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And when sunshine fell on me through the church windows during service, I regarded it as "a blessing." The other half of Mr. Andrewes' plan was not neglected. He was a good botanist, and his knowledge of the medicinal uses of wild herbs ranked next to his piety to raise him in Mrs. Bundle's esteem. When "lessons" were over, we often rode out together.
"I say, how warm the water is!" cried Bigley; and we others said it was. Then I thought of something to say. We had each tied our clothes up as tightly as we could in our pocket-handkerchiefs, and so it was a long time before they were regularly saturated and heavy. "I say," I cried, "my bundle's just like a cork, and holds me up beautiful. How are yours?"
"And you tell falsehoods too; you send your apprentice to me with all sorts of stories; you are then busy with my things, you will deliver them the same evening, or else you've had an accident, the bundle's fallen into a pail of water. Whilst all this is going on, I waste my time, nothing turns up, and it worries me exceedingly. No, you're most unreasonable. Come, what have you in your basket?
Bundle's apron-string, but now and then I was, to use an expressive word, moped. My father had taken counsel with Mr. Andrewes, and the end of it all was that I found myself the master of the most charming of ponies, with the exciting prospect before me of learning to ride. The very thought of it invigorated me. Before the Irish groom went away I had asked if my new steed "could jump."
Nurse Bundle's tales were of the young masters and misses she had known. Her worst domestic tragedy was about the boy who broke his leg over the chair he had failed to put away after breakfast. Her romances were the good old Nursery Legends of Dick Whittington, the Babes in the Wood, and so forth. My dreams became less like the columns of a provincial newspaper.
Except as to colour or length of tail, she recognized no difference between one and another. As to any distinctions between "play" and "vice," a fidgety animal and a determined kicker, a friendly nose-rub and a malicious resolve to bite, they were not discernible by Mrs. Bundle's unaccustomed eyes.
I want no more'n that," he said. "'Tis Anne Bundle's darter," answered Mrs. Tregenza, her mind on her maid. "The man!" thundered Noy, "the man who brot the thing about the man what ruined O God o' Hosts, be on my side now! Who weer 'e? Give me the name of en. That's all as I wants." "Us doan't knaw.
My poor father, whose irrepressible distress led to his being forbidden to enter my room, powerless to help, and therefore without alleviation for his anxiety, simply hung upon Nurse Bundle's orders and reports, and relied utterly on her. Fortunately for his own health, she gained sufficient influence to insist, almost as peremptorily as in my case, upon his taking food.
By the time that I heard this anecdote I was happily too good a rider to be frightened by it; but I did wish that Mrs. Bundle's relative had died any other death than that which formed so melancholy a precedent in her mind. The strongest obstacle, however, to any chance of my nurse's looking with favour on my new pet was her profound ignorance of horses and ponies in general.
I felt that it was as she had pointed out intense ingratitude on my part to wish to part with her, and I said as much when I went down to dessert that evening. Morever, I now lived in vague fear of those terrible qualities which lay hidden beneath Mrs. Bundle's benevolent exterior.
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