University of Virginia Library

29. XXIX.
Kitty in the Country.

SUNSHINE is upon the old Bodgers house,
of Newtown; healthful, gay, cheery sunshine.
The air of mourning that lay upon the dead man's
home is gone. The closed blinds are flung wide
open. The front gates, where the old gardener had
driven fastenings, above the latch, are ajar half the
day. The paths where the Squire, in his brown
surtout, walked back and forth are newly trimmed;
and the sturdy hollyhocks are all alive with bees
and blossoms. The vines that clamber over the
porch are trimmed as they were never trimmed
before; and the humming-birds which once darted
around the trumpet-flowers fearlessly, are frightened

away by a wee chorus of voices which comes from
the little parlor of the late Squire Bodgers.

Kitty Fleming, with a pretty look of importance,
directs the chorus. She plays the mistress charmingly.
Mrs. Fleming and the housekeeper, after an
amiable womanly quarrel, have come to terms. I
doubt, however, if they continue to agree. Two
housekeepers in the same house, never did agree;
and it is my opinion that they never will.

Indeed, Mrs. Dyke (for that was the housekeeper's
name) was not the person to live without
a brush with anybody; least of all, with a rival.
She had grown old, and bent over, in the Bodgers
service. There was not a boy of any butcher's or
baker's shop in Newtown, but had some time felt
her pitiless, sharp tongue. The old Squire himself
had winced under it, often. I think he would have
changed his housekeeper—if he had dared. I think
he would have forbidden the periodic house-cleaning
of Mrs. Dyke—if he had dared. I think he would
have rooted up some of her patches of thyme, and
chamomile, and sage, and sweet balm, in the garden
—if he had dared. I think he would have dined on
pot-luck less often—if he had dared.

Your town housekeeper is altogether a different
body; but your notable, weazen-faced, country
housekeeper, who keeps bags of herbs in the garret,

and a pet cat, and dresses in bombazine, and is
for ever sweeping and dusting, and has money in
the bank, and a taste for garlic, is a very terrible
creature.

Mrs. Dyke retained her little back-room in the
Bodgers house, by a kind of prescriptive right. To
remove Mrs. Dyke would have been as strange and
unprecedented, as to remove the front porch, or the
garden-fence. Sometimes her sharp tongue is heard
berating the little flock of Miss Kitty, for tracking
the clean hall with their muddied feet; and sometimes
she falls into serious altercation with meek
Mrs. Fleming, who has expressed a wish for veal
cutlets, when she, the housekeeper, has decided upon
a re-hash of yesterday's beef.

Kitty, however, like the bit of sunshine that she
is, brightens the clouded faces of the older ones;
and by a compromise in the dinner-tactics, and a
generous yielding to an occasional dish of the old
lady's chamomile tea, she preserves peace in the
household.

Miss Jemima, too, makes a visit to Newtown, and
is delighted with the ruddy faces of the little girls
who flock at morning to the old Bodgers parlor;
and she is charmed with the walks in the wood
which Kitty had written of; and they gather flowers
together; and Jemima seems to grow young

again—forgetting Blimmer and making woodland
sonnets, and writing home to Bridget a letter full
of pastoral narrative, and of that “dear, good, old
lady, Mrs. Fleming.”

There is a bright-eyed scholar among those who
come every morning between the hollyhock blossoms
that skirt the front path to the Bodgers door,
to whom Kitty's heart cleaves more lovingly (if she
has any partialities) than to the rest. Her name is
Bessie Flint. It may be because she is an orphan,
and so has few to care for her: it may be that she
is so gentle, and her face so fair and winning: it
may be that her name recalls pleasant memories
to her, of the companions of her own school age:
in short, there may be many reasons, and doubtless
are, why Kitty seems nearer to Bessie Flint than to
others who come and go, every day, between the
hollyhock blossoms.

Among other matters, this same dimple-cheeked
Bessie is learning the management of a pen; and
as she makes advances, day after day, she undertakes
childish letters to a certain brother of hers, who is
far away across seas. And naturally enough, the
teacher, so kind in other things, will help forward
Bessie in her letter; rounding the capitals, and putting
in stops and semi-colons, and half-inclined to
cross out altogether a period in which the prattling

sister tells what mistress she has, and how she is
“ever so kind.”

