Love Me Little, Love Me Long | Page 8

four smoking post-horses,
came wheeling round the gravel to the front door. Uncle Fountain's
factotum got down from the dicky, packed Lucy's imperial on the roof,
and slung a box below the dicky; stowed her maid away aft, arranged
the foot-cushion and a shawl or two inside, and, half obsequiously, half
bumptiously, awaited the descent of his fair charge.
Then, upstairs, came a sudden simultaneous attack of ardent lips, and a
long, clinging embrace that would have graced the most glorious,
passionate, antique love. Sculpture outdone, the young lady went down,
and was handed into the carriage. Her ardent aunt followed presently,
and fired many glowing phrases in at the window; and, just as the
carriage moved, she uttered a single word quite quietly, as much as to
say, Now, this I mean. This genuine word, the last Aunt Bazalgette
spoke, had been, two hundred years before, the last word of Charles the
First. Note the coincidences of history.
The two postboys lifted their whips level to their eyes by one instinct,
the horses tightened the traces, the wheels ground the gravel, and Lucy
was whirled away with that quiet, emphatic post-dict ringing in her
ears,

Remember!
Font Hill was sixty miles off: they reached it in less than six hours.
There was Uncle Fountain on the hall steps to receive her, and the
comely housekeeper, Mrs. Brown, ducking and smiling in the
background. While the servants were unpacking the carriage, Mr.
Fountain took Lucy to her bedroom. Mrs. Brown had gone on before to
see for the third time whether all was comfortable. There was a huge
fire, all red; and on the table a gigantic nosegay of spring flowers, with
smell to them all.
"Oh how nice, after a journey!" said Lucy, mowing down Uncle
Fountain and Mrs. Brown with one comprehensive smile.
Mrs. Brown flamed with complacency.
"What!" cried her uncle; "I suppose you expected a black fire and
impertinent apologies by way of substitute for warmth; a stuffy room,
and damp sheets, roasted, like a woodcock, twenty minutes before use."
"No, uncle, dear, I expected every comfort at Font Abbey." Brown
retired with a courtesy.
"Aha! What! you have found out that it is all humbug about old
bachelors not knowing comfort? Do bachelors ever put their friends
into damp sheets? No; that is the women's trick with their household
science. Your sex have killed more men with damp sheets than ever fell
by the sword."
"Yet nobody erects monuments to us," put in Lucy, slyly.
She missed fire. Uncle Fountain, like most Englishmen, could take in a
pun by the ear, but wit only by the eye. "Do you remember when Mrs.
Bazalgette put you into the linen sponge, and killed you?"
"Killed me?"
"Certainly, as far as in her lay. We can but do our best; well, she did
hers, and went the right way to work."
"You see I survive."
"By a miracle. Dinner is at six."
"Very well, dear."
"Yes; but six in this house means sixty minutes after five and sixty
minutes before seven. I mention this the first day because you are just
come from a place where it means twenty minutes to seven; also let me
observe that I think I have noticed soup and potatoes eat better hot than
cold, and meat tastes nicer done to a turn than--"

"To a cinder?"
"Ha! ha! and come with an appetite, please."
"Uncle, no tyranny, I beg."
"Tyranny? you know this is Liberty Hall; only when I eat I expect my
companion to-eat too; besides, there is nothing to be gained by humbug
to-day. There will be only us two at dinner; and when I see young
ladies fiddling with an asparagus head instead of eating their dinner, it
don't fall into the greenhorn's notion--exquisite creature! all soul! no
stomach! feeds on air, ideas, and quadrille music--no; what do you
think I say?"
"Something flattering, I feel sure."
"On the contrary, something true. I say hypocrite! Been grubbing like a
pig all day, so can't eat like a Christian at meal time; you can't humbug
me."
"Alas! so I see. That decides me to be candid--and hungry."
"Well, I am off; I don't stick to my friends and bore them with my
affairs like that egotistical hussy, Jane Bazalgette. I amuse myself, and
leave them to amuse themselves; that is my notion of politeness. I am
going to see my pigs fed, then into the village. I am building a new
blacksmith's shop there (you must come and look at it the first thing
to-morrow); and at six, if you want to find me--"
"I shall peep behind the soup-tureen."
"And there I shall be, if I am alive." At dinner the old boy threw
himself into the work with such zeal