Seeing the evident partiality of Miss Crawley for
the new governess, how good it was of Mrs. Bute Crawley
not to be jealous, and to welcome the young lady to
the Rectory, and not only her, but Rawdon Crawley,
her husband’s rival in the Old Maid’s five
per cents! They became very fond of each other’s
society, Mrs. Crawley and her nephew. He gave
up hunting; he declined entertainments at Fuddleston:
he would not dine with the mess of the depot at Mudbury:
his great pleasure was to stroll over to Crawley parsonage—whither
Miss Crawley came too; and as their mamma was ill,
why not the children with Miss Sharp? So the
children (little dears!) came with Miss Sharp; and
of an evening some of the party would walk back together.
Not Miss Crawley—she preferred her carriage—but
the walk over the Rectory fields, and in at the little
park wicket, and through the dark plantation, and
up the checkered avenue to Queen’s Crawley,
was charming in the moonlight to two such lovers of
the picturesque as the Captain and Miss Rebecca.
“O those stars, those stars!” Miss Rebecca
would say, turning her twinkling green eyes up towards
them. “I feel myself almost a spirit when
I gaze upon them.”
“O—ah—Gad—yes,
so do I exactly, Miss Sharp,” the other enthusiast
replied. “You don’t mind my cigar,
do you, Miss Sharp?” Miss Sharp loved the smell
of a cigar out of doors beyond everything in the world—and
she just tasted one too, in the prettiest way possible,
and gave a little puff, and a little scream, and a
little giggle, and restored the delicacy to the Captain,
who twirled his moustache, and straightway puffed
it into a blaze that glowed quite red in the dark
plantation, and swore—“Jove—aw—Gad—aw—it’s
the finest segaw I ever smoked in the world aw,”
for his intellect and conversation were alike brilliant
and becoming to a heavy young dragoon.
Old Sir Pitt, who was taking his pipe and beer, and
talking to John Horrocks about a “ship”
that was to be killed, espied the pair so occupied
from his study-window, and with dreadful oaths swore
that if it wasn’t for Miss Crawley, he’d
take Rawdon and bundle un out of doors, like a rogue
as he was.
“He be a bad’n, sure enough,” Mr.
Horrocks remarked; “and his man Flethers is
wuss, and have made such a row in the housekeeper’s
room about the dinners and hale, as no lord would
make—but I think Miss Sharp’s a match
for’n, Sir Pitt,” he added, after a pause.
And so, in truth, she was—for father and
son too.
CHAPTER XII
Quite a Sentimental Chapter
We must now take leave of Arcadia, and those amiable
people practising the rural virtues there, and travel
back to London, to inquire what has become of Miss
Amelia “We don’t care a fig for her,”
writes some unknown correspondent with a pretty little
handwriting and a pink seal to her note. “She
is fade and insipid,” and adds some more kind
remarks in this strain, which I should never have
repeated at all, but that they are in truth prodigiously
complimentary to the young lady whom they concern.
