Clare Avery | Page 4

have what we want," answered he.
"You can!" objected Clare.
"Nay, my child, I cannot," gravely replied her grandfather. "An' I could, I would have alway a good, obedient little grand-daughter."
Clare played with Mr Avery's stick, and was silent.
"Leave her with me, good Barbara, and go look after thy mighty charges," said her master, smiling. "I will bring her within ere long."
Barbara trotted off, and Clare, relieved from the fear of her duenna, went back to her previous subject.
"Gaffer, what do the fishes?"
"What do they? Why, swim about in the water, and shake their tails, and catch flies for their dinner."
"What think they on, Gaffer?"
"Nay, thou art beyond me there. I never was a fish. How can I tell thee?"
"Would they bite me?" demanded Clare solemnly.
"Nay, I reckon not."
"What, not a wild fish?" said Clare, opening her dark blue eyes.
Mr Avery laughed, and shook his head.
"But I would fain know--And, O Gaffer!" exclaimed the child, suddenly interrupting herself, "do tell me, why did Tom kill the pig?"
"Kill the pig? Why, for that my Clare should have somewhat to eat at her dinner and her supper."
"Killed him to eat him?" wonderingly asked Clare, who had never associated live pigs with roast pork.
"For sure," replied her grandfather.
"Then he had not done somewhat naughty?"
"Nay, not he."
"I would, Gaffer," said Clare, very gravely, "that Tom had not smothered the pig ere he began to lay eggs. [The genuine speech of a child of Clare's age.] I would so have liked a little pig!"
The suggestion of pig's eggs was too much for Mr Avery's gravity. "And what hadst done with a little pig, my maid."
"I would have washed it, and donned it, and put it abed," said Clare.
"Methinks he should soon have marred his raiment. And maybe he should have loved cold water not more dearly than a certain little maid that I could put a name to."
Clare adroitly turned from this perilous topic, with an unreasoning dread of being washed there and then; though in truth it was not cleanliness to which she objected, but wet chills and rough friction.
"Gaffer, may I go with Bab to four-hours unto Mistress Pendexter?"
"An' thou wilt, my little floweret."
Mr Avery rose slowly, and taking Clare by the hand, went back to the house. He returned to his turret-study, but Clare scampered upstairs, possessed herself of her doll, and ran in and out of the inhabited rooms until she discovered Barbara in the kitchen, beating up eggs for a pudding.
"Bab, I may go with thee!"
"Go with me?" repeated Barbara, looking up with some surprise. "Marry, Mrs Clare, I hope you may."
"To Mistress Pendexter!" shouted Clare ecstatically.
"Oh ay!" assented Barbara. "Saith the master so?"
Clare nodded. "And, Bab, shall I take Doll?"
This contraction for Dorothy must have been the favourite name with the little ladies of the time for the plaything on which it is now inalienably fixed.
"I will sew up yon hole in her gown, then, first," said Barbara, taking the doll by its head in what Clare thought a very disrespectful manner. "Mrs Clare, this little gown is cruel ragged; if I could but see time, I had need make you another."
"Oh, do, Bab!" cried Clare in high delight.
"Well, some day," replied Barbara discreetly.
A few hours later, Barbara and Clare were standing at the door of a small, neat cottage in a country lane, where dwelt Barbara's sister, Marian Pendexter, [a fictitious person] widow of the village schoolmaster. The door was opened by Marian herself, a woman some five years the senior of her sister, to whom she bore a good deal of likeness, but Marian was the quieter mannered and the more silent of the two.
"Marry, little Mistress Clare!" was her smiling welcome. "Come in, prithee, little Mistress, and thou shalt have a buttered cake to thy four-hours. Give thee good even, Bab."
A snowy white cloth covered the little round table in the cottage, and on it were laid a loaf of bread a piece of butter, and a jug of milk. In honour of her guests, Marian went to her cupboard, and brought out a mould of damson cheese, a bowl of syllabub, and a round tea-cake, which she set before the fire to toast.
"And how fareth good Master Avery?" asked Marian, as she closed the cupboard door, and came back.
Barbara shook her head ominously.
"But ill, forsooth?" pursued her sister.
"Marry, an' you ask at him, he is alway well; but--I carry mine eyes, Marian."
Barbara's theory of educating children was to keep them entirely ignorant of the affairs of their elders. To secure this end, she adopted a vague, misty style of language, of which she fondly imagined that Clare did not understand a word. The result was unfortunate, as it usually is. Clare understood detached bits of her nurse's conversation, over which she brooded silently in her own little