LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2322, 13 September 1881, Page 4

LITERATURE.

IN AN APPLE ORCHARD. ["All the Year Bound."] ( Continued.) ' What a pretty girl Miss Bella has grown,' Janie bursts forth, with enthusiasm. ' I saw her in Plymouth the other day, riding with her pa and Lord Charles Collingford, one of the gentlemen on board the admiral's ship. They Bay in Plymouth that Lord Charles is after her.' • Now, do they ? ' Mrs Ainslle responds reverently. With her whole heart would she rejoice to hear that every nobleman's heart in the country was laid at Miss Ff olett'n feet. All the better for her son's peace of mind, the old lady deems It, that fair Miss Belle should have many ardent and gallant and suitable adorers. Right glad will she be when one of these is chosen. ' Then Dick'll settle himself,' she thinks; 'settle himself with Janie,'

The brown colt 'is a picture,' and deports himself faultlessly. Miss Ffolett, standing by him In his stall, flings her arm round his strong shiny neck, presses her fair cheek down on his satin skin, and vows that ' he, and no other, shall be her own dear horse.' Dick, standing somewhere between the colt's heels and the harness room door, watches the group with curiously compounded feelings of pleasure and anguish. How good she is to look upon! How graciously she permits him to look upon her! Bow closely she seems to approach him in her liking, and sympathy, and interest in the colt! How far she is away from him in reality !

The yonng farmer hates his position, and despises himself for so hating it, as he stands watching her. It is useless for him to attempt to remind himself that the ' rank is but tho guinea stamp, the man's the gowd for a' that.'

What's the use of the man b irjg gold, if he is such a rough nugget that this lady's eyes cannot perceive his value ? Would that he had the rank—aye, aye, and with it the thousand and one traits and oharaoteristios, habits and manners, and tricks of bearing that mark the difference between those who wear the rank from mere ' men' snch au himself. And while these thoughts go surging through his brain, she lifts her winsome proadly-gracious little face away from the brown colt's near shonlder, and says : •I mustn't selfishly give all my thought!! to the colt, Dick. Your mother tells me that Janie Welbyn and you ——' She pauses abruptly. The man's face In charged in a moment with such passion and snch g'ief that she can say no more. ' My mother shouldn't trouble you with the nonsense she thinks about Janie and me, Miss Ffolett. Here, Jam,' he calls sharply to the stableman, ' you haven't given the colt half the grooming he ought to have after the sweating 1 gave him this morning.' He goes Into the harness-room, and cocoa back a moment or two after, with a couple of fine brushes in his hand.

'l'll give the colt a rub down myself, Miss Ffolett,' he say?, stripping off his coat, and turning to work with more than a groom's ardor. He takes a savage satisfaction in showing himself at his roughest before her. Bis honor demands that he shall assume to be no more than he is, a working farmer, before this radient, unmercifully friendly young queen of his soul, who, standing by, says presently, ' I always wish to do that for any horse I like. The darling I look how he turns his nose to you, his dear fine quivering noEitrilfl. How can you help kissing him ? I couldn't.'

' Miss Belle, will you go in to mother ?* hn asks despairingly. ' She'll think so much of it if you go and praise up the colt to her, because B&yleaf was my father's favorite mare, and mother thinks too much can't be said for the colt.'

He looks haggard and harrassed, but Belle Ffolett takes no special note of his lookti. yhe meroly gives the colt a farewell pat, and then steps aoross the yard to the house, daintily tapping her pretty little Hungarian boots as she walks, thinking pleasantly of how much somebody will like to look at her when she is on that brown colt's back

'Dear old Charlie !' she things, 'I should be just as fond of him if he hadn't a penny and wasn't his brother's heir.' Then, in spite of this asseveration, her spirit kindles within her at the prospect of being a marchioness, and she goes back into Mrs Ainslie'B parlor with a lovelier light than ever beaming in her eyes ond something in her step that seems like jocund spring itself.

Looking at the brightness and the lightness, and remembering that the girl has jnst come from the stable where her son is, the old lady says to herself indignantly, ' Shirs no bnsin&Sß to go on like this, flattering him, poor boy, with looking so happy because he's got a oolt she wants to bay. And all her pretty ways make Janie seem set and heavy like, yet Janie's the wife for him, and the wife he'll have, and this one will be no more to him than the crowned queen on her throne-' Belle lingers for a few minutes, babbling on in her happy unconsciousness, and then without giving a thought to young Ainalio'a

protracted absence in the stable, she says g od-bye to Mrs Ainslie and Janie, mounts her horso, and rides away to lunoheon at a big country house near Plymouth, where she is to meet many of her friends. To one of thcs.% Lord Charles Collingford, she confides a little secret.

