A Pair of Clogs | Page 7

The sooner that fellow is several miles away from here, the better I shall be pleased."
"She was a lovely little thing," repeated Mrs Vallance with a sigh.
"Well, well," said her husband; "I daresay. But here's something quite as lovely. Just look at this Captain Christie. It's the best rose I've seen yet. I don't believe Chelwood has a finer."
"Not one of the little Chelwoods was ever a quarter as pretty as that gypsy child, even when they were babies," continued his wife gazing absently at the rose, "and now they're getting quite plain."
She could not forget the beautiful child all that evening, though she did not receive the least encouragement to talk of her from her husband. Mr Vallance was not so fond of children as his wife, and did not altogether regret that he had none of his own. His experience of them, drawn from Squire Chelwood's family who lived a little further up the valley, did not lead him to think that they added to the comfort of a household. When they came to spend the day at the vicarage he usually shut himself into his study, and issuing forth after they were gone, his soul was vexed to find footmarks on his borders, his finest fruit picked, and fragments of a meal left about on his smooth lawn. But Mrs Vallance grudged them nothing, and if she could have found it in her heart to envy anyone, it would have been Mrs Chelwood at the White House, who had a nursery and school-room full of children.
On the morning after the gypsies had passed, the Reverend Austin Vallance was out even earlier than usual in his garden. He was always an early riser, for he liked time for a stroll before taking the service in his little church. Just now his roses were in full perfection, and the weather was remarkably fine, so that it was scarcely six o'clock before he was out of doors. It was certainly a beautiful morning. By and by it would be hot and sultry, only fit for a sensible man to sit quietly in his study and doze a little, and make extracts for his next sermon. Now, it was deliciously cool and fresh. The roses were magnificent! What a pity that the blaze of the sun would soon dim their glorious colours and scorch their dewy fragrance. It would be a good plan to cut a few at once before they were spoilt by the heat. He took his knife out of his pocket and hesitated where to begin, for he never liked to cut his roses; but, remembering that Priscilla would insist on having some indoors, he set to work on the tree nearest him, and tenderly detached a full-blown Baroness Rothschild. He stood and looked at it complacently.
"I don't believe," he said to himself, "that Chelwood, with all his gardeners, will ever come up to my roses. There's nothing like personal attention. Roses are like children--they want individual, personal attention. And they pay for it. Children don't always do that."
At this very moment, and just as he was turning to another tree, a little chuckling laugh fell on his ear. It was such a strange sound in the stillness of the garden, and it seemed so close to him, that he started violently and dropped his knife. Where did it come from? He looked vaguely up in the sky, and down on the earth--there was nothing living to be seen, not even a bird. "I must have been mistaken," he thought, "but it's very odd; I never heard anything more clearly in my life." He picked up his knife, and moved further along the turf walk, a good deal disturbed and rather nervous. At the end of it there was a rustic sort of shed, which had once been an arbour, but was now only used for gardening tools, baskets, and rubbish: over the entrance hung a mass of white climbing roses. Walking slowly towards this, and cutting a rose or two on his way, Mr Vallance was soon again alarmed by the same noise--a low laugh of satisfaction; this time it came so distinctly from within the shed, that he quickened his pace at once and, holding back the dangling branches, looked in with a half feeling of dread. What he saw there so astonished him that he stood motionless for some moments, as though struck by some sight of horror. On the floor was a large wooden marketing basket, and in this, wrapped in an old shawl, lay a little child of two years old. She had bright yellow hair, and a brown skin, and in her fat hands she held a queer little shoe with brass nails in it and brass clasps; she was making small