FullReads

Chris had been going on with his pudding again, but he paused to make a guess.

“A large cannon, just going off?”

“No. If I’d seen that, you wouldn’t have seen any more of me. I saw masses of wild clematis scrambling everywhere, so that the hedge looked as if somebody had been dressing it up in tufts of feathers.”

As she said this, Lady Catherine held out her hand to me across the table very kindly. She has a fat hand, covered with rings, and I put my hand into it.

“And what do you think came into my head?” she asked.

“Toast and water,” said Chris, maliciously.

“No, you monkey. I began to think of hedge-flowers, and travellers, and Traveller’s Joy.”

Aunt Catherine shook my hand here, and dropped it.

“And you thought how nice it was for the poor travellers to have such nice flowers,” said Chris, smiling, and wagging his head up and down.

“Nothing of the kind,” said Aunt Catherine, brusquely. “I thought what lots of flowers the travellers had already, without Mary planting any more; and I thought not one traveller in a dozen paid much attention to them–begging John Parkinson’s pardon–and how much more in want of flowers people ‘that have no garden’ are; and then I thought of that poor girl in those bare barracks, whose old home was one of the prettiest places, with the loveliest garden, in all Berkshire.”

“Was it an Earthly Paradise?” asked Chris.

“It was, indeed. Well, when I thought of her inside those brick walls, looking out on one of those yards they march about in, now they’ve cut down all the trees, and planted sentry boxes, I put my best bonnet out of the window, which always spoils the feather, and told Harness to turn his horses’ heads, and drive home again.”

“What for?” said Chris, as brusquely as Lady Catherine.

“I sent for Hobbs.”

“Hobbs the Gardener?” said Chris.

“Hobbs the Gardener; and I told Chambers to give him the basket from the second peg, and then I sent him into the conservatory to fill it. Mary, my dear, I am very particular about my baskets. If ever I lend you my diamonds, and you lose them, I may forgive you–I shall know that was an accident; but if I lend you a basket, and you don’t return it, don’t look me in the face again. I always write my name on them, so there’s no excuse. And I don’t know a greater piece of impudence–and people are wonderfully impudent now-a-days–than to think that because a thing only cost fourpence, you need not be at the trouble of keeping it clean and dry, and of sending it back.”

“Some more toast and water please,” said Chris.

Aunt Catherine helped him, and continued–“Hobbs is a careful man–he has been with me ten years–he doesn’t cut flowers recklessly as a rule, but when I saw that basket I said, ‘Hobbs, you’ve been very extravagant.’ He looked ashamed of himself, but he said, ‘I understood they was for Miss Kitty, m’m. She’s been used to nice gardens, m’m.’ Hobbs lived with them in Berkshire before he came to me.”

“It was very nice of Hobbs,” said Chris, emphatically.

“Humph!” said Aunt Catherine, “the flowers were mine.”

“Did you ever get to the barracks?” asked Chris, “and what was they like when you did?”

“They were about as unlike Kitty’s old home as anything could well be, She has made her rooms pretty enough, but it was easy to see she is hard up for flowers. She’s got an old rose-colored Sevres bowl that was my Grandmother’s, and there it was, filled with bramble leaves and Traveller’s Joy, (which she calls Old Man’s Beard; Kitty always would differ from her elders!) and a soup-plate full of forget-me-nots. She said two of the children had half-drowned themselves, and lost a good straw hat in getting them for her. Just like their mother, as I told her.”

“What did she say when you brought out the basket?” asked Chris, disposing of his reserve of currants at one mouthful, and laying down his spoon.