LITMIR.BIZ

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of her jam, and led the way into the parlour. To describe that parlour would occupy me gratefully for at least a couple of pages, but I forbear. The reader may perhaps be able to fill up the suggestion; if not, he (she?) will probably hear more about it later on.

      “Well,” said Miss Hewitt, placing herself in her high-backed chair, which no one else presumed to occupy, “what is to do? I could see as you’d something to tell me of before you were up to the kitchen door.”

      “I’ve more than something to tell you. I’ve something to ask you,” said Patty.

      “I dare say: the one mostly means the other; but you know as I’m not foolish, nor even to say free with my money, if that’s it, knowing the valley of it more than the likes of you.”

      “I know that,” said Patty; “and it ain’t for anything connected with the house or the business that I’d ever ask you, auntie; but this is for myself, and I sha’n’t go about the bush or make any explanations till I’ve just told you frank; it’s a matter of thirty pounds.”

      “Thirty pounds! the gell is out of her senses!” Miss Hewitt cried.

      “Or thereabouts. I don’t know for certain; but you, as knows a deal more than me, may. It’s for a marriage-licence,” said Patty, looking her aunt full in the face.

      “A marriage-licence!” Miss Hewitt repeated again, in tones of consternation; “and what does the fool want with a licence as costs money, when you can put up the banns, as is far more respectable, and be married the right way.”

      “I don’t know as there’s anything that ain’t respectable in a licence, and anyway it’s the only thing,” said Patty, “for him and me. If I can’t get it, I’ll have to let it alone, that’s all. A marriage as mightn’t be anything much for the moment, but enough to make the hair stand upright on your head, Aunt Patience, all the same!”

      “What kind of marriage would that be?” said the old lady, sceptical yet interested; “that fine Roger of yours, maybe, as is probable to be made a lord for his battin’ and his bowlin’. Lord! Patty, how you can be such a fool, a niece of mine!”

      “I ain’t such a fool,” said Patty, growing red, “though it might be better for me if I was. But anyhow I am your niece, as you say, and I can’t—be that kind of fool; maybe I’m a bigger fool, if it’s true as that old witch at the Manor says.”

      “What old witch?” cried the other old witch in the parlour, pricking up her ears.

      “Aunt Patience,” cried Patty, “you as knows: can they lock up in a madhouse a young man as isn’t mad, no more than you or me; but is just silly, as any one of us might be? Can they put him out of his property, or send for the Lord Chancellor and take everything from him to his very name? Oh, what’s the use of asking who he is? Who could he be? there ain’t but one like that in all this county, and you know who he is as well as I do. Mr. Gervase Piercey. Sir Giles’ son and heir! and they’ve got neither chick nor child but him!”

      “Patty,” said the elder woman, laying a grip like that of a bird with claws upon her niece’s arm, “is it ’im as you want the thirty pounds for to buy the licence? Tell me straight out, and not a word more.”

      “It is him,” said Patty, in full possession of her h’s, and with a gravity that became the importance of the occasion. Miss Hewitt did not say a word. She rose from her chair, and, proceeding to the window, pulled down the thick linen blind. She then placed a chair against the door. Then she took from the recess near the fireplace an old workbox, full to all appearance, when she opened it with a key which she took out of her purse, with thread and needles of various kinds. Underneath this, when she had taken the shelf completely out, appeared something wrapt in a handkerchief half-hemmed, with a threaded needle stuck in it—as if it had been a piece of work put aside—which proved to be an old pocketbook. She held this in her hand for a moment only, gave Patty a look, full of suspicion, scrutiny, yet subdued enthusiasm; then she opened it and took out carefully three crisp and crackling notes, selecting them one by one from different bundles. Then with great deliberation she put notes, pocketbook, the covering shelf, of the workbox, and the box itself back into the place where it had stood before.

      “Mind, now you’ve seen it, I’ll put it all into another place,” Miss Hewitt said; “so you may tell whoever you like, they won’t find it there.”

      “Why should I tell?” said Patty; “it’s more for my interest you should keep it safe.”

      “You think you’ll get it all when I die,” said the elder woman, sitting down opposite to her niece with the notes in her hand.

      “I think, as I hope, you’ll never die, Aunt Patience! but always be here to comfort and help a body when they’re in trouble, like me.”

      “Do you call yourself in trouble? I call you as lucky as ever girl was. I’d have given my eyes for the chance when I was like you; but his father was too knowing a one, and never gave it to me. Here! you asked for thirty, and I’ve give you fifty. Don’t you go and put off and shilly-shally, but strike while the iron’s hot. And there’s a little over to go honeymooning upon. Of course he’s got no money—the Softy: but I know ’im; he’s no more mad than you or me.”

      She ended with a long, low laugh of exultation and satisfaction which made even Patty, excited and carried away by the tremendous step in her life thus decided upon, feel the blood chilled in her veins.

      “You think there’s no truth, then, in what Lady Piercey said: that they could take everything from him, even to his name?” It was the hesitation of this chill and horror which brought such a question to Patty’s lips.

      Miss Hewitt laughed again. “The Manor estate is all entailed,” she said, “and the rest they’ll never get Sir Giles to will away—never! All the more if there’s a chance of an heir, who ought to have all his wits about him, Patty, from one side of the house. Get along with you, girl! You’re the luckiest girl as ever I knew!”

      But, nevertheless, it was with a slower step and a chill upon all her thoughts that Patty went back, without even putting up her parasol, though the sun from the west shone level into her eyes, to the Seven Thorns.

      CHAPTER IX.

       Table of Contents

      For a few days after Patty’s visit to her aunt, that young lady looked out with some eagerness for the reappearance of Gervase at the Seven Thorns, but looked in vain. At first she scarcely remarked his absence, having many things to think of, for it was not without excitement that she planned out the steps by which she was to enter into a new life. The first evening was filled, indeed, with the events of the day; the mental commotion called forth by the visit of Lady Piercey, and the excitement, almost overwhelming, of her unexpected, enthusiastic reception by Miss Hewitt, and the sudden supply so much above her most daring hopes. Fifty pounds! it was more to Patty than as many thousands would have been to minds more accustomed—much more. For the possession of a great deal of money means only income, and an unknown treasure in somebody else’s hands, whereas fifty pounds is absolute money, which you can change, and spend, and realise, and enjoy down to the last farthing. It gave her a great deal of anxiety how to dispose of it at first. The Seven Thorns was not a place where any thief was likely to come for money; it was not a house worth robbing, which was a point, as Patty with her excellent sense was aware, on which burglars are very particular, taking every care to obtain accurate information. But then, again, money is a thing that betrays itself—a secret that is carried by the birds of the air. Had there been any of these gentry about, he might have divined from the way in which she carried herself, that she had fifty pounds in her pocket. There was a little faint lightness about it, she thought, when she put it in her drawer—a sort of undeveloped halo, showing that something precious was in the old pocketbook which she had found to enshrine it in. Then she took it out of that formal receptacle, and placed it with scientific carelessness in an old envelope.

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