so what's it
all about, father?""I'll tell you; but you'd better shut yon window, John
William, or I don't know what your mother 'll say when she comes in
and finds the place full o' flies."It was the gun-room window that broke the law of no fresh
air, causing Mr. Teesdale uneasiness until John William shut it
with a grumble; for in this homestead the mistress was law-maker,
and indeed master, with man-servant and maid-servant, husband and
daughter, and a particularly headstrong son, after her own heart,
all under her thumb together."Now then, father, what was it took you into Melbourne all of
a sudden like that?""A letter by the English mail, from my old friend Mr.
Oliver.""Never heard tell of him," said John William, making
spectacles of his burnished bores, and looking through them into
the sunlight. Already he had lost interest.Mr. Teesdale was also occupied, having taken from his pocket
a very large red cotton handkerchief, with which he was wiping
alternately the dust from his tall hat and the perspiration from
the forehead whereon the hat had left a fiery rim. Now, however, he
nodded his bald head and clicked his lips, as one who gives another
up."Well, well! Never heard tell of him—you who've heard me tell
of him time out o' mind! Nay, come; why, you're called after him
yourself! Ay, we called you after John William Oliver because he
was the best friend that ever we had in old Yorkshire or anywhere
else; the very best; and you pretend you've never heard tell of
him.""What had he got to say for himself?" said Mr. Oliver's
namesake, with a final examination of the outside of his
barrels."Plenty; he's sent one of his daughters out in theParramatta, that got in with the mail
yesterday afternoon; and of course he had given her an introduction
to me.""What's that?" exclaimed John William, looking up sharply, as
he ran over the words in his ear. "I say, father, we don't want her
here," he added earnestly."Oh, did you find out where she was? Have you seen her? What
is she like?" cried Arabella, jumping up from the table and joining
the others with a face full of questions. She had that instant
finished her chapter."I don't know what she's like; I didn't see her; I couldn't
even find out where she was, though I tried at half a dozen hotels
and both coffee-palaces," said the farmer with a crestfallen
air."All the better!" cried John William, grounding his gun with
a bang. "We don't want none of your stuck-up new chums or chumesses
here, father.""I don't know that; for my part, I should love to have a
chance of talking to an English young lady," Arabella said, with a
backward glance at herFamily Cherub. "They're very rich, the Olivers," she added for her
brother's benefit; "that's their house in the gilt frame in the
best parlour, the house with the tower; and the group in the frame
to match, thatisthe Olivers,
isn't it, father?""It is, my dear; that's to say, it was, some sixteen years
ago. We must get yon group and see which one it is that has come
out, and then I'll read you Mr. Oliver's letter, John William. If
only he'd written a mail or two before the child started! However,
if we've everything made snug for her to-night, I'll lay hands on
her to-morrow if she's in Melbourne; and then she shall come out
here for a month or two to start with, just to see how she likes
it.""How d'ye know she'll want to come out here at all?" asked
John William. "Don't you believe it, father; she wouldn't care for
it a little bit.""Not care for it? Not want to come out and make her home with
her parents' old friends? Then she's not her father's daughter,"
cried Mr. Teesdale indignantly; "she's no child of our good old
friends. Why, it was Mr. Oliver who gave me the watch I——hush! Was
that your mother calling?"It was. "David! David! Have you got back, David?" the harsh
voice came crying through the lath-and-plaster walls.Mr. Teesdale scuttled to the door. "Yes, my dear, I've just
got in. No, I'm not smoking. Where are you, then? In the spare
room? All right, I'm coming, I'm coming." And he was
gone."Mother's putting the spare room to rights already," Arabella
explained."I'm sorry to hear it; let's hope it won't be
wanted.""Why, John William? It would be such fun to have a young lady
from Home to stay with us!""I'm full up o' young ladies, and I'm just sick of the sound
of Home. She'll be a deal too grand for us, and there won't be much
fun in that. What's the use o' talking? If it was a son of this
here old Oliver's it'd be a different thing; we'd precious soon
knock the nonsense out of him; I'd undertake to do it myself; but a
girl's different, and I jolly well hope she'll stop away. We don't
want her here, I tell you. We haven't even invited her. It's a
piece of cheek, is the whole thing!"John William was in the parlour now, sitting on the
horse-hair sofa, and laying down the law with freckled fist and
blusterous voice, as his habit was. It was a good-humoured sort of
bluster, however, and indeed John William seldom opened his mouth
