Part 7

Lizzie stepped up, and found her friend reclining outside her patchwork quilt, absorbed in the perusal of a “penny dreadful” of the most thrilling type. Lizzie approached the bed, clumping sturdily with her well-polished best boots.

“Bain’t ye agoin’ to see pore Tom?” she inquired, without wasting time on preliminaries.

Susan looked up, startled: she had just got to that point in the narrative when the heroine, drawing herself up to her full height, informed the villain that she would be sooner clasped by a serpent than permit herself to be degraded by his embrace.

“What? No, I’m not going to see Tom Locke. My nerves is much too upset. Ye did give me a jump comin’ in that way, Lizzie.”

“He’ll be waiting up there for you to spaik to en.”

“Well, ’tisn’t my fault if he do. I never axed en to. I’m real fainty an’ porely to-day, Lizzie; couldn’t so much as go to church. Sit down, an’ let’s talk a bit. I seed yer father lookin’ arter me t’other night; I was walkin’ so queer, wasn’t I? I expect he thought I was lookin’ real bad.”

“No, I’ll not sit down,” said Lizzie. She planted her umbrella on the floor, and stared at the other girl for a moment without speaking.

“If he was to get another eye would ye look at en then?” she remarked at length, abruptly. “A mock un, I mane. They can be had easy, Policeman Blanchard says. No good to see out of, ye know, but jest to look at.”

“Oh, Lizzie, what a tale! He was makin’ fun o’ you.”

“No, he wasn’t. ’Twas to father he said it. He said he knowed a man Tipton way as had un—rale ’andsome—’andsomer nor his own. He wore it Sundays an’ ’olidays, an’ took it out week days for fear o’ accidents.”

“Well,” said Susan, consideringly, “if Tom were to get un perhaps I could forget it were a mock un; but he’d have to wear it always, that he would, else I couldn’t make believe ’twere real.”

“Well, I’ll go an’ tell en that. If he gets a real nice one ye’ll think on’t, won’t ye, Susan?”

“I dunno; I’ll see,” said Susan provisionally.

Lizzie marched towards the door without another word.

“’Tis a funny notion, though, yer takin’ it up like that,” cried Susan, suddenly awaking to the fact. “Be ye really goin’ to en now?”

“Yes, I be,” replied Lizzie, without turning her head; and down the stairs clattered she, and out into the air.

Leaving the village behind she ascended a steep, stony path, which led across a curious and antiquated bridge, and presently found herself in a shady lane bordered on both sides by high banks, where the hedgerows had long escaped all control of man, and grew in a wild and most picturesque tangle. Here thorn and gorse and wild apple crowded upon each other; golden maple was thrown into relief by the sturdier green of the elder; there the clustering berries of a guelder-rose, already turning red, made a wondrous patch of colour, while the tiny, soft-shelled hazel nuts shone out from the deep green leaves like pearls; over all the traveller’s-joy had flung its wealth of delicate blossom and clinging tendril, now swinging proudly from the topmost bough of a tall sapling, now creeping low amidst the brambles and the bracken. A yellow-hammer called to a brother occasionally from some swaying twig; little speckled half-fledged robins hopped along the path in front of Lizzie, taking occasional short flights when she came inconveniently near, but returning to peer up at her with large, yellow-rimmed, curious eyes.

Lizzie noticed none of these things. Had she had a mind to gaze upon the beauties of the prospect, she would have peered through the gaps in the green ramparts down to the plain, and away past the cultivated fields and the silver windings of the river to the distant roofs and chimney-stacks of the market town. One could obtain a beautiful view of the new brewery from here; the brickwork looked as red as red, and one could see the smoke rising from the great chimney. Ah, that was a view worth looking at; so all the villagers said, and Lizzie agreed with them.

But to-day she stared straight in front of her, with eyes as round and curious as those of the robins themselves; eyes which had, moreover, an alarmed expression entirely lacking to those of the bold, sociable little birds in question. Her heart was beginning to beat rather fast, and she was conscious of increasing trepidation as she drew near the trysting-place.

At a turn of the lane she could see a pair of long legs thrust out from a recess in the bank; then a hand idly brandishing a stick; at length a head moving amid the clustering leaves. When the rapid _clump_, _clump_ of her thick-soled boots reached his ears, the man rose quickly and came towards her. A tall, loose-limbed, young fellow, with a fringe of dark beard and whisker round his brown face; his hat was pulled rather forward over his brows, and his one remaining eye looked eagerly and anxiously towards the approaching figure.

