THE SECOND NARRATIVE

THE HOSTLER’S STORY.—­TOLD BY HIMSELF

IV

It is now ten years ago since I got my first warning of the great trouble of my life in the Vision of a Dream.

I shall be better able to tell you about it if you will please suppose yourselves to be drinking tea along with us in our little cottage in Cambridgeshire, ten years since.

The time was the close of day, and there were three of us at the table, namely, my mother, myself, and my mother’s sister, Mrs. Chance.  These two were Scotchwomen by birth, and both were widows.  There was no other resemblance between them that I can call to mind.  My mother had lived all her life in England, and had no more of the Scotch brogue on her tongue than I have.  My aunt Chance had never been out of Scotland until she came to keep house with my mother after her husband’s death.  And when she opened her lips you heard broad Scotch, I can tell you, if you ever heard it yet!

As it fell out, there was a matter of some consequence in debate among us that evening.  It was this:  whether I should do well or not to take a long journey on foot the next morning.

Now the next morning happened to be the day before my birthday; and the purpose of the journey was to offer myself for a situation as groom at a great house in the neighboring county to ours.  The place was reported as likely to fall vacant in about three weeks’ time.  I was as well fitted to fill it as any other man.  In the prosperous days of our family, my father had been manager of a training stable, and he had kept me employed among the horses from my boyhood upward.  Please to excuse my troubling you with these small matters.  They all fit into my story farther on, as you will soon find out.  My poor mother was dead against my leaving home on the morrow.

“You can never walk all the way there and all the way back again by to-morrow night,” she says.  “The end of it will be that you will sleep away from home on your birthday.  You have never done that yet, Francis, since your father’s death, I don’t like your doing it now.  Wait a day longer, my son—­only one day.”

For my own part, I was weary of being idle, and I couldn’t abide the notion of delay.  Even one day might make all the difference.  Some other man might take time by the forelock, and get the place.

“Consider how long I have been out of work,” I says, “and don’t ask me to put off the journey.  I won’t fail you, mother.  I’ll get back by to-morrow night, if I have to pay my last sixpence for a lift in a cart.

My mother shook her head.  “I don’t like it, Francis—­I don’t like it!” There was no moving her from that view.  We argued and argued, until we were both at a deadlock.  It ended in our agreeing to refer the difference between us to my mother’s sister, Mrs. Chance.