FullReads

From the moment that John Cobham detected such an approach to the habits of civilised life as sleeping under a roof, he looked upon the wild son of the Moors as virtually reclaimed, and so it proved. Every day he became more and more like his fellow-men. He abandoned his primitive oven, and bought his bread at the baker’s. He accepted thankfully the decent clothing necessary to his attending Miss Phoebe in her rides round the country. He worked regularly and steadily at whatever labour was assigned to him, receiving wages like the other farm servants; and finally it was discovered that one of the first uses he made of these wages was to purchase spelling-books and copy-books, and enter himself at an evening school, where the opening difficulties being surmounted, his progress astonished every body.

His chief fancy was for gardening. The love, and, to a certain point, the knowledge of flowers which he had always evinced increased upon him every day;–and happening to accompany Phoebe on one of her visits to the young ladies at the Hall, who were much attached to the lovely little girl, he saw Lady Mordaunt’s French garden, and imitated it the next year for his young mistress in wild flowers, after such a fashion as to excite the wonder and admiration of all beholders.

From that moment Jesse’s destiny was decided. Sir Robert’s gardener, a clever Scotchman, took great notice of him and offered to employ him at the Hall; but the Moors had to poor Jesse a fascination which he could not surmount. He felt that it would be easier to tear himself from the place altogether, than to live in the neighbourhood and not there. Accordingly he lingered on for a year or two, and then took a grateful leave of his benefactors, and set forth to London with the avowed intention of seeking employment in a great nursery-ground, to the proprietor of which he was furnished with letters, not merely from his friend the gardener, but from Sir Robert himself.

N. B. It is recorded that on the night of Jesse’s departure,
Venus refused her supper and Phoebe cried herself to sleep.

Time wore on. Occasional tidings had reached the Moors of the prosperous fortunes of the adventurer. He had been immediately engaged by the great nurseryman to whom he was recommended, and so highly approved, that in little more than two years he became foreman of the flower department; another two years saw him chief manager of the garden; and now, at the end of a somewhat longer period, there was a rumour of his having been taken into the concern as acting partner; a rumour which received full confirmation in a letter from himself, accompanying a magnificent present of shrubs, plants, and flower-roots, amongst which were two Dahlias, ticketed ‘the Moors’ and ‘the Phoebe,’ and announcing his intention of visiting his best and earliest friends in the course of the ensuing summer.

Still time wore on. It was full six months after this intimation, that on a bright morning in October, John Cobham, with two or three visiters from Belford, and his granddaughter Phoebe, now a lovely young woman, were coursing on the Moors. The townspeople had boasted of their greyhounds, and the old sportsman was in high spirits from having beaten them out of the field.

“If that’s your best dog,” quoth John, “why, I’ll be bound that our Snowball would beat him with one of his legs tied up. Talk of running such a cur as that against Snowball! Why there’s Phoebe’s pet Venus, Snowball’s great grandam, who was twelve years old last May, and has not seen a hare these three seasons, shall give him the go-by in the first hundred yards. Go and fetch Venus, Daniel! It will do her heart good to see a hare again,” added he, answering the looks rather than the words of his granddaughter, for she had not spoken, “and I’ll be bound to say she’ll beat him out of sight He won’t come in for a turn.”