POOR PRETTY BOBBY.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 3046, 23 January 1892, Page 1 (Supplement)

POOR PRETTY BOBBY.

./ Cn.nplilf Title in Four Olmpin-x. i;v ];i[oi).v r.IioUCiITON. CHATTER IT. For- some moments th<; silence threatens to remain unbroken between us; for soino moments tho subdued sounds of father's and mother's talk from among tho roscbeds and tho piercing clamour of the canaries — fish-wives among birds—are the only noises that salute our ears. Noise, we make none ourselves. My eyes are reading the muddled pattern of the Turkey carpet; Ido not know what his are doing. Small knowledge have I had of men save the dancingmaster at our school; a beautiful new youth is almost as great a novelty to me as to Miranda, and I a good deal gawkier than she was under the new experience. I think he must have made a vow that he would not speak first. I feel myself swelling to double my normal size with confusion and heat; at last, in desperation, I look up and say sententiously, 'You have been wounded, I believe ?' ' Yes, I have.' He might have helped me by answering more at large, might not he ? But now that I am having a good look at him, I see that he is rather red too. Perhaps he foe's gawky and swollen ; the idea en courages me. " Did it hurt very badly 1" ii jj—not so very much." " I should have thought that you ought to have been in bed," says I, with .1 motherly air of solicitude. " Should you, why?" " I thought that when people broke their limbs they had to stay in bed till they were mended again." " But mine was broken a week ago," he answers, smiling and showing his straight white teeth—ah, the miniature was silent about them ! " You would not have me stay in bed a whole week like an old woman ?"

" I expected to have seen you much ilk);" say I, beginning to feel r»oro at my east;, and with a sensible diminution of that unpleasant swelling sensation. " Father said in his note that we were to nurse you well again ; that sounded as if you were quite ill." " Your father always takes a good deal too much care of mo," he says ; " I might be sugar or salt." " And very kind of him, too," I say, firing up. " What motive besides your own good can he havo for looking after you? I call you rather ungrateful." ''Do you?" he says calmly, and without apparent resentment. "But you are rather mistaken. lam not ungrateful. However, naturally, you do not understand." " Oh, indeed ? " reply I, speaking rather shortly, and feeling a little offended, "Idaro say not," Our talk is taking a somewhat hostile tone; to what further amenities we might havo proceeded is unknown ; for at this point father and mother reappear through the window, and the necessity of conversing , with each other at all ceases.

Father stayed till evening, and we all supped together, and I was called upon to sit by Bobby, and cut up his food for him, as he was disabled from doing it by himself. Then, later still, when the sun had set, and all his evening reds and purples had followed him, whea the night flowers were scenting all the garden, and the shadows lay about, enormously long in the summer moonlight, f athei got into the postchaise again, and diove away through the black-shadows and the faint clear shine, and Bobby stood at tho hall door watching him, with his arm in a sling and a wistful smile on his lips and eyes. " Well, we are not left quite desolate this time," says mother, turning with rather tearful laughter to the young man. "You wish that wo were, do you not, Bobby ? "

"You would not believe me if I answerod, 'No,' would you?" he asks, with the still smile.

" Ho is not very polite to us, is he Phoebe?"

" You would not wish me to be polite in sunh a case," he replies Hushing. " You would not wish mo to be glad at missing the chance of soeing any of the fun ?"

But Mr Gerard's eagerness to be back at his post delays tiie probability of his being able to return thither. The next day he has a feverish attack ; the day after he is worse; the day after that worse still ; and, in fine, it is between a fortnight and three weeks before he is alile to get into the post chaise and drive away to Plymouth. And meanwhile mother and I nurse and cosset him, and make him odd and cool drinks out of herbs and field flowers, whose uses are now disdained or forgotten. I do not mean any offence to you, my dear, but I think that young girls in those days were less squeamish and more truly delicate than they are now-a-days. I remember once I read " Humphrey Clinksr" aloud to my father, unci we both highly relished and laughed over its jokus; but I should not have understood one of the darklyunulean allusions in that l<Yench book your brother left here one day. You would think it very unseemly to enter the bedroom of a strange young man, sick or well, but as for me I spent whole nights in Bobby's, watching lii:n and tending him with as lit .le false shame as if he had been my brother. I can hoar now, more plainly than the song you sang me an hour ago, the slumberous buzzing of the great brown-coated bees

i:i his still room, as I sat by his bedside watching his sleeping face, us lie dreamt unquietly, and clenched and again unclenched bis nervous hand. I think lie was back on the Thunderer. T can see w>lo the little close curls of his sunshiny hair straggling over the white pillow. And then there came a good and blessed clay when he was out of danger, when he was up and dressed and ho and [ walked forth into the hay field beyond the garden—reversing tho order of things— he loaning on my arm, and a good plump solid arm it was. We walked out under the heavy-leaved horse-chestnut trees and the old rough-barked elms. The sun was shining all this time, as it seems to me. Ido not believe that in those old days that there were the same cold unseasonable rains a.j now; there were soft showers enough to keep the grass green and the flowers undrooped, but I have no association of overcast skies and untimely deluges with those long azure days. We sat under a hayceck, on the shady side, and indolently watched the hot haymakers—the shirt-sleeved men and burnt and bare-armed women, tossing and raking; while we breathed the blessed country air, full of adorable scents, and crowded with happy and pretty-winged insects.

