The Battle Ground | Page 7

a candle to the Brown Bess I ran twenty years ago--you don't remember Brown Bess, eh, Governor?"
"Why, to be sure," said the Governor. "I can see her as if it were yesterday,--and a beauty she was, too,--but come in to supper with us, my dear Major; we were just sitting down. No, I shan't take an excuse--come in, sir, come in."
"No, no, thank you," returned the Major. "Molly's waiting, and Molly doesn't like to wait, you know. I got dinner at Merry Oaks tavern by the way, and a mighty bad one, too, but the worst thing about it was that they actually had the impudence to put me at the table with an abolitionist. Why, I'd as soon eat with a darkey, sir, and so I told him, so I told him!"
The Governor laughed, his fine, brown eyes twinkling in the gloom. "You were always a man of your word," he said; "so I must tell Julia to mend her views before she asks you to dine. She has just had me draw up my will and free the servants. There's no withstanding Julia, you know, Major."
"You have an angel," declared the other, "and she gets lovelier every day; my regards to her,--and to her aunts, sir. Ah, good night, good night," and with a last cordial gesture he started rapidly upon his homeward way.
Betty caught the Governor's hand and went with him into the house. As they entered the hall, Uncle Shadrach, the head butler, looked out to reprimand her. "Ef'n anybody 'cep'n Marse Peyton had cotch you, you'd er des been lammed," he grumbled. "An' papa was real mad!" called Virginia from the table.
"That's jest a story!" cried Betty. Still clinging to her father's hand, she entered the dining room; "that's jest a story, papa," she repeated.
"No, I'm not angry," laughed the Governor. "There, my dear, for heaven's sake don't strangle me. Your mother's the one for you to hang on. Can't you see what a rage she's in?"
"My dear Mr. Ambler," remonstrated his wife, looking over the high old silver service. She was very frail and gentle, and her voice was hardly more than a clear whisper. "No, no, Betty, you must go up and wash your face first," she added decisively.
The Governor sat down and unfolded his napkin, beaming hospitality upon his food and his family. He surveyed his wife, her two maiden aunts and his own elder brother with the ineffable good humour he bestowed upon the majestic home-cured ham fresh from a bath of Madeira.
"I am glad to see you looking so well, my dear," he remarked to his wife, with a courtliness in which there was less polish than personality. "Ah, Miss Lydia, I know whom to thank for this," he added, taking up a pale tea rosebud from his plate, and bowing to one of the two old ladies seated beside his wife. "Have you noticed, Julia, that even the roses have become more plentiful since your aunts did us the honour to come to us?"
"I am sure the garden ought to be grateful to Aunt Lydia," said his wife, with a pleased smile, "and the quinces to Aunt Pussy," she added quickly, "for they were never preserved so well before."
The two old ladies blushed and cast down their eyes, as they did every evening at the same kindly by-play. "You know I am very glad to be of use, my dear Julia," returned Miss Pussy, with conscious virtue. Miss Lydia, who was tall and delicate and bent with the weight of potential sanctity, shook her silvery head and folded her exquisite old hands beneath the ruffles of her muslin under-sleeves. She wore her hair in shining folds beneath her thread-lace cap, and her soft brown eyes still threw a youthful lustre over the faded pallor of her face.
"Pussy has always had a wonderful talent for preserving," she murmured plaintively. "It makes me regret my own uselessness."
"Uselessness!" warmly protested the Governor. "My dear Miss Lydia, your mere existence is a blessing to mankind. A lovely woman is never useless, eh, Brother Bill?"
Mr. Bill, a stout and bashful gentleman, who never wasted words, merely bowed over his plate, and went on with his supper. There was a theory in the family--a theory romantic old Miss Lydia still hung hard by--that Mr. Bill's peculiar apathy was of a sentimental origin. Nearly thirty years before he had made a series of mild advances to his second cousin, Virginia Ambler--and her early death before their polite vows were plighted had, in the eyes of his friends, doomed the morose Mr. Bill to the position of a perpetual mourner.
Now, as he shook his head and helped himself to chicken, Miss Lydia sighed in sympathy.
"I am afraid Mr. Bill must find us very flippant," she offered as