' You can have that brown colt, Charlie,* eho says. ' I have taken the trouble to Had that out for you this morning. Young Ainslie, of Little Firs, bred him himself, so you can bring the colt in ono hand, and dtmand mo of papa with tho other, on my birthday.' • I've told Ocolngton, and prepared him for the worst he'll meet in you,' Lord Charles says, speaking of his brother, the marquis. Then the pair, who are not * engaged ' boforo tho world yet, but who ore to be on Belle's twenty-first birthday, proceed to develop some of their own plans ta one another, and to hope that Cccington and papa will fall in with them. Meanwhile the chiokens—a trifle overdone, for Diok found a tiresome lot of things to detain him in the stable—are served on the Little Firs farm house table* and Janie surveys with secret grateful satisfaction the well-worn table silver and linen, the glittering glass and fine old Wedgewood service that will all be hers if matters go on as she and Mrs Ainslie, together with the gossip of the neighborhood, have arranged that they shall.

The girl does not notice that Dick is auspiciously silent during dinner. It is the habit of her fathers and brothers, stolid farmers, of a heavier type than Diok, to be silent during meals. Nor does it wound the vanity she has not, to find that Dick Is alive and astir to get out over the farm after dinner. There ia always a lot to do on the land, and it pleases her well that the man who is to be her master and keeper should be on the alert in looking after his own interests. But it does pain her a little, that when his mother leaves them alone for a few miemtea before he goes out, Dick prefers to study one of the Plymouth dailies-iastead of talking to her. 4 Is there much news in the papers, Dick?' she asks. Poor soul, if he answered that the Kimberley Horse had joined issue with the Home Rulers, and that the whole party had taken a tourist's ticket to Rome via Afghanistan, she would not be much the wiser. But he is very literal. ' There's nothing that you would care to hear, Janie.' ' I like to hear the news,' she saya, perking herself np. 'One feels so silly if one never hears of anything that is gcing on away from our own place. What a lot Miss Belle must hear, to be sure! All those gentlemen in the regiments and ships in Plymouth go out to the squire's to dine, some of them every day.' Diok had been rellgioasly brought up, therefore he tries not to inwardly curse both services.

'Well, I'm off,' he shouts, flinging the helpless paper away on his mother's workbasket. ' The land won't look after itself, worse luck ; good-bye, Jenie, you'll be gone before I come In, I daresay.' ' Not if you're in to tea,' she says modestly. ' I'll say good-bye at any rate. I never know what may ioep me when I get on to the farm,' he says a little awkwardly, for ber eyes are bent upon him with such a look of entreaty that he can hardly bear to refuse her outspoken request. And she Is obliged to say good-bye, and to see him go away without his having given one word of the promise her heart is teaching her to hope for from him.

She etays to tea with her old friend ; but the hours of the afternoon drag slowly, and the tea, to which Dick does not come in, is a very dull meal. The brightness that had been abc at everything in the morning In Jamie's eyes has vanished, and she almost feels disposed to quarrel with faith for having made Miss Ffolett's lot so much more brilliant than her own.

By-andbye, as the sweet spring-tide evening shades are gathering, the girl takes leave of Dick's mother, and starts on her homeward walk to her father's farm.

' Strange of Dick not to oome and walk along with you,' the old lady says as her favorite departs ; ' bnt men who never neglect their business, even when they're oourting, make the best husbands.' And with these comforting words ringing in her ears, J ante is fain to leave without getting another glimpse of Dick. But he sees her pass out of the courtyard, and go on alone into the dying light, from his post of observation in the harnessroom, whither he had retired to smoke and think.

'She's a nice good girl, but I can't go home with her to-night,' he says to himself with a sigh. 'I oouldn't say anything to her tonight, not after seeing Miss Ffolett; and I know mother thinks I ought to speak out to June, or have done with it,' *****

It is the day before Belle Ffolett's birthday, and the squire has his otter-hounds out. Everyone who knows anything of either otter-hunling or the Ffoletts is here, for the pool to be drawn is the famous one on the Little Firs Farm property, down at the bottom of the home orchard, where the river winds among the apple trees in one of its most picturesque curves. It is one o'clock when they noar this point —the best for the purpose of luncheon that they will reach for the day. So the hampers are taken out from the waggonette in which Mrs Ffolett is driven discreetly to see the sport, and the squire's friends, and every stranger who likes to do so, draw near to be regaled.

Belle Is here with her long otter pole in her hand, in a dress and hat of grey verge whioh suit her to perfeotion, and by her side—always by her side—ls Lord Charles Oolllngford, whom she addrecses openly now as 'Charlie,' and to whom it ia generally understood she is engaged. (To be continued )