One glance told him that the sturdy form was not that of his sweetheart, and he turned away, whistling to himself to hide his disappointment, and swishing absently at the wayside grasses. He expected the rapid steps to pass on; but, to his surprise, they slackened as they drew near, and then abruptly ceased.

“Good-day to ’ee, Mr. Locke.”

“Ah,” said Locke, “it’s Lizzie Fripp. Good-day, Lizzie, good-day.”

He turned unwillingly as he spoke. Though not by nature a sensitive man, he felt a little diffident as to the impression which his new disfigurement was likely to create when first beheld by a stranger.

“Ye be waitin’ for Susan?” said Lizzie, staring hard for a moment and then averting her eyes. “She’s—she’s not able to come to-day.”

“I thought as much,” said Tom gloomily. “I’ve been sittin’ here two hour an’ more. Did she send ye to me?” he added suddenly.

“No, I came myself. I wanted to tell ’ee somethin’, Mr. Locke,” blurted out Lizzie tremulously. “I d’ ’low that if you was to get a glass eye Susan ’ud love you jest the same as ever.”

A dark flush overspread the young farmer’s face, and a flash of anger appeared in his solitary orb.

“Did she tell ’ee to say this?” he asked, after a pause.

“Nay now, nay now, don’t ’ee take on so, Mr. Locke. They was all talkin’ about it in the village laist night; an’ Policeman Blanchard said he knowed a man as had one that could be took in an’ out quite handy, an’ it looked jest the same as t’other, only ’andsomer. An’ I axed Susan if ye was to get one would she walk with ’ee again, an’ she seemed to take to the notion; so I thought I’d jest run here an’ tell ’ee.”

“Did ye?” said Tom. “That was very well done, Lizzie.”

“Well, I thought ’twas but kind,” said Lizzie modestly. “Susan, ye see, has a terrible delicate constitootion, an’ takes things to ’eart. Why, she could scarce so much as walk home from our place laist night.”

“Couldn’t she?” returned Locke sardonically. “She run fast enough out o’ my way—I know that. Aye, she showed as clean a pair o’ heels as a maid need wish to. An’ so she said she’d take to me again if I was to get a glass eye, did she?”

“She said she’d think on’t,” returned the girl cautiously.

Tom took off his hat and bent down till his face was nearly on a level with Lizzie’s.

“Look here, Lizzie Fripp,” he said authoritatively; “you be a trewth-tellin’ maid, an’ ye’ll gi’e me a straightfor’ard answer. Tell me plain! I was reckoned a fairish good-lookin’ chap till now, but this accident has spiled my looks for me. Tell me the trewth. Am I such an object that any maid would run away from me, or is it jest Susan that’s extra pertic’lar?”

Lizzie raised her honest brown eyes and gazed at him steadily.

“You’re not an object, Mr. Locke,” she said thoughtfully. “Dear no, not at all an object. I think a body ’ud soon get used to—to one side bein’ a little different from t’other. But some maids takes notions, ye see. My mother said she never could abide red hair. If father’d hev been a red-haired man she’d never ha’ married him. Now _I_ think ’tis much the same as any other colour.”

Tom slowly straightened himself. A smile was hovering about his mouth.

“You think I’d look better with a glass eye?” he inquired.

“Well,” returned Lizzie dispassionately, “I think it ’ud be very nice for Sundays, Mr. Locke. Sundays an’ market-days, or when ye was goin’ for a drive in the trap, or such like.”

“I see,” said Tom, meditatively stroking his beard. “P’r’aps I’ll talk to doctor about it.”

“Oh, do,” she urged eagerly. “I d’ ’low Susan ’ll be real pleased.”

“Ah!” said Tom. “Be ye goin’ home now, Lizzie?”

“Yes. I only came this way to see you.”

“Oh, an’ did ye? Well, ’twas very kindly done of you. Come, I’ll walk a piece of the way with you.”

He walked a piece of the way—indeed, he walked all the way; and Lizzie thought within herself, as they trudged along, that if any stranger met them who did not know them, he might have taken them for sweethearts; for they walked in almost unbroken silence, just as courting people did, and Tom kept very close to her, and when they came to a rough piece of road he supported her by the elbow, just as he might have done if she had been Susan.

