Two Maiden Aunts Part 11

'Aunt Angel,' he began, when Betty stopped him by a scream.

'G.o.dfrey, you're wet! Wherever have you been?'

'I've been in the pond,' said G.o.dfrey's clear voice; 'I mean my legs have. Before that I was on the ice, but it broke, and then there was only water for me to be on. If there hadn't been a tub I should have been at the bottom. Aunt Angel, Aunt Angel dear, don't look like that; your cheeks are quite white--oh, is your heart cracking? I've come for you to whip me; please whip me quick. I wanted to be brave, and I've begun at the wrong end.'

'Oh, G.o.dfrey, how could you, how could you?' faltered Betty.

'It wasn't at all difficult, Aunt Betty,' said G.o.dfrey earnestly; 'p'r'aps that was why it wasn't brave.'

'I beg your pardon,' said the stranger, who had been standing by unnoticed, 'but, if I might suggest, I would get this young gentleman's wet things off, and I'm sure he'll be none the worse, and will be wiser another time.'

Angel pulled herself together and made a grave curtsey.

'Thank you, sir, for your kindness in bringing our nephew home. He shall come indoors and get dry at once. G.o.dfrey, come with me,' and she curtsied again and led G.o.dfrey into the house. Betty was following when Nancy rushed up to her and whispered eagerly:

'Please Miss Bet--Miss Elizabeth, the gentleman got Master G.o.dfrey safe out of the tub. I don't know what we should ha' done if it hadn't ha'

been for him.'

'I'll run and thank him again,' said Betty impulsively; 'what's his name, Nance?'

'I don't know, miss; I never saw him before.'

I think p'r'aps I ought to ask him in,' said Betty, and she followed the stranger down the lane. He turned at the sound of her steps and took off his hat.

'I'm afraid you think us very rude, sir,' she said, with a pretty blush, 'but we were--we were thinking very much about our nephew, you see; he has no one but us to think for him. We are very much obliged indeed to you, my sister and I. Will you--will you come in and have a gla.s.s of elder wine, if you have far to go in the cold?'

'Thank you very much,' said the stranger heartily. 'I shall hope to avail myself of your kind hospitality another day, for I am staying a short time in Oakfield, and shall hope to see more of your nephew, who seems to me a very fine little fellow. I must ask my friend here to show me the shortest cut to Oakfield Place,' and he looked at the astonished Nancy with a sly smile. 'My name is Maitland, Captain Maitland of the _Mermaid_. Come along, little woman, and make a clean breast of the Arctic expedition,' and he took off his hat again, gave his hand to Nancy, who could do nothing but stare at him with her mouth and eyes wide open, and went off down the road. It must be confessed that Betty, though she was thirteen years old and an aunt, stared very hard after him too, and stood by the garden gate in the darkening winter afternoon looking with all her eyes down the lane, as if one of the heroes of her history books had suddenly come to life. Then she turned round and rushed back to the house and half-way up the stairs, burning to tell her news. But there she stopped short suddenly, and after a minute sat down on the stairs and dropped her chin in her hands. There she sat without moving until the door of G.o.dfrey's room opened and Angelica came out. The two sisters sprang to meet each other.

'Oh, Angel!' burst out Betty.

'Oh, Betty, I've done it!' and Angel sank down on the stairs, and hid her face on her sister's shoulder.

'Have you whipped him?' asked Betty.

'Yes, I said I would, and I had to; you know what Martha said--he must be able to depend on what we said. I whipped him and put him to bed.'

'Poor Angel, poor dear, how your hands are shaking. You couldn't have hit him very hard.'

'I don't know; it seemed to me as if I did, and he is so little.'

'Did he cry?' asked Betty.

'Oh no, but he's so brave he wouldn't, not even if I really hurt him dreadfully.'

The idea of slender, gentle Angelica doing bodily violence to any one would have been amusing if the sisters had not been too serious to see it.

