fe ay 1 1 or
\
LIBRARY OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
**$
ROB AND KIT.
OB AND
IT.
BY THE AUTHOR OF
"TIP-CAT," "MISS TOOSEY'S MISSION,"
"LADDIE," ETC.
BOSTON:
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
1899.
Copyright, 1898,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
A II rights reserved.
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. FATHER AND SON i
II. LOWBURN VICARAGE 10
III. . EDEN 21
IV. EARLY DAYS 30
V. AN INTRODUCTION 37
VI. GOOD COMPANY 45
VII. SUNDAY ,
52
VIII. STRAWBERRIES 61
IX. CHANGE 70
X. TAKING THOUGHT FOR THE MORROW . 80
XI. RETROSPECT . . ^ 87
XII. A LETTER 99
XIII. NEWS I09
XIV. THE ANSWER 117
XV. ORPHEUS .126
XVI. THE ABSENT 137
XVII. THE PRESENT 145
XVIII. LEAVE-TAKING ... 153
VI CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PACK
XIX. LONG A-DOING 161
XX. AT THE BEACON 170
XXI. PERPLEXITY 182
XXII. A FRIEND IN NEED ...... 191
XXIII. THE PRICE 199
XXIV. EXPEDIENTS 210
XXV. KIT'S PLAN 219
XXVI. A SUMMONS 227
XXVII. THE DOCTOR'S VISIT 239
XXVIII. THE PRESCRIPTION 246
XXIX. IPHIGENIA 255
XXX. UNCLE PHILIP 264
XXXI. BY-AND-BY 272
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PACK
"He was a very pleasant looking young fellow, tall and
broad shouldered" Frontispiece
" After supper, Rob set off on his ride home " 43
" Still sitting with his hands clasped round his knees " . . 129
" Kit's accusing finger pointed to the cup " 184
" And then the door burst open, and Tibby Brownlow stood
there" 235
"The Vicar had risen too, and stood between the two
men" 268
ROB AND KIT.
CHAPTER I.
FATHER AND SON.
" A gentle knight was pricking on the plaine."
SPENSER.
MY story begins, as many stories used in days
gone by, with a solitary horseman wending
his way under the scorching rays of a midsummer
sun, along the glaring, white chalk road, cut across a
wide-spreading common in Sussex.
But here all similarity to those old romances
ceases, for the individual of whom I write bore no
resemblance to the heroes of old, having nothing
mysterious or interesting about him. His hat was
not slouched down to conceal his features being,
indeed, rather on the back of his head nor was a
heavy cloak wrapped about him, luckily for him, con-
sidering the heat of the day. He carried no pistols
in his holsters, nor was he travel-stained, except for
the dust, which settled on every available point of
his person, as it did on the dry gorse-bushes and
thirsty bits of grass by the roadside.
He was a good deal heated by his efforts to urge
on his steed, and at the same time prevent his trou-
2 ROB AND KIT.
sers from working up towards his knees, as is the way
those articles have of annoying unaccustomed riders.
The horse would certainly have been described by
the novelist as jaded, but his rider was not to be
held accountable for the signs of fatigue manifested,
which were the accumulation of many years passed
in a milk-cart, to which walk in life may be traced
his tendency to zigzag along the road from one side
to the other, and to stop at all the back-doors, when
he was in the neighbourhood of houses. Since then,
he had been let out for hire on the esplanade at Sea-
down, and had stood, with hanging head and bent
knees, among the doggedly patient donkeys with their
white and scarlet saddle-cloths, and malicious-looking
glassy-eyed goats with wagging beards. The boys in
attendance played pitch-and-toss on the shingle below
till an excursion came, when the animals' patience
had to give way to more active endurance.
But the season at Seadown had hardly begun yet,
and it was only yesterday that the bathing machines
had been brought down from the field at the top of
the town, where they were stowed away for the winter
months, and old Joe was brought in from the com-
mon, where he picked up a precarious living through
the winter, to drag them down.
So when Rob Chambers asked if there was any-
thing available to take him over to Lowburn, six
miles away, Newman, the proprietor of the bathing
machines, volunteered to let him have old Joe, " as
have a deal of go left in him still, though he ain't
much to look at neither."
FATHER AND SON. 3
Neither was Rob himself much to look at, anyhow
according to his father's opinion. Dr. Chambers
used to contemplate his only son and heir with
undisguised disapproval which, of course, made Rob
twice as awkward and ungainly as nature had formed
him. But to be looked at critically through a gold-
rimmed eyeglass by a cold, disparaging eye, would
have turned Ariel himself into a Caliban.
Dr. Chambers was so eminently refined and ele-
gant himself, such a gentleman all over from the
top of his head, where his hair was turning a little
silver on the temples, to the tips of his well cared-
for taper fingers and toes of his well clad feet. He
carried himself so well, his voice was so full and
melodious; his broad brow and clear-cut features
and firm mouth, impressed beholders with a sense
of power which was wonderfully consoling and uplift-
ing in times of doubt or danger. But in the hour
of death, I have known people find more comfort in
the presence of little Mr. Johnson, fat and shabby
and short of " h's " as he was, and grossly ignorant as
was generally acknowledged.
"Why, he just sat down and cried like a child
that day our Ben was took."
So I suppose, though he had not the gift of proph-
ecy, and did not understand all mysteries and all
knowledge, he had that greatest gift of all love,
which was wanting in Dr. Chambers.
Once when Rob was ill, one of his feverish fancies
was that his father was hollow like one of those
inflated bladder-balls of many colours sold on the
4 ROB AND KIT.
beach and that a prick might reduce him to very
small, and shrivelled, and unimposing dimensions.
In later years, when father and son were enduring
some of these tete-a-tetes which were equally distaste-
ful to both of them, the childish fancy would recur
to Rob's mind, and in an incoherent sort of way, he
would wonder if, inside the elegance and culture and
artificiality, there might be a real little man like
the pea in the middle of the great shining pink ball
that made the babies on the sands so perfectly happy
for ten minutes, and grievously afflicted for half an
hour afterwards.
But this comparison of Dr. Chambers will give the
reader far too trifling and light-minded an impression
of him. For though St. Paul reckoned knowledge
and learning and eloquence as weighing nothing when,
put into the scale against charity, a distinguished
member of the medical profession, an M.D. belong-
ing to half a dozen learned and scientific societies,
would not suggest an air-ball to the world at large.
Rob's mother had died when he was born. She
was a simple, good sort of girl, with an unbounded
admiration for her gifted husband; and, perhaps,
their married life was too short for her to apply the
matrimonial pin, and discover the real little man
within the splendid greatness. And, perhaps, it was
quite as well.
He had not married again, as most people prophe-
sied he would ; and many did all in their power to
make their prophecies come true, and provide a
suitable step-mother for Rob, who, from the very
FATHER AND SON. 5
first, did not satisfactorily play the part assigned him
by Nature, of a poor little motherless child a poor
little neglected lamb, sadly requiring the maternal
care, which many a kindly heart of widow or spinster
yearned to bestow.
He was robustly healthy to begin with, and, if he
was left to the care of servants, he certainly did credit
to that care being fat and solid and red and
mottled, to a degree that no other baby in Seadown,
with the most devoted of mothers, could compete
with.
His lungs were beyond suspicion, as he testified by
his howls under the blandishments of various ladies
who met his perambulator on the esplanade ; and he
conducted himself with a dreadful want of considera-
tion, on the one occasion when Dr. Chambers had
him brought down to display to some admiring and
pitiful ladies.
Dr. Chambers had so large an experience of other
people's babies, that he ought to have known better
than to disturb his youthful son so immediately after
his mid-day meal, and, having done so, to take him
from his nurse's arms.
The immediate result was the sudden and violent
return of that mid-day meal all over Dr. Chambers'
immaculate waistcoat a situation in which the most
dignified and elegant person cannot avoid looking
ridiculous, perhaps, all the more so, from the extra
dignity and elegance. It is very difficult to forgive
any one who makes us appear ridiculous, and I
am afraid it was some time before Dr. Chambers
6 ROB AND KIT.
could look with complaisancy on this unconscious
delinquent.
And this want of complaisancy in his son, had ex-
tended even to the day when we make that son's
acquaintance, riding on old Joe across the downs.
Where the boy got his personal appearance from was
a puzzle to all beholders ; for Mrs. Chambers, though
not a striking beauty, was fair and pleasant to behold,
and Dr. Chambers was, in most people's estimation,
a decidedly good-looking man.
Rob had a broad, good-natured face, with very
large ears standing out on either side like handles,
and small round blue eyes that were utterly out of
control, and expressed every simple feeling of the
mind within, with the most transparent and occa-
sionally inconvenient sincerity, even when that blurt-
ing, unmanageable tongue of his was reduced to
silence.
He grew very fast, with long legs and arms that
outgrew trousers and jacket-sleeves in an extraordinary
manner; and his awkwardness made his big hands
and feet more conspicuous, and any defects in his
clothing more patent to the most casual observer.
And if his personal appearance was a puzzle to be-
lievers in heredity, so also was his mind to which
book-learning was as repugnant as it was congenial to
his father. His mother, it is true, was not highly
gifted, and sons, they say, get their intellects mostly
from their mothers ; but she came of a distinctly
literary stock, and there had been distinguished in-
tellects among her immediate connections, so that
FATHER AND SON. 7
poor Rob's deficiencies could not be laid to her
charge.
Every year Dr. Chambers had to modify his hopes
and intentions for Rob. It very soon became plain
that Rob had no turn for science, and could never
become the coadjutor and sympathizer in his father's
pursuits, which had been fondly anticipated when he
lay in the chrysalis form in his cradle, as capable of
developing into a gorgeous butterfly as any other
chrysalis or red-faced baby.
His whole education from the very beginning
from the alphabet on round pieces of card spread on
the nursery floor out of a squeaking round box was
a more thorny path than most have to encounter:
beset with troubles, tears, prolonged standing in cor-
ners, abnormally early going to bed, deprivation of
pudding gradually passing on to canings, deten-
tions, impositions ; and through it all Rob came out
pretty well as ignorant as he went in, and as good-
natured and simple-minded and clumsy.
Really Dr. Chambers had some reason to feel
hardly used by Providence, and to look with ill-con-
cealed impatience at this son of his, on whose
education he would have willingly expended liberally,
if it had not been so clearly a case of casting pearls
before swine.
It would not have been so afflicting if Rob had
developed into the ornamental young country gentle-
man idle and feather-brained and extravagant. I
think his father could have stood that better than the
solid, awkward steadiness of Rob. "Such a good
8 ROB AND KIT.
creature ! " lady patients said to the doctor of his
son, meaning to please him ; and the doctor, though
he assented cordially, felt in his heart of hearts that
even a dash of vice would be preferable to such a
negative sort of goodness, which seemed merely the
want of wit to be otherwise.
It was idle to think of sending him to Oxford even
if he could have matriculated, and equally impossible
to get him into Sandhurst ; so when my story begins,
Rob Chambers' future walk in life was an unsolved
problem.
Dr. Chambers had a mind that chafed at unsolved
problems, and he was disposed to get Rob on his
brain, and to let him interfere with his digestion and
his sleep ; so that he felt a sensible relief when Rob
announced that morning at breakfast his intention of
going over to Lowburn, from whence he should not
be back till late on in the evening.
"How are you going? I am driving the other
way, or I could set you a bit on the way. It must be
pretty near eight miles."
" I can walk."
" It 's going to be a blazing hot day."
" I can take it easy."
Rob was already two shades redder in complexion
from his father's unusual interest and concern about
his arrangements ; and the doctor, sitting opposite to
him, so cool and composed in mind and body, won-
dered if any inducement on earth would make him
trudge eight mortal miles under a broiling sun, and
what tinge of complexion Rob would have acquired
when he got there.
FATHER AND SON: 9
" You might have the mare," the doctor said
reflectively, " only "
But just then Rob upset the milk-jug, which
changed the subject and saved the doctor the neces-
sity of weighing the perils to the mare's knees and to
Rob's brains. And as he stepped into his well-
appointed victoria half an hour later, he called back
to Rob at the door
" Perhaps you could get a mount from Newman."
So this was how it was that Rob was riding towards
Lowburn on old Joe.
IO ROB AND KIT.
CHAPTER II.
LOWBURN VICARAGE.
u A little lowly hermitage it was,
Down in a dale hard by a forest side
Farre from resort of people that did pass
In travell to and fro.' '
SPENSER.
LOWBURN lies in a hollow of those Sussex
downs an oasis in the great wide, breezy,
exposed uplands, across which the winter's winds
tear and sweep, with nothing to oppose their fury
but the ragged gorse-bushes, or here and there a
twisted thorn, grown all on one side like some poor
nymph hurrying away from the rough caresses of rude
Boreas.
To-day the most modest maiden might have wel-
comed one of his brisk, fresh kisses on her hot cheek,
except that any wind would have blown up the thick
white dust. There was the warm apricot smell of the
gorse, which mocked the golden glory of the sun
with its shining flowers, round which the bees
hummed their never-ending song of happy labour,
and white and sulphur butterflies hovered in light-
hearted idleness.