That young lady happened to be leaning languidly against her door-post when the couple drew near. She had been looking up the road as though expecting somebody, and at sight of Tom uttered a faint shriek and rushed into the house, closing the door.

“Pore Susan!” cried Lizzie commiseratingly. “It has given her a turn to see you.”

Locke made no reply, but, after a moment, coming to the precipitous descent which led downwards from the bridge, he supported Lizzie very kindly, and was indeed good enough at one particularly stony bit to encircle her waist with his arm. They parted at the Adlams’ door, and Lizzie tripped joyfully upstairs.

“It’s all right,” she cried gaily. “He’s promised to see about gettin’ a new eye, Susan.”

Miss Adlam turned abruptly away from the window where she chanced to be standing, and cast a suspicious glance upon her friend.

“What was Tom Locke’s arm doin’ round your waist?” she inquired.

“Why, the path was so steep,” explained Lizzie, opening her eyes very wide. “What’s the matter, Susan? Bain’t ye so well this evenin’?”

For Susan was making an odd sort of gulping noise.

“Ye sly thing!” she burst out suddenly. “Lard! I wouldn’t be so treecherous—that I wouldn’t; running after en afore my very eyes. Get along with ’ee, do. I’ll have nothin’ more to say to ’ee.”

Lizzie stared for a moment, thunderstruck, her usually rosy face turning quite pale, and tears presently rushing to her eyes.

“Well, Susan,” she said, as soon as she had recovered her breath, “I didn’t think it of ’ee to turn on me so sudden. I never did nothin’ but what was for yer good. I thought it ’ud plaze ye. But there, you can manage en for yourself now. I don’t care if Tom Locke doesn’t get no new eye at all.”

She hurried from the room, leaving Susan convulsively choking and sobbing.

“Dear heart! dear heart! she’s took wi’ the westeria again,” groaned Mrs. Adlam, as she went creaking up the stairs.

But little Lizzie made no response. Her cheeks were red enough now, and she metaphorically shook the dust of the Adlam premises from her feet as she closed the garden gate behind her.

She kept religiously away from her former friend throughout the week, but when Sunday came round that young lady actually condescended to pay her a visit. Susan arrived attired in white, with a wreath of daisies round her hat, and a great bunch of monthly roses in her waistband; the coils of her fair hair shone like gold in the sunlight—she was a harmony of white and pink and yellow, very pleasant to behold, particularly as her face was flushed with unwonted excitement, and her eyes were bright and eager.

Lizzie received her in the orchard, where she was feeding the chickens. She was not yet dressed for the afternoon, it being her mother’s turn to go to church, and various household duties falling in consequence to her share to-day; but she had put on the clean print which was to serve her throughout the coming week, and a big white apron over that. Her curly brown hair was plaited very neatly, and her sleeves rolled up high on her firm plump arms. The sun glanced down through the heavily laden apple boughs upon her active little figure as she flitted from one hen-coop to another dispensing handfuls of yellow meal to the half-fledged chickens that ran in and out between the bars; her bright tin bucket glittered in the rays, and the little brown tendrils on her forehead danced up and down with the rapidity of her movements.

[Picture: “Oh, Lizzie, I’ve such a piece of news for you!”]

“Oh, it’s you,” she remarked, not quite so cordially as usual.

“Yes, it’s me,” cried Susan eagerly. “Oh, Lizzie, I’ve such a piece of news for you! Tom Locke has been away all the week, and they d’ say he’s jest come back wi’ two eyes—a new imitation one that looks jest the same as t’other.”

“Has he truly?” responded Lizzie, her lingering resentment forgotten, and a broad smile beaming on her face. “Why, I _am_ glad, I am, sure. Ye’ll be willin’ to take up wi’ en now, Susan?”

“I’ll see,” responded the other, with a little toss of the head. “I can’t answer for myself altogether, but I’ll try to conquer my feelin’s. I’m jest thinkin’ o’ takin’ a stroll over the bridge yonder an’ up the lane towards Locke’s. An’ if I do happen to meet en we’ll see how things turns out, Lizzie.”

But it chanced that the meeting with Tom Locke was to take place under different circumstances than those which his sweetheart had anticipated. At that very moment the portly form of Mrs. Fripp emerged from the back door of the cottage, followed by the tall figure of a man—a man whose bearded brown face was enlivened by a pair of beautiful brown eyes. He advanced straight to Lizzie, beaming with pleasure and manly pride.

