The Parent's Assistant; Or, Stories for Children. Maria Edgeworth
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to please, she ran to her neat chicken-yard; but, alas! her guinea-hen was not there—it had strayed into the attorney's garden. She saw it through the paling, and timidly opening the little gate, she asked Miss Barbara, who was walking slowly by, to let her come in and take her guinea-hen. Barbara, who was at this instant reflecting, with no agreeable feelings, upon the conversation of the village children, to which she had recently listened, started when she heard Susan's voice, and with a proud, ill-humoured look and voice, refused her request.
'Shut the gate,' said Barbara, 'you have no business in our garden; and as for your hen, I shall keep it; it is always flying in here and plaguing us, and my father says it is a trespasser; and he told me I might catch it and keep it the next time it got in, and it is in now.' Then Barbara called to her maid, Betty, and bid her catch the mischievous hen.
'Oh, my guinea-hen! my pretty guinea-hen!' cried Susan, as they hunted the frightened, screaming creature from corner to corner.
'Here we have got it!' said Betty, holding it fast by the legs.
'Now pay damages, Queen Susan, or good-bye to your pretty guinea-hen,' said Barbara, in an insulting tone.
'Damages! what damages?' said Susan; 'tell me what I must pay.' 'A shilling,' said Barbara. 'Oh, if sixpence would do!' said Susan; 'I have but sixpence of my own in the world, and here it is.' 'It won't do,' said Barbara, turning her back. 'Nay, but hear me,' cried Susan; 'let me at least come in to look for its eggs. I only want one for my father's supper; you shall have all the rest.' 'What's your father, or his supper to us? is he so nice that he can eat none but guinea-hen's eggs?' said Barbara. 'If you want your hen and your eggs, pay for them, and you'll have them.' 'I have but sixpence, and you say that won't do,' said Susan, with a sigh, as she looked at her favourite, which was in the maid's grasping hands, struggling and screaming in vain.
Susan retired disconsolate. At the door of her father's cottage she saw her friend Rose, who was just come to summon her to the hawthorn bush.
'They are all at the hawthorn, and I am come for you. We can do nothing without you, dear Susan,' cried Rose, running to meet her, at the moment she saw her. 'You are chosen Queen of the May—come, make haste. But what is the matter? why do you look so sad?'
'Ah!' said Susan, 'don't wait for me; I can't come to you, but,' added she, pointing to the tuft of double cowslips in the garden, 'gather those for poor little Mary; I promised them to her, and tell her the violets are under a hedge just opposite the turnstile, on the right as we go to church. Good-bye! never mind me; I can't come—I can't stay, for my father wants me.'
'But don't turn away your face; I won't keep you a moment; only tell me what's the matter,' said her friend, following her into the cottage.
'Oh, nothing, not much,' said Susan; 'only that I wanted the egg in a great hurry for father, it would not have vexed me—to be sure I should have clipped my guinea-hen's wings, and then she could not have flown over the hedge; but let us think no more about it, now,' added she, twinkling away a tear.
When Rose, however, learnt that her friend's guinea-hen was detained prisoner by the attorney's daughter, she exclaimed, with all the honest warmth of indignation, and instantly ran back to tell the story to her companions.
'It won't do,' said Barbara, turning her back.
'Barbara! ay; like father, like daughter,' cried Farmer Price, starting from the thoughtful attitude in which he had been fixed, and drawing his chair closer to his wife.
'You see something is amiss with me, wife—I'll tell you what it is.' As he lowered his voice, Susan, who was not sure that he wished she should hear what he was going to say, retired from behind his chair. 'Susan, don't go; sit you down here, my sweet Susan,' said he, making room for her upon his chair; 'I believe I was a little cross when I came in first to-night; but I had something to vex me, as you shall hear.
'About a fortnight ago, you know, wife,' continued he, 'there was a balloting in our town for the militia; now at that time I wanted but ten days of forty years of age; and the attorney told me I was a fool for not calling myself plump forty. But the truth is the truth, and it is what I think fittest to be spoken at all times come what will of it. So I was drawn for a militiaman; but when I thought how loth you and I would be to part, I was main glad to hear that I could get off by paying eight or nine guineas for a substitute—only I had not the nine guineas—for, you know, we had bad luck with our sheep this year, and they died away one after another—but that was no excuse, so I went to Attorney Case, and, with a power of difficulty, I got him to lend me the money; for which, to be sure, I gave him something, and left my lease of our farm with him, as he insisted upon it, by way of security for the loan. Attorney Case is too many for me. He has found what he calls a flaw in my lease; and the lease, he tells me, is not worth a farthing, and that he can turn us all out of our farm to-morrow if he pleases; and sure enough he will please; for I have thwarted him this day, and he swears he'll be revenged of me. Indeed, he has begun with me badly enough already. I'm not come to the worst part of my story yet——'
Here Farmer Price made a dead stop; and his wife and Susan looked up in his face, breathless with anxiety.
'It must come out,' said he, with a short sigh; 'I must leave you in three days, wife.'
'Must you?' said his wife, in a faint, resigned voice. 'Susan, love, open the window.' Susan ran to open the window, and then returned to support her mother's head. When she came a little to herself she sat up, begged that her husband would go on, and that nothing might be concealed from her. Her husband had no wish indeed to conceal anything from a wife he loved so well; but, firm as he was, and steady to his maxim, that the truth was the thing the fittest to be spoken at all times, his voice faltered, and it was with great difficulty that he brought himself to speak the whole truth at this moment.
The fact was this. Case met Farmer Price as he was coming home, whistling, from a new-ploughed field. The attorney had just dined at The Abbey. The Abbey was the family seat of an opulent baronet in the neighbourhood, to whom Mr. Case had been agent. The baronet died suddenly, and his estate and title devolved to a younger brother, who was now just arrived in the country, and to whom Mr. Case was eager to pay his court, in hopes of obtaining his favour. Of the agency he flattered himself that he was pretty secure; and he thought that he might assume a tone of command towards the tenants, especially towards one who was some guineas in debt, and in whose lease there was a flaw.
Accosting the farmer in a haughty manner, the attorney began with, 'So, Farmer Price, a word with you, if you please. Walk on here, man, beside my horse, and you'll hear me. You have changed your opinion, I hope, about that bit of land—that corner at the end of my garden?' 'As how, Mr. Case?' said the farmer. 'As how, man! Why, you said something about it's not belonging to me, when you heard me talk of enclosing it the other day.' 'So I did,' said Price, 'and so I do.'
Provoked and astonished at the firm tone in which these words were pronounced, the attorney was upon the point of swearing that he would have his revenge; but, as his passions were habitually attentive to the letter of the law, he refrained from any hasty expression, which might, he was aware, in a court of justice, be hereafter brought against him.
'My good friend, Mr. Price,' said he, in a soft voice, and pale with suppressed rage. He forced a smile. 'I'm under the necessity of calling in the money I lent you some time ago, and you will please to take notice that it must be paid to-morrow morning. I wish you a good evening. You have the money ready for me, I daresay.'
'No,' said the farmer, 'not a guinea of it; but John Simpson, who was my substitute, has not left our village yet. I'll get the money back from him, and go myself, if so be it must be so, into the militia—so I will.'
The attorney did not expect such a determination, and he represented, in a friendly, hypocritical tone to Price, that he had no wish to drive him to such an extremity; that it would be the height of folly in him to run his head against a wall for no purpose. 'You don't mean to take the corner into your own garden, do you, Price?'