not as she is now,” said Mrs. Irwine, continuing to look at Hetty. “Well-looking, indeed! She’s a perfect beauty! I’ve never seen anything so pretty since my young days. What a pity such beauty as that should be thrown away among the farmers, when it’s wanted so terribly among the good families without fortune! I daresay, now, she’ll marry a man who would have thought her just as pretty if she had had round eyes and red hair.”
Arthur dared not turn his eyes towards Hetty while Mrs. Irwine was speaking of her. He feigned not to hear, and to be occupied with something on the opposite side. But he saw her plainly enough without looking; saw her in heightened beauty, because he heard her beauty praised—for other men’s opinion, you know, was like a native climate to Arthur’s feelings: it was the air on which they thrived the best, and grew strong. Yes! She was enough to turn any man’s head: any man in his place would have done and felt the same. And to give her up after all, as he was determined to do, would be an act that he should always look back upon with pride.
“No, Mother,” and Mr. Irwine, replying to her last words; “I can’t agree with you there. The common people are not quite so stupid as you imagine. The commonest man, who has his ounce of sense and feeling, is conscious of the difference between a lovely, delicate woman and a coarse one. Even a dog feels a difference in their presence. The man may be no better able than the dog to explain the influence the more refined beauty has on him, but he feels it.”
“Bless me, Dauphin, what does an old bachelor like you know about it?”
“Oh, that is one of the matters in which old bachelors are wiser than married men, because they have time for more general contemplation. Your fine critic of woman must never shackle his judgment by calling one woman his own. But, as an example of what I was saying, that pretty Methodist preacher I mentioned just now told me that she had preached to the roughest miners and had never been treated with anything but the utmost respect and kindness by them. The reason is—though she doesn’t know it—that there’s so much tenderness, refinement, and purity about her. Such a woman as that brings with her ’airs from heaven’ that the coarsest fellow is not insensible to.”
“Here’s a delicate bit of womanhood, or girlhood, coming to receive a prize, I suppose,” said Mr. Gawaine. “She must be one of the racers in the sacks, who had set off before we came.”
The “bit of womanhood” was our old acquaintance Bessy Cranage, otherwise Chad’s Bess, whose large red cheeks and blowsy person had undergone an exaggeration of colour, which, if she had happened to be a heavenly body, would have made her sublime. Bessy, I am sorry to say, had taken to her ear-rings again since Dinah’s departure, and was otherwise decked out in such small finery as she could muster. Any one who could have looked into poor Bessy’s heart would have seen a striking resemblance between her little hopes and anxieties and Hetty’s. The advantage, perhaps, would have been on Bessy’s side in the matter of feeling. But then, you see, they were so very different outside! You would have been inclined to box Bessy’s ears, and you would have longed to kiss Hetty.
Bessy had been tempted to run the arduous race, partly from mere hedonish gaiety, partly because of the prize. Some one had said there were to be cloaks and other nice clothes for prizes, and she approached the marquee, fanning herself with her handkerchief, but with exultation sparkling in her round eyes.
“Here is the prize for the first sack-race,” said Miss Lydia, taking a large parcel from the table where the prizes were laid and giving it to Mrs. Irwine before Bessy came up, “an excellent grogram gown and a piece of flannel.”
“You didn’t think the winner was to be so young, I suppose, Aunt?” said Arthur. “Couldn’t you find something else for this girl, and save that grim-looking gown for one of the older women?”
“I have bought nothing but what is useful and substantial,” said Miss Lydia, adjusting her own lace; “I should not think of encouraging a love of finery in young women of that class. I have a scarlet cloak, but that is for the old woman who wins.”
This speech of Miss Lydia’s produced rather a mocking expression in Mrs. Irwine’s face as she looked at Arthur, while Bessy came up and dropped a series of curtsies.
“This is Bessy Cranage, mother,” said Mr. Irwine, kindly, “Chad Cranage’s daughter. You remember Chad Cranage, the blacksmith?”
“Yes, to be sure,” said Mrs. Irwine. “Well, Bessy, here is your prize—excellent warm things for winter. I’m sure you have had hard work to win them this warm day.”
Bessy’s lip fell as she saw the ugly, heavy gown—which felt so hot and disagreeable too, on this July day, and was such a great ugly thing to carry. She dropped her curtsies again, without looking up, and with a growing tremulousness about the corners of her mouth, and then turned away.
“Poor girl,” said Arthur; “I think she’s disappointed. I wish it had been something more to her taste.”
“She’s a bold-looking young person,” observed Miss Lydia. “Not at all one I should like to encourage.”
Arthur silently resolved that he would make Bessy a present of money before the day was over, that she might buy something more to her mind; but she, not aware of the consolation in store for her, turned out of the open space, where she was visible from the marquee, and throwing down the odious bundle under a tree, began to cry—very much tittered at the while by the small boys. In this situation she was descried by her discreet matronly cousin, who lost no time in coming up, having just given the baby into her husband’s charge.
“What’s the matter wi’ ye?” said Bess the matron, taking up the bundle and examining it. “Ye’n sweltered yoursen, I reckon, running that fool’s race. An’ here, they’n gi’en you lots o’ good grogram and flannel, as should ha’ been gi’en by good rights to them as had the sense to keep away from such foolery. Ye might spare me a bit o’ this grogram to make clothes for the lad—ye war ne’er ill-natured, Bess; I ne’er said that on ye.”
“Ye may take it all, for what I care,” said Bess the maiden, with a pettish movement, beginning to wipe away her tears and recover herself.
“Well, I could do wi’t, if so be ye want to get rid on’t,” said the disinterested cousin, walking quickly away with the bundle, lest Chad’s Bess should change her mind.
But that bonny-cheeked lass was blessed with an elasticity of spirits that secured her from any rankling grief; and by the time the grand climax of the donkey-race came on, her disappointment was entirely lost in the delightful excitement of attempting to stimulate the last donkey by hisses, while the boys applied the argument of sticks. But the strength of the donkey mind lies in adopting a course inversely as the arguments urged, which, well considered, requires as great a mental force as the direct sequence; and the present donkey proved the first-rate order of his intelligence by coming to a dead standstill just when the blows were thickest. Great was the shouting of the crowd, radiant the grinning of Bill Downes the stone-sawyer and the fortunate rider of this superior beast, which stood calm and stiff-legged in the midst of its triumph.
Arthur himself had provided the prizes for the men, and Bill was made happy with a splendid pocket-knife, supplied with blades and gimlets enough to make a man at home on a desert island. He had hardly returned from the marquee with the prize in his hand, when it began to be understood that Wiry Ben proposed to amuse the company, before the gentry went to dinner, with an impromptu and gratuitous performance—namely, a hornpipe, the main idea of which was doubtless borrowed; but this was to be developed by the dancer in so peculiar and complex a manner that no one could deny him the praise of originality. Wiry Ben’s pride in his dancing—an accomplishment productive of great effect at the yearly Wake—had needed only slightly elevating by an extra quantity of good ale to convince him that the gentry would be very much struck with his performance of his hornpipe; and he had been decidedly encouraged in this idea by Joshua Rann, who observed that it was nothing but right to do something to please the young squire, in return for what he had done for them. You will be the less surprised at this opinion in so grave a personage when you learn that Ben had requested Mr. Rann to accompany him on the fiddle, and Joshua felt quite sure that though there might not be much in the dancing, the music