White Lilac; or the Queen of the May - Amy Walton (mystery books to read TXT) 📗

to her sister-in-law: "It 'ull never be any different as long as you don't look after the dairy yourself, or teach Bella to do it. What does Molly care how the butter turns out?"

But Bella tossed her head at the idea of working, as she expressed it, "like a common servant", or indeed at working at all. She considered that her business in life was to be genteel, and to be properly genteel was to do nothing useful. So she studied the fashion books which Gusta sent from London, made up wonderful costumes for herself, curled her hair in the last style, and read the stories about dukes and earls and countesses which came out in the _Family Herald_.

The smart bonnets and dresses which Mrs Greenways and her daughters wore on Sundays in spite of hard times and poor crops and debt were the wonder of the whole congregation, and in Mrs White's case the wonder was mixed with scorn. "Peter's the only one among 'em as is good for anything," she sometimes said, "an' he's naught but a puzzle-headed sort of a chap." Peter was the farmer's only son, a loutish youth of fifteen, steady and plodding as his plough horses and almost as silent.

It was April again, bright and breezy, and all the cherry trees at the farm were so white with bloom that standing under them you could scarcely see the sky. The grass in the orchard was freshly green and sprinkled with daisies, amongst which families of fluffy yellow ducklings trod awkwardly about on their little splay feet, while the careful mother hens picked out the best morsels of food for them. This food was flung out of a basin by Agnetta Greenways, who stood there squarely erect uttering a monotonous "Chuck, chuck, chuck," at intervals. Agnetta did not care for the poultry, or indeed for any of the creatures on the farm; they were to her only troublesome things that wanted looking after, and she would have liked not to have had anything to do with them. Just now, however, there was a week's holiday at the school, and she was obliged to use her leisure in helping her mother, much against her will. Agnetta had a stolid face with a great deal of colour in her cheeks; her hair was black, but at this hour it was so tightly done up in curl papers that the colour could hardly be seen. She wore an old red merino dress which had once been a smart one, but was now degraded to what she called "dirty work", and was covered with patches and stains. Her hands and wrists were very large, and looked capable of hard work, as indeed did the whole person of Agnetta from top to toe.

"Chuck, chuck, chuck," she repeated as she threw out the last spoonful; then, raising her eyes, she became aware of a little figure in the distance, running towards her across the field at the bottom of the orchard.

"Lor'!" she exclaimed aloud, "if here isn't Lilac White!"

It was a slight little figure clothed in a cotton frock which had once been blue in colour, but had been washed so very often that it now approached a shade of green; over it was a long straight pinafore gathered round the neck with a string, and below it appeared blue worsted stockings, and thick, laced boots. Her black hair was brushed back and plaited in one long tail tied at the end with black ribbon, and in her hand she carried a big sunbonnet, swinging it round and round in the air as she ran. As she came nearer the orchard gate, it was easy to see that she had some news to tell, for her small features worked with excitement, and her grey eyes were bright with eagerness.

Agnetta advanced slowly to meet her with the empty basin in her hand, and unlatched the gate.

"Whatever's the matter?" she asked.

Lilac could not answer just at first, for she had been running a long way, and her breath came in short gasps. She came to a standstill under the trees, and Agnetta stared gravely at her with her mouth wide open. The two girls formed a strong contrast to each other. Lilac's white face and the faded colour of her dress matched the blossoms and leaves of the cherry trees in their delicacy, while about the red-cheeked Agnetta there was something firm and positive, which suggested the fruit which would come later.

"I came--" gasped Lilac at last, "I ran--I thought I must tell you--"

"Well," said Agnetta, still staring at her in an unmoved manner, "you'd better fetch your breath, and then you'll be able to tell me. Come and sit down."

There was a bench under one of the trees near where she had been feeding the ducks. The two girls sat down, and presently Lilac was able to say: "Oh, Agnetta, the artist gentleman wants to put me in a picture!"

"Whatever do you mean, Lilac White?" was Agnetta's only reply. Her slightly disapproving voice calmed Lilac's excitement a little.

"This is how it was," she continued more quietly. "You know he's lodging at the `Three Bells?' and he comes an' sits at the bottom of our hill an' paints all day."

"Of course I know," said Agnetta. "It's a poor sort of an object he's copyin', too--Old Joe's tumble-down cottage. I peeped over his shoulder t'other day--'taint much like."

"Well, I pass him every day comin' from school, and he always looks up at me eager without sayin' nothing. But this morning he says, `Little gal,' says he, `I want to put you into my picture.'"

"Lor'!" put in Agnetta, "whatever can he want to paint _you_ for?"

