The Queen of Hearts | Page 9

expected.
"What you expected?" I repeated, in astonishment.
"Yes," returned Morgan, with his bitterest emphasis. "It doesn't surprise me in the least. It's the way things go in this world--it's the regular moral see-saw of good and evil--the old story with the old end to it. They were too happy in the garden of Eden--down comes the serpent and turns them out. Solomon was too wise--down comes the Queen of Sheba, and makes a fool of him. We've been too comfortable at The Glen Tower--down comes a woman, and sets us all three by the ears together. All I wonder at is that it hasn't happened before." With those words Morgan resignedly took out his pipe, put on his old felt hat and turned to the door.
"You're not going away before she comes?" exclaimed Owen, piteously. "Don't leave us--please don't leave us!"
"Going!" cried Morgan, with great contempt. "What should I gain by that? When destiny has found a man out, and heated his gridiron for him, he has nothing left to do, that I know of, but to get up and sit on it."
I opened my lips to protest against the implied comparison between a young lady and a hot gridiron, but, before I could speak, Morgan was gone.
"Well," I said to Owen, "we must make the best of it. We must brush up our manners, and set the house tidy, and amuse her as well as we can. The difficulty is where to put her; and, when that is settled, the next puzzle will be, what to order in to make her comfortable. It's a hard thing, brother, to say what will or what will not please a young lady's taste."
Owen looked absently at me, in greater bewilderment than ever--opened his eyes in perplexed consideration--repeated to himself slowly the word "tastes"--and then helped me with this suggestion:
"Hadn't we better begin, Griffith, by getting her a plum-cake?"
"My dear Owen," I remonstrated, "it is a grown young woman who is coming to see us, not a little girl from school."
"Oh!" said Owen, more confused than before. "Yes--I see; we couldn't do wrong, I suppose--could we?--if we got her a little dog, and a lot of new gowns."
There was, evidently, no more help in the way of advice to be expected from Owen than from Morgan himself. As I came to that conclusion, I saw through the window our old housekeeper on her way, with her basket, to the kitchen-garden, and left the room to ascertain if she could assist us.
To my great dismay, the housekeeper took even a more gloomy view than Morgan of the approaching event. When I had explained all the circumstances to her, she carefully put down her basket, crossed her arms, and said to me in slow, deliberate, mysterious tones:
"You want my advice about what's to be done with this young woman? Well, sir, here's my advice: Don't you trouble your head about her. It won't be no use. Mind, I tell you, it won't be no use."
"What do you mean?"
"You look at this place, sir--it's more like a prison than a house, isn't it? You, look at us as lives in it. We've got (saving your presence) a foot apiece in our graves, haven't we? When you was young yourself, sir, what would you have done if they had shut you up for six weeks in such a place as this, among your grandfathers and grandmothers, with their feet in the grave?"
"I really can't say."
"I can, sir. You'd have run away. She'll run away. Don't you worry your head about her--she'll save you the trouble. I tell you again, she'll run away."
With those ominous words the housekeeper took up her basket, sighed heavily, and left me.
I sat down under a tree quite helpless. Here was the whole responsibility shifted upon my miserable shoulders. Not a lady in the neighborhood to whom I could apply for assistance, and the nearest shop eight miles distant from us. The toughest case I ever had to conduct, when I was at the Bar, was plain sailing compared with the difficulty of receiving our fair guest.
It was absolutely necessary, however, to decide at once where she was to sleep. All the rooms in the tower were of stone--dark, gloomy, and cold even in the summer-time. Impossible to put her in any one of them. The only other alternative was to lodge her in the little modern lean-to, which I have already described as being tacked on to the side of the old building. It contained three cottage-rooms, and they might be made barely habitable for a young lady. But then those rooms were occupied by Morgan. His books were in one, his bed was in another, his pipes and general lumber were in the third. Could I expect him, after the sour similitudes