Through the same pleasant medium, Kitty learns
what sickness has fallen upon Harry Flint; and she
shares with a tender sympathy, the childish solicitude
that hangs over the sister's face when she speaks
of it. But to the old aunt, who stands in the
place of a mother to Bessie, she never shows this;
but asks, only in the reserved and quiet way in
which any friend might ask, after the fortunes of her
absent townsman.

Besides, it is noised in the village (and I fear
Mrs. Fleming may have kept the noise astir) that
Kitty's winter in the town was a winter of conquest;
and there are hints about the young Mr.
Quid, who has made such a kind disposal of the old
Bodgers mansion; and people mention him slily to
Kitty, as if—something were brewing. And Mrs.
Fleming looks very conscious when his name is mentioned;
indulging her motherly pride thereby, to
the great vexation of Kitty herself.

I think Mrs. Fleming was rash and unreasonable
in her anticipations. The Quids may have done her
a kindness in giving her the rental of the old Bodgers
house; they, doubtless, had their own reasons
for conciliating the relatives of the deceased Squire.
It is certain that they slipped quietly and modestly

into enjoyment of the estate, to the great advantage
of their social position in town. Adolphe was often
in the Spindle pew of Dr. Muddleton's church.
Mrs. Fudge's eyes and heart were often turned
that way. I may say the same of Wilhelmina;
notwithstanding the continued earnestness of the
Count Salle. Adolphe drove a very fast trotter,
called Mary Taylor, and was a star at matinées.
He might be said to occupy a position that allowed
him to look down upon the Fudges: he might be
said, by his partial friends, to occupy almost the
same level with the Pinkertons. I do not think the
Pinkertons would allow it; still, they received him.
Arabella Spindle, who was eight-and-twenty, rode
with him upon the Avenue; and worked “Adolphe”
in floss silk upon a bit of paste-board: it was a
book-mark: the book-mark became Mr. Quid's.

Under these circumstances, it is not to be supposed
that the newly-rich and admired young gentleman
should bestow many thoughts upon such
country-people as the Flemings. He certainly did
not; and he had been known to make such wanton
mention of the ruddy color in Kitty's face, as would
have terribly shocked the old lady, her mamma,
and, I am sure, brought an indignant tear into the
eye of Miss Kitty herself.

Circumstances, however, made a sudden change

in this disposition of affairs. I have already mentioned
a communication extended by the diplomatic
Mr. Blimmer towards the complacent Quid. I need
hardly say that this communication was the source
of great uneasiness to the gentleman to whom it
was addressed.

The first thought, indeed, of Mr. Quid had taken
a singularly shrewd direction, and he indulged the
belief that Mr. Blimmer was “playing gammon,”
in order to quicken his payments on the Blimmersville
land account. In short, he did not believe
that Blimmer was honest in his statement—that he
had merely consigned to him a copy, and not the
will itself.

To make himself sure, he made some investigations
respecting the hand-writing of the late Mr.
Bodgers; he even, in virtue of possessing himself of
some letters of the deceased gentleman, made the
comparison; it was not favorable; there certainly
seemed to be a difference: the assertion of Mr.
Blimmer appeared plausible: there was too much
reason to believe that the instrument he held in his
keeping was indeed a copy, and a copy only, of the
real Bodgers will.

In view of the disparity of the signatures, it
seemed to him the most natural thing in the world,
that the cautious Mr. Blimmer should have acted

as he professed to have done. To quarrel with him
would be dangerous. Some new scheme must be
set on foot. That scheme speedily suggested itself
to the ambitious mind of Mr. Quid. It was a capital
one; and if effective, would utterly over-reach
the designing Blimmer.

Young Mr. Quid is called into consultation. The
father explains to him with parental anxiety the
difficulties of their position, and the deceit practised
upon them by the proprietor of the Blimmersville
estates.

