Love Me Little, Love Me Long | Page 9

that soon after the cloth was
removed, from fatigue and repletion, he dropped asleep, with his
shoulder toward Lucy, but his face instinctively turned toward the fire.
Lucy crept away on tiptoe, not to disturb him.
In about an hour he bustled into the drawing-room, ordered tea, blew
up the footman because the cook had not water boiling that moment,
drank three cups, then brightened up, rubbed his hands, and with a
cheerful, benevolent manner, "Now, Lucy," cried he, "come and help
me puzzle out this tiresome genealogy."
A smile of warm assent from Lucy, and the old bachelor and the
blooming Hebe were soon seated with a mountain of parchments by
their side, and a tree spreading before them.
It was not a finite tree like an elm or an oak; no, it was a banyan tree;
covered an acre, and from its boughs little suckers dropped to earth,

and turned to little trees, and had suckers in their turn, and "confounded
the confusion."
Uncle Fountain's happiness depended, _pro tem,_ on proving that he
was a sucker from the great bough of the Fontaines of Melton; and why?
Because, this effected, he had only to go along that bough by an
established pedigree to the great trunk of the Funteyns of Salle, and the
first Funteyn of Salle was said to be (and this he hoped to prove true)
great-grandson of Robert de Fontibus, son of John de Fonte.
Now Uncle Fountain could prove himself the shoot of George his
father (a step at which so many pedigrees halt), who was the shoot of
William, who was the shoot of Richard; but here came a gap of eighty
years between him and that Fountain, younger son of Melton, to whom
he wanted to hook on. Now the logic of women, children, and
criticasters is a thing of gaps; they reason as marches a kangaroo; but to
mathematicians, logicians, and genealogists, a link wanting is a chain
broken. This blank then made Uncle Fountain miserable, and he cried
out for help. Lucy came with her young eyes, her woman's patience,
and her own complaisance. A great ditch yawned between a crocheteer
and a rotten branch he coveted. Our Quinta Curtia flung herself, her
eyesight, and her time into that ditch.
Twelve o'clock came, and found them still wallowing in modern
antiquity.
"Bless me!" cried Mr. Fountain when John brought up the bed-candles,
"how time flies when one is really employed."
"Yes, indeed, uncle;" and by a gymnastic of courtesy she first crushed
and then so molded a yawn that it glided into society a smile.
"We have spent a delightful evening, Lucy."
"Thanks to you, uncle."
"I hope you will sleep well, child."
"I am sure I shall, dear," said she, sweetly and inadvertently.

CHAPTER II
.
A LARGE aspiration is a rarity; but who has not some small ambition,
none the less keen for being narrow--keener, perhaps? Mrs. Bazalgette
burned to be great by dress; Mr. Fountain, member of a sex with higher

aims, aspired to be great in the county.
Unluckily, his main property was in the funds. He had acres in ----shire;
but so few that, some years ago, its lord lieutenant declined to make
him an injustice of the peace. That functionary died, and on his death
the mortified aspirant bought a coppice, christened it Springwood, and
under cover of this fringe to his three meadows, applied to the new lord
lieutenant as M'Duff approached M'Beth. The new man made him a
magistrate; so now he aspired to be a deputy lieutenant, and attended
all the boards of magistrates, and turnpike trusts, etc., and brought up
votes and beer-barrels at each election, and, in, short, played all the
cards in his pack, Lucy included, to earn that distinction.
We may as well confess that there lurked in him a half-unconscious
hope that some day or other, in some strange collision or combination
of parties, a man profound in county business, zealous in county
interests, personally obnoxious to nobody, might drop into the seat of
county member; and, if this should be, would not he have the sense to
hold his tongue upon the noisy questions that waste Parliament's time,
and the nation's; but, on the first of those periodical attacks to which the
wretched landowner is subject, wouldn't he speak, and show the
difference between a mere member of the Commons and a member for
the county?
If anyone had asked this man plump which is the most important,
England or ----shire, he would have certainly told you England; but our
opinions are not the notions we repeat, and can defend by reasons or
even by facts: our opinions are the notions we feel and act on.
Could you have looked inside Mr. Fountain's head, you would