“Good day to ’ee, Lizzie,” he cried. “I’ve jest come to ax if ye’ll go for a walk wi’ me.”

“Oh, Mr. Locke, ye mane Susan, surely?” stammered the little rosy-faced damsel.

“Ah, you didn’t see that I was here,” said Susan, coming forward with a coquettish sidle and a fatuous smile.

“Nay, Susan, I seed ye very well. I was sorry to hear ye was so porely—I hope ye’re feelin’ a trifle better now. Well, Lizzie my dear, ye’ll gi’e me an answer, won’t ye? I’ll be truly pleased to take ’ee for a walk.”

The two girls looked at one another; the fiery light of animosity beginning to shine in Susan’s eyes; wonder, confusion, and a kind of doubtful pleasure perceptible in Lizzie’s.

“Ye see ’tis this way,” proceeded Locke, in an affably explanatory tone, “I took yer advice, Lizzie, an’ got fixed wi’ a new eye at Bristol. An’ ye wouldn’t believe the difference it has made to my sight. Lard! I wonder I could ha’ been so blind before! But I see clear now at last, an’ I see, my maid, that you’re the wife for me.”

* * * * *

The seizure which overtook Susan Adlam on realising that Tom Locke’s mind was irrevocably made up would have thrilled the whole village, had not the interest once evoked by her uncommon delicacy of constitution been now entirely absorbed in admiring contemplation of Tom Locke’s artificial eye. The fact of Susan Adlam’s being subject to attacks of that remarkable malady with the high-sounding name did, no doubt, confer a certain distinction upon the neighbourhood; but what was that compared with the lustre of having in their midst a man with a removable eye? An eye that could be pocketed when not in immediate use, and assumed at a moment’s notice when it was desired to create a favourable impression.

The new Mrs. Locke, being a thrifty soul, did not encourage too frequent a use of this wonderful adornment; and, indeed, it was universally felt that the spectacle would somewhat lose in value if it were made too cheap. But little Lizzie, though she was the humblest of her sex, felt a modest glow of pride when she sat beside her husband in the spring-cart; and on Sundays her devotion was somewhat disturbed by the pleasant consciousness that, at sermon time, the glances of the congregation wandered frequently from the countenance of the preacher towards the preternaturally alert orb of her Thomas.

THE ROSY PLATE.

“Where thy treasure is, there also is thy heart.”

WHEN old Maria Stickly had come slowly hobbling down the narrow stairs each morning, and had passed through the rickety door which admitted her into the kitchen, her first glance was directed towards the plate which occupied a prominent and central position on the topmost shelf of the dresser.

Hands which had long since mouldered into dust had driven into this shelf the two nails, rusty with age, which kept it from slipping. Maria herself had, many, many years before, constructed the little cloth pad which supported its upper rim; and her first act after lighting the fire and sweeping the tiled floor was to possess herself of this treasure, and carefully and lovingly polish every inch of its already shining surface with a soft cloth kept for the purpose.

This plate, the Rosy Plate, as Maria called it, though, in truth, the large crimson flower which sprawled over its centre in the midst of foliage of a kind totally unknown to botanists might just as well have been likened to a peony or a hollyhock, had played a very important part in its owner’s career—in fact, it might have been called the arbiter of her destiny. Maria used to tell the story sometimes when her nearest neighbour, good-natured, overworked Mrs. Andrews, who lived on the top of the hill a mile away, dropped in to rest on her return home after a marketing expedition, the results of which took up so much room in the perambulator that “the twin,” a fine healthy pair of four-year-old boys, the youngest of her family, had to take it by turns to walk.

Very hot and tired used poor Mrs. Andrews to be by the time she reached this halting-place, very fractious were the children, the pedestrian hanging on to his mother’s skirts and wailing intermittingly, while the proud occupant of the “pram” kicked viciously at the parcels as they encroached on the space usually allotted to his own fat little legs, and uttered piercing shrieks when his exhausted mother reproved him with certain admonitory but wholly innocuous taps. No wonder that at such times as these Mrs. Stickly’s little cottage appeared a very haven of rest, and the sight of her kind old ruddy face peering out between the geraniums in the little window was as welcome as the face of an angel.

