Part 21

"I've heard of him," I said, exchanging glances with Ernest, "and should like to hear him, if convenient."

"I'll drive you in," volunteered Dawn.

"If you're around you might act as groom," I suggested to Ernest, and he gladly responding, it was agreed that we should begin electioneering that night.

"I knew Ernest would be delighted to be with us, he takes great pleasure in my company," I remarked with assumed complacence as we drove home; and I watched Dawn smile at my conceit in imagining any one took pleasure in my company while she was present, and that any normal male under ninety should do so would have been so phenomenal that she had reason for that derisive little smile.

"You said he was hopelessly red-headed," she remarked; "why, I think he has a handsome kind of red hair. I never thought red hair could be nice, but Mr Ernest's is different."

I smiled to myself.

"I never thought much of men, but this one is different," has been said by more than one bride; and, "I never could suffer infants, but this kid is different to all I've seen," is an expression often heard from proud young fathers.

"His young lady thinks so at all events," I innocently remarked, and we fell into silence complete.

ELEVEN.

ANDREW DISGRACES HIS "RARIN'."

The silence that fell upon Dawn and myself was unbroken when we went to tea and seemed to have affected the whole company, or else it was the conversational powers of Andrew, who was absent, which were wanting to enliven us.

"He ought to be home," said grandma. "He's got no business away, and the place can't be kep' in a uproar for him when the girls want to go out."

The old lady had determined to take a vigorous interest in politics, and spoke of going to hear the meetings later on herself.

It presently transpired that Andrew had not been looking to his grandma for all that went into his "stummick" so religiously as he should have been. Just as he was under discussion he made a dramatic entry, and fell breathlessly in his grandma's arm-chair near the fireplace. The usual occupant glared at him in astonishment and demanded "a explanation," which came immediately, but not from Andrew. Instead there was a loud and imperative knocking at a side door, and when Carry, after cursing the white ants which had made the door hard to open by throwing it out of plumb with their ravages, at last got it open, there appeared an irate old man carrying a stout stick. It was plain that he too had been running,--in short, was in pursuit of Andrew, who had quite collapsed in the chair.

"I've come, missus, to warn you to keep your boy out of my orange orchard," he gulped. "Six or seven times I've nearly caught him an' young Bray in it, but to-night I run 'em down, an' only they escaped me I'd have give 'em the father of a skelpin'. If I ketch them there again I'll bring 'em before the court an' give 'em three months; but you being a neebur, I'd like to give you a show of keepin' him out first."

The old dame, a la herself, had been in the act of pouring milk and sprinkling sugar on some boiled rice which frequently appeared on the menu during Carry's week in the kitchen, previous to handing it to Miss Flipp, but she waved her hand, thereby indicating that in so dire an extremity we were to be trusted with the sugar-basin ourselves,--in fact, that any laxity in this item would have to be let slide for once.

After the manner of finely-strung temperaments with the steel in them, which wear so well, and to the last remain as sensitive as a youth or maiden, Mrs Martha Clay then rose from her seat, visibly trembling, but with a flashing battle-light in her eyes.

"What have you got to say to this?" she demanded, turning on her grandson.

"I never touched none of his bloomin' old oranges. It was Jack Bray, it wasn't me."

"Yes," said she; "and if you was listening to Jack Bray it would be you done it all, an' he who never done nothink. What's the charge, and what damages have you laid on it?" she demanded of the accuser, fixing him with a fiery glance.

"I ain't goin' to lay any damages this time, I only thought you'd rather me warn you than not; I know I would with a youngster. I suppose after all he ain't done no more than you an' me done in our young days, an' my oranges bein' ripe so extra early was a great temptation," familiarly said the man.

"Well, I don't know what you done in your young days, but I know I never took a pin that didn't belong to me, none of me children or people neither; and as for Jim Clay, he wouldn't think of touchin' a thing--he was too much the other way to get on in the world. An' it ain't any fault of my rarin' that me grandson is hounded down a vagabond," said the old lady in a tragic manner.

Seeing her fierce agitation, the lad's pursuer was alarmed and sought to pacify her by further remarking--

"He ain't done nothink out of the way, an' I admit the oranges was a great temptation."

The old lady snorted, and the colour of her face heralded something verging on an apoplectic seizure.

"Temptation! If people was only honest and decent by keepin' from the things that ain't any temptation, we'd be all fit for jail or a asylum. Pretty thing, if he's only to leave alone that which ain't any temptation to him! You could put other people's things before me, I wouldn't take 'em, not if me tongue was hanging out a yard for 'em. That's the kind of honesty that I've always practised to me neighbours and rared into any one under me, and that's the only kind of honesty that is honesty at all," she splendidly finished. "An' I'm very thankful to you for informin' me. I wish you had caught him an' skelped the hide off of him. It's what I'll do meself soon as I sift the matter."

The old man bade good-night and departed with his stick.

"He's always sneakin' about the lanes, an' only poked his tongue out at me w'en I wanted to know where he was," maliciously said Uncle Jake in reference to his grand-nephew.