"So I didn't say nothing," continued Lilac, "because he looked so hard at me that I was skeert-like. So then he says very impatient, `Don't you understand? I want you to come here in that frock and that bonnet in your hand, and let me paint you, copy you, take your portrait. You run and ask Mother.'"

"I never did!" exclaimed Agnetta, moved at last. "Whatever can he want to do it for? An' that frock, an' that silly bonnet an' all! He must be a crazy gentleman, I should say." She gave a short laugh, partly of vexation.

"But that ain't all," continued Lilac; "just as I was turning to go he calls after me, `What's yer name?' And when I told him he shouts out, `_What_!' with his eyes hanging out ever so far."

"Well, I dare say he thought it was a silly-sounding sort of a name," observed Agnetta.

"He said it over and over to hisself, and laughed right out--`Lilac White! White Lilac!' says he. `What a subjeck! What a name! Splendid!' An' then he says to me quieter, `You're a very nice little girl indeed, and if Mother will let you come I'll give you sixpence for every hour you stand.' So then I went an' asked Mother, and she said yes, an' then I ran all the way here to tell you."

Lilac looked round as she finished her wonderful story. Agnetta's eyes were travelling slowly over her cousin's whole person, from her face down to the thick, laced boots on her feet, and back again. "I can't mek out," she said at length, "whatever it is that he wants to paint you for, and dressed like that! Why, there ain't a mossel of colour about you! Now, if you had my Sunday blue!"

"Oh, Agnetta!" exclaimed Lilac at the mention of such impossible elegance.

"And," pursued Agnetta, "a few artificials in yer hair, like the ladies in our _Book of Beauty_, that 'ud brighten you up a bit. Bella's got some red roses with dewdrops on 'em, an' a caterpillar just like life. She'd lend you 'em p'r'aps, an' I don't know but what I'd let you have my silver locket just for once."

"I'm afraid he wouldn't like that," said Lilac dejectedly, "because he said quite earnest, `_Mind_ you bring the bonnet'."

She saw herself for a moment in the splendid attire Agnetta had described, and gave a little sigh of longing.

"I must go back," she said, getting up suddenly, "Mother'll want me. There's lots to do at home."

"I'll go with you a piece," said Agnetta; "we'll go through the farmyard way so as I can leave the basin."

This was a longer way home for Lilac than across the fields, but she never thought of disputing Agnetta's decision, and the cousins left the orchard by another gate which led into the garden. It was not a very tidy garden, and although some care had been bestowed on the vegetables, the flowers were left to come up where they liked and how they liked, and the grass plot near the house was rank and weedy. Nevertheless it presented a gay and flourishing appearance with its masses of polyanthus in full bloom, its tulips, and Turk's head lilies, and lilac bushes. There was one particular bed close to the gate which had a neater appearance than the rest, and where the flowers grew in a well-ordered manner as though accustomed to personal attention. The edges of the turf were trimly clipped, and there was not a weed to be seen. It had a mixed border of forget-me-not and London pride.

"How pretty your flowers grow!" said Lilac, stopping to look at it with admiration.

"Oh, that's Peter's bed," said Agnetta carelessly, snapping off some blossoms. "He's allays mucking at it in his spare time--not that he's got much, there's so much to do on the farm."

The house was now in front of them, and a little to the left the various, coloured roofs of the farm buildings, some tiled with weather-beaten bricks, some thatched, some tarred, and the bright yellow straw ricks standing here and there. Between these buildings and the house was a narrow lane, generally ankle-deep in mud, which led into the highroad.

Lilac was very fond of the farmyard and all the creatures in it. She stopped at the gate and looked over at a company of small black pigs routing about in the straw.

"Oh, Agnetta!" she exclaimed, "you've got some toiny pigs; what peart little uns they are!"

"I can't abide pigs," said Agnetta with a toss of her curl-papered head; "no more can't Bella, we neither of us can't. Nasty, vulgar, low-smelling things."

Lilac felt that hers must be a vulgar taste as Agnetta said so, but still she _did_ like the little pigs, and would have been glad to linger near them. It was often puzzling to her that Agnetta called so many things common and vulgar, but she always ended by thinking that it was because she was so superior.

"Here, Peter!" exclaimed Agnetta suddenly. A boy in leather leggings and a smock appeared at the entrance of the barn, and came tramping across the straw towards them at her call. "Just take this into the kitchen," said his sister in commanding tones. "Now," turning to Lilac, "we can go t'other way across the fields. The lane's all in a muck."

Peter slouched away with the basin in his hand. He was a heavy-looking youth, and so shy that he seldom raised his eyes from the ground.

"No one 'ud think,"