“There is one way,” pursued the old gentleman,
“of getting out of the scrape, Adolphus.”

Adolphus listens eagerly.

“It depends upon you, Adolphus.”

Adolphus looks surprised.

“My son, you must marry Kitty Fleming!” and
the old gentleman speaks (as fathers are apt to
speak in such circumstances) as if the self-denial
involved in the sacrifice would be altogether on the
son's part. A jury of the lady-admirers of the
expectant Adolphus, would, I am sure have entertained
the same opinion.

Adolphus said—what I shall not write down.

“But she is pretty,” urged the old gentleman.

“Countrified!” said Adolphus; “no style!”

“Yet you paid her some attentions,” said the old
gentleman.

“Of course,” said Adolphus; “just the piece;
simple, innocent; but Lord!—Mrs. Adolphus Quid!”

And the young man walked up and down in an
excited state. Meantime, the old gentleman unrolled
the title-deeds, and made a quiet show of the
bonds and mortgages: a very charming array,
indeed.

The result was, the young man thought better
of the matter: he said he would marry her.

That very day, the fast trotter was driven to
Newtown; that very evening, a brilliant town bouquet
adorned the best vase in Mrs. Fleming's little
stock of porcelain. The old lady was charmed,
delighted; she knew how it would be: trust her
in such matters! Such disinterestedness! such
generosity!

And not only that day, but very often thereafter,
the ostler of the Newtown inn had the grooming
of the fast Mary Taylor. And Mehitable Bivins
looked more sourly than ever across the country-church;
and the city-friends wondered where
Adolphe could go so often, and feared he might be
given to racing, and dinners at Snediker's.

Kitty herself, with her kind heart easily warmed
into gratitude, schools herself to think well of one

who has given her old mother a home, and whom her
old mother likes. It may be, too, that her thought
wanders somewhat in school-hours to the elegant
gentleman, whom all the little scholars admire so
much; it may be that a certain pride, which belongs
in a measure to all of us, is lighted up with the
thought of drawing away from the town, and the
belles of the town, one who is caressed and fêted
(as she learns through Jemima's letters) by the
“very best people.”

And, judging in her innocent way (the very innocence
that prompted young Quid's agreeable flirtation),
she cannot mistake his views in these frequent
visits, and in these renewed cadeaux of flowers. Or,
if she were unsuspicious, is not the doting old
mother there at her elbow to put her right, and to
tell her every day how proud she is of her conquest?

It is not strange, then, that Kitty falls to thinking
in the twilight hours—if he would be always
kind, and gentle, and good to her good mamma;
and then comes up that more serious question,
whether she does really, truly, honestly love him,
as a wife should love a husband?

And then, she says (for he has not spoken yet of
marriage), “How silly! who knows what he means,
or if he means it? who knows if”—

In short she must not think of it; she will not
think of it; or, if she does, she does not know as
yet what to think. Perhaps she might; perhaps
she might not. Who knows? not she, as yet:
nor I.

The whole village talk of the matter: little
Bessie sees it with her girl's eyes, and writes, all
girlishly, to her good brother (just picking up from
his western fever), how Miss Kitty “is to marry an
elegant young man; and so rich, too; and she, for
her part is glad of it; for Kitty deserves it all;
and such elegant flowers as the girls see in the old
house; and how she is not made too proud by it,
but loves them all as much as ever.

“I wish you would come back to the wedding,
Harry; and then you would be grooms-man, perhaps.”

Old Mrs. Dyke, alone of all the household, sneers
at young Mr. Quid; the truth is, such old ladies
are very tenacious of their dignity, and have no
idea of being treated as servants; besides which,
Mr. Quid has laughed obstreperously at the mention
of her chamomile tea. Indeed, she calls him,
in one of her periodic quarrels with Mrs. Fleming,
a “city dandy;” whereat the widow reddens, and
retorts upon the housekeeper keenly. Mrs. Dyke

grows more inflamed, and says he has no more
right to the Bodgers' property than she has herself;
and, what's more, she can prove it.”

What can Mrs. Dyke mean?