The heather was not out yet to add its regal purple
to the gold of the gorse, and its buds only gave a
LOWBURN VICARAGE. II
bronze tint where the shoulder of the down raised it
against the blue of the sky.
You come on Lowburn quite suddenly when you
have begun to doubt the veracity of the mossy old
milestones the last of which announced the dis-
tance to that place as only one mile while on
ahead apparently the downs went on uninterrupt-
edly, gorse and heather, chalk road and cloud-shad-
ows and white sheep, till further orders.
And just as you are beginning to feel in despair,
and to use strong language, and to glance back at
the weary long road behind you, to be retraced if you
have come a fool's errand, lo and behold ! there is
Lowburn at your feet so that you might throw a
pebble down on to one of the thatched roofs that
cluster so snugly round the old church in the hollow.
And the road goes down at such a sharp pitch, that
an unwary rider or driver might get down to the bot-
tom, and into the pond there, uncomfortably quickly ;
and the road is worn into deep ruts by the heavy drags
the waggons put on, and the grunting squeak of the
locked wheels is a familiar sound in the village ears.
Approached from the other side, it is visible from a
greater distance, and the hill is not so abrupt, and to
right and left the valley spreads for a considerable dis-
tance, ultimately, on the left, opening on the sea, for,
as the name Lowburn implies, the valley is altogether
the work of the small stream that runs through the
village street. It is crossed by a plank bridge with a
hand-rail, and the children sail their walnut-shell boats
in it, and the ducks paddle about, and the women
12 ROB AND KIT.
throw their cabbage -stalks ; and altogether it is not
treated with the respect due to one who has carried
out engineering work on such a large scale, and in
the course of ages, scooped out so snug and sheltered
a nest for the Lowburn villagers.
And just as the roaring winter winds blow right
overhead and hardly stir the big myrtle by the Vicar-
age porch, so it seemed as if the winds of fashion were
also unfelt down in the hollow ; and the Lowburn folk
kept simpler, and life was less complicated than in the
outside world.
Smock-frocks lingered here long after they had be-
come something to stare and giggle at over at Sea-
down, and sun-bonnets of really ancient lineage and
unpretending ugliness altogether different from
the parvenu elegance brought into vogue by Kate
Greenaway.
When the young people of Lowburn tried their
wings and made a flutter out into the world, they had
to serve a cruel apprenticeship at first. But when once
they had served their time to the lord of this world
and come back to Lowburn, you would never believe
the patronizing airs they gave themselves, and what
fun they made of the old people and of the old ways.
" Such guys ! " or " cures ! " or whatever the pre-
vailing word of contempt might be. And this one
was so soft, and that one so old-fashioned, and the
whole place so dull and pokey and behind the time,
and no girl of spirit or up-to-date would stand it for
long together. But I have known some of these, who
would have been glad to creep back to the old place
LOWBURN VICARAGE. 13
when the tinsel had worn off, and the worthless dross
alone remained, and when they were drawing near to
the dark valley leading to that day of reckoning which
had seemed so far off when they first took service.
They had a yearning to enter that valley from the
dull, pokey, old-fashioned home rather than from
the glare and noise of great Babylon, and to lie in the
shade of the little high-shouldered, stumpy-towered
church, which looked so motherly in dreams of lonely
hearts far away, and whose little cracked bell sounded
the same kindly tone of welcome as the old folks at
home, bidding the wayfarers "Come in, and sit ye
down. I be downright glad to see ye."
But Rob Chambers received no such welcome
when, after getting down the hill in the anyhow
fashion peculiar to old Joe, he made his way along
the village street, past the church. He met no one
in the transit, except one large white duck, which
stood very tall on its yellow toes and flapped its
wings at him, with an outburst of quacking, no doubt
feeling that on him devolved the duty of keeping up
Lowburn's high character for hospitality. Even when
he turned in at the Vicarage gate, he found the whole
place as deserted as the village.
The gate was open, as also was the front door and
the windows, so that if any ill-conditioned person had
happened that way, he could have taken his pick of
all the Vicarage possessions, with no one to remon-
strate but a robin, who, perched on one of the
croquet hoops on the lawn, eyed Rob Chambers
suspiciously. The fact was, he had been trying a
14 ROB AND KIT.
little burglary on his own account, and therefore
suspected dishonest intentions in other people.
He had fluttered into the Vicar's study and perched
impudently on the open pages of the sermon which
was to admonish the Lowburn congregation on the
morrow. I am afraid he found it dry, as other peo-
ple occasionally did the good old Vicar's sermons;
for he hopped off with an irreverent twitch of the
tail, suggestive, if any one had been there to see, of
the flippant behaviour of some of our smart young
critics, who treat deep mysteries and grand old truths
with as little ceremony and as sublime contempt as
this pert little bird did the old Vicar's antiquated
theology.
The kitchen he found a more promising field of
operations, for much cutting of bread-and-butter had
lately taken place on the table there, the remains of
which, in inviting crumbs and buttery scraps, still lay
on the cloth; and the heart under that smart red
waistcoat must have beat high at the sight (robins'
hearts, like boys', being situated in their stomachs),
had not what might have been mistaken for a soft,
stout, tabby cushion on the hearthrug, suddenly de-
veloped a slit of topaz eye, which made Mr. Robin
all at once remember important business elsewhere
and seek the dining-room, where a few biscuit-crumbs
on the sideboard were a poor compensation for the
dangerous plenty in the kitchen.
Rob Chambers likewise took a survey of the down-
stair rooms, and then took Joe round into the stable-
yard, which was likewise deserted both by man and
LOWBURN VICARAGE. 15
beast, and put him into one of the stalls of the empty
stable, with such a feed of corn as Joe had not seen
in all the poor hungry days of his hardworking life.
And then Rob took his way across the kitchen
garden, and through a white gate in the clipped yew
hedge into the hayfield. For, of course, the explana-
tion of the deserted village and empty house was, that
everyone was hay-making. It was Saturday, and
there were signs of a change of weather: Lowburn
signs, much more dependable than the weather fore-
casts in the paper, or barometrical readings the
aching of old Nanny Cook's limbs, and the convulsive
braying of Master Miles' donkey, and the appearance
of the little man, at the doorway of the small cottage,
on the shelf at the Queen's Head, and the retirement
of his wife from the corresponding doorway. And as
there were these signs of a coming change, man,
woman, and child, not occupied in other hayfields,
turned out to carry the Vicar's hay, out of pure dis-
interested love, and not at all on account of the plen-
tiful tea and bread-and-butter provided for all these
volunteer workers, though such refreshment did not
come amiss.
They would not have felt easy in their minds to let
the parson's hay lie about through Sunday and such
a fine crop, too. The glebe meadow, " Parson's bit,"
as the people called it, was the best land in the par-
ish ; and the people felt a personal pride in the size
of the rick that was made off it, and felt a sensation
akin to indignation when any mishap reduced the
amount or lessened the sweet value of it.
1 6 ROB AND KIT.
Old Nanny Cook had even been heard to express
the sentiment that, " seeing as how it was the par-
son's," and in a way sacred, it would be quite ex-
cusable to finish off the last of it on Sunday morning,
rather than that it should get spoilt by the rain. She
hastened, however, to add for the benefit of the star-
ing youngsters aghast at the suggestion of such
Sabbath breaking that all other work was, of course,
out of the question, and would infallibly be punished,
as in the case of the man who gathered sticks on that
day and was forthwith carried up to the moon, where
he is to be seen to this day, and his dog, too, as a
warning to irreligious children.
But as Rob Chambers passes through the kitchen
garden and opens the white gate into the hayfield, I
must ask the reader to look at him again, and then, if
he will take the trouble to refer back to the descrip-
tion of him in the first chapter for I do not want
him to think that I have changed my tone abruptly, or
that my courage has failed me at the prospect of con-
ducting such a very unprepossessing hero through the
ups and downs of my story. It is not so, dear reader ;
it is only that in the first chapter I was looking at him
with his father's eyes, cold and critical, through those
gold -edged glasses, and now, as he comes out into
the hayfield, I see him with a pair of blue eyes that
looked at him from the top of a hay-cart, joggling
slowly across to the rick in the corner. Curly hair
has to be cleared away from before those blue eyes to
see more plainly, and a very battered old straw hat
pushed back ; and the little brown hand that was not
LOWBURN VICARAGE. I?
holding the heavy hayfork, had to shade them from
the dazzle of the sun, before the owner of them called
out in a clear, ringing, young voice
" Why, it's Rob ! Rob, Rob, we thought you were
never coming ! "
You do not know, reader, or perhaps you do, what
it is to look at the world from the top of a haycart,
with the eyes of seventeen. It is such a beautiful
world from that point of view, altogether a different
sort of place to what we see plodding along the dusty
ways of life, with our eyes turned inwards into that
dreary, monotonous little plot of ground ourselves.
And so Bottom is transformed ! you say. Yes, if you
like to have it so, for it was the love in Titania's eyes
that turned the rough weaver, even with the donkey's
ears, into her " gentle joy." And the same spell is
working every day around us wherever a mother
gazes with rapture on a poor little red morsel of hu-
manity, and thinks nothing has ever been created like
it, though it is not a hundredth part as pretty and
intelligent as a young pig.
As Rob appeared to those blue eyes, he was a very
pleasant looking young fellow, tall and broad shoul-
dered and long limbed, and his face was as bright and
smiling as a midsummer sun \ and if his mouth was
wide, it was all the better for smiling with a use for
a mouth that Dr. Chambers did not take into account
when he was reckoning up Rob's defects.
"" And he has awfully nice little eyes," Kit used to
say emphatically, when describing my hero; "they
are as blue as that cornflower. Mine look regular
1 8 ROB AND KIT.
washed out, boiled gooseberries, by the side of them.
And they're as clear as anything, and can't tell a lie
if he tries. Don't you remember that day when he
wouldn't say my nose was red, when it was? And he
couldn't look me in the face, and I made him look
me straight in my eyes, and then out came the truth
with a pop, though it hurt him to say what he thought
rude."
Well, her nose was not red to-day, except for the
general warm sunburn over her soft, creamy skin ; and
if Rob had been called on to speak the truth about
Kit's appearance, it would have been very pleasant
truth, for she was looking as pretty as could be, though
looks had not been taken into account at all. She had
only a cotton frock, pinned back in a very uncom-
promising style over a dark blue petticoat, and her
sleeves turned up to her dimpled elbows, and a bat-
tered old hat, in the band of which a bunch of
withered buttercups only added to the shabby, lopsided
effect. You could not chop up Kit Brownlow into
separate little squares and say this, that, or the other,
was her principal charm, for they all fitted into one
another, and could not be separated ; but certainly,
one of them was her utter absence of self-conscious-
ness, and the simple spontaneity in everything she did,
or said, or looked, and so you may be sure there was
nothing of the pretty haymaker about her as a studied
part, and if there was anything pretty about it, it was
quite by accident.
Rob did not recognize, for the first minute or two,
that the old man at the horse's head was the Vicar
LOWBURN VICARAGE. 19
himself, or that the horse was Dimple, the fat Vicarage
pony, into whose stall Joe had found his way as into
Paradise, and whose plentiful feed of corn was finding
its way as fast as Joe's teeth could grind them, between
those thin ribs of his.
Dimple, in spite of years and stoutness, had little
ways and manners of his own only understood by his
master, and in his heart of hearts felt a little aggrieved
at being in a cart, and would have resented the ordi-
nary cart-horse conversation, " gee whoop " and
" whoa." And the Vicar, having tender consideration
for the feeling of beast as well as man, consoled him
with a hand on the rein and reasonable remarks,
such as a horse of any education understands and
appreciates.
It was not surprising that Rob did not recognize
the Vicar without his coat, and with a red cotton
handkerchief tucked into his shapeless grey felt hat,
to protect the back of his neck from the sun's rays.
And, I am afraid, that some of the clergy, in their ir-
reproachable broadcloth and spotless linen, might have
taken exception at his grey flannel shirt- sleeves, and
have thought them unbecoming to his office, and his
position altogether undignified.
But his own parishioners would have been quite
surprised at any suggestion of the sort ; and if he had
chosen to go up into the pulpit in the same attire, they
would have listened with the same ignorant respect
and reverent inattention as they generally accorded
him.
There were others of the Vicarage family here and
20 ROB AND KIT.
there about the field, gradually come upon and rec-
ognized by Rob in the course of his labours, for he
was hard at work before he had been ten minutes
there. There was Nellie, with abnormally long black
legs which gave a certain bird-like appearance, height-
ened by a long neck and a habit of holding her head
on one side, like a thrush listening for worms ; but on
this occasion head and neck were hidden by a large
lavender sun-bonnet, with a voluminous curtain that
came down well over her shoulders.
There was Tibby, which (would anyone believe
it?) is the short for Philip short and stout and
roundabout. And Christy, a dainty little Dresden
china maiden of six, wielding the largest, heaviest rake
to be found, and prettily patronizing and protecting
baby Jack, who was told off to prevent Bogey, the
Vicarage dog, from beginning tea prematurely, and
who was discovered, I am sorry to say, asleep at his
post of duty, and Bogey licking his lips suspiciously
beside him.
