Friarswood Post Office

‘Dear Alfy, don’t!’ cried Ellen, throwing her arms round him, and kissing him with all her might; ‘don’t fancy it!  She’s always gossiping and gadding about, and don’t know what she says, and she’d got no business to tell stories to frighten my darling!’ she exclaimed, sobbing with agitation.  ‘I’m sure Mr. Blunt never said no such thing!’

‘But Mother thinks it, Ellen.’

‘She doesn’t, she can’t!’ cried Ellen vehemently; ‘I know she doesn’t, or she could never go about as she does.  I’ll call her up and ask her, to satisfy you.’

‘No, no, not while that woman is there!’ cried Alfred, holding her by the dress; ‘I’ll not have her coming up.’

Even while he spoke, however, Mrs. King was coming.  Betsey had spied an old acquaintance on the way from church, and had popped out to speak to her, and Mrs. King caught that moment for coming up.  She understood all, for she had been sitting in great distress, lest Alfred should be listening to every word which she was unable to silence, and about which Betsey was quite thoughtless.  So many people of her degree would talk to the patient about himself and his danger, and go on constantly before him with all their fears, and the doctor’s opinions, that Betsey had never thought of there being more consideration and tenderness shewn in this house, nor that Mrs. King would have hidden any pressing danger from the sick person; but such plain words had not yet passed between her and Mr. Blunt; and though she had long felt what Alfred’s illness would come to, the perception had rather grown on her than come at any particular moment.

Now when Ellen, with tears and agitation, asked what that Betsey had been saying to frighten Alfred so, and when she saw her poor boy’s look at her, and heard his sob, ‘Oh, Mother!’ it was almost too much for her, and she went up and kissed him, and laid him down less uneasily, but he felt a great tear fall on his face.

‘It’s not true, Mother, I’m sure it is not true,’ cried Ellen; ‘she ought—’

Mrs. King looked at her daughter with a sad sweet face, that stopped her short, and brought the sense over her too.  ‘Did he say so, Mother?’ said Alfred.

‘Not to me, dear,’ she answered; ‘but, Ellen, she’s coming back!  She’ll be up here if you don’t go down.’

Poor Ellen! what would she not have given for power to listen to her mother, and cry at her ease?  But she was forced to hurry, or Betsey would have been half-way up-stairs in another instant.  She was a hopeful girl, however, and after that ‘not to me,’ resolved to believe nothing of the matter.  Mrs. King knelt down by her son, and looked at him tenderly; and then, as his eyes went on begging for an answer, she said, ‘Dr. Blunt never told me there was no hope, my dear, and everything lies in God’s power.’

‘But you don’t think I shall get well, Mother?’

‘I don’t feel as if you would, my boy,’ she said, very low, and fondling him all the time.  ‘You’ve got to cough like Father and Charlie, and—though He might raise my boy up—yet anyhow, Alfy boy, if God sees it good for us, it will be good for us, and we shall be helped through with it.’

‘But I’m not good, Mother!  What will become of me?’

‘Perhaps the hearing this is all out of God’s mercy, to give you time to get ready, my dear.  You are no worse now than you were this morning; you are not like to go yet awhile.  No, indeed, my child; so if you don’t put off any longer—’

‘Mother!’ called up Ellen.  She was in despair.  Betsey was not to be kept by her from satisfying herself upon Alfred’s looks, and Mrs. King was only in time to meet her on the stairs, and tell her that he was so weak and low, that he could not be seen now, she could not tell how it would be when he had had his tea.

Ellen thought she had never had so distressing a tea-drinking in her life, as the being obliged to sit listening civilly to Betsey’s long story about the trouble she had about a stocking of Mrs. Martin’s that was lost in the wash, and that had gone to Miss Rosa Marlowe, because Mrs. Martin had her things marked with a badly-done K. E. M., and all that Mrs. Martin’s Maria and all Miss Marlowe’s Jane had said about it, and all Betsey’s ‘Says I to Mother,’—when she was so longing to be watching poor Alfred, and how her mother could sit so quietly making tea, and answering so civilly, she could not guess; but Mrs. King had that sense of propriety and desire to do as she would be done by, which is the very substance of Christian courtesy, the very want of which made Betsey, with all her wish to be kind, a real oppression and burthen to the whole party.

And where was Harold?  Ellen had not seen him coming out of church, but meal-times were pretty certain to bring him home.

‘Oh,’ said Betsey, ‘I’ll warrant he is off to the merry orchard.’

