’The child upon the mountain side
Plays fearless and at ease,
While the hush of purple evening
Spreads over earth and seas.
The valley lies in shadow,
But the valley lies afar;
And the mountain is a slope of light
Upreaching to a star.’
MENELLA Smedley.
How pleasant it was to hear Griffith’s cheery
voice, as he swung himself down, out of a cloud of
dust, from the top of the coach at the wayside stage-house,
whither Clarence and I had driven in the new britshka
to meet him. While the four fine coach-horses
were led off, and their successors harnessed in almost
the twinkling of an eye, Griff was with us; and we
did nothing but laugh and poke fun at each other
all the way home, without a word of graver matters.
I was resolved, however, that Griff should know how
terribly his commission had added to Clarence’s
danger, and how carefully the secret had been guarded;
and the first time I could get him alone, I told
him the whole.
The effect was one of his most overwhelming fits of
laughter. ’Poor old Bill! To think
of his being accused of gallanting about with barmaids!’
(an explosion at every pause) ’and revelling
with officers! Poor old Bill! it was as bad
as Malvolio himself.’
When, indignant at the mirth excited by what had nearly
cost us so dear, I observed that these items had
nearly turned the scale against our brother, Griff
demanded how we could have been such idiots as not
to have written to him; I might at least have had the
sense to do so. As to its doing him harm at
Hillside, Parson Frank was no fool, and knew what
men were made of! Griff would have taken the
risk, come at once, and thrust the story down the fellow’s
throat (as indeed he would have done). The
idea of Betsy putting up with a pious young man like
Bill, whose only flame had ever been old Miss Newton!
And he roared again at the incongruous pair.
’Oh, wasn’t she married after all, the
hussy? She always had a dozen beaux, and professed
to be on the point of putting up her banns; so if
the earrings were not a wedding present, they might
have been, ought to have been, and would be some
time or other.’
Then he patted me, and declared there was no occasion
for my disgusted looks, for no one knew better than
himself that he had the best brace of brothers in
existence, wanting in nothing but common sense and
knowledge of the world. As to Betsy—faugh!
I need not make myself uneasy about her; she knew
what a civil word was worth much better than I did.
He showed considerable affection for Clarence after
a fashion of his own, which we three perfectly understood,
and preferred to anything more conventional.
Griff was always delightful, and he was especially
so on that vacation, when every one was in high spirits;
so that the journey is, as I look back on it, like
a spot of brilliant sunshine in the distant landscape.