"In three days," says Bobby, leaning his elbow in the haj , , " three days at the furthest, I may go back again; mn-y not I, Phoebe?"

" Without doubt," reply I stiffly, pulling' a dry and faded ox-eye flower out of the odorous mound beside me; "for my part I do not see why you should not go tomorrow, or indeed—if we could send into Plymouth for a chaise— this afternoon; you are so thin that you look all mouth and eyes, and you can hardly stand, without assistance, but these, of course, are trifling drawbacks, and I daresay would be rather an advantage on board ship than otherwise." " You are angry !" he says, with a sort of laugh in his deep eyes.

" Yoii look even prettier when you are angry than when you are pleased."

" It is no question of my looks," I say," still in some heat, though mollified by the irrolevant compliment.

"For the second time you are thinking me ungrateful," ho says, gravely; "you do not tell me so in so many words, because it is towards yourself that my ingratitude is shown ; the first time you told mo of it was almost tho first thing that you ever said to me." " So it was," I answered quickly, " and if the occasion were to come over again, I should say it again. I daresay you do not mean it, but

it sounded exactly as if you were complaining of my father for being too careful of you."

"Ho is too careful of me !" cries the young man, with a hot flushing on his cheek and brow. " I cannot

help it if it makes you angry again; I must say it; he is more careful of me than he would bo of his own son if he had one.

"Did not he promise your mother that he would look after you?" ask I, eagerly. "When people make promises to people on their deathbeds, they are in no hurry to break them; at least, such people as father are not."

" You do not understand," he says, a little impatiently, while that hot flush still dwells on his pale cheek ; " mother was the last person in the world to wish him to take eare of my body at the expense of my honour."

" What are you talking about V I say, looking at him with a lurking suspicion that, despite the steady light of reason, in Ins blue eyes, he is still labouring under some form of delirium.

" Unless I tell you all my grievance, I see that you will never comprehend," he says sighing. " Well, listen to me and you shall hear it, if you do not agree with me, when I have done you are not the kind of girl I take you for."

"'lhen I aui sure I am not the kind of »irl you take me for," reply I, with a laugh: for.l am fully determined to disagree with you entirely."

" You know," he says, raising himself a little from his hay couch, and speaking with clear rapidity, "that whenever we take a French prize a lot of the French sailors are ironed, and the vessel is sent into port, in charge of one officer and several men; there is some slight risk attending it—for my part I think very slight—but I suppose that your father looks at it differently, for—l have never been sent. " It is an accident," say I reassuringly ; " your turn will come in good time."

"It is not an accident!" he answerSjfirnily, " Boys younger than I am—much less trustworthy, and of whom he has not half the opinion that lie has of mo—have been sent,

but 1, never. 1 bore ifc as well as I could for a long time, but now I can bear it no longer.- it is not, I assure you my fancy; but I can see that my brother officers knowing how partial your father is to me —what influence I have with him in many things—conclude that my

not being sent is my own choice ; in

short that I am—afraid." (His voice sinks with a disgusted and

shamed intonation at the last word). " Now—l have told you the sober facts —look me in the face," putting his hand with boyish familiarity under my chin, and turning round my cutis, my features and the front \iew of my big comb towards him,

" and tell me whether it is not cruel kindness on his part to make me keep a whole skin on such terms.

I looked him in the face for a moment, trying to say that I do not agree with him, but it is more than I can manage. " You were right," I say, turning my bead away, " I do agree with you ; I wish to heaven that I could say I did not."

" Since you do then," ho cries excitedly—" Phoebe ! I knew you would, I knew you would, I knew you better than you knew yourself—l have a favour to ask of you a great favour, and one that will keep me all my life in debt to you." " What is it ?" ask I, with a sink ing heart. " Your father is very fond of you ." " I know it," I answer curtly. " Anything that you asked, and that wae within the bounds of possibility, he would do," he continues, with eager gravioy. " Well, this is what I ask you : to write him a line and let me take it, when I go, asking him to send me home in the next prize." Silence for a moment, only the haymakers laughing over their rakes. '• And if," say I, with a J trembling voice, " you lose your life in this service, you will have to thank me for it ; I shall have your death on my head all through my life.

" The danger is infinitesimal, as I told you before," he says impatiently ; :t and even if it were greater than it is—well, life is a good thing, very good, but there are better things, and even if I came to grief, which is most unlikely, there are plenty of men as good as, better than I, to step into my place."

" It will be small consolation to ;he people who are fond of you ;hat someone better than you is alive, ihough you are dead," I say tear:ully.

" But I do not mean to be dead," he says, with a cheery laugh. " Why are you so determined on killing me 1 I may live to bo an admiral. Why should 1 not !"

" Why indeed V say I, with a feeble echo of his cheerful mirth, and feeling rather ashamed of my tears.

" And meanwhile you will write 1" he says, with an eager return to the charge ; " and soon ? l)o not look angry and pouting, as you did just now, but I must go! What is there to hinder me ? I am getting up my strength as fast as it is possible for any human creature to do, and just think how I shoutd feel if they were to come in for something reallv good while I am away." So I wrote. To be continued.