Now you have the whole family : Kit and Nellie,
Tibby, Christy and Jack and the family is scarcely
complete without reckoning Bogey, who was not to be
overlooked, being a dog of much character and a
mongrel of the purest breed.
EDEN. 21
CHAPTER III.
EDEN.
" Ah ! years may come and years may bring
The truth that is not bliss.
But will they bring another thing
That can compare with this ? "
CLOUGH.
MRS. BROWNLOW, or Madam, as the villagers
called her, had died when Jack was born ; but
her loss was not the overwhelming disaster that the
death of a mother usually is in a family more crush-
ing, perhaps, as regards the children, than the loss of
the father.
She was a gentle, colourless creature, who from bad
health and general inefficiency, faded out of the active
interests of life long before she actually passed away.
She had been a good many years younger than her
husband, who had always treated her as a child, and
petted and humoured her, and the children took up
the same line ; and Kit was quite motherly in her
bearing as the feeble life drew to an end, and even
little Tibby, only five when his mother died, would
condescend in the funniest way to her weakness, and
let her beat him in the simple games that even then
seemed babyish to him, and would listen with exem-
22 ROB AND KIT.
plary patience to the little stories she would tell him
in baby language, which he would have considered
insulting from any one else.
They were all very loyal to her and now that she
was gone, they added all sorts of virtues, and sweet-
ness, and charm, to their memory of her, and kept her
grave always trim and gay with flowers ; and taught
little Jack tender little stories of what mother said and
did, till he had a vision of her, like the sweet maiden
mother in the Bible picture-book ; and he cried when
Nellie, in a thoughtless moment, showed him a photo-
graph of her in a crinoline, with her hair in a chenille
net, and leaning against a Corinthian column.
And in passing, do you not think, reader, that it
would be as well if old photographs were burnt every
four or five years ?
Kit had begun to bear the keys of housekeeping at
such an early age, that the burden of them did not
weigh oppressively upon her when her mother's merely
nominal share in household duties finally ceased ; and
moreover, these duties were much lightened by the
presence in the house of nurse, who ruled them all
the Vicar included, with a rod of iron and did the
work of six, and was honest and trustworthy and de-
voted, and thoroughly disagreeable when she was cross
or had the toothache. She and Kit always got on well
together, for Kit and Jack were her special favourites
Kit having been her first baby, and Jack being her
present one ; added to which, Kit had never been the
least bit afraid of her such fearlessness being the
surest protection against tyrants.
EDEN. 23
" She was always a daring little monkey," nurse used
to say.
But Kit would come after her when none of the
others ventured to come near her, so appalling was
the grumpiness. She would worry and coax and perch
herself on an unwilling knee, and forcibly turn round
a very sour, displeased countenance, and force gloomy,
frowning eyes to meet hers, which nurse resisted as
long as she could, knowing that, when once she met
Kit's sweet eyes, looking so sunny and coaxing, she
would not be able to keep back that twitch at the
corner of the mouth, which betrayed that she was
vanquished, and which was generally followed by
" There, Miss Kit, go along with you do, and don't
hinder ! And if you want a cake made for tea there
ain't a minute to lose."
Nurse was cook, and most other things as well, in
the Vicarage establishment : lady's maid, to brush
Kit's silken curls ; valet to the master ; house parlour-
maid, with a strong dash of the butler in pantry-
work; "tweenie," whatever that mysterious domestic
may be, whose name is beginning to creep into adver-
tisements ; but whatever the duties of a tweenie, I
have no doubt nurse was capable of them. She was
head gardener when old Fry had an attack of rheu-
matics, which, according to nurse, was closely con-
nected with prolonged visits to the Queen's Head ;
and, by the way, she could preach a good practical
sermon to the mind all the time she was rubbing in
liniment to the body. She was occasionally coach-
man when Dimple had to be driven to meet the Vicar
24 ROB AND KIT.
at some outlying part of the parish ; and the poultry
yard was almost entirely managed by her, even to the
happy despatch of cocks and hens required for the
Vicarage table ; and the children darkly suspected that
she had a hand in the death of the pig, whose heart-
rending cries roused them early one morning from
their slumbers. She certainly superintended the cut-
ting up, as if butchering had been a principal study
and occupation all her life.
At the present moment nurse was head hay-maker,
marshalling a row of rakers in a masterly way, as
they raked up the hay into cocks out of the long
windrows.
No gossiping was possible under nurse's Argus
eyes, no pleasant pause at the end of a row to lean
on their rakes, and exchange a few remarks and wipe
hot foreheads. Still less to have unnecessarily fre-
quent recourse to the stone bottle of beer, lying so
temptingly under the elm, with blue and drab mugs
all ready for use.
The Vicar's hospitable mind was a little disturbed
by nurse's martinet treatment of the workers in the
field, who, though inefficient, and including among
their numbers the maimed, the halt, and the blind,
were all of them volunteers, and came out of sheer
good- will; and he was rather relieved when it was
necessary for her to go and see after the tea, which
was a big function at the Vicar's hay-making.
"Though what good all them children do about
the place," nurse said grudgingly, " I'm sure I don't
know, nor some of the older folks neither. There's
EDEN. 25
that old Martha Tippets, as ain't been inside the
church not since last hay-making, and always the first
after the beer, and puts down her rake before she've
well begun." And so on, till nurse's grumblings died
away in the distance.
Rob felt a little as if some of nurse's shafts were
aimed at him, though he had been working with great
diligence, and had refused to be beguiled by Tibby
and Christy, who had found a young hawk, which
returned their blandishments with such vigorous
use of hooked beak and sharp spurs, that Tibby's
fingers were much the worse for his treatment.
Tibby had to give up this ferocious, wild-eyed
treasure to go in and assist nurse, being distinguished
by nurse's preference as an aide-de-camp on such
occasions, which was a great distinction, and imparted
much importance and dignity to the short broad back
and patched knickerbockers which went bustling off
after nurse.
" Girls are such duffers," he explained to Rob,
having called his attention to the exalted position he
was called upon to fill ; " and you see only me and
nurse understand that boiler. If you don't look
awfully sharp the water gets smoked, and nurse says
it's not a bit of use trusting Annie that's our new
girl, you know she's no more head than a pin ;
and she won't have Nellie inside the wash-house door
ever since she nearly fell into the boiler reaching for
something the other side."
Tibby took a personal pride in that tea, and saun-
tered from time to time round the big circle of tea-
26 ROB AND KIT.
drinkers to hear what they thought of it ; and he felt
a little bit hurt when a third or even a fourth cup was
declined, and wanted to know if it was not sweet
enough, or what fault they had to find with it.
I am told that " to five o'clock" has become a re-
ceived French verb, and does not at all depend on
the hour at which it takes place, so that you may
receive an invitation to come and five o'clock at half-
past four. But at Lowburn, if such a solid square
meal can be reckoned as afternoon tea, they five
o'clocked at three. It was not a minute too soon for
the tastes of the people, and the shade of the big elm
tree was just large enough to take them all in, though
before the last load was carried, it had crept right
across to the yew hedge.
Rob had had no luncheon, so he was quite ready
for it, and Tibby found him most satisfactory in his
appreciation of the tea; and Jack kept him well
supplied with thick bread and butter and plum cake
that being Jack's special department going
round and round the circle with large dishes, fol-
lowed closely by Bogey with an eye to the occasional
avalanches of cake, which ensued when Jack's atten-
tion was distracted from the solemn necessity of
keeping a strictly horizontal position with the dish.
Rob had been working with Kit all the time,
raking after her in the long rows, tossing up the
hay to her on the cart, or receiving it from her on
the rick; and now he was having tea luxuriously
stretched at her feet, and the big fern frond she
was using to drive off the flies was used for his
EDEN. 27
benefit as well, and occasionally for tickling his ears,
which, as we know, were prominent features.
Nurse would not allow tea to be indefinitely pro-
longed, as some of the workers seemed to wish, but
hurried them back to their work, making an ex-
ception, however, as regards the Vicarage family
themselves."
" There ain't no call for you to work yourselves
into such a heat, and Miss Nellie there safe for one
of them bad headaches, if she don't take care ; and
there ain't no more than a good two hours' work if
folks would just turn to and get through with it.
So just you bide there till we've fetched up the
further end, and then the sun will be off this side,
and you'll be fresh to help in with the lave of it."
They were not loth to let themselves be per-
suaded ; and the Vicar, even though not expressly
addressed or included in nurse's advice or command,
settled himself on the big cock which Tibby and
Christy had specially heaped for his comfort. He
was a little dozy with the heat and the soft purr of
the wood-pigeons in the elm tree overhead, while
just beyond him Nellie's black legs were all that
was visible, to the naked eye, of that young lady,
the rest of her being buried in hay; but they con-
veyed the impression of great rest, being crossed
like the legs of crusaders on a tomb, and the
crusading effect was heightened by Bogey asleep at
her feet.
Christy and Tibby were much too absorbed in
the young hawk to take any rest, and, moreover, I
28 ROB AND KIT.
do not think children between the ages of six and
twelve ever go to sleep in the day-time unless they
are ill ; but then they make up for it at night and
how they do sleep then !
Jack went from one to the other, assisting with
the hawk till he got one fat finger pecked, when he
retired, with rather a quivering under-lip, to sit on
the hay above Nellie, till subterranean remonstrances
and earthquakes dislodged him, when he took refuge
with his father. Settling the grey felt hat at a less
jaunty angle on the clerical head, removing spectacles
from very sleepy eyes that certainly did not require
their aid just at present, and trying them on his own
very wide-awake round eyes, and snubby little nose ;
and he was proceeding to burrow after the loudly
ticking silver watch, which made its presence evident
from some inner sanctuary, when Kit called him
away.
Rob was lying flat on his back looking up among
the great solid old branches of the elm tree, and the
depth of green leaves through which here and there
showed lakes of sapphire blue sky, and across the
leafy coolness of which shot shafts of sunlight full of
myriad insect life invisible in the shadows ; and one
adventurous little ray found its way down between
gnarled branches and thick foliage, right down on
to Kit's bright head, from which she had taken the
hat. I have said that Rob was staring up into the
elm tree, but half the staring found its way to Kit's
face, which bore his gaze as serenely as only perfect
innocence, or perfect insolence could do.
EDEN. 29
Rob was not at all poetical or imaginative, as his
father would freely have testified ; but even to him
there seemed something idyllic in lying there on the
fragrant hay in the shade of that grand old tree, in
which the wood-pigeons drowsily cooed, and to look
up into Kit's face smiling so sweet and fair and
kindly.
" Eden must have been something like this," he
thought dreamily ; " but .in this Eden at Lowburn
there's no serpent to upset all the jolliness."
And, just then, Tibby's shrill little voice piped
out
" I say, Kit, have you told Rob about Stuart
Sinclair?"
30 ROB AND KIT.
CHAPTER IV.
EARLY DAYS.
" In all this world ne was ther non him like
To speke of phisike and of surgerie
He was a veray parfite practisour."
CHAUCER.
ROB CHAMBERS had made the acquaintance
of the Brownlows when he was a small boy
of six. He had had the measles or mumps, or
something troublesome and infectious without being
dangerous, and had been sent with his nurse to con-
valesce at a cottage on the shore near the coast-
guard station on the coast, near the place where the
little stream, to which Lowburn owes its name and
its snug shelter scooped out of the wind-swept downs,
dribbles ignominiously into the sea.
It was a hot summer that year, too, and Mrs.
Brownlow was laid up with one of those long and
tedious illnesses that preceded or succeeded the
birth of most of her babies. Mr. Brownlow used to
pull her chair down to the little bay, to get what air
there was over the sea; and she would lie there,
under a rough sort of tent he had constructed, till
he came to bring her dinner, and to fetch her home
in the cool of the evening.
EARLY DAYS. 31
It meant a good deal of heat and exertion for the
Vicar, but he thought nothing of that as long as there
was a little shade of pink in his wife's cheeks, and
a little less heavy languor in her eyes. He used most
days to bring down Kit, who, though only three at
that time, was a very capable little person, and could
fetch and carry and wait on her mother, and was to
be reckoned on not to get into mischief, but to amuse
herself in safe and reasonable ways.
Rob watched them from afar for the first day or
two, and Mrs. Brownlow rather resented his presence
in the bay, which she had grown to consider her own
private property. But Kit was a sociable creature, and
soon made friends with the staring, round-eyed boy
with big ears sticking out ; and after that he became
her devoted slave, and for her amusement dug holes
or built castles or caught little crabs, or made small
boats and sailed them in the great green pools among
the rocks.
By-and-by he was promoted to assisting with the
chair, and being a strong-built, sturdy little fellow,
his help to get the chair up the steep little path from
the beach was really a perceptible assistance, and not
the fly-on- the- wheel business that Kit's was, though
she set her teeth and pushed and struggled, and put
all her baby strength into it, and arrived at the top
very hot and out of breath, but triumphant at having
helped " fader."
