Janice Meredith | Page 9

table, till his eyes rested on Janice. There they fixed themselves in a bold, unconcealed scrutiny, to the no small embarrassment of the maiden, though the man himself stood in an easy, unconstrained attitude, quite unheeding the five pairs of eyes staring at him, or, if conscious, entirely unembarrassed by them.
"Well, Charles, Mr. Cauldwell writes me that ye don't know much about horses or gardening, but he thinks ye have parts and can pick it up quickly."
Still keeping his eyes on Miss Meredith, Fownes nodded his head, with a short, quick jerk, far from respectful.
"But he also says ye are a surly, hot-tempered fellow, who may need a touch of a whip now and again."
Without turning his head, a second time the man gave a jerk of it, conveying an idea of assent, but it was the assent of contempt far more than of accord.
"Come, come," ordered the squire, testily. "Let 's have a sound of your tongue. Is Mr. Cauldwell right?"
Still looking at Miss Meredith, the man shrugged his shoulders, and replied, "Bain't vor the bikes of ar to zay Mister Cauldwell bai a liar." Yet the voice and manner left little doubt in the hearers as to the speaker's private opinion, and Janice laughed, partly at the implication, but more in nervousness.
"What kind of work are ye used to?" asked Mr. Meredith.
The man hesitated for a moment and then muttered crossly, "Ar indentured vor to work, not to bai questioned."
"Then work ye shall have," cried the squire, hotly. "Peg, show him the stable, and tell Tom--"
"One moment, Lambert," interjected his wife, and then she asked, "Hast thou had breakfast, Charles?"
Fownes shook his head sullenly.
"Take him to the kitchen and give him some at once, Peg," ordered Mrs. Meredith.
For the first time the fellow looked away from Janice, fixing his eyes on Mrs. Meredith. Then he bowed easily and gracefully, saying, "Thank you." Apparently unconscious that for a moment he had left the Somerset burr off his tongue and the rustic pretence from his manner, he followed Peg to the kitchen.
If he were unconscious of the slip, it was more than were his auditors, and for a moment they all exchanged glances in silent bewilderment.
"Humph!" finally growled the squire. "I like the look of him still less."
"He holds himself like a gentleman," asserted Tabitha.
"This fellow will need close watching," predicted Mr. Meredith. "He 's no yokel. He moves like a gentleman or a house-servant. Yet he had to make his mark on the covenant."
"I think, dadda," said Miss Meredith, in her most calmly judicial manner, "that the new man is a born villain, and has committed some terrible crime. He has a horrid, wicked face, and he stares just as--as--so that one wants to shiver."
Mrs. Meredith rose. "Janice," she chided, "thou 't too young to make thy opinions of the slightest value. Go to thy spinet, child, and don't let me hear any more such foolish babble. Charles has a good face, and will make a good servant."
"I don't care what mommy thinks," Miss Meredith confided to Tabitha in the parlour, as the one took her seat at an embroidery frame and the other at the spinet. "I know he's a bad man, and will end by killing one of us and stealing the silver and a horse, just as Mr. Vreeland's bond-servant did. He makes me think of the villain in 'The Tragic History of Sir Watkins Stokes and Lady Betty Artless.'"
IV AN APPLE OF DISCORD
In the week following his advent the new servant was the cause of considerable discussion, and, regrettably, of not a little controversy, among the members of the household of Greenwood. The squire maintained that "the fellow is a bad-tempered, lazy, deceitful rogue, in need of much watching." Mrs. Meredith, on the contrary, invariably praised the man, and promptly suppressed her husband whenever he began to rail against him. To Janice, with the violent prejudices of youth still unmodified by experience and reason, Charles was almost a special deputy of the individual she heard so unmercifully thrashed to tatters each Sunday by the Rev. Mr. McClave. And again, to the contrary, Tabitha insisted with growing fervour that the servant was a gentleman, possessed of all the qualities that word implied, plus the most desirable attribute of all others to eighteenth-century maidens, a romantic possibility.
As a matter of fact, these diverse and contradictory views had a crossing-point, and accepting this as their mean, Charles proved himself to be a knowing man with horses, an entirely ignorant and by no means eager labourer in the little farm work there was to do, a silent though easily angered being with every one save Mrs. Meredith, and so clearly above his station that he was viewed with disfavour, tinctured by not a little fear, by house-servants, by field