WHEN an untoward calamity falls upon the head of a meek one, its heavy stroke is often softened and turned, and the dread thing cheated of its blow, provided that a chance occurs to explain it away in a simple manner.
Miss Pink was one of those who, though fearing all things beforehand, take the most simple line of thought when anything terrible is said to have happened, for she would entirely disbelieve it. And although Mary Gulliver, who was in the field with her cows, had seen with her own eyes Mr. Pink walk into the sea and never return again to the shore, yet Miss Pink was just as sure that her brother had only gone for a sail with the fisherman—perhaps to the islands?
This idea of Miss Pink’s was certainly strengthened because the day after Mr. Pink’s disappearance the fisherman wasn’t seen either.
This day was the first of July and high summer. The sky above Mockery was coloured at dawn like the inner petals of a splendid rose, and the small birds sang their early songs of praise to the wonderful founder of all summer days.
Had a wise one, whose wisdom might exceed in a small measure that of Mr. James Tarr, expected to see—and such a one is never disappointed—that the dwellers in the pretty gap upon this summer’s day wore leopard-wise the same spots in their coats as ever, he would merely have remarked that Mr. Pink had gone as his colour foretold and invited him, and that the others would follow as their merry, mad, or sad destiny directed.
Mr. Pink, as Miss Ogle remarked in a letter to Mr. Roddy, should have taken a more practical view of his master’s interest. He should have turned Mr. Gulliver out of his farm and let it to Mr. Cheney, who had a fine aptitude in adding house to house and field to field. ‘And now’—and Miss Ogle invited herself to become Mr. Roddy’s agent because Mr. Pink was gone—‘here’s a fine business,’ she wrote, ‘and under the wicked labour laws who’s to drown him?—there’s this fisherman settled in a cottage, an idler who catches crabs just when he wishes, and who lives without any character, and, as far as Mr. Pattimore can tell, without a name either.’
‘Who is to tell,’ Miss Ogle added, ‘that the wicked life of this new fisherman might not prevent Mr. Cheney from following Mr. Tarr’s wisely given hint and discovering those golden earrings under the green mound?’ And so Miss Ogle ended her letter to Mr. Roddy.
There was something in this July day—for colour calls out sound sometimes—that caused Mrs. Pring to rattle her pail more than she used to do on dismal and dull days; and she even stopped while scrubbing her doorstep to stare at the sea as if she expected the poor drowned body of Mr. Pink to step out of it and bow to her.
There is nothing like a July day—and this one happened to be a Saturday, too—to make all children born of the earth riotous with a spirit of naughtiness that is not unmixed with a merry malice. And so the Mockery brats, after rolling in the dust of the lane to sharpen their wits, began to follow Esther Pottle—who was now grown old enough to feel her own prettiness and so was growing more modest—who they supposed was out looking for the Nellie-bird.
But the fisherman not being in the way, the pack bethought them of Mr. Caddy, who had so often informed his ducks exactly—taking every detail of the adventure into consideration—how he would use a young and willing girl if she rested for a short five minutes upon the green clover near to his gate.
‘Let’s drive she to wold Caddy,’ they cried. And so they did, and Esther, hot and flushed with running, fell almost into Mr. Caddy’s arms, who was regarding with the wise, leisurely thoughts of a philosopher the green pond-weeds, now fully in flower, where the ducks were swimming.
Once safely there into the goat’s mouth, Mockery, as represented by its children, crawled under a hedge that was near by and peered through the bushes. They hoped that Mr. Caddy, whose wife—or ‘wold ’oman,’ as they called her—was gone that day to Weyminster, would greet Esther’s hot panting—for since the arrival of the fisherman she had bloomed and sprouted—with an indelicate gesture; and so they crawled nearer to watch. But—who would have thought it?—here was Mr. Caddy, a man known far and wide for his stories, an old idler who talked to his ducks, and now in a pretty corner garlanded and near covered by green bushes with a girl, more willing than a painted butterfly, and asking her whether she happened to have at home a brown ribbon suitable for his Sunday hat!
‘I bain’t one of they who despise churchgoing,’ said Mr. Caddy gravely, as though church thoughts had been occupying his mind all that happy day. ‘Though Mr. Pattimore be always talking of God an’ ’is naughty ways. An’ I do like to go tidy, an’ a new ribbon to me hat will show that poor Caddy bain’t all a bag stuffed wi’ wickedness.’
Mockery peeped through the hedge, the little girls getting the nearest to the fun, and, whispering to the boys that the merriment would soon begin, they watched breathlessly. Their expectations were indeed heightened and encouraged when Esther, raising her clothes a little, placed a very firm and nicely rounded leg upon the second bar of Mr. Caddy’s gate; but strange to say, Mr. Caddy, who certainly at that moment should have looked at the girl, turned away and nodded at the ducks.
And then when Esther, with so much of her own warmth in it, showed him her garter, inquiring whether that was about the width he wished the ribbon to be, Mr. Caddy, to whom the garter appeared to be of no more importance than a lady’s hair-ribbon, replied that it might be a little wider.
‘I want they bad choir girls,’ said Mr. Caddy with emphasis, ‘to see that I be dressed.’
Esther fastened her garter again, this time resting upon the grassy bank.
The two might have been alone in Eden, for no voice or footstep was near. Esther lay right out, in the manner that she liked best to lie, on the cool grass, and looked up through the green bushes with her eyes half closed.
Mockery watched Mr. Caddy.
‘Mrs. Moggs do sell hat ribbon, don’t she?’ inquired Mr. Caddy, looking at Esther as though she were a log of green wood cast at the wayside ‘And wi’ thik shilling,’ he said, putting the coin upon the gate, ‘that I did take for ducks’ eggs, thee mid buy what I do require.’
Esther jumped up, ready enough for the errand now the money was come, and walked away quickly, tossing her head.
Mr. Caddy looked at the drake that was swimming in the pond. ‘You an’ I be different birds now,’ he said composedly.
Mr. Caddy leant against his gate and waited; he hoped that there would be enough change out of his shilling to buy a mackerel for dinner, if the fisherman, who hadn’t been seen all that morning, landed upon the Mockery beach with his basket.
Mockery crept away disappointed.