Bulldog and Butterfly | Page 2

was naturally sensitive to refining influences, and of a nature which, remembering how strong it was, was curiously tender.
It was May, in the year 1850--mid-May--and the weather was precisely what mid-May weather ought to be, perfumed and softly fresh, with opposing hints of gaiety and languor in it. The birds were singing everywhere--a vocal storm, and the sheep--who can never express themselves as being satisfied in any weather--bleated disconsolately from the meadows. The clucking of fowls, the quacking of ducks, the very occasional grunt of some contented porker in the backward regions of the place, the stamp of a horse's foot, and the rattle of a chain in a manger-ring--sounds quite unmusical in themselves--blended with the birds' singing, and the thick humming of the bees, into an actual music in which no note was discordant. The day was without a cloud, and the soft light was diffused everywhere on a skyey haze of whitish blue.
In this positively delightful weather, Bertha stood with folded hands in the porch of the Oak House (the floor and the far wall of the kitchen behind her patched with gleams of red and brown light), like the central figure of a picture framed in live green. She was pretty enough to be pleasant to look at; but her charms were mainly the growth of tranquil good temper and sound sense. Broad brow, gray eyes, resolute little chin, the mouth the best feature of the face, her expression thoughtful, serene, and self-possessed, the gray eyes a trifle inclined to dream wide-awake, hair of no particular colour, but golden in the sunlight. She stood leaning sideways, with one shoulder touching the trellis-work of the porch, and one pretty little foot crossed over the other, her head poised sideways and nestled into the ivy. She was looking far away, seeing nothing, and her folded hands drooped before her. A bridge, with a hand-rail on either side of it, crossed the stream and led from a meadow path to the garden. This meadow path was hidden--partly by the garden wall, and partly by the growth of alder and pollard at the side of the stream--and a man came marching along it, unobserved. Before he reached the bridge he brought his footsteps to a sudden halt, and sent a glance towards the porch. Seeing the girl there, sunk in day dreams, he slipped back into the shelter of the withies and took a good long look at her. Twice or thrice, though his feet did not quit the ground, he made a faint movement to go on again, and at length, after two or three minutes of indecision, he walked briskly to the foot of the bridge, threw open the little gate at the end of it, and, suffering it to fall with a clanking noise behind him, tramped across the hollow-resounding boards.
At this sudden break upon the rural stillness--for, in spite of the chorus of the birds and the farmyard noises which mingled with it, the general effect was somehow of stillness and solitude--the girl looked round at the new-comer, drew herself up from her lounging attitude, placed her hands behind her and there re-folded them, and stood waiting, with an added flush of colour on her cheek. The new-comer strode along in a kind of awkward resoluteness, looking straight at the girl with a glance which appeared to embarrass her a little, though she returned it frankly enough.
'Here I am, you see,' said the new-comer, halting before her.
He was tallish, well-made, and of middle age. His expression was a trifle dogged, and for a man who came love-making he looked less prepossessing than he himself might have wished.
'Good afternoon, Mr. Thistlewood,' said the girl, in a tone which a sensitive man might have thought purposely defensive.
'Is it yes or no to-day, Bertha?' asked Mr. Thistlewood.
'It has always been no,' she answered, looking down.
'Oh,' he answered, 'I'm perfectly well aware of that. It always has been no up till now, but that's no reason why it should be no to-day. And if it's no to-day that's no reason why it should be no again this day three months. Maids change their minds, my dear.'
'It is a pity you should waste your time, Mr. Thistlewood,' said Bertha, still looking down.
'As for wasting my time,' returned John Thistle-wood, 'that's a thing as few can charge me with as a general rule. And in this particular case, you see, I can't help myself. The day I see you married I shall make up my mind to leave you alone until such time as you might happen to be a widow, and if that should come to pass I should reckon myself free to come again.'
'It has always been no,' said Bertha. 'It is no to-day. It will always be no.'
The words in