‘I hope not,’ said Mrs. King gravely.

‘He never would,’ said Ellen, in anger.

‘Ah, well, I always said I didn’t see no harm in a lad getting a bit of pleasure.’

‘No, indeed,’ said Mrs. King.  ‘Harold knows I would not stint him in the fruit nor in the pleasure, but I should be much vexed if he could go out on a Sunday, buying and selling, among such a lot as meet at that orchard.’

‘Well, I’m sure I don’t know when poor folks is to have a holiday if not on a Sunday, and the poor boy must be terrible moped with his brother so ill.’

‘Not doing thine own pleasure on My holy day,’ thought Ellen, but she did not say it, for her mother could not bear for texts to be quoted at people.  But her heart was very heavy; and when she went up with some tea to Alfred, she looked from the window to see whether, as she hoped, Harold might be in Paul’s hay-loft, preferring going without his tea to being teased by Betsey.  Paul sat in his loft, with his Bible on his knee, and his head on Cæsar’s neck.

‘Alfred,’ said Ellen, ‘do you know where Harold is?  Sure he is not gone to the merry orchard?’

‘Is not he come home?’ said Alfred.  ‘Oh, then he is!  He is gone to the merry orchard, breaking Sunday with Dick Royston!  And by-and-by he’ll be ill, and die, and be as miserable as I am!’  And Alfred cried as Ellen had never seen him cry.

CHAPTER VI—THE MERRY ORCHARD

Where was Harold?

Still the evening went on, and he did not come.  Alfred had worn himself out with his fit of crying, and lay quite still, either asleep, or looking so like it, that when Betsey had finished her tea, and again began asking to see him, Ellen could honestly declare that he was asleep.

Betsey had bidden them good-bye, more than half affronted at not being able to report to her mother all about his looks, though she carried with her a basket of gooseberries and French beans, and Mrs. King walked all the way down the lane with her, and tried to shew an interest in all she said, to make up for the disappointment.

Maybe likewise Mrs. King felt it a relief to her uneasiness to look up and down the road, and along the river, and into the farm-yard, in the hope that Harold might be in sight; but nothing was to be seen on the road, but Master Norland, his wife, and baby, soberly taking their Sunday walk; nor by the river, except the ducks, who seemed to be enjoying their evening bath, and almost asleep on the water; nor in the yard, except Paul Blackthorn, who had come down from his perch to drive the horses in from the home-field, and shut the stable up for the night.

She could not help stopping a moment at the gate, and calling out to Paul to ask whether he had seen anything of Harold.  He seemed to have a great mind not to hear, and turned very slowly with his shoulder towards her, making a sound like ‘Eh?’ as if to ask what she said.

‘Have you seen my boy Harold?’

‘I saw him in the morning.’

‘Have you not seen him since?  Didn’t he go to church with you?’

‘No; I don’t go to Sunday school.’

‘Was he there?’

She did not receive any answer.

‘Do you know if many of the boys are gone to the merry orchard?’

‘Ay.’

‘Well, you are a good lad not to be one of them.’

‘Hadn’t got any money,’ said Paul gruffly; but Mrs. King thought he said so chiefly from dislike to be praised, and that there had been some principle as well as poverty to keep him away.

‘It might be better if no one had it on a Sunday,’ she could not help sighing out as she looked anxiously along the lane ere turning in, and then said, ‘My good lad, I don’t want to get you to be telling tales, but it would set my heart at rest, and his poor brother’s up there, if you could tell me he is not gone to Briar Alley.’

Paul turned up his face from the gate upon which he was leaning his elbows, and gazed for a moment at her sad, meek, anxious face, then exclaimed, ‘I can’t think how he could!’

Poor Paul! was it not crossing him how impossible it would seem to do anything to vex one who so cared for him?

‘Then he is gone,’ she said mournfully.

‘They were all at him,’ said Paul; ‘and he said he’d never seen what it was like.  Please don’t take on, Missus; he’s right kind and good-hearted, and wanted to treat me.’

‘I had rather he had hearkened to you, my boy,’ said Mrs. King.

‘I don’t know why he should do that,’ said Paul, perhaps meaning that a boy who heeded not such a mother would certainly heed no one else.  ‘But please, Missus,’ he added, ‘don’t beat him, for you made me tell on him.’

‘Beat him! no,’ said Mrs. King, with a sad smile; ‘he’s too big a boy for me to manage that way.  I can’t do more than grieve if he lets himself be led away.’