Mass George | Page 2

Sarah," I heard Morgan whisper, for I had gone up to put my
hand in hers.
"For shame!" she said; "it's you who ought."
"Now look you," said Morgan, who was a Welshman, and spoke very
Welshy sometimes, "didn't you just go and promise to help and obey?
And the first thing I tells you to do you kicks."
"I am very busy," said my father. "If you two want a holiday, say so."
"Holiday, sir? Not us," said Morgan, in a hesitating way. "We don't
want no holiday, sir, only we felt like as it was our dooty to tell you
what--"
"To tell me what?"
"Yes, sir; seeing as we were going out to a savage country, where
you've got to do everything yourself before you can have it, and as
there'd be no parsons and churches, we thought we'd get it done decent
and 'spectable here first."
"My good fellow, what do you mean?" said my father.
"Why, what I've been telling of you, sir. Sarah says--"
"I did not, Morgan, and I shouldn't have thought of such a thing. It was
all your doing."
"Steady in the ranks, my lass. Be fair. I'll own to half of it, but you
know you were just as bad as me."
"I was not, sir, indeed," cried Sarah, beginning to sob. "He deluded me
into it, and almost forced me to say yes."
"Man's dooty," said Morgan, dryly.
"What!" cried my father, smiling; "have you two gone and been
married?"

"Stop there, sir, please, begging your pardon," said Morgan; "I declare
to gootness, you couldn't make a better guess than that."
"I beg your pardon, sir," said Sarah, who was very red in the face
before, but scarlet now; and as I sit down and write all this, as an old
man, everything comes back to me as vividly as if it were only
yesterday--for though I have forgotten plenty of my later life, all this is
as fresh as can be--"I beg your pardon, sir, but as you know all the
years I have been in your service, and with my own dear angel of a
mistress--Heaven bless her!"
"Amen," said my father, and, stern soldier as he was, I saw the tears
stand thick in his eyes, for poor Sarah broke down and began to sob,
while Morgan turned his face and began to blow his nose like a trumpet
out of tune.
"I--I beg your pardon for crying, sir, and it's very weak, I own,"
continued Sarah, after a few minutes' interval, during which I hurriedly
put my arm round her, and she dabbed down and kissed me, leaving my
face very wet; "but you know I never meant to be married, but when
Morgan comes to me and talks about what I was thinking about--how
you and that poor darling motherless boy was to get on in foreign
abroad, all amongst wild beasts and savages, and no one to make a drop
o' gruel if you had colds, or to make your beds, or sew on a button, and
your poor stockings all in holes big enough to break any decent
woman's heart, and to Master George's head--"
"I can wash my own head well enough now, Sarah," I said.
"Yes, my dear; but I don't believe you'd do it as well as I could, and
you know I never let the soap get in your eyes. And when, sir, Morgan
comes to me, and he asks me if I'd got the heart to let you both go out
into the wilderness like that without a soul to look after you, and tells
me as it was my dooty to marry him, and go out and look after the
housekeeping for you both, while he did the garden, what could I say?"
Poor Sarah paused quite out of breath.

"Say?" said my father, smiling, but looking very much moved. "You
could only say yes, like the good, true-hearted woman you are."
"Oh, sir!" exclaimed Sarah.
"You have both relieved me of a great deal of care and anxiety by your
faithful, friendly conduct," continued my father, "for it will make what I
am going to seek in the wilderness quite a home at once. It is not the
wilderness you think, for I know on very good authority that the place
where we are going is a very beautiful and fertile country."
"Can't come up to Wales," said Morgan, shaking his head.
"Perhaps not," said my father, smiling; "but very beautiful all the same.
I ought to warn you both, though, while there is time to draw back, that
the land is entirely new."
"What, wasn't it made with the rest of the world, sir?" said Morgan,
staring.
"Yes, of course," said my father; "but I mean