And when a wet day came, and Mrs. Brownlow
did not go down to the shore, and Kit was pitying
" boy," as she called him, for being all alone with
32 ROB AND KIT.
that nice little boat that he had nearly finished the
day before, "boy" suddenly appeared before the
Vicarage windows, dripping and red- faced, and in-
clined to hide when he was observed, and to run
away when the Vicar went out to bring him in.
But he was caught and handed over to nurse to be
dried, and he reappeared in an extraordinary cos-
tume of an old coat of the Vicar's and a red flannel
petticoat of his wife's, while his own garments dried
before the kitchen fire. Mrs. Brownlow laughed so
much at his appearance that she forgot all about hei
own ailments for ever so long, and was all the bettei
for it for it is wonderful how ailments grow by
contemplation.
Having once found his way to the Vicarage, Rob
spent a good part of his time there, when Mrs.
Brownlow and Kit did not come down to the shore ;
and as the maid, who was supposed to be in charge
of him, was carrying on a very interesting flirtation
with one of the coastguards, she had no objection to
Rob being amused and looked after by other people.
From time to time Dr. Chambers paid a perfunc-
tory visit to see how his son was getting on, duly
notifying his coming to Sarah beforehand, being too
wise a man to pop down unexpectedly on any of his
domestics, and place them at an unfair disadvantage.
So, accordingly, he always found Rob in a spot-
lessly clean suit and collar, and with smooth hair,
and Sarah mending one of his stockings sitting in
the porch, as if there was not a coastguard within a
hundred miles.
EARLY DAYS. 33
Dr. Chambers was not, of course, taken in by this
little scene ; but there was never any deception
about Rob, and his robust health and earnest wish
to stop at the bay was evident to the most casual
glance. As Dr. Chambers was not consumed with
anxiety to have the child home, he was well con-
tented to let his stay run on indefinitely till well into
the autumn ; so that the friendship between Kit and
Rob was firmly established by the time he went back
to Seadown.
The next year he came again but did not stay so
long, as another coastguard had arisen who knew not
Sarah ; and that young person discovered that Low-
burn Bay was a horrid, dull place, and " them coast-
guard fellows " a low set, and their wives " trumpery
such as no respectable girl could have anything to
do with." And she kept up a persistent small agita-
tion till they were recalled home, in spite of Rob's
protestations.
And the next year, so great an influence have ser-
vants on the affairs of life, though we do not always
recognize it, Rob would not have gone at all, and
perhaps he and Kit might have met no more, had
not Mr. Brownlow invited him to the Vicarage.
The Vicar had brought his wife over to Seadown
to consult Dr. Chambers, whose medical reputation
had spread even to Lowburn ; and he might have
gone back without in any way connecting the suave,
elegantly-mannered doctor, who conveyed so little
hope or comfort in such honeyed words, with the
blunt, plain, little boy with big ears and staring
3
34 ROB AND KIT.
truthful eyes, had not Rob himself appeared on the
scene.
He came blundering out of the dining-room just as
the Brownlovvs were being shown out, though it was
Altogether forbidden to be in the way when patients
were entering or leaving the consulting-room.
Mr. and Mrs. Brownlow were in that uncertain
state which sometimes follows an interview with the
doctor. The sentence had been pronounced in such
ambiguous though elegant terms, and with such a
smiling and utterly expressionless face, that they were
each waiting to see how the other took it, before
giving way to hope or despair.
Mrs. Brownlow was nervously twisting the pre-
scription in her fingers, and her husband feeling in
his waistcoat pocket, where a guinea had been a few
minutes before, which was there no longer.
But Rob's appearance distracted their minds from
hope or fear.
" I never see that boy," Mrs. Brownlow said,
" without remembering how ridiculous he looked that
day in your old coat and my petticoat."
Rob was so unfeignedly pleased to see them his
feelings were always unfeigned and not very quietly
expressed that Dr. Chambers opened his consult-
ing-room door to see the cause of the commotion,
and found Rob with one arm round Mrs. Brownlow
and the other holding her husband's arm and press-
ing them to come in and have tea : a rough-and-
ready meal that had just been brought in on a tray,
with a cup of weak, sloppy tea, and a plate of very
EARLY DAYS. 35
thick bread and butter a very different meal to the
dainty afternoon tea with which Dr. Chambers occa-
sionally regaled his lady patients.
"Rob !" said Dr. Chambers in astonishment.
He disliked the abbreviated name intensely, but
circumstances which in this case, as in many others,
mean servants were too strong for him, and he had
to relinquish Robert as a bad job.
Rob's arms at once dropped to his sides, and his
eager, hospitable tongue stopped its persuasions. His
mouth was silenced in the middle of a word, remain-
ing half open.
Mr. Brownlow hastened to explain that they had
made Rob's acquaintance at Lowburn Bay, and that
he and their little girl were great friends.
" And Kit will be looking out for us," he went on
to Rob ; " and she won't have tea till we come, so
we must make haste home. Won't you let your boy
come over and stay with us a bit?" he said to the
doctor, " as he tells us that he is not coming to the
bay this year. Lowburn is a very quiet, out-of-the-
way place, but we will take good care of him."
"Thanks very much," said the doctor; "it is too
good of you to propose such a thing, but "
" We should like him to come. Good-bye, Rob, I
shall tell Kit you are coming."
Dr. Chambers bowed them out with many courte-
ous expressions of thanks and adieu, while Rob stood
with his mouth open and his hands in his pockets,
without a word.
But just as Mr. Brownlow was driving out of Sea-
36 ROB AND KIT.
down in the seedy old four-wheeler they had borrowed
for the afternoon, the boy came running breathless
and bareheaded after them.
" I say," he panted, " write to him and say you
want me to come, or he won't let me. You do want
me to come, don't you? And it's not humbug, like
it is when he asks people to dinner and says, 'Thank
goodness ! ' when they refuse."
And as they drove home through the gathering
dusk, Mr. Brownlow, as is the manner of good men,
thought less of the want of sincerity in the doctor,
patent even to his young son for " to his own
Master he standeth or falleth," than of his own
life and conduct, lest little Kit should ever feel that
about him. Surely it would be better that a millstone
were round his neck and he drowned in the deep of
the sea than that he should offend one of God's
little ones little Kit with her great truthful, trustful
eyes.
AN INTRODUCTION. 37
CHAPTER V.
AN INTRODUCTION.
" We live together day by day,
And some chance look or tone
Lights up with instantaneous ray
An inner world unknown."
LORD HOUGHTON.
SINCE then Rob's visits to Lowburn Vicarage had
been frequent, and for one pleasant six months
before he went to school, he was there as a pupil,
and learnt more in those six months than he ever did
before or since.
But the Vicar had not sufficient confidence in his
own powers to undertake Rob's further instruction,
and the doctor had not at that time relinquished all
his hopes for Rob's future or become resigned as
he was at the time my story begins to his son's
invincible ignorance; so perhaps, he lost the one
chance there might have been of overcoming that
ignorance by Mr. Brownlow's kind and patient, and,
no doubt, somewhat muddling method.
But never a holiday time passed without Rob find-
ing his way frequently over to Lowburn ; so it is no
wonder that he knew his way so "well that hot mid-
summer day, and took up his position so easily as
one of the Vicarage family in the hay-field.
38 ROB AND KIT.
But having brought up Rob's friendship with the
Brownlows to the present date, I must go back to
Tibby's remarks about Stuart Sinclair.
Whether it was the name occurring just as Rob
.was comparing Lowburn to Eden with this advan-
tage to the latter that it had no serpent or whether
it was the sibilant sound of the name, I do not know,
but Stuart Sinclair was curiously associated in Rob's
mind with the serpent who worked our first parents
such deadly ill. And then, too, when the fern-leaf,
which fell suddenly on to Rob's face when Tibby
spoke, had been raised, and Rob could see Kit's face
again, there was an odd little look on it, which Rob,
in all his staring experience, had never seen on it
a little, conscious, shy look that was very pretty, but
that Rob did not altogether admire, he could not tell
why.
"Oh yes, Rob; I was going to tell you about a
visitor that's coming to see us. We haven't had any
one to stay in the house for such a long time, I feel
quite frightened. And Nurse is in such a fuss about
the spare bedroom, though I dare say in California
they don't have everything so very elegant, and get
on very well without toilette muslins and bath cloths."
" California ? "
"Yes, that's where he's coming from. Christy
and Jack and I have been doing California for the
geography lesson ever since the letter came ; for they
hadn't an idea where it was, and I was not so very
sure, and Tibby thought it was one of the Roman
emperors."
AN INTRODUCTION. 39
Rob laughed derisively at the idea, though he was
not very much the wiser.
" But who is he? "
" You didn't know that we had an uncle out there,
did you?"
" Oh-h-h ! " with much undefined relief from
Rob, there being a harmless sound about that rela-
tionship.
"Uncle Philip, you know. Tibby's named after
him."
" But I thought you said the name was Stuart
something? "
"So it is. It isn't Uncle Philip himself that's
coming, but a friend of his."
" Uncle Philip wrote a long letter about him," put
in Tibby, " and "
" We never heard about Uncle Philip," Kit rather
hastily interrupted, " because, you know, I fancy he
had been rather a trouble to father in the old days
before I can quite remember."
Kit lowered her voice and glanced across at the
Vicar; but she might have spared herself the pre-
caution, for he was having a nice, little nap, and
was quite out of reach of the conversation going on
on the neighbouring haycock.
" I don't quite know what it was ; but Nurse says
he was unfortunate about money, and poor mother
was ill, and there were the babies to be thought of.
Nurse says he was a very nice sort of gentleman and
very fond of children, and he took a great deal of
notice of me ; and I almost think I can remember a
40 ROB AND KIT.
little about it, but I'm not quite sure. But, at last,
he went quite away and no letters came from him ;
and father was anxious about him and worried more
than he did, even when Uncle Philip was always
coming to ask his help. And then, after a few years,
father heard from him from California, just a few
lines, saying he was settled there for the present, but
did not know if he should stay. And then nothing
more, though father wrote several times, till a few
days ago, when he wrote and said that he was on his
way home, but had been taken ill at New York ; and
though he was better and hoped soon to be well
enough to continue his journey, he was giving an
introduction to a friend of his, Stuart Sinclair, who
was coming to England, and would arrive very soon
after we got the letter, and he would come to
Lowburn and give us all his news."
" And he said," burst in Tibby, interrupted again
by Kit.
"Uncle Philip says he was not well enough to
write at any length, but that Mr. Sinclair will tell
all about him. We think from the letter father
and I think," Kit went on, sagely, "that he has been
getting on better, as he does not say a word about
any help, and he writes from some big hotel, and as
if he were being well cared for. But we shall hear
all about it when this friend of his comes. But I
say ! " Kit exclaimed, jumping to her feet, " how
lazy we are ! and there is another load coming up
from the end of the meadow."
"Yes, to be sure, my dear," responded the Vicar,
AN INTRODUCTION. 41
with much liveliness. " I wasn't asleep, though I
dare say you thought so, but only resting my eyes
the sun dazzles them a little. I could hear all you
were talking about. But you must tell Rob about
the visitor we are expecting. It's quite an event
for us, you know and a visitor from America, too.
Why," at sight of broad grins from his disrespectful
family, " have you been telling him about Stuart
Sinclair? Then I must have dozed off for a minute,
after all."
"Tibby," said Kit, "fly across and help with
Dimple. He's showing off airs and graces."
But Tibby was not going to be done out of im-
parting the piece of information he had been trying
to edge in every time Kit paused. So he fell behind,
to give Rob his hay- fork, and took the opportunity to
tell him.
" Do you know what Uncle Philip said about this
Stuart Sinclair? Why, that he was a very nice, young
fellow, and would make a good husband for Kit.
Fancy what a lark Kit having a young man !
She gets into a regular rage at the idea, and says it's
all a pack of nonsense ; but you see, Rob, Kit's get-
ting on now and she's not bad looking," with the
disparaging air of a brother ; " and many girls of her
age have young men. There's Bessie Jones, who's
not as old as Kit, and has an awful squint "
But just then Kit made a speaking-trumpet of her
two little brown hands, and shouted to Rob to come
and help at the rick, guessing the purport of Tibby's
interesting communication to Rob, which produced a
42 ROB AND KIT.
heightened colour in that youth, and a furtive, wistful
look in the eyes that followed Kit so persistently.
" Don't you wish," Tibby said, the next time he
came across Rob, in the course of their labours
" don't you wish that fellow Sinclair would turn up
this evening, so that you could have a look at him? "
No answer was, happily, necessary to this question,
as the hay-cart passed on with Tibby on the top
out of reach of a reply; for, honestly, Rob wished
that that fellow Sinclair should never turn up at all,
and he might have blurted out this ill-natured desire,
and surprised Tibby, who would have been altogether
unable to understand the reason for it.
But although Tibby's fervent wish that Stuart Sin-
clair should make his appearance at Lowburn that
evening was not gratified exactly, Rob, curiously
enough, made his acquaintance before next day
dawned, though it was outside the limits of his Eden,
Lowburn, that he found the serpent, if serpent Stuart
Sinclair was.
