CHAPTER IV.

PUT TO THE QUESTION.

LADY BARTON sat in the old wooden arm-chair, which formed the chief article of furniture in Mrs. Peele's kitchen, the flounces of her rich blue silk dress filling up the space between the red brick fireplace and the deal table, which was still scattered over with the crumbs of the recent repast. Lady Barton was a stately and elegant woman, with an air of fashion and dignity, which contrasted with the simple attire and manner of Mrs. Curtis, with whom she was conversing before Ned and Bessy re-entered the cottage.

As they came in, Lady Barton was just returning into her pocket a purse, from which she had taken a half sovereign, with what intent both the sailor and Bessy could not but guess as they caught sight of the glittering beads of the purse as it was replaced within the silk dress.

"Ah!" exclaimed Lady Barton, with a queenly graciousness of manner to the sailor, "I am glad to have an opportunity of speaking with one of the gallant men who have served in the same ship with my son. You can give me late accounts of Mr. Lacy Barton."

With a bright smile on her lips, the lady awaited Ned's reply.

"I was aboard the same vessel as Mr. Barton for more than a year," said the tar, with the respectful manner with which he would have spoken to any lady.

"You must have seen much of him then?"

Ned only bowed, thinking to himself "a good deal too much."

As he did not seem inclined to be communicative, the partial mother tried to draw him out by an observation! "My son usually makes himself a great favourite wherever he goes."

Bessy nudged her brother's arm, but Ned did not speak at the hint.

Lady Barton's gloved hand closed more tightly over the little piece of gold which it hid; rather less graciously she inquired whether Mr. Barton had been quite well when the sailor had seen him last.

Ned paused for a moment before he replied. "There was nothing much the matter with his health."

The tender mother took alarm from his hesitation as well as his words.

"Not much the matter?" she anxiously repeated. "Was Mr. Barton not well, was he obliged to keep his cabin?"

"Only for a few days, lady," said Ned, sincerely desirous to relieve her.

"What ailed him?" asked Lady Barton. "Was he laid up with fever?" Her voice betrayed her emotion.

"No, not fever," answered the sailor, wishing himself up to his neck in water rather than standing there to answer the lady's questions.

"It was not his chest—not his lungs?" said the anxious mother, dropping her voice. "He was so subject to coughs as a boy!"

"His lungs are as sound as can be, I'll answer for that!" replied Ned, with a clear recollection of the strength of a voice which, raised in an oath or a curse, might be heard above the roar of a storm.

"Then what was the matter with him?" repeated Lady Barton, in the tone of one who must, and will, have a reply.

Ned's honest face was suffused with a flush, as if he himself had been the culprit as he answered—"He'd had a bit of a spree on shore, and been knocked about a little; these things will sometimes happen, but a few bruises don't do much harm."

Lady Barton asked no more questions; she knew enough of her son's former habits to enable her to guess but too well what the sailor had left unsaid. Sorrow taking the form of mortified pride, the lady drew herself up, and the delicate kid-gloved hand slid something back into her pocket, a movement which did not escape the covetous eyes of Bessy.

Without condescending to say another word to Ned Franks, Lady Barton rose from her seat, and, turning to address Mrs. Curtis, plunged at once into a different subject of conversation. She asked the vicar's wife about her scholars, said that Sir Lacy had resolved on beginning to build the new school at Michaelmas, and observed that somewhere about this spot would be the best possible place for the site.

Bessy clenched her teeth, and scowled at her brother, but the expression of anger on her face was instantly changed to one of obsequious mildness, as she caught the eye of the stately Lady Barton. If Bessy had been gratified by the visit of the vicar's wife, she was overwhelmed by the honour of one from a titled lady, and with a double number of curtsies and thanks, she shewed her two guests to the door, sending blessings after them as long as they remained within hearing.

And then!—

"You heartless good-for-nothing, unfeeling, ill-mannered dolt!" she exclaimed, turning towards her brother with a gesture of her clenched fist, as though she could have found it in her heart to have struck him, had she dared. "What ill luck brought you here to bring trouble, and ill-will, and ruin, on a poor lone widow as never did you any harm!"

"I'm as vexed as you can be, Bessy," said the sailor, passing his hand through his thick curly hair.

"You'd better have bit off that foolish tongue of yours, than have let it provoke such a lady!"

"It was grieving the mother, that I felt," said Ned Franks, "it was seeing her so anxious and troubled. 'Twas a stiff gale to weather, and I was never in my life more nigh dragging my anchor. But I'm glad," he added to himself, "I'm glad that I held fast by the truth."

Ned was to have little peace during the remainder of that day. He had to endure the "continual dropping" that made him bitterly remember Solomon's proverb—"It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman in a wide house." *

* Proverbs xxi. 9.

On Dan's return home in the evening, the storm which Ned had lulled a little, broke forth anew with fresh fury.

"What do you think, Dan, that this hero uncle of yours has been a-doing!" exclaimed Bessy to her son, banging down the kettle on the bar of the grate, as if it too had grievously wronged her. "Lady Barton herself, in her grand sweeping gown, came down from the Hall; I'd never but once afore seen her enter my cottage, and that was when your poor father lay a-dying!"

"What could she come for?" asked Dan, curiosity gleaming in his keen little eyes.

"What for but to hear about her son, to be sure, and to talk to this bear's cub about him, and to tip him with what would have bought me a Sunday gown, I'll be bound, for I saw the lady thrusting back her purse into her pocket. And there was he—" Bessy pointed at Ned with her thumb—"first standing dumb as a stock-fish, looking as if he couldn't utter a word, and then bounce out with such a fine tale, how Mr. Lacy had got himself smashed in a drunken row, how he had to lie in his bed for days all covered with bruises, how he was the most swaggering, quarrelsome—"

Ned felt the hot blood mounting to his face, and the fiery passion to his heart: there was nothing for it but to beat a retreat, before he should utter as an angry man what as a Christian he might have regretted. Weary as the sailor was, there was something which he felt to be worse than fatigue, and he walked out into the cool fresh evening air, once more to quiet his fevered spirit under the light of the pale young moon.