POOR PRETTY BOBBY.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 3043, 16 January 1892, Page 1 (Supplement)

POOR PRETTY BOBBY.

A Complete Title in Four Chapter:'. 15V RItODA RROUCWTOX. CIIAVTEP r. " Yes, tny dear, you may not believe rue, l>nt I cm assure you that, you cannot dislike old women more, nor think them more contemptible supernumeraries, than I did when I was your age." This is what old Mrs Wentworth says—the old lady so incredibly tenacious of lifo (incredilily as it seems to be at eighteen) as to have buried a husband and five strong sons, and still to eat her dinner with henrty relish, and laugh at any such jokes as are spoken loudly enough to reach her dulled ears. This is what she says, shaking the while her head, which, poor old soul, is already shaking a good deal involuntarily. I am sitting close beside her armchair, and have been reading aloud to her; but, as I cannot succeed in pitching my voice so as to make her hear satisfactorily, by mutual consent the book has been dropped in my lap, and we have betaken ourselves to conversation.

" I never said I disliked old women, did I," I reply evasively, being too truUitul altogether to deny the soft impeachment. " What makes you think I do ? They are infinitely preferable to old men ; I do distinctly dislike them." " A fat, bald, deaf old woman," continues she, not heeding me, and speaking with slow emphasis, while she raises one trembling hand to mark each unpleasant adjective; "if in the year '2 anyone had told me that I should have lived to be that, I think I should have killed them or myself—and yet now I am all three."

" You are not very deaf," say I politely—(the fatness and bildness admit of no civilities consistent with veracity)—but I raise my voice to pay the compliment. " In the year '2 I was seventeen," slu>s:iys, wandering ofFi to memory. "Yes, my dear, 1 am just fifteen years older than the century, and it is getting into its dotage, is it not? The year '2—all ! that, was just about the time that I first saw Bobby ! Poor pretty Bobby !" "And who vas Bobby?" ask I, pricking up my tars, and scenting with the keen nose of youth a dead love idyll ; an idyll of which this poor old hill of unsteady flesh was the hero&io.

" I must have told you the tale a hundred times, have I not I ?'' she asks, turning her old dim eyes towards mo. " A curious tale, say what you will and explain it how you will. I must have told you ; but, indeed, 1 forget to whom 1 tell my old stories, and to whom I do not. Well, ray love, you must promise to stop me if you have heard it before ; but to me, you know, these old things are so much clearer than the things of yesterday."

"Yon nover told iiir, Mrs Wontworth," I say, and say truthfully ; for being a new acquaintance I really have not been made acquainted with Bobby's history. '' Would you mind teliing it mo now if you aro sure that it would not bore you ?"

" Bobby," she repeats softly to herself, " Bobby. I daresay you do not think it a very pretty name?'' " N—not particularly," reply I honestly. "To tell you the truth, it rather reminds me of a policeman." 1 I daresay," she answers quietly : " and yet in the year '2 I grew to think it the handsomest, dearest naaie on earth. Well, iE you like, I will begin at the beginning and tell you how that came about.'

" Do," says I, drawing a stocking out of my pocket ; and thriitily beginning to knit to assist me in the process of listening.

" Tn the year '2 we were afc war with France—you know that, of course. It seemed then as if war were our normal state; 1 could hardly remember a timo when Europe had l»'on at peace. In these days of stagnant quiet it appears as if people's kith and kin always lived out their full time and died in their beds. Then, there was hardly a house ivhere there was not one dead, either in battle or of his wounds after battle, or of some dysentery or uuly parching fever. As for us, we had always been a soldier family

—always ; there was not one of us that had ever worn a black gown or sat upon a high stool with a pen behind his ear. I had lost uncles and cousins by the half-dozen and dozen, but for my part, I did not much mind, as I knew very little about them, and blaak was more becoming wear to a person with my bright colour than anything else."

At Ihe mention of her bright ] colour I unintentionally lift my eyes from my kni:ting, and contemplate the yellow bagginess of the poor old cheek nearest me. Oh, Time ! Time ! what absurd and dirty turns you play us? What do you do with all our fair and goodly things when you have stolen tlmm from us ? In what far and hidden treasure-house do you store them ? "But I did care very much —very exceedingly — for my dear old father—no't so old either—younger than my eldest boy was when he went; he would havo been fortytwo if ho had lived three days longer. Well, well, child, you must not lot mo wander; you must keep mo to it lie was not a soldier, wtis not my father ; ho was a sailor, a post-cap'ain in His Majesty's navy, and commanded the ship Thunderer in tho Channel fleet.