The Vicar's hay was carried triumphantly by sun-
set, and, though the sky was crimson from west to
east, and, as is well known " the red sky at night is
the shepherd's delight," and betokens fine weather
on the morrow, the great green rick-cloth was drawn
over the fragrant, substantial rick, so that there might
be no ill-feeling against Providence, if any of the
Lowburn folk woke in the night, which was not likely,
as they were all so tired, and heard the rain patter
down on the tiles.
The moon was rising over the edge of the down
AN INTRODUCTION. 43
when all was done, and they gave three cheers for the
Vicar, and sang the evening hymn, before they went
away. I am afraid Nurse sang the lines
" Sleep that may me more vigorous make,
To serve my God when I awake,"
rather pointedly at Martha Tippets, who was certainly
remiss in attending church.
And then the Vicarage party went across the shaven
meadow, where the dew was gathering thickly, with
Nurse hurrying on ahead to get the supper ready.
Kit and Nellie had each one of the Vicar's arms.
He was tired, though he would not own it; and
Tibby and Christy had linked on to Nellie, while Rob,
carrying Jack on his back, walked beside Kit, who
put her hand on his arm to make the line complete.
And thus they straggled slowly across the meadow in
pleasant, friendly fashion, till the wicket in the yew-
hedge broke up the line, and they could see the light
shining from the dining-room window, and supper
was nearly ready, with the magic that Nurse was able
to wield when she did what she called " striking a
bustle."
And, after supper, Rob set off on his ride home on
old Joe, who was quite skittish after his unusually
good meal and with the prospect of going home,
though the home was not one for which any one else
would have cared much. And, by the way, reader,
how wonderful that home feeling is, in man and
beast a poor, damp, back kitchen, with dirt and
starvation, is a " little 'ome," very bitter to give up to
44 ROB AND KIT.
go to the work-house infirmary, which, to an unpreju-
diced eye, belonging, it is unnecessary to say, to a
person who has not to go there, appears comfort and
luxury. And how a poor, starved, ill-treated cat
will go back miles, sometimes, to a place where she
has never had any kindness, and is by no means
welcome.
So old Joe wagged his stump of a tail, and jogged
bravely along in the moonlight, and even got up
enough spirit to shy at the black shadow cast over
the road by a ragged furze bush.
There was no other wayfarer along the lonely road
till Rob came in sight of the lights of Seadown, and
then it was mostly of the Saturday-night order men
making a devious way home with greatly diminished
week's wages in their pockets, and uncertainty as to
which side of Rob and his steed they would pass.
But it was not among these that Rob lighted on
Stuart Sinclair, but on his return home, after safely
bestowing Joe in the dilapidated shed which served
him for a stable.
Hearing voices in the dining-room, and smelling
the unaccustomed odour of tobacco in the air, he
concluded that his father had some friend with him, and
debated whether he would not go straight up to bed ;
but, on second thoughts, went into the dining-room,
dusty and rough and unkempt from his long ride.
" Well, if you want to hear all about the Brownlows,
here's the very man for you. Rob, this is Mr. Stuart
Sinclair."
GOOD COMPANY. 45
CHAPTER VI.
GOOD COMPANY.
" His eyes full of merry simplicity, his words of hearty companion-
ableness." SIDNEY.
STUART SINCLAIR was a tall, slight man, whose
cleanly-shaven face made him at first sight look
younger than he was, and a casual observer might
have set him down almost as a boy and a good-
looking boy too.
It was these good looks that Rob objected to most
in him, and an easy assurance of manner that Rob
grudgingly owned was very attractive.
He seemed to have already established himself in
Dr. Chambers' good graces to an extent unparalleled
in Rob's experience, seeing that it had carried him
so far as to allow of smoking in the dining-room. If
he had been ugly, and awkward, and middle-aged,
Rob would have received him with open arms, and
undertaken to escort him over to Lowburn with the
greatest pleasure in life.
But from the very first view of him, through the
delicate curls of smoke, lying back in an indolent,
careless attitude in the armchair, and turning a smiling,
interested face towards the new-comer, Rob was
convinced that the man was exactly what Kit would
46 ROB AND KIT.
admire ; and Tibby's confidences and Kit's efforts to
restrain them, came back painfully into his mind.
And the more he unwillingly admired the man, and
the unstudied grace of his movements, and his pleas-
ant, genial manner with just a sufficient touch of
deference to Dr. Chambers and his ready, frank
laugh, so much the more awkward and uncouth and
silent did Rob become, sitting clumsily on the edge
of a chair near the door, painfully conscious of his
dusty boots and limp shirt collar, out of which the
hay-making had taken all the starch, and of bits of
hay adhering to his hair and coat, and of his big red
hands not over clean. He was aware, too, of his
father's critical eye noticing all these details, and
comparing them with the stranger who was certainly
a striking contrast in every particular.
" Mr. Sinclair wants to hear about Mr. Brownlow
and his family," Dr. Chambers said. " Mr. Sinclair,
it appears, became acquainted with a brother of Mr.
Brownlow's in California, travelled part of the way
home with him, and promised him to come and look
up his relations, as the old gentleman is detained at
New York by illness."
" Oh ! " said Rob.
He could not for the life of him think of anything
to say, and he knew he looked very idiotic, and could
hear the irritability in his father's tone as he went
on.
" I have been telling Mr. Sinclair that you know
them quite well, and can tell him all about them."
"Yes," said Bob, with his eyes wildly roving round
GOOD COMPANY. 47
the room in search of some intelligent remark, which
was not to be extracted, however, from the gilt cornice
over the window, or the big engraving of one of Land-
seer's pictures on the wall.
He wished, desperately, that he had stuck to his
first intention of going straight up to bed, or that some
excuse would offer itself for bolting out of the room
even the schoolboy excuse of nose-bleeding presenting
itself to his perturbed mind.
But the stranger himself came to the rescue with a
kindliness that Rob appreciated while he resented it.
" It's rather a large order, isn't it, to be called upon
to tell all you know about any one ? But Dr. Cham-
bers tells me they are great chums of yours ; and the
old gentleman over there did not seem to know much
about them, not even how many there were of them."
I do not think, if Rob had been paid for it he could
have said right off, at that moment, how many Brown-
lows there were ; and while he was stammering over
it, and trying to count up on his fingers on the arm of
the chair, beginning with Kit and never getting any
further, his father intervened irritably
" Their name is legion, apparently, as is the case
with the families of most country parsons ; and the
poorer they are, the more children. The mother died
a year or two ago, and I fancy there is a grown-up
daughter, or nearly grown up."
" Oh," said Sinclair, " the old gentleman told me
about her : Kitty, or Katie, or something, isn't she
called?"
And then Rob's voice suddenly came back to him,
48 ROB AND KIT.
rather loud and abrupt and startling, causing Dr.
Chambers' eyebrows to elevate themselves, and a
twinkle to come into Sinclair's eyes, and a funny, little
twitch at the corner of his mouth.
" Miss Brownlow is called Kit at home, and she is
quite grown up. And, besides her, there are four :
Ellen and Philip and Christina and John."
It sounded, even to himself, so ridiculous to cata-
logue them by these very unusual names, that he could
hardly resist smiling ; and when it came to John
that fat, inconsequent dumpling, who rolled about with
Bogey on such very equal terms, and had no dignity
to speak of being called by such a solid and sensi-
ble name, he nearly broke down and laughed out-
right.
"The old gentleman used to talk of Kit I beg her
pardon, Miss Brownlow," Sinclair interrupted himself
with a little deprecatory nod to Rob, which provoked
a chuckle from the doctor " as quite a little girl ;
but I expect he had forgotten the flight of time, and,
of course, I knew nothing about it. But he always spoke
of her as a child, and, I fancy, if he had sent her a pres-
ent, it would have been a doll."
" Well, my good fellow," said the doctor, " I can only
say that this is the first time I have ever heard of Miss
Brownlow. It has only been Kit heretofore, and, in-
deed, I used to think it was a boy, when Kit's doings
used to be dinned into my ears. Did they ever men-
tion this uncle of theirs in California, Rob? "
" Not till to-day," Rob answered. " I never heard
of him before."
GOOD COMPANY. 49
"No," said Sinclair; "I fancy from what he told
me that he had been down on his luck, and his rela-
tions had turned the cold shoulder on him."
" It's not like Mr. Brownlow to turn the cold
shoulder on any one because they're poor."
The doctor laughed. " You see, Sinclair, the
Brownlows have a tremendous partisan here, so you
had better mind what you say about them."
The stranger gave a little deprecating shrug, and,
through the light curls of smoke, his eyes looked
keenly at Rob, who certainly was a curious sight
having grown very red as he blurted out his defence
of Mr. Brownlow, and having rubbed up his hair on
end with a nervous movement he had when he was
more than usually awkward and embarrassed.
" I haven't anything to say about them," Sinclair
said, " because I don't know anything. The old
man talked of ' Miss Brownlow ' " with a slight
hesitation before the name "as a little girl; and
of his brother as a good sort, and that's about all I
know of them. But I shall run over on Monday and
make their acquaintance ; for I shall have to write
and report to the old gentleman, or, anyhow, tell him
all about them when I go back."
" Is he likely to come home himself? 1 '
" Well, he talks of it ; but this illness of his I was
telling you of has taken a lot out of him, though he
has plenty of pluck, and won't give in if he can
help it."
" Has he done pretty well out there ? " asked the
doctor.
50 ROB AND KIT.
Sinclair was lighting a fresh cigarette, so did not
answer quite directly.
" That depends on what you call well."
" Oh, I know the time has gone by for making big
fortunes out there. Men don't come home with their
pockets stuffed with bank-notes, or their portman-
teaux with nuggets."
Sinclair got up from his armchair, with a half-sup-
pressed yawn, and a stretch of his long arms.
" I think I'll be making tracks, as the Yankees
say, for my hotel. To tell you the truth, sir, I'm a
bit fagged with those few days in London. Civiliza-
tion comes fatiguing when you're not used to it. If
you'll allow me, I'll look you up again to-morrow,
and perhaps your son will put me in the way of get-
ting over to Lowburn."
The doctor had lost that youthful agility of mind,
even if he had ever possessed it, of leaping easily
from one subject to another, and his thoughts were
still running on the fortunes that used to be made in
the old days by emigrants.
" I suppose, nowadays, the only chance of making
a pile is if you happen to What is the expres-
sion ? ' Strike ile.' Oh, never mind, it does not the
least signify ! "
For a sudden movement of Sinclair's, as the doctor
spoke these last words, which sounded oddly to Rob
on the dignified lips of his father, had upset a small
table close by, on which a glass was standing, which
was smashed to atoms in its fall.
" It really does not matter. The maid will sweep
GOOD COMPANY. 51
it up directly. Good night. Good night. Very
pleased to have seen you. Look in any time to-
morrow. Good night to you."
What a well-knit figure it was that Rob's grudging
eyes watched along the esplanade, under the lamps,
with the dark, tossing sea behind him. But the face
that looked away across the sea to where the flashing
light of a lighthouse showed and disappeared, and
showed again as you watched it, had a curious hard
look on it, that took away all the effect of youth that
had struck you at first sight.
52 ROB AND KIT.
CHAPTER VII.
"Does not divide the Sunday from the week."
SHAKESPEARE.
QTUART SINCLAIR had brought a letter of in-
w3 troduction from a doctor at New York, whose
acquaintance Dr. Chambers had made some years ago,
and this letter Stuart had presented that afternoon.
Something about him had so taken the doctor's fancy
that he had invited him to dine that evening, and had
even sanctioned that hitherto unheard-of indulgence
in the sacred precincts of the dining-room cigarettes.
He was an amusing companion, and had travelled
and seen the world ; and Dr. Chambers was just then
suffering from the feeling of the entirely local character
of the people with whom he had to do.
Of course, it was very much more satisfactory to
have a large practice among the country gentry
and the residents ; but sometimes Dr. Chambers
thanked his stars that he lived at a watering-place,
small and insignificant as it was, to which visitors came
from London and various parts of England, and
even as in the case of the N ew York doctor, whose
letter Stuart Sinclair had brought from another
hemisphere, people whose ideas were not bounded by
SUNDAY. 53
a five-mile radius of Seadovvn, and who could talk of
something besides the state of the road or the rates
or some threadbare piece of local gossip.
No doubt many of these in whom Dr. Chambers
found relief from the gentry of Seadown and its vicin-
ity, were quite as local as those of whom the doctor
complained ; but their locality was not the locality
that had become stale to him with the wear and tear
of everyday life, and their limitations did not touch
his limitations, even at their outside edge ; so that to
get a peep into other people's interests, however small,
was a refreshing change.
But Stuart Sinclair was more unlimited still. He
did not seem to have any special locality, but to have
been everywhere and seen everything ; and yet he did
not bore you with his experiences, but was able to
listen as well as to talk, and to be interested as well
as interest.