'Penny met us on the stairs,' Angel went on, 'and she wanted to pet him, and I wouldn't let her. I think she thought me very cruel, and if she knew I'd whipped him----'

'Well, we ar'n't bringing up G.o.dfrey to please Penny,' said Betty decidedly, 'and really and truly, Angel dear, I expect you hurt yourself more than you did him. Come down into the parlour, your fingers are as cold as ice. I've got something to tell you, too.'

She put her arm round her sister's waist, and drew her downstairs, telling the remarkable news about the strange gentleman as they went.

Angel could not but be interested.

'Captain Maitland,' she said, 'was it really? Do you know I hardly saw him, I only had a sort of idea that there was a gentleman there. I hope I was not very rude. I ought to have said something more to him.'

'But I did, Angel, so it doesn't matter. I offered him elder wine--that was all right, wasn't it? But I was so glad when he said no, for you know that little last piece of cake is getting stale, and we don't bake till to-morrow, and Penny might have been cross about getting the wine hot with all the mince-meat about.'

'Perhaps it was as well,' said Angelica rather abstractedly. 'How odd it should have been Captain Maitland, G.o.dfrey's hero, that brought him home! Did G.o.dfrey know who he was?'

'I don't think so; I'm sure Nancy didn't. I'm not sure whether he's quite like what I expected, Angel.'

Angel scarcely answered, there was not much room for any one except G.o.dfrey in her thoughts at that moment. Penelope came in presently with a log for the fire, and an air of severe disapproval about her, and asked stiffly whether the poor dear young gentleman upstairs were to have any supper or not. Angel ordered bread-and-milk very quietly, but in such a way that Penny went out of the room with no more than a half-suppressed snort.

'She hates me,' sighed Angel sorrowfully; 'I wonder if G.o.dfrey does.'

'He isn't such a stupid,' said Betty stoutly; and they sat together silent in the twilight, missing the little figure that always squeezed up between them during that idle half-hour--''twixt the gloaming and the mirk.' At last Angel stood up and said, almost appealingly:

'Betty, don't you think I might go to him now?'

'Angel dear, I've been biting my tongue for ever so long to keep from saying it. I'm quite sure you might.'

Angel waited for no more. She was upstairs directly and pausing at G.o.dfrey's door. How would he meet her? Would he be sulky? Would he refuse to speak to her? She hesitated with her fingers on the handle.

Then she heard G.o.dfrey's voice inside. He seemed to be saying his lessons.

'England is an island; an island is a piece of land, and I'm not going to say what it is surrounded by, but I know. France is a country, and the capital of it is Paris, and I'm not going to say what there is between France and England, nor what there are sailing about there, but I know.'

'G.o.dfrey,' said Angelica softly in the doorway.

'Aunt Angel!' and a pair of arms were stretched out in the dusk, and Angel's head drawn down until her face was close to G.o.dfrey's own.

'Aunt Angel, Aunt Angel dear, I can't see you in the dark, but I'm feeling your cheeks to see if they are thin. Do you feel at all as if your heart was cracking? Promise me you and Aunt Betty won't be like that Aunt Jane.'

'We shall both be very happy, G.o.dfrey, if you are sorry for being naughty, not only for vexing us,' said Angel with a deep breath of relief.

'I am,' said G.o.dfrey eagerly; 'I won't again. I've begun directly beginning at the right end. Did you hear me beginning at the right end, Aunt Angel?'

'The right end of what, dear?'

'Of being a brave man. That gentleman said it was doing what you didn't like because it was right, and leaving the nice things because they were wrong. So I'm saying my geography, and leaving out all the parts about s.h.i.+ps. Do you think he knows, Aunt Angel? I think he is a good man, only rather stupid.'

'What makes you think he's stupid, G.o.dfrey?'

'Because he didn't seem to think that Kiah's captain was a very, very great man. But I daresay he was only ignorant, and Aunt Betty says we should never be hard on ignorance.'

Angel smiled in the dark.

'I can tell you why he said that, G.o.dfrey,' she said. 'Do you know, that gentleman is Captain Maitland himself?'