without displaying his excellent downright nature in one good light
or another. He had inherited his mother's qualities along with her
sharp, decided features, which in the son were set off by a strong
black beard and bristling moustache. He managed the farm, the men,
Arabella, and his father; but all under Mrs. Teesdale, who managed
him. Not that this masterful young man was so young in years as you
might well suppose; neither John William nor Arabella was under
thirty; but their lives had been so simple and so hard-working
that, going by their conversation merely, you would have placed the
two of them in their teens. For her part, too, Arabella looked much
younger than she was, with her wholesome, attractive face and
dreamy, inquisitive eyes; and as for the brother, he was but a boy
with a beard, still primed with rude health and strength, and still
loaded with all the assorted possibilities of budding
manhood."I've taken down the group," said Mr. Teesdale, returning
with a large photograph in a gilt frame; "and here is the letter on
the chimney-piece. We'll have a look at them both
again."On the chimney-piece also were the old man's spectacles,
which he proceeded to put on, and a tobacco jar and long clay pipe,
at which he merely looked lovingly; for Mrs. Teesdale would have no
smoking in the house. His own chair stood in the cosy corner
between the window and the hearth; and he now proceeded to pull it
up to his own place at the head of the table as though it were a
meal-time, and that gilt-framed photograph the only dish. Certainly
he sat down to it with an appetite never felt during the years it
had hung in the unused, ornamental next room, without the least
prospect of the Teesdales ever more seeing any member of that group
in the flesh. But now that such a prospect was directly at hand,
there was some sense in studying the old photograph. It was of
eight persons: the parents, a grandparent, and five children. Three
of the latter were little girls, in white stockings and hideous
boots with low heels and elastic sides; and to the youngest of
these three, a fair-haired child whose features, like those of the
whole family, were screwed up by a strong light and an exposure of
the ancient length, Mr. Teesdale pointed with his
finger-nail."That's the one," said he. "She now is a young lady of five
or six and twenty.""Don't think much of her looks," observed John
William."Oh, you can't tell what she may be like from this," Arabella
said, justly. "She may be beautiful now; besides, look how the sun
must have been in her eyes, poor little thing! What's her name
again, father?""Miriam, my dear.""Miriam! I call it a jolly name, don't you,
Jack?""It's a beast of a name," said John William."Stop while I read you a bit of the letter," cried the old
man, smiling indulgently. "I won't give you all of it, but just
this little bit at the end. He's been telling me that Miriam has
her own ideas about things, has already seen something of the
world, and isn't perhaps quite like the girls I may remember when
we were both young men——""Didn't I tell you?" interrupted John William, banging the
table with his big fist. "She's stuck-up! We don't want her
here.""But just hark how he ends up. I want you both to listen to
these few lines:—'It may even be that she has formed habits and
ways which were not the habits and ways of young girls in our day,
and that you may like some of these no better than I do. Yet her
heart, my dear Teesdale, is as pure and as innocent as her mother's
was before her, and I know that my old friend will let no mere
modern mannerisms prejudice him against my darling child, who is
going so far from us all. It has been a rather sudden arrangement,
and though the doctors ordered it, and Miriam can take care of
herself as only the girls nowadays can, still I would never have
parted with her had I not known of one tried friend to meet and
welcome her at the other end. Keep her at your station, my dear
Teesdale, as long as you can, for an open-air life is, I am
convinced, what she wants above all things. If she should need
money, an accident which may always happen, let her have whatever
she wants, advising me of the amount immediately. I have told her
to apply to you in such an extremity, which, however, I regard as
very unlikely to occur. I have also provided her with a little note
of introduction, with which she will find her way to you as soon as
possible after landing. And into your kind old hands, and those of
your warm-hearted wife, I cheerfully commend my girl, with the most
affectionate remembrances to you both, and only regretting that
business will not allow me to come out with her and see you both
once more.' Then he finishes—calls himself my affectionate friend,
same as when we were boys together. And it's two-and-thirty years
since we said good-bye!" added Mr. Teesdale as he folded up the
letter and put it away.He pushed his spectacles on to his forehead, for they were
dim, and sat gazing straight ahead, through the inner door that