He even seemed to have dabbled a bit in medical
science, and to have got so far as to understand in-
telligently what Dr. Chambers said, without having
acquired that little knowledge, which is such a dan-
gerous thing, by making its owner think that he knows
all about the subject, when he is really only standing
on the threshold, not having even reached that vesti-
bule leading to the temple of knowledge conscious-
ness of one's own ignorance.
Perhaps Stuart had attained to that vestibule, for
he listened with great deference to Dr. Chambers'
opinions, and thereby convinced that gentleman of
his superior intelligence.
54 ROB AND KIT.
Now, if Rob had been such an one as this, Dr.
Chambers thought more than once, that evening,
what a difference it might have made ! A son who
would have been interested in his experiments, who
would have thrown himself with ardour into his pur-
suits would have been something to live for, some-
thing to save for and spend on, something to stir up
the old enthusiasm which had been dying out under
Rob's utter want of sympathy and appreciation.
And then, Sinclair was such a pleasant-mannered,
distinguished-looking fellow a little bit, the doctor
thought, what he himself had been at that age : the
sort of young fellow he would have been proud to
take about and introduce to his better sort of patients,
and who would soon have made his way in society.
And then, in came Rob, dusty, unkempt, awkward,
boorish, brusque with Sinclair, and taking up the
cudgels with clumsy touchiness, most unnecessarily,
in defence of his friends at Lowburn, before a word
had been said against them.
It must be allowed that the doctor was a sorely-
tried man, and it is no wonder that, when Sinclair was
gone, he took himself off to his study, with only a
curt nod of good night to Rob.
One of the influences brought to bear on Rob by
his friends at Lowburn, was church-going on Sunday.
He remembered Kit's look of horrified surprise when
he told her he did not go to church, and her inquiry
why he did not go with his father? and her almost
incredulous wonder when he told her that his father
never went either.
SUNDAY. 55
"Are you sure, Rob," she said "quite sure?
Perhaps he goes without your knowing it. I know
old Martin used to go every Sunday to the meeting-
house at Stoneborough, and none of his family knew
anything about it. I don't mean, of course," she
hastened to add, " that Dr. Chambers is likely to go to
chapel ; but, perhaps, it is to another church he goes
on Sunday mornings? "
But Rob, anxious as he was to appease the disap-
proving look in Kit's eyes, was obliged, by that trouble-
some truthfulness of which Kit spoke in a previous
chapter, to confess that breakfast was later on Sunday.
The bells had generally stopped before the doctor got
up from the breakfast-table, and, gathering up his
letters and newspapers, went into the consulting-room,
from which he emerged, when the brougham came to
the door at twelve, extra well shaved, and with his
Sunday coat on, which was, as far as Rob knew, his
only recognition of the day.
Rob used to be taken to church at one time, when
he had a serious nurse, and used to swing short legs
from what then appeared a dangerously high seat, off
which he once fell with a hideous crash when he had
gone to sleep in the sermon. But the serious nurse
was succeeded by a more light-minded one, with
friends on the beach, so Rob's church-going was not
kept up or renewed till he came to Lowburn Bay, and
became acquainted with the Brownlows; and then
going to church meant sitting by Kit, in her clean,
starched white frock, and having the places in the
Prayer-book in which she was better instructed
56 ROB AND KIT.
than he pointed out by a finger in a white glove, a
size too large for it, which caused a fold at the top,
obscuring the first words of the passage in question.
It soon came to mean too going to dinner at the
Vicarage, and playing quiet, little Sunday games with
Kit in the garden afterwards, and then going to church
again, and perhaps tea to follow. So with all these
advantages attached to going to church, anybody
would have been glad to do so.
But at Seadown church-going was very different.
To go by yourself, or with an unwilling maid ; to be
shown by the pew-opener in a white cap to a con-
spicuous seat, close by that in which Miss Peck's young
ladies' school sat horrid, staring, little girls, quite a
different creation from Kit girls who detected with
little, sharp eyes that he was holding the Prayer-book
upside down, or looking for " Dearly beloved breth-
ren " in the Psalms, and who tittered and nudged one
another in a manner unendurable to a sensitive person
of the masculine gender.
But after Kit's reproachful surprise at his confession
of not going to church, even Miss Peck's young ladies
could not prevent him, or his father's raised eyebrows,
or the late breakfast, or the various small obstacles
that the maids threw in the way, till they established
the fact that they were not expected to accompany
him ; and he even appeared at church one Sunday
with well-developed mumps, to the great indignation
of the rest of the congregation.
Dr. Chambers had not attended church since the
first year or two of his residence at Seadown. He
SUNDAY. 57
found that his practice did not demand the sacrifice,
that, first of all, his absence could be accounted for
by the arduous nature of his professional duties, and
that afterwards a cheque now and then for parochial
charities made it all right with the Vicar. And when,
by-and-by, some of his lady patients began to shake
their heads and express fears about his religious state,
it did not cost him many patients, as there is an un-
confessed feeling, even in the most sincerely religious
people, that want of faith is generally combined with
great intellectual powers.
" Of course, my dear," Miss Hodges would say
and Miss Hodges was one of the pillars of the church
at Seadown " it is very pleasing to see Mr. Johnson
so regular at church, and all his little girls ; but I
think poor dear Maria would have died if we had not
called in Dr. Chambers when we did. And though,
poor man, he suffers from doubts himself, it is plain
he is bringing up his son very carefully, as that boy is
always in his place on Sunday ; only I wish he would
not go to sleep in the sermon, and snore it is so
distracting ! "
So Rob's presence at church was reckoned a credit
to his father, as was also the boy's presenting himself
as a candidate for confirmation, though his unparal-
leled ignorance on doctrinal matters caused the Vicar
great searchings of heart.
So, this Sunday, when Stuart Sinclair came in the
morning, he found the doctor alone again, Rob being
at church ; and, the Vicar's sermon being longer than
usual that day, when Rob came in he found that his
58 ROB AND KIT.
father and Mr. Sinclair had driven over to Lowburn,
and left a message that he need not wait lunch for
them.
It was such a beautiful day, there was not the
slightest necessity for that cloth over the Vicar's hay-
rick. They need not have been in such a hurry to
carry the hay on Saturday ; it might have lain safely
in cocks, and had an extra drying in the full, bright
sunshine, if it had required any more. And there was
more air than the day before, a nice brisk breeze that
caught the tops of the little waves and just tipped them
with white, and made little eddies of dust on the
road.
So it was nothing to be very much astonished at,
that the doctor should have offered to drive Mr. Sin-
clair over to Lowburn, especially if he had any pa-
tients in that direction. But still, often as Rob had
gone that way, it had never even been suggested that
the doctor should drive him, however beautiful the
day or amiably disposed the doctor.
Rob imagined their arrival at Lowburn, perhaps
just at the time of the early dinner, and the Vicar's
and Kit's kindly hospitality ; and he wondered what
his father, who was fastidious and particular about his
food, would think of the simple fare, that always
seemed to Rob so singularly nice and appetising the
great big dishes of vegetables, and the vast gooseberry
puddings. He was desperately afraid that his father
might think it disgusting.
He hardly touched the luncheon that was brought
up for him, so engrossed was he in imagining what
SUNDAY. 59
was occurring at Lowburn ; and I am afraid that the
mental and moral nourishment provided for him at
the afternoon service received as little attention as the
dish of cutlets, which the cook sent up anyhow, be-
cause it was " only Master Rob, and he doesn't notice."
His mind principally dwelt on what his father would
think of them, and after that, on what Kit would think
of Stuart Sinclair ; and if he could have found one
thing about Sinclair, that he was quite sure Kit would
not like, he would have felt far happier. He searched
anxiously in his memory for the things about which
Kit had expressed her likes or dislikes in people, and
especially in the few men who had come into her
sphere of observation. But Kit's likes were much
more extensive than her dislikes, and alas ! many of
her likings fitted in with Sinclair's peculiarities.
He felt a little easier in his mind when it was half-
past two the hour at which Kit and Nellie, and even
Christy now, went off to the Sunday school, and the
Vicar began to fidget in and out of his study with a
list of hymns and chants, and his notes for the cate-
chizing. Visitors would surely take their leave then,
or, if they remained, would be left to their own de-
vices, or to the entertainment of Tibby and Jack.
But Rob had been home from afternoon service
some time before Doctor Chambers appeared, and
then he came by himself.
"Look here, Rob," he said. "I wish you'd just
step round to the George, and tell them to send a
man with Sinclair's traps across to Lowburn. They
would not hear of his coming away. It seems they
60 ROB AND KIT.
have been expecting him some time, and it was non-
sense for him to come all the way back here to-night,
just to go over again to-morrow, though I must say I
should have been glad of his company. I have not
come across such good company for a long time.
The old parson there took to him at once, and so did
the girl. He seemed quite one of the family before I
came away. And, by the way, Rob, what a nice-look-
ing girl that Miss Kit of yours has grown into. Sin-
clair was quite smitten, I tell you. I fancy he has
made some money out in California, though he is not
forward to talk of it, and I like him all the better for
that ; so little miss over there might do worse, if she
takes his fancy."
Poor Rob !
STRAWBERRIES. 6 1
CHAPTER VIII.
STRAWBERRIES.
*' Dr. Boteler said of strawberries, Doubtless God could have made
a better berry, but doubtless God never did."
IZAAC WALTON.
THE worst of coming in contact with a very con-
genial companion is, that it makes others seem
almost more uncongenial than they really are ; and the
few days after Sinclair's visit, Rob trod on his father's
toes at every turn, all the more so as Rob was heavy and
displeased, and did not take any trouble, which at the
best of times was unavailing, to propitiate his father.
It was rather a slack time for Dr. Chambers. The
visitors had not begun to arrive at Seadown. There
was a notice of apartments to let up in nearly every
window along the esplanade; and in the country
round, the season was undoubtedly healthy a bless-
ing for which it requires great heroism in a doctor to
be thankful.
The scientific work in which he was engaged had
reached a point requiring costly research, undisturbed
devotion of time, and intelligent collaboration, if it
was to be what Dr. Chambers once fondly pictured,
the book of medical science of the present generation
and a text-book for future ages.
62 ROB AND KIT.
Costly research would not square with his income
and with some unlucky investments which he had
made. Undisturbed time was not obtainable by a
general practitioner, liable, at the most crucial mo-
ment of an experiment, or an elaborately worked
out argument, to be summoned to ~a baby with the
hiccups or an old man stupid with drink.
And as for intelligent collaboration, Dr. Chambers
looked at Rob and groaned.
Rob, on his side, was suffering a purgatory of anx-
iety to know what was going on at Lowburn, and yet
declaring to himself that wild horses should not drag
him in that direction as long as that fellow Sinclair
was there.
It was certainly not wild horses that did the deed
two days later for wild is the last adjective any one
would apply to Joe, who was tameness itself, and was
more used to be dragged himself than to drag any one.
The only violence required to set Rob travelling along
the road to Lowburn, with a much brighter face than
his father had seen that week, was a postcard from
Kit.
"Won't you come and pick strawberries? KIT."
So Joe was requisitioned again, and off Rob set,
pretty nearly forgetting all about Stuart Sinclair, or if
he remembered him, snapping his fingers mentally at
his handsome person and attractive manners, since
these had not made Kit forget her old friend, or dis-
pense with his services over the strawberry beds.
STRAWBERRIES. 63
Strawberry-jam making was a serious business at
Lowburn, for strawberry jam was a large item of con-
sumption at the Vicarage, and Rob could hardly re-
member having tea there without a plentiful supply
of it.
The fruit picking had to be done in a business-like
and methodical way under Nurse's- directions and, I
tell you, it was rather back-aching work, and heating
too on the sunny strawberry beds on the slope of the
hill, though you were free to refresh yourself with the
great, cool, scarlet fruit as you went along.
Nurse provided the whole party with pinafores or
aprons which Rob, up to this year, had donned with-
out a murmur, nor thought of any absurdity in his
appearance. But this year, as he went he made up
his mind that, under Sinclair's critical eye, he would
rather not make a fool of himself. He also, with a
view to that eye, put on his Sunday coat, which,
though disguised with dust, was at once recognized
by Christy, who came running out to meet him, and
who insisted on his taking it off forthwith, and, if he
must wear a coat at all, put on an old one of the
Vicar's which had reached the green hue which black
acquires with much wear.
" I have been watching for you ever so long,
Rob," Christy said, linking a small arm in his, " for
I want you to be my partner and help me fill my
basket. We are all going to begin at the same time
and have partners, and whoever gets their basket
filled first, will have the prize. It was Mr. Sinclair
suggested the idea of partners, and he's going to give
64 ROB AND KIT.
the prize. It will be such fun. Tibby wanted me
to be partner with him, but he eats such a lot that
I know we shouldn't have a chance and I do
want the prize awfully. Look here, Rob, I can show
it you if you can come into the next room. It's a
lot of little boxes one inside the other, till you get to
the very wee-est little box that you can hardly see."
Poor Rob, in the Vicar's old coat, was ruefully put-
ting two and two together about this partner business
an odious innovation it seemed to him on the old
simplicity of each one filling his basket as quickly
as he could, with liberty to tip his store into one
of the little ones' baskets when he or she was not
looking, so as to equalize the amount brought in to
Nurse, and to prevent loss of self-respect or over-
much crowing.