I had struck seventeen in the yoar —'2 as I said bofore, and had just come homo from being finished at a boai'diiigischool of repute in thoso days, vvhero I had learnt to talk the prettiest ancien regime French and to hate Bonaparte with unchristian violence, from a little

ruined emigre vutrechak ■■: had al-.0,

with infinite expenditure of time, labour, and Berlin wool, wrought out "Abraham's Sacrifiee for

bsaae," and ' Jacob's First Jviss to Uachaol," in finest cross-stitch Now I had bidden adieu to learning ; had inly resolved never to disinter " Xelemaque " and Thomson's '•' Seasons," from tbe bottom of my trunk ; had taken a holiday from all my accomplishments, with the exception of cross-stitch, to which I still faithfully adhered— and indeed, on the day I am going to mention, I recollect that I was hard at work on Judas Iscariot's faco in Leonardo da Yinci's "Last Supper"—hard at work on it, sitting in the morning sunshine, on a straight-backed chair. We had flatter backs in those days; our shoulders were not made round by lolling in easy chairs indeed, no then I upholsterer made a chair that it was possible to 101 l in. My father rented a house near Plymouth at that time, an in and out noohj kind of old house—no doubt it has fallen to pieces long years ago—a house all set round with unnumbered flowers, and about which the rooks clamoured all together from the windy elm tops. I was labouring in flesh-coloured wool on Judas' left cheek, when the door opened and my mother entered. She looked as

f something had freshly pleased ler, an I her eyes were smiling. In ter hand she held an open and evilently just-read letter.

" A messenger has come from Plymouth," she says, advancing qui-kly and joyfully towards me

■ Your father will be here this fternoon !

" Thin afternoon I" cry I, at the top of my voice, pushing away my heavy work-frame. " How delightful !"■ But how?-how can that happen ?"

" They have had a brush with a French privateer," she answers, sitting down on another straight, hacked chair, and looking again over the large square letter, destitute of envelope, for such things were not in those days, " and then succeeded in taking her. Yet they were a good deal knocked about in the process, and have put into Plymouth to refit, so he will be here this afternoon for a-few hours." " Hurrah !" cry T, holding out my scanty skirts, and "beginning to dance. " Bobby Gerrard is coming with him," continues my mother, again glancing at her despatch. "Poor boy, he has had a shot through his right arm, which has broken the

hone, so your father is bringing him here for us to nurse him well again."'

I stop my dancing. " Hurrah again !'' I say brutally. " I do not mean about his arm ; of course I am sorry for that : but at all events, I shall see at last, I shall see whether he is like this picture, and whether it is not as egregiously flattered as I have always suspected." "There wore no photographs in those days—not even hazy daguerreotypes —it .was fifty good years too soon for them. The picture to which I allude is a .niniature, at which I had stolen many a deeply longing admiring glance in its velvet case. It is almost impossible for a miniature not to flatter. To the most coarse-skinned and mealy-potato faced people it cannot help giving cheeks of the texture of a rose leaf and brows of the grain of finest marble. " Yes," replied my mother, absently, "so you will. Well, I must be going to give orders about his ro mi. He would like one looking on to tho g irden best, do not you think Phoebe ?—one where he could smell the flowers and hear the birds ?"

Mother goes, and 1 fall into a meditation. Bobby Gerard is an orphan. A few years ago his mother, who was an old friend of my father's—who knows ? porhaps an old love—feeling her end drawing nigh, had sent for father, and had asked him, with eager dying tears, to take as much earn of her protty forlorn boy as he could, and to shield him a little in his tender years from the evils of this wicked world, and to be to him a wise and kindly guardian, in the place of those natural ones that God had taken. And father had promised, and when he promised there was small fear of his not keoping his word. This was some years ago, and yet I had never seen him nor he me ; he had been almost always at sea and I at school. I had heard plenty about him—about his sayings, about his waggeries, his mischeviousnoss, his soft-hoartednoss, and his great and unusual comeliness ; but his outward man, save as represented in that stealthily peoped-at miniature, had I never soon. They were to arrivo in the afternoon ,' but long before the hour at which they were due I was waiting with expectant impatience to receive thorn. I had changed my dross, and had (though rather ashamed of myself) put on everything most becoming that my wardrobe afforded. If you were to see tne as J stood before the glass on that summer afternoon you would not be able to contain your laughter; the little boy-: in the street would run after me throwing stones and hootin" : but then —according to then