stood now wide open, and out of the gun-room window. This
overlooked a sunburnt decline, finishing, perhaps a furlong from
the house, at the crests of the river timber, that stood out of it
like a hedge, by reason of the very deep cut made by the Yarra,
where it formed the farm boundary on that side. And across the top
of the window (to one sitting in Mr. Teesdale's place) was
stretched, like a faded mauve ribbon, a strip of the distant
Dandenong Ranges; and this and the timber were the favourite haunts
of the old man's eyes, for thither they strayed of their own accord
whenever his mind got absent elsewhere, as was continually
happening, and had happened now."It's a beautiful letter!" exclaimed Arabella
warmly."I like it, too," John William admitted; "but I shan't like
the girl. That kind don't suit me at all; but I'll try to be civil
to her on account of the old man, for his letter is right
enough."Mr. Teesdale looked pleased, though he left his eyes where
they were."Ay, ay, my dears, I thought you would like it. Ah, but all
his letters are the same! Two-and-thirty years, and never a year
without at least three letters from Mr. Oliver. He's a business
man, and he always answers promptly. He's a rich man now, my dears,
but he doesn't forget the early friends, not he, though they're at
the other end of the earth, and as poor as he's rich.""Yet he doesn't seem to know how we're situated, for all
that," remarked John William thoughtfully. "Look how he talks about
our 'station,' and of your advancing money to the girl, as though
we were rolling in it like him! Have you never told him our
circumstances, father?"At the question, Mr. Teesdale's eyes fell twenty miles, and
rested guiltily upon the old green tablecloth."I doubt a station and a farm convey much the same thing in
the old country," he answered crookedly."That you may bet they do!" cried the son, with a laugh; but
he went on delivering himself of the most discouraging prophecies
touching the case in point. The girl would come out with false
ideas; would prove too fine by half for plain people like
themselves; and at the best was certain to expect much more than
they could possibly give her."Well, as to that," said the farmer, who thought himself
lucky to have escaped a scolding for never having told an old
friend how poor he was—"as to that, we can but give her the best
we've got, with mebbe a little extra here and there, such as we
wouldn't have if we were by ourselves. The eggs 'll be fresh, at
any rate, and I think that she'll like her sheets, for your mother
is getting out them 'at we brought with us from Home in '51. There
was just two pairs, and she's had 'em laid by in lavender ever
since. We can give her a good cup o' tea, an' all; and you can take
her out 'possum-shooting, John William, and teach her how to ride.
Yes, we'll make a regular bush-girl of her in a month, and send her
back to Yorkshire the picture of health; though as yet I'm not very
clear what's been the matter with her. But if she takes after her
parents ever so little she'll see that we're doing our best, and
that'll be good enough for any child of theirs."From such a shabby waistcoat pocket Mr. Tees-dale took so
handsome a gold watch, it was like a ring on a beggar's finger; and
he fondled it between his worn hands, but without a
word."Mr. Oliver gave you that watch, didn't he, father?" Arabella
said, watching him."He did, my dear," said the old man proudly. "He came and saw
us off at the Docks, and he gave me the watch on board, just as we
were saying good-bye; and he gave your mother a gold brooch which
neither of you have ever seen, for I've never known her wear it
myself."Arabella said she had seen it."Now his watch," continued Mr. Teesdale, "has hardly ever
left my pocket—save to go under my pillow—since he put it in my
hands on July 3, 1851. Here's the date and our initials inside the
case; but you've seen them before. Ay, but there are few who came
out in '51—and stopped out—who have done as poorly as me. The day
after we dropped anchor in Hobson's Bay there wasn't a living soul
aboard our ship; captain, mates, passengers and crew, all gone to
the diggings. Every man Jack but me! It was just before you were
born, John William, and I wasn't going. It may have been a mistake,
but the Lord knows best. To be sure, we had our hard times when the
diggers were coming into Melbourne and shoeing their horses with
gold, and filling buckets with champagne, and standing by with a
pannikin to make everybody drink that passed; if you wouldn't,
you'd got to take off your coat and show why. I remember one of
them offering me a hundred pounds for this very watch, and precious
hard up I was, but I wouldn't take it, not I, though I didn't
refuse a sovereign for telling him the time. Ay, sovereigns were
the pennies of them days; not that I fingered many; but I never got
so poor as to part with Mr. Oliver's watch, and you never must
either, John William, when it's yours. Ay, ay," chuckled Mr.