Or perhaps it would be better to say that Rob was
putting one and one together Kit and Mr. Sinclair
as it was easy enough to understand for what pur-
pose the idea of partners was suggested. He had a
great mind to put on Joe's saddle again and go back
to Seadown, but Christy's little clinging hands on his
arm restrained the first impulse.
"You'll pick very fast, Rob, won't you?" she was
saying, " for I want the prize dreadfully, and I don't
believe Kit cares a bit about it. And if Nellie is
disappointed, I could give her some of the boxes.
I wouldn't mind her having nearly quite all of them,
except the little tiny one but I should like that."
" All right. Come along, Christy ! We'll get
the prize, and if we don't you shall have as many
STRAWBERRIES. 65
little boxes as you like. Hullo, Jack ! and whose
partner are you going to be? You'd better join on
to me and Christy, and we'll be a company
Christy & Co."
But Jack shook his head resolutely. " No ; Kit
and me is partners. She don't like any partners but
me. Mr. Sinclair wanted us to let him come in, but
we wouldn't. Kit says we're very scloosive. What
does ' scloosive ' mean, Rob ? "
It meant, judging by Rob's radiant face, something
very admirable, which had taken away all desire to
shuffle back to Seadown, and made him catch Jack
up, and set him astride on his neck and go prancing
off into the garden with Christy clinging to his arm ;
and he put on one of Nurse's large aprons without
demur.
Why, he would have put on her cap as well, with
the delightful assurance that Kit had refused to be
Stuart Sinclair's partner in strawberry gathering !
And there was Kit, herself, coming to meet him ;
just the same Kit, not a bit altered into " the little
miss over there," which Dr. Chambers had conjured
up before Rob's mind a little affected minx, with
arts and affectations, trying to catch the fancy of
Stuart Sinclair.
" Why, Rob," she said reproachfully ; " I thought
you must be ill as you didn't come over, and you
knew the strawberries were ripe. Nurse said if we
waited any longer the rain would come, and we
mightn't get the chance of picking the fruit in the
dry. And oh, Rob, you never told us what a nice,
66 ROB AND KIT.
old man your father is, and so good-looking ! Not
a bit like you."
"Yes, he is a fine-looking old chap," said Rob,
quite imperturbable at the slight to his own personal
appearance, in the pleasure at the compliment to his
father, who, by the way, would not have been best
pleased at the way he was described, even though it
was meant as high praise.
" He was so pleasant and kind on Sunday when he
came, and he looked at that scratch on Bogey's leg,
and prescribed for him. Fancy Bogey being pre-
scribed for by a great, clever doctor ! We tell him
he ought to be a very proud little dog."
"And how do you like Sinclair? "
" Oh, we all like him very much," said Kit
" don't we, Nellie ? He and Nellie are going to be
partners over the strawberry picking ; and Jack and
I, and Christy said she must have you. So poor
Tibby is left out in the cold, and he's actually trying
to persuade father to come and help him."
Rob was a simple-minded creature, so he was not
rendered suspicious by the way in which the conver-
sation, now, and on several subsequent occasions,
turned off from Stuart Sinclair.
" I thought she would have been quite full of him,"
he told himself with much satisfaction, " and that I
should have heard of nothing else. I believe she
thinks more of the pater than she does of him. And
she always tells off Nellie to go with Sinclair, or do
anything for him. If Nellie was not a great, long-
legged child still, one might have said it was she that
STRAWBERRIES. 67
Sinclair was smitten with. And he hardly takes any
notice of Kit, though he can't help seeing she is the
flower of the flock, and not one of them is fit to hold
a candle to her ; but I dare say he's a bit nettled at
her being so cool to him. Why, she hardly looked
at him when he came up from the shore though,
by Jove ! what a good-looking fellow he is ! just
out of the sea, with his hair all wet and crisp and
curling, and such a colour ! Not looking all blue
and horrid, like I do, with swelled purple lips and
teeth chattering like castanets. If she'd treated me
like that just going off to the strawberry beds as if
she was vexed at being kept waiting I know I
should have been jolly miserable till I'd set it right
with her. But he didn't seem to mind a bit, but
kept fooling about with Tibby, as if Kit wasn't
there."
And so, this keen observer of human nature felt
greatly comforted, not to say elated, and began
almost to pity Stuart Sinclair, and wish that Kit would
not show her preference for him, Rob, so distinctly,
keeping him near her, and making him fetch and
carry and do all manner of little services for her,
which she declined when Stuart offered them. If it
had not been Kit, Rob would have thought her a
little capricious and wayward, and he looked at her
once or twice with an inquiring puzzled look, which
made Kit colour up in an odd unusual way very
unlike her usual sunny calm.
But she was not capricious or wayward to him ; but
so kind, and gentle, and considerate that Rob found
68 ROB AND KIT.
it in his heart to be quite friendly and genial to
Sinclair, who responded more heartily than Rob
would have done in his place if Stuart had been
favoured by Kit, and Rob been snubbed.
All the rest of the family, including the Vicar, were
devoted to Sinclair ; and even Rob began to feel the
attraction of his pleasant, genial manner, and was
quite sorry when Kit called him away from the group
under the mulberry tree after dinner, gathered round
Sinclair, who was giving a thrilling description of an
adventure with a bear in the Rockies the Vicar
being as much interested as Tibby.
It was only some question about the croquet-hoops
that Kit wanted to ask him about, which would have
done quite as well later on ; and, after all, she did
not pay much attention to his advice on the subject,
being all the time half listening to the scraps of Sin-
clair's story, which reached them from time to time
across the garden, and the children's delighted com-
ments on the narrative, while Rob, who could not do
two things at once, pounded away solidly on the
croquet-hoop question.
I am not sure that those two standing together by
the garden-fence in such a pleasant, confidential
attitude, did not affect the course of the story about
the bear; for the narrator could not tell that the
subject under discussion was only a croquet-hoop, and
that even that had very divided attention from one
of the two certain it is, that when Kit laid her
hand on Rob's arm, to emphasize some remark, the
bear suddenly, and somewhat tamely, went off into
STRAWBERRIES. 69
the forests, without even a mouthful out of the leg
that was in such imminent peril the moment before.
" I thought you said that was how your friend lost
his leg? " persisted inconvenient Tibby.
" Did I ? Oh no, that's another story. But /
shall lose my leg in another minute, if Master Jack
sits on it so solid. I've got the cramp in it jolly
bad."
ROB AND KIT.
CHAPTER IX.
CHANGE.
" A touch which seems to unlock
Treasure unknown as yet ;
And the bitter, sweet, first shock
One never can forget."
LORD HOUGHTON.
ROB travelled home from Lowburn that night
^^ in an unusually contemplative state of mind
contemplation not being at all in his line in a
general way.
Horses soon understand the humour of their
riders, and, before Joe had scrabbled up the steep
hill out of Lowburn, he knew that he might take
advantage of Rob to any extent, even to stopping
for a minute to sample a particularly green and
juicy kind of grass, or, like the horse described by
Mark Twain, to lean up against the wall and think.
Rob's mind was not disquieted on the subject
of Stuart Sinclair and Kit. About that he felt quite
at ease, as it was so plain that Kit did not even
like him as well as the others did, and certainly
not as well as she did him, Rob.
But the very certainty of Kit's liking make him
think more of what manner of man it was that Kit
liked; and, indeed, I think it was almost the first
CHANGE. 71
time Rob had thought of himself as a man at all,
being but little inclined to think of himself in any
way, and now only in a roundabout way, as the
fellow that Kit liked.
And with that came a sudden feeling of regret
that he was such a duffer, and had never done
anything at school; and in this altogether new ef-
fort at introspection, he searched about in his very
simply-constructed mind which had no corners or
crannies, like many minds to see if it was his
fault, and if he had done his best.
" I'm afraid I was a beastly idle chap," he said
ruefully ; " but I don't think I could have done
better if I'd tried. Now, if I could have been a
clever chap like Sinclair, and told ripping stories,
how pleased the pater would have been. But she
wouldn't have liked me any the better, so it don't
matter."
But Sinclair's coming had introduced an element
of change into the peaceful life at Lowburn, and
had disturbed that calm, indefinite feeling of things
going on just as they had done for years past. Not
only things might change, but Rob realized that
things had changed. He himself was a man he
would be twenty next birthday. Kit was grown up,
which he had not realized till he impressed it on
Stuart Sinclair, to reprove the impertinence of
calling her by her Christian name. Even Nellie
was nearly grown up, and would be turning up her
hair and lengthening her petticoats before long.
And so with them all even little Jack was no
72 ROB AND KIT.
longer a baby, but did regular lessons with Kit, and
was too much of a man to cry when he fell on the
gravel and scored his fat knees severely.
What further changes might the future bring?
And just then Tibby's confidence in the hay-field
came back to Rob's mind. "You see, Rob, Kit's
getting on now; and she's not bad- looking, and
many girls of her age have young men."
Though Stuart Sinclair might not be the young
man of Tibby's prognostications. Why not another?
Why not
And here Joe had quite a long rest, while Rob
stared away hard at the dark shoulder of the down,
outlined against the pale indigo sky, with a big soft
star just showing over the ridge. It was a pity, Joe
thought, they had not made the halt at a place where
there was grass to be nibbled ; but still, rest even on
a dusty road is not a thing to be despised.
It was quite intolerable to think of Kit marrying
any one else ; but the other alternative caught his
breath, and made him gasp and choke as if a big
wave had swept over him. Science tells us that there
is no such thing as colour, except in the light ; but no
science could convince me that Rob was not crimson
to the tips of his ears at that first thought of marry-
ing Kit.
But if that was to be anything more than an idea,
as distant as that calm-looking star over the edge of
the down there, there must be no more of this potter-
ing, do-nothing life, kicking his heels about Seadown,
killing time, getting through the day anyhow, from
CHANGE. 73
mealtime to mealtime, from bedtime to bedtime. He
must turn- to somehow anyhow at something. It
did not much matter what. He was not a clever
chap, but it was hard lines if he could not find some-
thing he could do to earn his living, and make a
home for Kit.
And then again came a long stop for Joe, and
more staring away over the darkness to the big star,
which somehow, often afterwards came back to his
mind connected with Kit and his love for her, for the
first time that night formed into a conscious, sensible
feeling, though in its unconscious, unrealized form,
it had been in his heart ever since he had shame-
facedly sidled up to the bright-faced little girl on
the beach, and presented her with a crab.
And, after that second long pause, Joe became
conscious of some subtle change in his rider some
briskness and energy in his treatment, which Joe
hardly thought was an improvement on the pleasant,
old, slip-slop manner of getting along with a loose
rein, and freedom to choose whichever part of the
road looked the easiest for old feet, and the pace
that was most agreeable to the same.
Dr. Chambers, too, was irritably conscious of a
change in Rob as he came in, and, as he had had some
annoying business letters by the evening post, he was
not in a humour to be sympathetic, or even patient,
with Rob's somewhat blundering efforts to consult
him on his future course in life ; and, while Rob was
stammering and repeating himself and trying to re-
member some of the uncommonly sensible things he
74 ROB AND KIT.
had said to himself as he rode home, Dr. Chambers
gathered up his papers and writing-materials, and
went off to his consulting-room, merely saying
" I really can't pretend to understand what you
mean, so I think I'll bid you good night."
But as poor Rob, greatly crest-fallen, made his way
up to bed, he saw that same bright star shining
steadily over the sea. "Though, of course," Rob
told himself, " it can't be the same, for that was just
over the down halfway to Lowburn."
But it comforted him all the same.
It was not only on Rob that that day of strawberry
picking had impressed the sense of change, though
perhaps with Kit the feeling had begun before. It
is when a girl first reads the look of love in a man's
eyes that the happy sense of stability in childhood
and early youth passes away ; that feeling of one day
following another with little variation, and spring
gliding on into summer and being much the same,
except that the roses are out on the old home walls
instead of the violets under the well-known hedge ;
the impression that one year is much like another,
and that the swallows come back and build in the
porch, and the primroses blossom year after year in
the same little coppice, and that if you do not pick
them one year you will the next.
And then, all of a sudden something startles you
with the consciousness of change. Sometimes, it is
death's cold shadow thrown across the sunny garden,
and you realize that the swallows may come back
and the primroses bloom, and Nature repeat herself
CHANGE. 75
with but small variations ; but other eyes will be
there to see and other hands to gather the flowers.
And sometimes, as I have said, it is love that
strikes across a girl's simplicity like a lightning flash
at sea, revealing that beyond the snug little vessel of
home lies a great wide sea and distant shore, full, no
doubt, of infinite possibilities of happiness, but mixed
with doubt and uncertainty and mystery. But after
that flash she can never feel that everything is con-
tained in that small cockle-shell boat that was large
enough to satisfy her childish ideas.
It was the look in Stuart Sinclair's eyes that was
the first revelation to Kit of possibilities beyond Low-
burn and home ; and if that look was not love, it was
something so like, and meant to be so like it, that it
might well have been mistaken by a girl of seventeen.
