White Lilac; or the Queen of the May, Amy Walton [red seas under red skies TXT] 📗

all he dragged them on the ground. You had only to look at the face of the master of the shop to see that speed was impossible to him, and that he was justly known as the slowest man in the parish both in speech and action. This was hardly considered a failing, however, for it had its advantages in shopping; if he was slow himself, he was quite willing that others should be so too, and to stand in unmoved calm while Mrs Jones fingered a material to test its quality, or Mrs Wilson made up her mind between a spot and a sprig. It was therefore a splendid place for a bit of talk, for he was so long in serving, and his customers were so long in choosing, that there was an agreeable absence of pressure, and time to drink a cup of gossip down to its last drop of interest.

"I don't understand myself what Mary White would be at," said Mrs Greenways.

She stood waiting in the shop while Dimbleby thoughtfully weighed out some sugar for her; a stout woman with a round good-natured face, framed in a purple-velvet bonnet and nodding flowers; her long mantle matched the bonnet in stylishness, and was richly trimmed with imitation fur, but the large strong basket on her arm, already partly full of parcels, was quite out of keeping with this splendid attire. The two women who stood near, listening with eager respect to her remarks, were of very different appearance; their poor thin shawls were put on without any regard for fashion, and their straight cotton dresses were short enough to show their clumsy boots, splashed with mud from the miry country lanes. The edge of Mrs Greenways' gown was also draggled and dirty, for she had not found it easy to hold it up and carry a large basket at the same time.

"I thought," she went on, "as how Mary White was all for plain names, and homely ways, and such-like."

"She _do say_ so," said the woman nearest to her, cautiously.

"Then, as I said to Greenways this morning, `It's not a consistent act for your sister to name her child like that. Accordin' to her you ought to have names as simple and common as may be.' Why, think of what she said when I named my last, which is just a year ago. `And what do you think of callin' her?' says she. `Why,' says I, `I think of giving her the name of Agnetta.' `Dear me!' says she; `whyever do you give your girls such fine names? There's your two eldest, Isabella and Augusta; I'd call this one Betsy, or Jane, or Sarah, or something easy to say, and suitable.'"

"_Did_ she, now?" said both the listeners at once.

"And it's not only that," continued Mrs Greenways with a growing sound of injury in her voice, "but she's always on at me when she gets a chance about the way I bring my girls up. `You'd a deal better teach her to make good butter,' says she, when I told her that Bella was learning the piano. And when I showed her that screen Gusta worked-- lilies on blue satting, a re'lly elegant thing--she just turned her head and says, `I'd rather, if she were a gal of mine, see her knit her own stockings.' Those were her words, Mrs Wishing."

"Ah, well, it's easy to talk," replied Mrs Wishing soothingly, "we'll be able to see how she'll bring up a daughter of her own now."

"I'm not saying," pursued Mrs Greenways, turning a watchful eye on Mr Dimbleby's movements, "that Mary White haven't a perfect right to name her child as she chooses. I'm too fair for that, I _hope_. What I do say is, that now she's picked up a fancy sort of name like Lilac, she hasn't got any call to be down on other people. And if me and Greenways likes to see our girls genteel and give 'em a bit of finishing eddication, and set 'em off with a few accomplishments, it's our own affair and not Mary White's. And though I say it as shouldn't, you won't find two more elegant gals than Gusta and Bella, choose where you may."

During the last part of her speech Mrs Greenways had been poking and squeezing her parcel of sugar into its appointed corner of her basket; as she finished she settled it on her arm, clutched at her gown with the other hand, and prepared to start.

"And now, as I'm in a hurry, I'll say good night, Mrs Pinhorn and Mrs Wishing, and good night to you, Mr Dimbleby."

She rolled herself and her burden through the narrow door of the shop, and for a moment no one spoke, while all the little clocks ticked away more busily than ever.

"She's got enough to carry," said Mrs Pinhorn, breaking silence at last, with a sideway nod at her neighbour.

"She have _so_," agreed Mrs Wishing mildly; "and I wonder, that I do, to see her carrying that heavy basket on foot--she as used to come in her spring cart."

Mrs Pinhorn pressed her lips together before answering, then she said with meaning: "They're short of hands just now at Orchards Farm, and maybe short of horses too."

"You don't say so!" said Mrs Wishing, drawing nearer.

"My Ben works there, as you know, and he says money's scarce there, very scarce indeed. One of the men got turned off only t'other day."

"Lor', now, to think of that!" exclaimed Mrs Wishing in an awed manner. "An' her in that bonnet an' all them artificials!"

"There's a deal," continued Mrs Pinhorn, "in what Mrs White says about them two Greenways gals with their fine-lady ways. It 'ud a been better to bring 'em up handy in the house so as to help their mother. As it is, they're too finnicking to be a bit of use. You wouldn't see either of _them_ with a basket on their arm, they'd think it lowering themselves. And I dare say the youngest 'll grow up just like 'em."

