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"The voice was shaky and, I dare say, uncertain in its upper notes; but it fetched M. Benest right-about-face again. He perceived that it came from the garden of a solitary cottage up the road, a gunshot and more beyond his signpost. But a tall hedge interrupted his view, and, though he stared long and earnestly, all he could see that day was a pea-stick nodding above it.
Then the thought flashed through her mind that here was a beginning! Here she could help. By the aid of a long pea-stick she collected the greedy hens and drove them all into their run again, and fastened them in securely; but it took her some time. "Wherever have you been?" demanded Aunt Emma coldly; "here's tea-time nearly, and you've been out all the afternoon."
"Indeed I would!" said she, taking off her hat. John now began to sharpen the end of his pea-stick. "It was a good many years ago," said he, "more than twenty and I was then a seafaring man. I was on board a brig, cruising in the West Indies, and we were off Porto Rico, about twenty miles northward, I should say, when we ran into something in the night, we never could find out what it was, and we stove a big hole in that brig which soon began to let in a good deal more water than we could pump out. The captain he was a man that knew all about that part of the world, and he told us all that we must work as hard as we could at the pumps, and if we could keep her afloat until he could run her ashore on a little sandy island he knew of not far from St.
"Here's a basket. I'LL manage the faggots!" In a very few minutes there was little doubt about its being a genuine bonfire and no paltry makeshift. Selina, a Maenad now, hatless and tossing disordered locks, all the dross of the young lady purged out of her, stalked around the pyre of her own purloining, or prodded it with a pea-stick.
John put down his bundle of pea-sticks by the side of a small stool. "Won't you sit down, miss?" pointing to a garden-bench near by, "and I will see what I can do for you." Then he seated himself upon the stool, took out his knife, and picked up a pea-stick.
"That's nat'ral, seein' as ye're lone in life without 'usband or childer," she said "There's a many wimmin as 'ud grow fond of an Aunt Sally on a pea-stick if they'd nothin' else to set their 'arts on. An' as the old chap was yer father's friend, there's bin a bit o' feelin' like in lookin' arter 'im. But I wouldn't take 'im on my back as a burgin, Mis' Deane, if I were you.
"Yes, miss; that is the end of it," replied the gardener. The young lady said no more, but walked away in quiet reflection, while John Gayther picked up the only pea-stick on which he had been at work that morning. The Daughter of the House, her fair cheeks a little flushed, walked rapidly down the broad centre path of the garden, looking for John Gayther, the gardener.
Ye see," Jess explained to me, "Leeby was lyin' ben the hoose, an' Jamie wasna allowed to gang near her for fear o' infection. Weel, he gat a lang stick it was a pea-stick an' put it aneath the door an' waggled it. Ay, he did that a curran times every day, juist to let her see he was thinkin' o' her." "Mair than that," said Leeby, "he cried oot 'at he loved me."
"Well, well," said John Gayther, who had not cut a pea-stick for the last fifteen minutes; "I suppose you could not tell by their uniforms which one of them belonged to your side I mean the young lady could not tell?"
"We are living in a tangled thicket of wood. I must confess that I should have liked to cut down a good deal; but we do not do even the requisite thinnings without making the proper application for leave to Mr. Johnson. In fact, your old friend Dixon is jealous of every pea-stick the gardener cuts. I never met with so faithful a fellow.
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