Teesdale, as he snapped-to the case and replaced the watch in his
pocket, "and it's gone like a book for over thirty years, with
nothing worse than a cleaning the whole time.""You must mind and tell that to Miriam, father," said
Arabella, smiling."I must so. Ah, my dear, I shall have two daughters, not one,
and you'll have a sister while Miriam is here.""That depends what Miriam is like," said John William,
getting up from the sofa with a Hugh and going back idly to the
little room and his cleaned gun."I know what she will be like," said Arabella, placing the
group in front of her on the table. "She will be delicate and fair,
and rather small; and I shall have to show her everything, and take
tremendous care of her.""I wonder if she'll have her mother's hazel eyes and gentle
voice?" mused the farmer aloud, with his eyes on their way back to
the Dandenong Ranges."I should like her to take after her mother; she was one of
the gentlest little women that ever I knew, was Mrs. Oliver, and I
never clapped eyes——"The speaker suddenly turned his head; there had been a step
in the verandah, and some person had passed the window too quick
for recognition."Who was that?" said Mr. Teesdale."I hardly saw," said Arabella, pushing back her chair. "It
was a woman.""And now she's knocking! Run and see who it is, my
dear."Arabella rose and ran. Then followed such an outcry in the
passage that Mr. Teesdale rose also. He was on his legs in time to
see the door flung wide open, and the excited eyes of Arabella
reaching over the shoulder of the tall young woman whom she was
pushing into the room."HereisMiriam," she
cried. "Here's Miriam found her way out all by
herself!"
CHAPTER II.—A BAD BEGINNING.
At the sound of the voices outside, John
William, for his part, had slipped behind the gun-room door; but he
had the presence of mind not to shut it quite, and this enabled him
to peer through the crack and take deliberate stock of the fair
visitant.
She was a well-built young woman, with a bold, free carriage
and a very daring smile. That was John William's first impression
when he came to think of it in words a little later. His eyes then
fastened upon her hair. The poor colour of her face and lips did
not strike him at the time any more than the smudges under the
merry eyes. The common stamp of the regular features never struck
him at all, for of such matters old Mr. Teesdale himself was hardly
a judge; but the girl's hair took John William's fancy on the spot.
It was the most wonderful hair: red, and yet beautiful. There was
plenty of it to be seen, too, for the straw hat that hid the rest
had a backward tilt to it, while an exuberant fringe came down
within an inch of the light eyebrows. John William could have borne
it lower still. He watched and listened with a smile upon his own
hairy visage, of which he was totally unaware.
"So this is my old friend's daughter!" the farmer had cried
out.
"And you're Mr. Scarsdale, are you?" answered the girl,
between fits of intermittent, almost hysterical laughter.
"Eh? Yes, yes; I'm Mr. Teesdale, and this is my daughter
Arabella. You are to be sisters, you two."
The visitor turned to Arabella and gave her a sounding kiss
upon the lips.
"And mayn't I have one too?" old Teesdale asked. "I'm that
glad to see you, my dear, and you know you're to look upon me like
a father as long as you stay in Australia. Thank you, Miriam. Now I
feel as if you'd been here a week already!"
