You are here

قراءة كتاب Out in the Forty-Five Duncan Keith's Vow

تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"

‏اللغة: English
Out in the Forty-Five
Duncan Keith's Vow

Out in the Forty-Five Duncan Keith's Vow

تقييمك:
0
No votes yet
المؤلف:
دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
الصفحة رقم: 3

have both fine romantic silly names. Hatty was called after his mother, and that he likes; and Fanny is after a sister of Mamma’s who died young. But Father never gives over growling because one of us was not a boy.

“Four girls!” he says: “four girls, and never a lad! Who on earth wants four girls? I’ll sell one or two of you cheap, if I can find him.”

But I don’t think he would, if it came to the point. I know, for all his queer speeches sometimes, he is proud of Fanny’s good looks, and Sophy’s good housekeeping, and even Hatty’s pert sayings. I know by the way he chuckles now and then when she says anything particularly smart. I don’t know what he is proud of in me, unless it is my manners. Of course, having lived in Carlisle with Grandmamma, I have the best manners of any. And I speak the best, I know. Sophy talks shockingly broad; she says, “Aw wanted him to coom, boot he would not.” Fanny has found that will not do, so she tries to imitate my Aunt Dorothea and Amelia Bracewell, but she goes on the other side of her pattern, and does not sound the u full where she ought to do it, but says, “The basin is fell of shegar.” Hatty laughs at them both, and lets her u go where it likes, but she is not so bad as Sophy.

I think I shall try and put the notion into my Aunt Kezia’s head to have the Bracewells here for Christmas. I know Angus and Flora will be here then, and later. That would make a decent party, if we got Ephraim Hebblethwaite, and Ambrose Catterall too.

After all, I went on writing so late, that I only got down-stairs in time to see Ambrose Catterall’s back as he went down the drive. He could not stay for some reason—I did not hear what. Father growled as he heard him go off, singing, down the walk.

“Where on earth did the fellow get hold of that piece of whiggery?” said he. “Just listen to him!”

I listened, and heard the refrain of the Whigs’ favourite song,—

“Send him victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us—”

“Disgusting stuff!” said Father, with some stronger words which I know my Aunt Kezia would not let me put down if she were looking. “Where did the fellow get hold of it? His father is a decent Tory enough. What is he at now? Listen, girls.”

Ambrose’s tune had changed to,—

“King George he was born in the month of October,—
’Tis a sin for a subject that month to be sober!”

“I’ll forbid him my house!” cries Father, starting up. “I’ll send a bullet through his head! I’ll October him, and sober him too, if he has not a care! Fan! Where’s Fan? Go to the spinnet, girl, and sing me a right good Tory song, to take the taste of that abominable stuff out of my mouth.”

“Nay, Brother,” saith my Aunt Kezia, who was pinning a piece of work on the table, “surely a man may use respect to the powers that be, though they be not the powers he might wish to be?”

“‘Powers that be!’” saith Father. “Powers that shouldn’t be, you mean. I’ll tell you what, Kezia,—you may have been bred a Tory, but you were born a Puritan. Whereon earth you got it—! As for that fellow, I’ll forbid him my house. ‘King George,’ forsooth! Let me hear one of you call the Elector of Hanover by that name, and I’ll—I’ll—. Come along, Fan, and give me a Tory song.”

So Fanny sat down to the spinnet, and played the new song that all the Tories are so fond of. How often she made Britain arise from out the azure waves, I am sure I don’t know, but she, and Father with her, sang it so many times that all that day I had “Britons never shall be slaves!” ringing in my ears till I heartily wished they would be slaves and have done with it.

At night, when we were going to bed, after Father had blessed us, Hatty runs round to his back and whispers in his ear.

“Don’t send Ambrose Catterall away, there’s a good Father!” says she: “there will be two of us old maids as it is.”

Father laughed, and pinched Hatty’s ear. So I saw my gentlewoman had been thinking the same thing I had. But I don’t think she ought to have said it out.

Stay, now! Why should it be worse to say things than to think them? Is it as bad to think them as to say them? Oh dear! but if one were for ever sifting one’s thoughts in that way,—why, it would be just dreadful! Not many people are careful about their words, but one’s thoughts!

No, I don’t think I could do it, really. I suppose my Aunt Kezia would say I ought. I do so dislike my Aunt Kezia’s oughts. She always thinks you ought to do just what you do not want. If only people would say, now and then, that you ought to eat plum-pudding, or you ought to dance, or you ought to wear jewels! But no! it is always you ought to sew, or you ought to carry some broken victuals to old Goody Branscombe, or you ought to be as sweet as a rosebud when Hatty says things at you.

Stop! would it be so if I always wanted to do the things I ought? I suppose not. Then why don’t I?

But why ought I? There’s another question.

I wish we either wanted to do what we ought, or else that we ought to do what we want!

I was obliged to stop last night all at once, because I heard Hatty coming up the garret stairs. I always write in the garret and keep my book there, so that none of the girls shall get hold of it—Hatty particularly. She would make such shocking game of it. I had only just put my book away safely when in she came.

“What on earth are you doing up here?” cried she.

“What are you doing?” said I.

“Looking for you,” she says.

“Then why should not I be looking for you?” said I.

“Because you weren’t, Miss Caroline Courtenay!” and she makes a swimming courtesy. “Oh yes, you don’t need to tell me you have a secret, my young gentlewoman. I know as well as if I had seen it. O Pussy, have you come too? Do you know what it is, Pussy? Does she come up here to read her love-letters—does she? Oh, how charming! Wouldn’t I like to see them! How does she get them, Pussy? She has been rather fond of going to see Elspie this past week or two; is that it, Pussy? Won’t you tell me, my pretty, pretty cat?”

“Hatty, don’t be so absurd!” cried I.

“We know, don’t we, Pussy?” says Hatty in a provoking whisper to the cat in her arms. “I thought there would be somebody at Carlisle that she would be sorry to leave—didn’t you, Pussy-cat? What is he like, Pussy? Tall and dark, I’ll wager, with a pair of handsome mustachios, and the most beautiful black eyes you ever saw! Won’t that be about it, Pussy?”

I could have thrown the cat at her. How could any mortal creature be sweet, or keep quiet, talked to in that way? I flew out.

“Hatty, you are the most vexatious tease that ever lived! Do, for pity’s sake, go down and let me alone. You know perfectly well it is all stuff and nonsense!”

“Oh, how angry she is, my pretty pussy!” says Hatty, hiding her laughing face behind the cat. “It was all nonsense, you know; but really, when she gets into such a tantrum, I begin to think I must have hit the white. What do you say, Pussy?”

I stamped on the garret floor.

“Hatty, will you take that hideous cat down and be quiet?” cried I.

“Dear, dear! To think of her calling you a hideous cat! Doesn’t that show how angry she is? People should not get angry—should they, Pussy? She will box our ears next. I really think we had better go, my darling tabby.”

So off went Hatty with the cat in her arms, but as she was going down the stairs, she said, I am sure for me to hear,—

“We will come some other time, won’t we, Pussy? when the dragon is out of her den: and we will have a quiet rummage, you and I; and we’ll find her love-letters!”

Now is not that too bad? What is one to do? Job could not have kept

Pages