fashion a'id standard of gentility— I was all thai was most elegant and comma if/axf. Lately it has been the mode to puff oneself out with unnatural and improbable protuberances ; then one's great life-object was to make oneself appear as scrimping as possible to ninke oneself look as flat as if one had been ironed. . Many people damped their clothes to make them stick more closely to them, and to make them define more distinctly the outline of form and limbs. One's waist was under one's arms ; the sole object of which seemed to be to outrage nature by pushing one's bust up into one's chin, and one's legs were revealed through one's scanty drapery with startling candour as one walked or sat. I remember once standing with my back to a bright fire in our long drawing-room, and seeing myself reflected in a big mirror at the other end. I was so thiuly clad that I was transparent, and could see through myself. "Well, in the afternoon in question I was dressed quite an hour and a-half too soon. I had a narrow little white gown, which clung successfully tight and close to my figure, and which was of so moderate a length as to leave visible my ankles and my neatlyshod and closely sandaled feet. 1 had long mittens on my arms, black, and embroidered on the backs in coloured silks; and aliovo my hair, which at the back was scratched up to the top of my crown, towered a tremendous tortoise-shell comb; whi'e on each side of my face modestly drooped a bunch of curls, nearly meeting over my nose.

My figure was full—ah ! my dear, I have always had a tendency to fat, and you see what it has come to—and my pink cheeks were more deeply brightly rosy than usual. I had looked out at every upper window, so as to have the furthest possible view of the road.

I had walked in my thin shoes half way down the drive, so as to command a turn, which, from the house, impeded my vision, when at last, after many tantalising false alarms, and just five minutes later than the time mentioned in the letter, the high-swung yellow bodied, post chaise hove in sight, dragged— briskly jingling—along by a pair of galloping horses. Then, suddenly, shyness overcame me—much as I loved my father, it was more as my personification of all knightly and noble qualities than from much personal acquaintance with him— and I fled.

I remained in my room until I thought I had given them ample time to get through the first greetings and settle down into quiet talk. Then, having for one last time run my fingers through each ringlet of my two curl bunches, I stole diffidently downstairs.

There was a noise of loud and gay voices issuing from the parlour, but, as I entered, they all stopped talking and turned to look at me.

" And so this is Phoebe !" cries my father's jovial voice, as he comes towards tne, and heartily kisses me. " Good Lord, how time flies! It does not seem more than three months since I saw the child, and yet (hen she was a bit of a brat in trousers, and long bare legs 1

At this allusion to my late mode of attire, I laugh, but also feel myself growing scarlet.

"Here, Bobby!" continues my father, taking me by the hand, and leading tue towards a sofa on which a young man is sitting beside my mother; " this is my little lass that you have so often heard of. Not such a very litfc'e one, after all, is she % Do not be shy, my boy ; you will not see such a pretty girl every clay of your life—give her a kiss."

My eyes are on the ground, but I am aware that the young man rises, advances (not unwillingly, as it seems to me), and bestows a kiss, so me where or other on my face. I am not quito clear where, as I think the curls impede him a good deal.

Thus, before over I saw Bobby, before ever I knew what manner of man he was, I was kissed by him. That was a good beginning was it not ?

After these salutations are over, we subside again into conversation —I sitting beside my father, with his arm round my waist, sitting modestly silent, and peeping every now and then under my eyes, as often as I think I may do so safely unobserved, at the young fellow opposite me. I am instituting an inward comparison between Nature and Art; between the real live man and the miniature that undertakes to represent him. Tho first result of this inspection is disappointment, for where are the lovely smooth roses and lillies that I have been wont to connect with Bobby Gerard s name? There are no roses in his cheek, certainly; they are palish—from his wound, as I conjecture; but even before that accident, if there were roses at all they must have been mahoganycoloured ones, for the salt sea winds and the hicjh summer sun have tanned his fair face to a rich reddish, brownish, copperish hue. But in some things the picture lied not. There is the brow more broad than high ; the straight fine nose ; the brave and joyful blue eyes, and mouth with it-? pretty curling smile. On the whole, perhaps, I am not disappointed. By-aucl-liy father rises, and steps out into the verandah, where the canary lards hung out in their cages ate noisily praising God after their manner.. Mother follows him. I should like to do the same ; but a sense of good manners, and a conjecture that possibly my parents

may have some subjects to discuss, on which they would prefer to be without the help of my advice, restrained me. I therefore remained, and so docs the invalid. (To be continued.)