Just then, when Rob on Joe's back had come to
that sudden stop halfway to Seadown, and remained
as if transfixed staring like a stuck pig, as his
father would have thought, only I think he would
have put it into more elegant words at the big,
bright star, Kit up at her bedroom window was
looking out, by a curious coincidence, at that very
star, which would have upset Rob's extremely rudi-
mentary knowledge of astronomy, by appearing over
the bam roof on the opposite slope of the hill.
She had been putting Jack to bed. In spite of the
change in him, that Rob had been struck with that
very day, Jack was still baby enough to like to have
some one to tuck him up and stop a minute or two
after the light was out not that men of four are
76 ROB AND KIT.
afraid of the dark, but there is generally something
important to say, just at the moment when the can-
dle goes out, something that will not keep till
morning.
" Miss Kit," Nurse would say, " you're just spoil-
ing that child."
But to-night Kit stopped long after those impor-
tant somethings had grown drowsy and indistinct,
and given way to peaceful regular breathing ; and,
as I have said, she stood in the window and watched
that star over the barn.
Down below from under the mulberry tree came
the voices of her father and Stuart Sinclair, and the
smell of his cigarettes which he had been teaching
Nellie and Christy to roll for him, mingled with the
soft dewy fragrance of the June night, roses, and new-
mown hay.
Kit's cheeks were hot and flushed, and even Jack
had noticed it as he drew her face down with his fat
hands on either side of it, to kiss him on his pillow.
The flush had come into them as she stood outside
the gate in the dusk, watching Rob ride away, with
that affectionate, amused recognition of his awkward
horsemanship, and the imminent peril he was in of
falling off when he turned to call a last word to her.
Stuart Sinclair had come up, and stood leaning his
arms on the top of the gate, so that she could not
open it to go back into the garden without his mak-
ing way for her.
" You have treated me very badly to-day, Miss
Kit," he said.
CHANGE. 77
And she wondered if she could get in another way,
through the stable, on pretence of saying good night
to Dimple.
" I don't know what you mean," she said, trying
to speak lightly, for of course he was only joking.
"Don't you?" he said. "Shall I tell you? You
have only spoken to me twice, and you have only
looked at me about three times. Oh, it's no use
shaking your head. It's quite true. You have had
no eyes or ears for any one but that I beg
your pardon ! for he's evidently a great friend of
yours. But it's rather hard lines on a fellow to be
set aside as completely as I have been to-day."
" I'm very sorry," she stammered ; " I didn't
mean to be rude. But, you see, I've known Rob
all my life, and I didn't think you cared."
I think this must have been the first time that Kit
had said anything not absolutely true, and I think
it was then that the colour rushed hotly up into
her cheeks that was still burning there when Jack
bade her good night ; for she knew that Sinclair had
noticed her absorption in Rob, and if, indeed, she
had only looked at him three times that day, each
time had detected an expression of reproach and
injury.
"Cared?" he said, and his voice sank low to a
tone of tenderness that vibrated through all the girl's
pulses as something strange and sweet but terrifying.
" Cared ? I am fool enough to care very much,
Kit."
She had put up her hand to open the gate and
78 ROB AND KIT.
make her escape, but he laid his hand gently over
hers and kept her a prisoner. If it had been Rob,
she would just have caught her hand away, and have
bidden him to stand out of the way, and not be tire-
some ; but now she stood hot and shy and tremulous,
afraid to look up at the dark face that was looking
down at her with something in the eyes that she felt
without seeing, and which, rather than meet, she
would have had the earth open and swallow her up.
There was a minute's silence, most eloquent si-
lence which she would have given worlds to break,
by some light, trivial remark, that would counteract
the meaning of the pause. She could hear her own
heart beating and his breath coming quickly. A
great, soft, white owl flew out of the ivy-covered roof
of the barn, and sailed silently overhead, and a
cricket chirruped its monotonous little note hard
by.
"Kit," he said again, dwelling tenderly, as if it
were very sweet to his lips, on the Christian name
that Rob had so indignantly reproved him for using.
"Kit!"
But just then the name was taken roughly out of his
mouth, and echoed in several different keys, and at
the top of strong young lungs.
" Kit ! " shouted Tibby's penetrating voice.
" Kit ! Coo-ey ! Hullo there ! Where are you? "
" Kit ! " in Nellie's shriller accents. " Kit !
Kittee ! "
" Kit ! " in Christy's sweet, little pipe, like a black-
bird in the evening.
CHANGE. 79
" Kit ! " from Jack, rather thick with bread-and-
butter.
Even " Miss Kit, dear ! where are you ? " from
Nurse's voice at the back door.
And " Kit ! " from the study window from Mr.
Brownlow, who could not find his newspaper.
Stuart Sinclair let Kit's hand escape with a mut-
tered exclamation of annoyance, and opened the gate
for her to pass ; and she fled into the house like a
frightened bird, and was glad to hurry Jack's depart-
ure to bed to recover her composure upstairs.
80 ROB AND KIT.
CHAPTER X.
TAKING THOUGHT FOR THE MORROW.
" Thus times do shift, each thing his turne do's hold ;
New things succeed as former things grow old."
HERRICK.
AS Mr- Brownlow and Stuart Sinclair sat under
the mulberry tree that evening, Sinclair was
less talkative than usual ; and it was the Vicar's voice
which came most frequently to the ears of the girl at
the window above.
On the Vicar, too, in some mysterious way, had
come that sense of change that Rob and Kit had
experienced, and his mind, almost in spite of itself,
kept taking thought for the morrow; and having a
sympathetic listener and one not too closely con-
cerned, as was Kit, in what that morrow might bring
forth to listen composedly when the Vicar talked
of that change which must come to us all, sooner or
later, and which he felt could not be long delayed
for him, he opened out to Stuart Sinclair more than
he had done to any one else for many a day.
First of all, it was about his parish that he talked,
and of his successor another Vicar of Lowburn
who might perhaps do more there than he had been
TAKING THOUGHT FOR THE MORROW. 8 1
able to do, but who might not understand the temper
of some of those he would have to deal with, or con-
sider their little peculiarities.
"There's a lot of good in them, Sinclair," the
Vicar said, with an indulgent smile, " but they have
a queer way of showing it sometimes, and strangers
don't know always what to make of them. They're
very like children, and sometimes very naughty ones.
But it is no use taking them too seriously. I remem-
ber, eight years ago, when there was a talk of my
going away to another living, how hard it seemed to
part with my odd, tiresome, obstinate flock do
you know, Sinclair, it seems sometimes more like
being a swineherd than a shepherd ! with all their
inarticulate love for me and the little ones, and their
ignorance and weakness. After all, it's the naughty
children one is often the fondest of; and I could not
bear to think of any one standing in my shoes, and
having the guidance perhaps driving instead of
guiding, and ordering instead of humouring. Well,
we didn't go. It was a better living, and might
have been a good thing for the children, and perhaps
for the wife's health. But there, I wasn't the right
man,,and some one else was, and I was quite content
when I saw how pleased the poor folk here were that
I was going to stay. It's not a case of a living now,
Sinclair; it's a case of dying, or rather, please God,
it's a case of a new living across the dark river."
Sinclair gave a little sympathetic murmur, and
presently the Vicar went on
" It's not so much about leaving the parish, that I
6
82 ROB AND KIT.
think now, when I get my preferment. I've felt my
age a good bit lately. I can't take up new notions,
and work my parish on new lines, as perhaps I
should. I'm getting a bit sleepy and old-fashioned,
and when I go to the ruri-decanal meetings, and run
up against some of those earnest, clever, young men,
I feel what an old fossil I am. If I could see my
way plain about the children, as I can't take them
with me to this new living Now, if I had gone
to Pilton eight years ago. The income was nearly
double what it is here, and it was not such an out-of-
the-way place, and there were resident gentry who
helped with the charities, and would have been
friends with the children. But here, you see, there's
no one. Of course there are a few of the clergy
about, that we are supposed to visit with ; but there
are sometimes months when we don't see any one
but just the Lowburn folk ; and if it were not for the
children and for the future, I should be quite con-
tent. But suppose, now, anything should happen to
me, the children have not a friend in the world
except Rob Chambers, and he "
Sinclair gave a little derisive laugh, and flicked off
the end of his cigarette.
' Oh, he's a thorough good fellow, and I'm always
glad to think they should have him. But he's not
much more than a boy himself. That's the worst,
Sinclair, of marrying late in life. You see, the chil-
dren are so young. There's Jack hardly more than
a baby, and it will be years before Tibby will be
earning his own living, much less his sisters. Take
TAKING THOUGHT FOR THE MORROW. 83
my advice and marry young, with a chance of seeing
your children's children."
" Have you no relations ? "
"Well, you know, there's my brother poor fellow.
You have not told us much about him, but I hope no
news is good news, and that he is doing better than
in his former days. Perhaps you know that he has
been very unfortunate, and, at times, has been a
source of some little anxiety?"
" Yes," Sinclair said. " I gathered from what he
has told me at different times that life has not gone
very smoothly with him. But "
"And I have no other relations," Mr. Brownlow
went on, following his own line of thought, and
unintentionally checking the information about his
brother that might have been, and that Sinclair
afterwards thought, was on his very lips.
" Philip and I were the only two in our family ;
and my wife was an orphan, poor girl, and her grand-
mother, with whom she lived, died very shortly after
our marriage, and I never took any trouble to follow
up any other relations of hers. I regret it now ; but
really, up to quite recently, I never realized how curi-
ously isolated we are. It does not matter very much,
perhaps, so long as I am spared, but it has been borne
in on my mind lately, when I have been thinking of
leaving Kit and the others "
His voice was a little tremulous, and he left the
sentence unfinished.
Sinclair bent eagerly forward. "I'm sure, sir, you
need have no fear for the future of Miss Kit. I
know "
84 ROB AND KIT.
But again the Vicar interrupted. "Yes, yes, lad;
and so do I. Thank you for reminding me. I need
have no fear; I know they will be taken care of.
Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?' "
There was a strange look on Stuart Sinclair's face,
could any one have seen it through the soft June twi-
light, which is all that night can manage in the way
of darkness at midsummer ; but it is enough to hide
transient expressions passing over a face even close
by. It was the first time he had ever been thanked
for administering spiritual consolation or a rebuke for
want of faith, and nothing had been further from his
thoughts when he spoke, and the look and the feeling
it expressed was a curious mixture of amusement and
compunction and regret.
"I should like to talk to you about Mr. Philip
Brownlow," he said rather abruptly. " I promised
him to tell you all about his affairs."
"Yes, yes," the Vicar said a little bit wearily.
Philip's affairs in old days had been synonymous
with trouble and debt and painful endeavours to set
matters right; and though, for the last few years
there had been a respite from this, he shrank a little
nervously from taking up the old worry again.
" I shall like to hear all about him another time.
But it is prayer-time now, and we must go in."
Stuart gave a little, imperceptible shrug of his
shoulders as they rose to go in.
"Well, if he won't listen, it's not my fault," he
was saying to himself. " I have made two attempts
at it this evening. The fact is, he's got it so firmly
TAKING THOUGHT FOR THE MORROW. 85
into his head that old Philip is a bad hat, it would be
quite a business to convince him to the contrary.
Well, perhaps it is quite as well I should make my
running with Miss Kit before she realizes that she is
an heiress."
Kit was a little bit shy of him that evening, and
kept out of his way as much as possible, finding vari-
ous excuses with the children, or household matters,
to interrupt what had been most evenings a pleasant
tete-a-tete, when the little ones were in bed, and Mr.
Brownlow a little dozy over his second day's
Standard.
But to-night there were no quiet little dozings
possible for the Vicar, so persistently did Kit include
him in the conversation ; and Nurse got as irritable
as she ever could be with Kit, at repeated inroads
into the kitchen with perfectly unnecessary directions
or inquiries about matters which Nurse considered
her own concern.
" There, Miss Kit, there ain't no call for you to be
so fidgeting. I ain't been here all these years without
knowing about the jam."
But the old servant had a dim sort of motherly
understanding of the girl's unusual restlessness of
the need of some sympathy from one of her own sex,
that a girl has in those bewildering sweet days of first
love.
" I remember, in my old courting days " court-
ing that came to nothing, from Tom taking to drink
and bad company "as I liked to give mother a
kiss before I went along the lane to meet him. A
86 ROB AND KIT.
girl do want a mother at times, though Madam wasn't
much to call a mother either."
And so, after some cross little snub about fidgeting
and worrying, Nurse would call Kit back to settle
more tidily a soft plait of the bright hair she loved to
dress, or brush a little invisible dust from her sleeve.
" Bless her heart ! " as she let her go. " And
he's a nice, pleasant-spoken young gentleman ; and
it seems for all the world as if he'd been sent right
across from America a-purpose for our Miss Kit, as
might have gone on here to doomsday without any
one finding her out. And, master there ! I don't
suppose it would ever cross his mind as young ladies
did ought to be married. And Miss Nellie coming
on and talking of turning up her hair though what-
ever we shall do without Mis