"There's a deal in what Mrs Greenways's just been saying too," remarked the woman called Mrs Wishing in a hesitating voice, "for Mrs James White _is_ a very strict woman and holds herself high, and `Lilac' is a fanciful kind of a name; but _I_ dunno." She broke off as if feeling incapable of dealing with the question.

"I can't wonder myself," resumed Mrs Pinhorn, "at Mrs Greenways being a bit touchy. You heard, I s'pose, what Mrs White up and said to her once? You didn't? Well, she said, `You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, and you'll never make them girls ladies, try all you will,' says she. `Useless things you'll make 'em, fit for neither one station or t'other.'"

"That there's plain speaking!" said Mrs Wishing admiringly.

Mr Dimbleby had not uttered a word during this conversation, and was to all appearance entirely occupied in weighing out, tying up parcels, and receiving orders. In reality, however, he had not lost a word of it, and had been getting ready to speak for some time past. Neither of the women, who were well acquainted with him, was at all surprised when he suddenly remarked: "It were Mrs Leigh herself as had to do with the name of Mrs James White's baby."

"Re'lly, now?" said Mrs Wishing doubtfully.

"An' it were Mrs Leigh herself as I heard it from," continued Dimbleby ponderously, without noticing the interruption.

"Well, that makes a difference, don't it now?" said Mrs Pinhorn. "Why ever didn't you name that afore, Mr Dimbleby?"

"And," added Dimbleby, grinding on to the end of his speech regardless of hindrance, like a machine that has been wound up; "and Mrs Leigh herself is goin' to stand for the baby."

"Lor'! I do wish Mrs Greenways could a heard that," said Mrs Pinhorn; "that'll set Mrs White up more than ever."

"It will so," said Mrs Wishing; "she allers did keep herself _to_ herself did Mrs White. Not but what she's a decent woman and a kind. Seems as how, if Mrs Leigh wished to name the child `Lilac', she couldn't do no other than fall in with it. But _I_ dunno."

"And how does the name strike you, Mr Snell?" said Mrs Pinhorn, turning to a newcomer.

He was an oldish man, short and broad-shouldered, with a large head and serious grey eyes. Not only his leather apron, but the ends of his stumpy fingers, which were discoloured and brown, showed that he was a cobbler by trade. When Mrs Pinhorn spoke to him, he fingered his cheek thoughtfully, took off his hat, and passed his hand over his high bald forehead.

"What name may you be alludin' to, ma'am?" he enquired very politely.

"The name `Lilac' as Mrs James White's goin' to call her child."

"Lilac--eh! Lilac White. White Lilac," repeated the cobbler musingly. "Well, ma'am, 'tis a pleasant bush and a homely; I can't wish the maid no better than to grow up like her name."

"Why, you wouldn't for sure wish her to grow up homely, would you now, Mr Snell?" said Mrs Wishing with a feeble laugh.

"I _would_, ma'am," replied Mr Snell, turning rather a severe eye upon the questioner, "I _would_. For why? Because to be homely is to make the common things of home sweet and pleasant. She can't do no better than that."

Mrs Wishing shrank silenced into the background, like one who has been reproved, and the cobbler advanced to the counter to exchange greetings with Mr Dimbleby, and buy tobacco. The women's voices, the sharp ticking of the clocks, and the deeper tones of the men kept up a steady concert for some time undisturbed. But suddenly the door was thrown violently back on its hinges with a bang, and a tall man in labourer's clothes rushed into their midst. Everyone looked up startled, and on Mrs Wishing's face there was fear as well as surprise when she recognised the newcomer.

"Why, Dan'l, my man," she exclaimed, "what is it?"

Daniel was out of breath with running. He rubbed his forehead with a red pocket handkerchief, looked round in a dazed manner at the assembled group, and at length said hoarsely: "Mrs Greenways bin here?"

"Ah, just gone!" said both the women at once.

"There's trouble up yonder--on the hill," said Daniel, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder, and speaking in a strange, broken voice.

"Mary White's baby!" exclaimed Mrs Pinhorn.

"Fits!" added Mrs Wishing; "they all went off that way."

"Hang the baby," muttered Daniel. He made his way past the women, who had pressed up close to him, to where the cobbler and Dimbleby stood.

"I've fetched the doctor," he said, "and she wants the Greenways to know it; I thought maybe she'd be here."

"What is it? Who's ill?" asked the cobbler.

"Tain't anyone that's ill," answered Daniel; "he's stone dead. They shot him right through the heart."

"Who? Who?" cried all the voices together.

"I found him," continued Daniel, "up in the woods; partly covered up with leaves he was. Smiling peaceful and stone dead. He was always a brave feller and done his dooty, did James White on the hill.