“Walk in, Mrs. Andrews, dear, do ’ee now, an’ sit ye down. Tommy!—that bain’t never Tommy a-cryin’, I’m sure. And here’s little Walter a-sittin’ so good in his pram, bless his little ’eart—_he_ wouldn’t cry. Come in, come in, and see what Mrs. Stickly have a-got ye. A little bird did tell I as there was a slice o’ bread an’ sugar in the cupboard for two good boys. I wonder who they can be! Come in, Mrs. Andrews, an’ rest ye a bit; I’ve got the tea drawed all ready, down here in the chimbley corner—he’ll be nice and strong, for he’ve a-been made nigh half a hour.”

“’Tis wonderful kind o’ you, Mrs. Stickly,” Mrs. Andrews would probably return, jamming the pram into a convenient angle behind the door-post, and heaving a weary sigh as she entered the cosy little kitchen. “’Tis what I should never ha’ thought on, I’m sure. I should never ha’ looked for sich a thing. But a cup o’ tea is a blessin’ when a body have been so far as I’ve been. Two lumps, if you please—thank you—that’ll do nice. Sit ye down, Tommy, and Walter, stand here quiet aside o’ me. If you be good little boys, Mrs. Stickly ’ull maybe show you the rosy plate afore we do go home.”

Then Tommy and Walter would munch their bread-and-sugar in blissful silence, and make themselves amazingly sticky, and stare with all their might at the crimson-bedecked trophy which gleamed down at them from its eminence on the dresser. And when Mrs. Andrews had drunk her tea, and told her kind hostess all her troubles—how her master was only working four days a week, or how Teddie had got sore eyes, or how Susanna had an impression on her chest, or, perhaps, how she herself had been that bad last week with a sore throat that if anybody had comed to her wi’ a cup o’ tea in one hand and a poker in the other, she would have been forced to choose the poker; and when Mrs. Stickly had duly groaned and shaken her head in sympathy, the desire of the “twin” was acceded to, and the rosy plate was carefully taken down and submitted to the admiring inspection of the two pairs of round sloe-black eyes.

Mrs. Andrews well knew that this little ceremony caused quite as much pleasure to Mrs. Stickly as to the children, and it was, perhaps, on this account chiefly that she asked for it, and that, moreover, busy as she was, with a thousand odd jobs waiting for her at home, she lingered a little longer in order to hearken to the oft-told tale of the rosy plate, and of all that it represented to its owner. Leaning back in Mrs. Stickly’s best chair with the patchwork cushion, and the knitted antimacassar astride on its shiny wooden back, she would fold her arms, heave a sigh of sentimental reminiscence, and remark tentatively:

“Dear, yes, Mrs. Stickly, they poor innocents don’t have no notion of all as that there pretty plate have a-brought about. Nay, that they haven’t. But ye could tell a tale about that plate, couldn’t ’ee, Mrs. Stickly?”

“Ah, that I could,” the old woman would say, swallowing the bait eagerly. “My poor husband, you know—Stickly—he did give it I when first he was a-coortin’ me.”

“So I think I’ve heard you say,” Mrs. Andrews would return, with placid interest. “Ye’d jist a-had a miff afore he give it ye.”

“E—es, we did have a bit of a miff that time; and we shouldn’t never ha’ made it up, I don’t think, if Stickly hadn’t give me the rosy plate.”

“He did buy it for ’ee at Shroton, didn’t he?” Mrs. Andrews would say, needing perhaps to recall her hostess to the present by some such reminder, for frequently, when talking of these far-away times, Mrs. Stickly’s faded blue eyes would assume a dreamy look, and it would become evident that her thoughts had strayed away from her interlocutrix to the bygone days, when she was a handsome young lass, and Stickly and his peers had come “a-coortin’.”

“Ah, he did buy it for I there—there was more nor him did want to buy it for I. Dear heart alive, I can mind it so well as if it were yesterday. I were reckoned a good-lookin’ maid in those days—I did use to have a very good colour, and my hair was curly and yollow—as yollow as the corn, Stickly did say sometimes—and there was a good many arter me one way and another. There was Tom Boyt—a farmer’s son _he_ were—and there was ’Neas Stuckhey—”

“Strange,” Mrs. Andrews occasionally murmured at this moment, for the coincidence never failed to strike her, “Stuckhey and Stickly—the two names do sound very much alike. ’Tis odd how things do come about—ye chose Stickly, and it mid jist as well ha’ been Stuckhey.”

To this profound remark Mrs. Stickly would probably assent, and would then continue:—