Chapter 9 CATS.

With the departure of the more stirring member of the company, Miss Wych had subsided; and in that state could feel that she was tired. She sat in the doorway of the mill. It was after sundown; still, bright, sweet, and fair, as after sundown in June can be. The sky all aglow still with cooler lights; in the depth of the hollow the morsel of a lake had a dark shining of its own, like a black diamond, or a green jasper, with the light off. Mrs. Saddler was gone up the hill with Phoebe, to get her share of hospitality. Mr.

Falkirk had supped on the remains of the strawberries and milk, and would have nothing more. Guardian and ward were alone. The stillness of Summer air floated down from the tree-tops, and did not stir the lake.

'Wych, how do you like seeking your fortune? I am curious to be informed?'

'Thank you, sir. The finding to-day has gone so far beyond my expectations, that I am willing to rest the pursuit till to- morrow.'

'Fortune and you clasp hands rather roughly at first setting out! But what do you think of the train she has brought with her in these seven days?'

'What train, sir?'

'I asked you what you thought of it. Answer straight like a good child.'

'It's a wonderful train, if it has made a good child of me,' she answered, with a half laugh. 'Do you mean of people, or events, sir?'

'The events are left behind, child; the people follow.'

'Will they?' said Wych Hazel. 'Dr. Maryland and all? Mr.

Kingsland might stay behind. Nobody will ever want him.'

'All the rest have your good leave!' said Mr. Falkirk, with an expression-Wych could not tell what sort of an expression, it was so complicated. 'Do you think it is an easy office I have to fill?' he went on.

'Maybe not, sir. I thought you seemed very ready to give it up. I have felt like stray baggage to-day.'

'How do you suppose I am to guard you from so many enemies?'

'Ready to send me round the country, with the first knight- errant that starts up?' said the girl, in an aggrieved voice. 'And if I had proposed such a thing!'

'My dear,' said Mr. Falkirk, 'you would have been perfectly safe at Dr. Maryland's. And much better off than in this old mill. I am not sure but I ought to have made you go.'

'What do you mean by "enemies," just now, Mr. Falkirk?'

'There's an old proverb,' said Mr. Falkirk with a quirl of his lips, 'that "a cat may look at a king." And no doubt it is a queen's liability. But how am I to guard you from the teeth and the claws?'

'My dear sir, very few cats are dangerous. I am not much afraid of being scratched.'

'Have you any idea how many of your grimalkins are coming to

Chickaree this Summer?'

'No, sir. The more the better; for then they will have full occupation for their claws without me.'

'Ah, my dear,' said Mr. Falkirk, 'don't you know that the cat gets within springing distance before the claws are shown?'

'Yes, sir; but you are presupposing a stationary mouse. Pray, how many fierce, soft-pawed, sharp-clawed monsters preside over your ideas at present?'

'Six or seven,' said Mr. Falkirk with the utmost gravity.

'Fortune has come upon you suddenly, Wych.'

It was very pretty, the way she laughed and flushed.

'They are not all troubled with whiskers, sir-my kind medical friend, for instance.'

'You think so! Pray, in your judgment, what is he, then?'

'Not a cat, sir, and yet no lion. Mr. Rollo calls him a "specimen." '

'Of what?' (dryly enough.)

'I rebuked him for the expression, sir, but did not inquire its meaning.'

'Do you suppose that the English traveller, Mr. Shenstone, will come to Chickaree this Summer for the purpose of inspecting the Morton manufactories?'

'Let us 'ope not, sir. Mr. Morton will, for his home is just there. He told me so.'

'And young Nightingale has it in his mind to spend a good deal of the Summer at his aunt's, Mrs. Lasalle's; for he told me so. I saw him in town.'

'Mr. Falkirk, you are not a bit like yourself to-day. Are all men cats, sir?' (very gravely.)

'My dear,' said Mr. Falkirk, 'most men are, when they see a

Chickaree mouse in their path!'

'Poor little me!' said Wych Hazel, laughing. She was silent a minute, then went cheerfully on. 'I know, Mr. Falkirk, I shall depend upon you! We're in a fairy tale, you remember, sir, and you must be the three dogs.'

'Will you trust me, Wych, when I take such a shape to your eyes?'

'Do you remember?' said she, not heeding. 'The first one with eyes like saucers, looking-so! And the next with eyes like mill wheels-so! And the next, with eyes like the full moon!-' At which point Miss Hazel's own eyes were worth looking at.

'You do not answer me, I observe. Never mind. A woman's understanding, I have frequently observed, develops like a prophecy.'

The night in the mill was better, on the whole, than it promised. No sound awoke Wych Hazel, till little messengers of light came stealing through every crack and knot hole of the mill, and a many-toed Dorking near by had six times proclaimed himself the first cock in creation, let the other be who he would!