Mr. Teesdale had received as prompt and as hearty a kiss as
his daughter before him.
"Mrs. Teesdale is busy, but she'll come directly," he went on
to explain. "Do you know what she's doing? She's getting your room
ready, Miriam. We knew that you had landed, and I've spent the
whole day hunting for you in town. Just to think that you should
have come out by yourself after all! But our John William was here
a minute ago. John William, what are you doing?"
"Cleaning my gun," said the young man, coming from behind his
door, greasy rag in hand.
"Nay, come! You finished that job long ago. Come and shake
hands with Miriam. Look, here she is, safe and sound, and come out
all by herself!"
"I'm very glad to see you," said the son of the house,
advancing, dirty palms foremost, "but I'm sorry I can't shake
hands!"
"Then I'd better kiss you too!"
She had taken a swinging step forward, and the red fringe was
within a foot of his startled face, when she tossed back her head
with a hearty laugh.
"No, I think I won't. You're too old and you're not old
enough—see?"
"John William 'll be three-and-thirty come January," said Mr.
Teesdale gratuitously.
"Yes? That's ten years older than me," answered the visitor
with equal candour. "Exactly ten!"
"Nay, come—not exactly ten," the old gentleman said, with
some gravity, for he was a great stickler for the literal truth;
"only seven or eight, I understood from your father?"
The visitor coloured, then pouted, and then burst out
laughing as she exclaimed, "You oughtn't to be so particular about
ladies' ages! Surely two or three years is near enough, isn't it?
I'm ashamed of you, Mr. Teesdale; I really am!" And David received
such a glance that he became exceedingly ashamed of himself; but
the smile that followed it warmed his old heart through and
through, and reminded him, he thought, of Miriam's mother.
Meantime, the younger Teesdale remained rooted to the spot
where he had been very nearly kissed. He was still sufficiently
abashed, but perhaps on that very account a plain speech came from
him too.
"You're not like what I expected. No, I'm bothered if you
are!"
"Much worse?" asked the girl, with a scared look.
"No, much better. Ten thousand times better!" cried the young
man. Then his shyness overtook him, and, though he joined in the
general laughter, he ventured no further remarks. As to the
laughter, the visitor's was the most infectious ever heard in the
weather-board farmhouse. Arabella shook within the comfortable
covering with which nature had upholstered her, and old David had
to apply the large red handkerchief to his furrowed cheeks before
he could give her the message to Mrs. Teesdale, for which there had
not been a moment to spare out of the crowded minute or two which
had elapsed since the visitor's unforeseen arrival.
"Go, my dear," he said now, "and tell your mother that Miriam
is here. That's it. Mrs. T. will be with us directly, Miriam. Ah, I
thought this photograph'd catch your eye sooner or later. You'll
have seen it once or twice before, eh? Just once or twice, I'm
thinking." The group still lay on the table at Mr. Teesdale's
end.
"Who are they?" asked the visitor, very carelessly; indeed,
she had but given the photograph a glance, and that from a
distance.
"Who? Why, yourselves; your own family. All the lot of you
when you were little," cried David, snatching up the picture and
handing it across. "We were just looking at it when you came,
Miriam; and I made you out to be this one, look—this poor little
thing with the sun in her eyes."
The old man was pointing with his finger, the girl examining
closely. Their heads were together. Suddenly she raised hers,
looked him in the eyes, and burst out laughing.
"How clever you are!" she said. "I'm not a bit like that now,
now am I?"
She made him look well at her before answering. And in all
his after knowledge of it, he never again saw quite so bold
anddébonnairean expression
upon that cool face framed in so much hot hair. But from a mistaken
sense of politeness, Mr. Teesdale made a disingenuous answer after
all, and the subject of conversation veered from the girl who had
come out to Australia to those she had left behind her in the old
country.
That conversation would recur to Mr. Teesdale in after days.
