“Darling, do just what you please. Only
make no rogue of me.”
For that she gave me the simplest, kindest, and sweetest
of all kisses; and I went down the great stairs grandly,
thinking of nothing else but that.
[Illustration: 631.jpg Old London Bridge]
JOHN IS JOHN NO LONGER
[Illustration: 632.jpg Illustrated Capital]
It would be hard for me to tell the state of mind
in which I lived for a long time after this.
I put away from me all torment, and the thought of
future cares, and the sight of difficulty; and to myself
appeared, which means that I became the luckiest of
lucky fellows, since the world itself began.
I thought not of the harvest even, nor of the men who
would get their wages without having earned them, nor
of my mother’s anxiety and worry about John
Fry’s great fatness (which was growing upon
him), and how she would cry fifty times in a day, “Ah,
if our John would only come home, how different everything
would look!”
Although there were no soldiers now quartered at Plover’s
Barrows, all being busied in harassing the country,
and hanging the people where the rebellion had thriven
most, my mother, having received from me a message
containing my place of abode, contrived to send me,
by the pack-horses, as fine a maund as need be of
provisions, and money, and other comforts. Therein
I found addressed to Colonel Jeremiah Stickles, in
Lizzie’s best handwriting, half a side of the
dried deer’s flesh, in which he rejoiced so
greatly. Also, for Lorna, a fine green goose,
with a little salt towards the tail, and new-laid
eggs inside it, as well as a bottle of brandied cherries,
and seven, or it may have been eight pounds of fresh
homemade butter. Moreover, to myself there was
a letter full of good advice, excellently well expressed,
and would have been of the greatest value, if I had
cared to read it. But I read all about the farm
affairs, and the man who had offered himself to our
Betty for the five pounds in her stocking; as well
as the antics of Sally Snowe, and how she had almost
thrown herself at Parson Bowden’s head (old enough
to be her grandfather), because on the Sunday after
the hanging of a Countisbury man, he had preached
a beautiful sermon about Christian love; which Lizzie,
with her sharp eyes, found to be the work of good Bishop
Ken. Also I read that the Doones were quiet;
the parishes round about having united to feed them
well through the harvest time, so that after the day’s
hard work, the farmers might go to bed at night.
And this plan had been found to answer well, and to
save much trouble on both sides, so that everybody
wondered it had not been done before. But Lizzie
thought that the Doones could hardly be expected much
longer to put up with it, and probably would not have
done so now, but for a little adversity; to wit, that
the famous Colonel Kirke had, in the most outrageous