To open her eyes was to be awake, with Wych Hazel; and softly she stepped along the floor and out on the dewy path to the lake side; and there stood splashing her hands in the water and the water over her face, with intense satisfaction. The lake was perfectly still, disturbed only by the dip of a king- fisher or the spring of a trout. She stood there musing over the last day and the last week, starting various profound questions, but not stopping to run them down,-then went meandering back to the mill again. On her way she came to a spot in the grass where there was a sprinkling of robin's feathers. Wych Hazel stopped short looking at them, smiling to herself, then suddenly stopped and chose out three or four; and went back with quick steps to the mill.

Bread and tea were had in the open air, with the seasoning of the June morning. The stage coach rumbled off by the road it had come, bearing with it the two countrywomen, and leaving a pile of baggage for Chickaree. The miller came down and set his mill agoing, excusing himself to his guests by saying that there was a good lot of corn to be ground and the people would be along for it. So the mill became no longer a place of rest, and Miss Hazel and her guardian were driven out into the woods by the rumble and dust and jar of machinery. Do what they would, it was a long morning to twelve o'clock; when the mill ceased its rumble and the miller went home to his dinner, and the weary and warm loiterers came back to the shade of the mill floor. Then the sound of wheels was heard at last; the first that had broken the solitude that day; and presently at the mill door Rollo presented himself, looking as if sunshine agreed with him. He shook hands with Mr. Falkirk, but gave Wych Hazel his old stately salutation.

'I could not come sooner,' he said. 'I did my best; but it is thirty miles instead of twenty-five. How was the night?'

'Sadly oblivious and uneventful!'

'Mine wasn't! for I was getting dinner for you in my dreams all night long. Being dependent on other people's resources, you see-However, I had a good little friend to help me!'

'What carriage have you brought for us, Rollo?'

'Dr. Maryland's rockaway, sir; and the miller's wagon for the trunks. To get anything else would have made much more delay. Is my friend Phoebe here?'

'She will be soon. It is dinner-time in the mill. What do you want, Mr. Rollo?'

'Three words and a little assistance.'

He went off, and in a little while was back again, accompanied by Phoebe and plates and glasses; and the two went on to set forth the dinner, which he drew from a great basket that had come in the rockaway. All this was done, and order given at the same time to other matters, with the light-handed promptitude and readiness of the bird-roasting of yesterday; Rollo assuring Wych Hazel between whiles that travelling was a very good thing, if you took enough of it.

'Thirty miles this morning, and thirty last night; and how many yesterday morning?-A hundred, I should say, by my measurement.'

'Rollo!-What a dinner you have brought us!' said Mr. Falkirk, who maintained a quiet and passive behaviour.

'You cannot set off for some hours yet, sir-the horses must have rest. I believe-but am not sure-that somebody got up very early this morning to make that pie. I told them I had left some friends in distress; and Primrose and I-did what we could. I realized this morning what must be the position of a Commissary General on a rapid march.'

The provision on the board called for no excuses. Rollo served everybody, even Mrs. Saddler, and afterwards dispensed strawberries of much larger growth than those of the day before. He was the impersonation of gay activity as long as there was anything to do; and then he subsided into ease- taking. The smoke of a cigar did not indeed offend Miss Kennedy's mill-door; but in a luxurious position under a tree at some distance the sometime smoker settled himself with his sketch-book, and seemed to be comfortably busy at play, till it was time for moving.

Wych Hazel had been in an altogether quiet mood since the arrival of the rockaway. In that mood she had watched the unpacking of the basket, in that mood she had eaten her dinner. It was strange, even to herself, the sort of quietus Mr. Rollo was to her. Not feeling free to play with him, by no means disposed to play before him, she had ventured to offer her services no further than by asking him what he wanted; then left him to himself; oddly conscious all the while, that if it had been any other one of her new feline friends, she would have put her little hand into the business and the basket with pleasant effect. So she sat still and watched him,-giving a bit of a smile now and then indeed to his direct remarks, but as often only a fuller look of the brown eyes. Since the gentleman had been under the tree she had been idly busy with her own thoughts, having sketched herself tired in the morning. "Prim" she recognized at once-Dr. Maryland's sister,-she had heard him speak of her. Would she be a friend? any one to whom these many thoughts might come out? So Wych Hazel sat, gazing out upon the lengthening shadows, leaning her head somewhat wearily in her hand, wishing the journey over and herself on her own vantage ground at Chickaree. It would be such a help to be mistress of the house!-for these last two days she had been nothing but a brown parcel, marked "fragile"-"with care."