It contained surprises for him at the time. Later, he ceased to
wonder at what he had heard. Indeed, there was nothing wonderful in
his having nourished quite a number of misconceptions concerning a
family of whom he had set eyes on no member for upwards of thirty
years. It was those misconceptions which the red-haired member of
that family now removed. They were all very natural in the
circumstances. And yet, to give an instance, Mr. Teesdale was
momentarily startled to ascertain that Mrs. Oliver had never been
so well in her life as when her daughter sailed. He had understood
from Mr. Oliver that his wife was in a very serious state with
diabetes. When he now said so, the innocent remark made Miss Oliver
to blush and bite her lips. Then she explained. Her mother had been
threatened with the disease in question, but that was all. The real
fact was, her father was morbidly anxious about her mother, and to
such an extent that it appeared the anxiety amounted to
mania.
She put it in her own way.
"Pa's mad on ma," she said. "You can't believe a word he says
about her."
Mr. Teesdale found this difficult to believe of his old
friend, who seemed to him to write so sensibly about the matter. It
made him look out of the gun-room window. Then he recollected that
the girl herself lacked health, for which cause she had come
abroad.
"And what was the matter with you, Miriam," said he, "for
your father only says that the doctors recommended the
voyage?"
"Oh, that's all he said, was it?"
"Yes, that's all."
"And you want to know what was the matter with me, do
you?"
"No, I was only wondering. It's no business of mine."
"Oh, but I'll tell you. Bless your life, I'm not ashamed of
it. It was late nights—it was late nights that was the matter with
me."
"Nay, come," cried the farmer; yet, as he peered through his
spectacles into the bright eyes sheltered by the fiery fringe, he
surmised a deep-lying heaviness in the brain behind them; and he
noticed now for the first time how pale a face they were set in,
and how gray the marks were underneath them.
"The voyage hasn't done you much good, either," he said.
"Why, you aren't even sunburnt."
"No? Well, you see, I'm such a bad sailor. I spent all my
time in the cabin, that's how it was."
"Yet theArgussays you
had such a good voyage?"
"Yes? I expect they always say that. It was a beast of a
voyage, if you ask me, and quite as bad as late nights for you,
though not nearly so nice."
"Ah, well, we'll soon set you up, my dear. This is the place
to make a good job of you, if ever there was one. But where have
you been staying since you landed, Miriam? It's upwards of
twenty-four hours now."
The guest smiled.
"Ah, that's tellings. With some people who came out with
me—some swells that I knew in the West End, if you particularly
want to know; not that I'm much nuts on 'em, either."
"Don't you be inquisitive, father," broke in John William
from the sofa. It was his first remark since he had sat
down.
"Well, perhaps I mustn't bother you with any more questions
now," said Mr. Teesdale to the girl; "but I shall have a hundred to
ask you later on. To think that you're Mr. Oliver's daughter after
all! Ay, and I see a look of your mother and all now and then. They
did well to send you out to us, and get you right away from them
late hours and that nasty society—though here comes one that'll
want you to tell her all about that by-and-by."
The person in question was Arabella, who had just
re-entered.
"Society?" said she. "My word, yes, I shall want you to tell
me all about society, Miriam."
"Do you hear that, Miriam?" said Mr. Teesdale after some
moments. She had taken no notice.
"What's that? Oh yes, I heard; but I shan't tell anybody
anything more unless you all stop calling me Miriam."
This surprised them; it had the air of a sudden thought as
suddenly spoken.
"But Miriam's your name," said Arabella, laughing.
"Your father has never spoken of you as anything else,"
remarked Mr. Teesdale.
"All the same, I'm not used to being called by it," replied
their visitor, who for the first time was exhibiting signs of
confusion. "I like people to call me what I'm accustomed to being
called. You may say it's a pet name, but it's what I'm used to, and
I like it best."
"What is, missy?" said old Teesdale kindly; for the girl was
staring absently at the opposite wall.
"Tell us, and we'll call you nothing else," Arabella
promised.
The girl suddenly swept her eyes from the wall to Mr.
Teesdale's inquiring face. "You said it just now," she told him,
with a nod and her brightest smile. "You said it without knowing
when you called me 'Missy.' That's what they always call me at
home—Missy or the Miss. You pays your money and you takes your
choice."
